episode 011 – messa.tv JP, Ameba Now, Crunchpad, Kindle in Japan, Surprise visitor from Greece, and WordBench Osaka show notes

We started the show with some special news about messa.tv JP. We’ve relaunched the Japanese version of messa.tv and it’s being hosted by Hiro and Ken. Unlike this show where we go laptop-less, in the JP side they go diggnation-esque style. Watch the first episode to see what I mean.

The first topic of messa.tv JP is twitter Japan and its possible business model which leads to our topic of CyberAgent launching a twitter-clone in Japan. CyberAgent operate the blogging platform Ameba and they’ve named their twitter clone Ameba Nau (Now). They are also using their highly successful “Veronica Belmont” stragegy to get attention and users. We also talk about their infra-structure and possible problems.

Next was the topic of the Kindle in Japan. Hiro has actually seen and tried out one. Mizuno-san brought his along with him to the last WordBench Osaka meet and let Hiro try it out. He seemed impressed with it, but we also talked about the disadvantages and problems of the Kindle in Japan.

But at least the Kindle exists, we talked about the disasterous end to the CrunchPad that we were looking forward too. And it seems that we will just have to wait for the Apple’s touch pad project of their own.

As usual, we followed bad news with good news. Google released a new free IME (Input Method Editor) for Japanese users. An IME let’s Japanese computer users type more efficiently, converting hiragana to Kanji. Each Operating System has one bundled but the bundled ones are of only average quality. The gold standard is Atok by Just Systems and Hiro compares Atok to Google’s new Japanese IME system.

We had another announcement, this time about WordPress WordBench Osaka. The next meet-up is going to be in the offices of messaliberty and held on the 31st January 2010 from 1pm. So if you are interested in WordPress either developing or just using it and live around Kansai, come and join us. We have a short video on how to get to messaliberty on messa.tv or you can find a google map to our office here. Both Japanese and English will be spoken! If you need any further details, just send us an email at the usual address.

Our final piece of news was that we had a surprise visitor. Chris, a viewer from Greece, came round to see us. We were delighted to meet a new friend and he’s going to be in Japan for the next couple of weeks. He’s looking for work as a web developer/designer and he’s got a pretty good skill set (html/css/javascript/flash/accessibilty and more) and experience. If you know anyone or any company interested in hiring someone like Chris, please forward on his cv and portfolio. We’d like to see Chris continue his stay beyond his tourist visa

And that’s all we had time for. Happy New Year, see you in episode 12!