Akky Akimoto - The Japan Times

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Akky Akimoto

Akky Akimoto writes for Asiajin.com, an English/Spanish blog on the Japanese web scene. He is also an in-house blogger for Cybozu Labs, which helped him get over 120,000 tech-loving Twitter followers. He has worked as a localization engineer in the U.K., the U.S. and Vietnam as well as in Japan.

For Akky Akimoto's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

LIFE / Digital / JAPAN WEB WATCH

Jun 19, 2013

Web company IPOs in Japan pick up pace

What Web services are hot in Japan? One indicator that a company's business is growing and that it's expecting more growth is when it lists on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) with an IPO (Initial Public Offering).

Japan Times

LIFE / Digital / JAPAN WEB WATCH

May 15, 2013

Google Glass may shatter Japan's 'manner' mode

Google Glass is the latest mobile Internet gadget to grab headlines. Resembling a pair of glasses, the futuristic device enables wearers to access the Internet — in particular Google's search, maps and translation functions — as long as they have a Wifi or Bluetooth connection. The mini computer screen that appears in a user's direct field of view is combined with a camera/microphone making it easy to record all the information around you.

LIFE / Digital / JAPAN WEB WATCH

Apr 17, 2013

Shows on the road: mobile, on-demand TV a hit in Japan

There must be very few homes in the developed world that don't have a television, and Japan is no exception. Even in the Internet era, as terrestrial TV is slowly being replaced by networked TVs, cable channels and computers, regular TV broadcasting still makes up for much of many people's leisure time.

Japan Times

LIFE / Digital / JAPAN WEB WATCH

Mar 20, 2013

Japan expresses its love for Apple and Steve Jobs, in manga

Apple Inc. has been always loved by people in Japan. Even during its toughest years, in the 1990s, after cofounder Steve Jobs had been expelled and the company was almost dead, its Macintosh computer held a much greater market share in Japan than in other countries.

Japan Times

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Feb 20, 2013

Freeware has animators dancing to the Hatsune Miku beat

If you search for the acronym MMD on Niconico or YouTube — the two most popular video-sharing sites in Japan — the resulting list will have over 100,000 anime videos, most of which have 3-D anime-style girl characters singing and dancing to electronic J-pop music. What's surprising is that these (usually short) videos are not created by professional anime studios; they are mostly made by amateurs.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Jan 16, 2013

CV frauds revealed by diligent online fact checks

In recent years, there have been several cases where Japanese media icons, especially those who shine across national and language borders, have been accused of falsifying their personal histories, and they have consequently lost whatever popularity they had gained through the mass media and/or books.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Dec 19, 2012

2012 has been a big year on the Japanese social-media scene

Twitter continues to ride high. Facebook has grown a lot, but newcomer Line seems set to overtake it. Social game companies Gree and Mobage have shifted their overseas expansion into high gear. And Mixi finally admits that it needs to try harder to understand what its members want. In this month's column, we look back at the big battles fought in the Japanese social-media scene over the past year.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Nov 21, 2012

Merumaga: Paid e-mail newsletters make a come-back

Despite the fact that Japan has the world's largest market for digital-manga, which are primarily read on cellphones, and that Amazon has recently brought out its Kindle platform in Japan — after a delay of 5 years — the e-book business here has yet to take off. As such, it's probably no surprise that old-style digital content in the form of merumaga (paid e-mail newsletters) is blooming in the Japanese Web scene, though the scale of the business is still small.

Japan Times

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Oct 17, 2012

Apple should team up with local companies to solve Maps dilemma

In September, a major update of Apple's iOS software for iPhones and iPads (iOS6) replaced the devices' long-standing Google Maps application with Apple's self-made Maps service. However, the new app soon caused outrage among iDevice users around the world due to the low quality of the maps.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Sep 19, 2012

Yahoo! Japan's 'explosive speed' changes Web biz

This spring, Japanese Web titan Yahoo! Japan appointed a new CEO and new board members — the first big change to its board since the company was founded 16 years ago.

Japan Times

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Aug 15, 2012

Despite flaws, Rakuten is 1-0 against Amazon in Japan's e-book wars

Rakuten, Japan's largest online shopping mall — and a head-to-head rival of Amazon Japan that also hopes to expand its business globally — launched its first e-book reader, the Rakuten Kobo Touch, on July 19, getting the jump on the long anticipated Japanese release of Amazon's Kindle.

Japan Times

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Jul 18, 2012

Japan's LINE social network could challenge global competitors

LINE is a cross-platform communication service and app, offered for free by Naver, from NHN Japan. The basic functionality allows users to send text messages and to make free calls with other users who have the app installed on their smartphones. The service launched just 13 months ago, on June 27, 2011, and its growth rate has been simply amazing, with 45 million users currently registered — 20 million of whom are in its homeland. The rapid growth of LINE is currently one of the hottest Internet topics in Japan.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Jun 20, 2012

Online crowdfunded tuition service entangled in controversy

Crowdfunding, a method that enables projects to raise money over the Internet, has become one of the hottest trends in the world of Web-startups. The most successful of these is Kickstarter.com, which has hosted more than 45,000 projects.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

May 16, 2012

Japan's social-gaming industry hindered by government's anti-gambling move

When it comes to mobile social-gaming, nowhere is it as popular or as profitable as it is in Japan. The nation's two industry giants, Gree and its rival DeNA's Mobage, have been increasing their sales every quarter for years. Gree's TV-commercial campaigns are second only to cosmetics company Shiseido in the amount of money spent on advertising (Kao is No. 3, P&G No. 4 and Kirin No. 5), which shows just how large the social-gaming industry has grown.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Apr 18, 2012

Why good Wi-Fi is so hard to find in Japan

Friends visiting Japan often ask me why there are no, or very few, Wi-Fi hotspots available at hotels and cafes in Tokyo. They mention that in their countries, many places offer free Wi-Fi for guests — often it is completely open, or you simply need to ask the staff for the password.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Mar 21, 2012

How The Man is following you online — and even on the train

Hatena is a Kyoto-based company that has run several web services since 2001. Similar to Digg, Delicious or Reddit, it has grown a web-savvy, tech-oriented community around a Q&A service (from which its name, Japanese for "question mark," is gleaned), free blog-hosting, and so on.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Feb 15, 2012

Cosmetics review website goes public with IPO

Tokyo-based Internet company Istyle Inc. announced on Feb. 3 its intention to list itself on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers Market (Tosho Mothers). The planned date of the IPO is March 8, 2012.

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Jan 18, 2012

'Stealth marketing' by companies is polluting online forums

You may have heard that the underbelly of the Japanese Web revolves around a massive bulletin-board service called 2-channel (pronounced ni-channel), where people can post messages anonymously. For Japanese, who find it difficult to freely express their opinions in public, that anonymity has meant that 2-channel has become a place of emancipation. As such, the site is mostly full of garbage and is often the epicenter of Internet "incidents." It has, though, also become an outlet for a lot of valuable information.

Japan Times

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Dec 21, 2011

2011: The year when Japan went global over social networking

Over the past year, major U.S. social-media services have made some serious inroads into Japan. Here are some recent developments.

Japan Times

LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN

Nov 16, 2011

Social-gaming and traditional media no longer deadly foes

Japan's two social-game-networking giants, Gree and Mobage, have been spending enormous amounts on producing TV advertising recently, and as a result they have each attracted approximately 20 percent of the population to their services, selling vast number of virtual items. In the West it is unusual to promote Web services on traditional media such as TV, as good Web services are thought to be self-promotional and gain publicity virally, so the move by Gree and Mobage is an interesting business tactic.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.

The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces

By Stephen Mansfield

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