DEMOfall 09 with Japanese Perspective

Say you want a revolution, well you know... count me out

She points out that the incooporate SNS like Dekks powered by Indigo would be necsessary for us to improve productivity. Dekks gives us a good tool for the 'right person at right place' case.

Sure it does. However, so many productivity improving gadgets are out there and I have not seen them get the job done. Why? One of the reasons is that employees don't want to new tools. They think it lowers the productivity to use unfamiliar tools. They are now sutisfied just email or having a small talk.

The lower white-color productivity bottlenecks for the better work flow or larger surpass. But in Japanese situation, we need to spare us out of the bureaucratic process of decision making first. General or accountant stuff works hard with happiness to make so many rules to say that we need to keep our security, account rule change or the SOX act :) Rules piled up with keeping to send e-mails from general affair division. Some enterprises seem like the empire of the social democracy in the capitalism world. After removing this bureaucratic system, the incooperate SNS would work well.

Lost in Translation? Well, machine will help you..

Translation is the next generation keyword in the online business.

Chinese, Indian or most of European entrepreneurs pitch their services in the global market. 70% of online conversation is in non English. Mobile is the first computer for people in the emerging market. SMS reaches billions of users everyday. There are huge opportunity among the start-ups.

Dubzer, the machine translation developer, sees the bright future in the translation business. But, is it possible for the symple argolithm to apply the multiple translation? The Dubzer CEO, Anjali Gupta said, 'We can do that'. Their argolithm determines the way of transition each alpahabet, Chinese characters or Japanese hiragana. It works automatically and learns the way with organic.

Google already has machine translation service, and few people think that works well. However, I see the search results of Google translation when I serach some foreign news. It will be productive for many non English speakers to use their mother tongues to understand the information written in English.

A DEMO producer, Chris Shiply pointed out that Web 3.0 will be the 'distribution web' where the real world information carrys on the digital world. More spread the internet will, more people with non English speakers will log on. The new horizne of internet industry streaches on the Africa or Asian with local language and non techy people.

Zipangu or Galapagos?? Where to go, our ahead mobile market?

Azlan S. Shahabudin COO in Rseven, the mobile calender sync service, said, 'We focus on the mobile calendar because this is universal service. That's the way it is.' Rseven records every activity on daily life and archives it.You can check what you did on the paticular day.

There were other share the calendar or leverage-friend-list services at DEMOfall 09. Lunchster will makes you a lunch master and Tungle gives availability of share the schedule for you with friends. Most of them use iPhone platform.

Those are intersting for me, but I am not familiar with the leverage of my own friends lists. There is interesting cultural differences. The US people like social and we don't. Instead of busines use, most of the mobile sevice here in Japan is for amusement such as casual games and fortune teller. Teens or many commuters check the email (not SMS), writes what they are doing on SNS, or reading mobile literature.

I told Mr. Shahabudin that we use a notebook to manage their schedule. He said, 'Never' :D 'Hello! Kitty' note books are the schedule manager.

Mr. Shahabudin said, 'Japanese mobile service are crazy, we don't understant that.' The cuteness, or kawaii, is the key to the success in the mobile business here. It could be teens who have initiated how to use mobile phones. Decome, or mail application to decorative their mail, or Emoji, cute ascii art for email don't exist without their enthuisiasm for the mobile communication. We thought we are ahead in the mobile market. But, is it a zipangu or glapagos??

Japan has the lack of our ability of developping 'platform'. Google, Amazon or Facebook... all the online platforms come from the U.S. We have Yahoo! Japan, which is the only search engine that Google can't overwhelm in the local market. Mixi is the number one SNS, which has eight million subscribers. Docomo i-mode has enjoyed the paid contents model for a decade. Mobile restaurant search is familiar for many years. Our distress is none of our convinient service goes abroad as global platform. Masochistically, we called our mobile market Galapagos, where the evolution occured by own in each of island.

News paper dilemma, free, to be or not to

Z-commerce, powered by Zuora, would solve the Japanese media congromarites dilemma, free or pay. As the US or any other nwes paper companies do, Japanese newpapers suffer from their structual downturn economy. Asahi and Nikkei has annouced that they will end in deficit in the fiscal year of 2009.  It seems that they can not figure out the digital transition solution yet. Z-commerce has all in one package. Good solution for those Japanese media giants.They should contact with them.

Well, here are some thoughts on DEMO.. If you come to Tokyo, pleased to show you around, sushi in the fish market can't be missed :))