Episode 16 is a pretty exciting episode for us to make. It covers the big hitters of the Japanese mobile phone networks, NTT Docomo, AU by KDDI and Softbank. We cover some history and some of the differences between them. We also cover Softbank and its CEO Son-san (@masason)in a bit more detail in the latter half of this episode. I found out that he’s worth about the same as Steve Jobs. And sandwiched between is Ken’s 30 seconds, introducing lang-8.com

Unfortunately as I mentioned in a twitter post, this is a little on the long side at almost 26 minutes. We hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions about the mobile phone market here that we didn’t cover, you can send us email or a tweet.

I joined the TechCrunch Camp at Tokyo Japan and interviewed to CEO of Tonchdot Mr.IGUCHI who produced the Sekai Camera. His concept called ‘SOLAR’ was impressive. Please watch the video to hear what it is.

Not only that, I saw some cool demos at the camp and here are links I interviewed.

• Mind Bucket (English)
• Qlippy (English)
• Price Map (English, Only for iPad)
• V-Sido (English)

Unfortunately I couldn’t visit all booths but here are links of all companies joined. Most of companies, web sites speak Japanese only though.

• TUVALU VISUALIZATION PROJECT (English)
• AdMaker (English)
• ChanTo.me (English)
• Piku (Japanese Only)
• KAUPON (Japanese Only)
• MYTRACKs (Japanese Only)
• lalacolle (Japanese Only)
• SyncPlus (Japanese Only)
• Talknote (Japanese Only)
• iQON (Japanese Only)
• Ramblin (Japanese Only)
• twireco (Japanese Only)
• TAKUTOMO (Japanese Only)
• Creads (Japanese Only)
• proovy (Japanese Only)
• SekaiNow (Japanese Only)
• Insatsu Hikaku (Japanese Only)
• fluxflex (Web site unavailable)

First news, was of Rakuten (the online shopping mall we covered in Episode 014) switching to using English in their meetings as well as their purchase of buy.com for US $250 million. Next we talked about our new video camera, the DSLR Canon EOS Kiss x4 (also known as the Rebel T2i or EOS 550D, depending on where you are). What do you think of the video and sound quality, compared to previous episodes? And also we have a new video editor (me), so if you notice any problems just leave a comment and I will personally look into it.

The next part, is a new segment, which we named Ken’s 30 seconds, even though a little bit longer than that. Ken introduces the way he learns Chinese and how you can learn Japanese via Smart.fm brought to you by Cerego Japan. As a sidenote, Kim of jisho.org (one of the best online Japanese <-> English dictionaries) works there.

Of course, the iPad in Japan is a topic that we could hardly not mention, especially with the whole sim-lock nonsense from Apple and Softbank. Hiro’s reserved his iPad, and I’ve decided not to get one. On a related note, since he is getting the wifi only model, he gives his final verdict on the emobile vs WiMax.

Finally we mentioned WordCamp Yokohama, Japan’s 4th big WordPress meet-up. Hiro promises interviews, which I will do my best to edit and get ready soon. Disappointingly the videos we sent to WordPress.tv of WordCamp Kyoto never seemed to have appeared. We’ll probably be posting these to messa.tv directly.

Hope you enjoyed this episode, as ever we are delighted to get feedback whether good or bad. Leave us a comment or send us an email!

In this episode, we take a different approach, showing you a Japanese site or service intermixed with our usual video stream. The subject of this episode is Rakuten, Japan’s Number 1 online shopping mall. We will should you the ins and outs, what makes Rakuten special, Rakuten’s English site and even show you the CEO’s twitter feed.

We hope you enjoy it and if you do and would like to see more of these guides to Japanese sites and services please leave a comment below.

Patrick came to Osaka to give a cracking good presentation entitled “Improving Websites Design Through Use of Statistics” to the Design Matters group at the Apple Store. We invited him round to messaliberty for lunch and a quickie interview.

Patrick is famous for many reasons, including blogging about his experiences of setting up a mISV (micro Independant Software Vendor) on a shoestring budget (and as a side job). I think his initial budget was 60 USD. He is kind enough not only to share his experiences but also advice and even code. His side-business was so successful that he could quit his day job and is now working on his second project as well as touring around giving speeches. Next stop is Germany I believe.

Here are some of the links mentioned in the interview:

• Google Adwords Tool
• Patrick’s blog
• Patrick’s Bingo Card Creator
• A/Bingo Rails Framework (Open Source, A/B testing Rails plugin)
• Visual Website Optimizer
• Patrick’s twitter account

And here is the interview with Patrick in Japanese mentioned at the end.

We started the show with the Google vs China sagat, Hiro quizzed me on the reactions on Hong Kong citizens (I was in Hong Kong when the controversy started.) And he was surprised at the lack of surprise. Next up was some digital entertainment news, and the latest add-on for the PS3. The torune is a digital tv tuner but it also let’s the PS3 record shows. With this add-on, added to the Blu-ray, Internet, YouTube abilities, the PS3 could be poised to become the defacto home entertainment center in Japan. And if that wasn’t enough, DMM announced on-demand video streaming to the PS3. We forgot to mention that the ads that DMM are running feature Chiaki Kuriyama of Kill Bill and Battle Royale fame.

One more piece of Sony related news was TransferJet, a new wireless memory card that sends data faster than USB2! (But of course useless for other brands of digital camera). And finally we talked about the Kindle DX International version vs the as yet unannounced iPad. We recorded this episode one day before the big announcement. I basically sum up the why I was waiting for the iPad and held off ordering the Kindle DX.

And that was episode #13, a shorter sweeter episode than recent ones. Hope you enjoy it, and leave a comment! We’re starved of comments

We shared our New Year resolutions for messa.tv and messaliberty. hulor, blog posts and WordPress development all got a mention. 2009 was a busy year in the tech world in Japan and we reviewed it, Top 5 fashion. See if you agree with what we thought were the biggest or most important events of last year (with special mention of Ken’s new big screen TV).

Continuing with the Top 5 style, we did predictions for 2010 for the Japanese tech world, including the battle between Twitter Japan and Ameba Now. Predictions are always tricky to get right, so check back with us regularly to see if our crystal ball is working properly.

But we are also interested in hearing from you and so we are giving away this special and pretty amazing puzzle in our first competition. You can make any picture from its 300 pieces, and it works best with portraits. Check out the above link for more info about the puzzle.

Details of how to enter are near the end of the episode. The competition is open to anyone and we will send it anywhere. Looking forward to your many interesting entries!

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!

In this episode, we started with a brief report on WordCamp Kyoto 2009 and discussed our favourite parts.  We joined as a sponsor/official video crew.

Hiro’s favourite part of the two-day event were the presentations given by Yuriko-san on her plugin Ktai Style that let’s WP sites be compatible with Japanese mobile phone browsers.  It covers fine details such as optimised navigation and comment viewing/moderation and she tests it with all 5 network carriers.  Mine was the presentation by Koga-san on GPL licensed Commerially supported themes.  Which provoked some lively discussion as well as my own blog post.
We also did some quick fire interviews during the party afterwards and you can see some of them at the end of the show.

Next up, we talk about the new device from EMobile called PocketWifi that kicks MiFi’s ass.  MiFi you might know is a mobile wifi hotspot and is mighty popular in the US.  PocketWifi is all the same but faster, operating on the 7.2Mbps Emobile network.  I also get in my usual joke about Hiro’s MBP battery.

If 7.2Mbps sounds fast for wireless net, emobile’s fastest speed is actually 21Mbps.  And if 21Mbps isn’t good enough how about 40Mbps of WiMax?  Hiro shares some news about the WiMax installation in our office building, that makes me want to go out and buy a Panasonic Let’s Note S Series.  16 Hours battery life, 2.53GHz Core2Duo, built in DVD writer, built in WiMax, and only 1.32Kg (3lbs)

We heard some good news from Asiajin who talked about the success of NicoNico Douga and their freemium model.  Can you guess how much this “Japanese YouTube” is making from subscribers?  We talk about the figures and also the philosophy they took to achieve them.

And as we mentioned earlier this episode ends with some interviews, featuring Toru, Mizuno-san, Asami and Naoko-san.

From a different location (we just moved from one side of the office to the other) we started the show. Hiro shows everyone the new layout but I point out that not many viewers had seen the old layout.

Our first topic was CSS Nite, which are presentation events held in different cities in Japan, for web designers and developers. We went to the last one held in Osaka and which was about HTML5. We were quite surprised that so many fellow web folk attended. Over 100 signed up and showed up. There were presentations talking about the new tags in HTML5 and showing the new tags being used for video and player controls.

Our next set of news items were all to do with updates, from the Sony PS3 Slim to the ipod nano to snow leopard and WordPress.  And of course, Firefox 3.5.3 which Hiro tried again after his bad experiences of 3.5.0  It’s funny though, for Hiro it is a lot more stable than 3.0 but for me it is the opposite.

We then talked about two of Japan’s biggest SNS (Social Networking Service) operators, mixi and DeNA, and their plans at opening up their application platforms.  They have really high market capital and are trying their hardest at generating revenue like Facebook. Related to this is the problems Japanese app makers have in providing information to non-Japanese users.  Techcrunch’s Serkan Toto wrote a piece covering the top 32 Japanese iPhone apps but ended it with a lament on the quality of the English description, details or instructions.  We are keen to help, so if you know any Japanese iPhone or Android app developers that would like English assistance, you can put them in touch with us.

And it wouldn’t be messa.tv if we didn’t mention gadgets and I talked about the latest gadget I bought, the eye-fi wireless sd card.  I’ve been wanting to get it for quite some time and now it’s available online and in retail shops in Japan.  It is a bit more expensive than if you bought it in the States.

Finally we heard news of another WordCamp taking place near to us.  WordCamp Kyoto is going to take place 16th and 17th October and of course we will attend.  Matt however may not attend as it seems there is an time-slot for a video message from Matt. We’ll bring you more details on the main blog when we get them.

As usual if you enjoyed the show please tell your friends or digg us, delicious us or twitter about us (http://twitter.com/messaliberty) (http://twitter.com/messatv)

Plus don’t forget you can subscribe to us via iTunes or RSS. See you next episode!