Microsoft Will Try Out Blog Service In Japan 196
theodp writes "Signaling its growing awareness of blogging as both a potential threat and a new business opportunity, Microsoft is turning to Japan to launch its first blog service and aims to have 1 million users in the first year. Not surprisingly, Microsoft's offering targets mobile bloggers, since nearly 90 percent of Japan's cell phones have Internet capability."
Re:Japanese Characters (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Blog is an annoying word? (Score:2, Informative)
Really the only difference is that 'blogs' usually stick to only 1 topic or are someone's personal log or views. But they have comments, links, trolls just like everthing else before them.
Re:Japanese Characters (Score:5, Informative)
so if you have the chart like
a ka sa ta
i ki shi chi
u ku su tsu
e ke se te
o ko so to
then '2' would be a, press again for i, again for u.. depending on the manufacturer and model, you'd go through hiragana first, then hit katakana. Or, you'd switch modes to get to katakana/hiragana/alpha/numeric inputs.
For the kanji, there's either a special button and it'll interpret, or some phones have a little window at the bottom that has a list of commonly used words that start with what you've typed in so far. This was a really nifty feature on mine that I loved.. saved me a lot of typing for when I was emailing my japanese friends.
And yes, I said email: that's how text messaging works over there. There's in-network (c-mail, skymail, whatever..), but to get between J-Phone, DoCoMo, au, etc.. you use regullar smtp email, built in to the damned phone. Annoying when my parents didn't realize that I was reading their 10 page long emails on a cell screen, but oh well.
Re:Shouldn't that be... (Score:1, Informative)
Not their first (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Japanese Characters (Score:2, Informative)
This is almost right. The "a" is on the 1 key, not 2. The letters are arranged according to the Japanese alphabet
1 = a, i, u, e, o
2 = ka, ki, ku, ke, ko
3 = sa, shi, su, se, so
The star button is used to switch input modes, but most of the time it is unnecessary. ALL cell phones now come with a predict function which predicts what you are writing. To use an above poster's example, if I want to write "watashi" (I), I DO NOT write WA . TA . SHI . nor do I do any switching to kanji etc (as the above post said). Rather, I just hit 0 for wa (wa, wo, n ....) and the bottom of the screen has a list of suggestions. Since I use this word a lot it is the first choice, so I just hit DOWN > ENTER to get the kanji for watashi. It works this way for all kanji. Occassionally it will not have the kanji I want to use, but most of the time one of the first few predictions is that I want.
It also has a learning function. So it remembers words that I have used recently / more frequently and puts those near the top of the predict list. I recently went to a summer festival and mailed my date to tell her I might wear a JINBEI (summer festival clothes for men). The kanji for this was not one of the first predictions when I entered only JI. I had to enter the whole word to get the kanji. But in the next mail, when I wanted to use that word again, it did show up in the first screen of predictions after simply entering JI.
For me, as a foreigner, this is a great system. I speak Japanese far better than I can write. I don't have to have memorized all of the kanji to write on my cell phone, I just have to recognise them in context. The downside is that this makes me lazy in my kanji learning.
A lot of Japanese people say that they are "wordpro baka" (word processor fools) - since using a predict function is ubiquitous they only have to recognise kanji (reading skills) but their production abilities (writing skills) aren't as good. (Recognising and writing aren't the same thing when it comes to thousands of kanji.)
I think the article stated that something like 90% of Japanese cell phones are internet-ready. I think it is a bit misleading. ALL new phones have internet capabilities. It would only be older phones that do not. I have one single co-worker (out of a hundred) who does not have internet capability on his cell phone. That is only because he hasn't upgraded in a few years. The four main cell phones companies all have a system whereby you can upgrade to a new (expensive) phone for little money after a period of time. (Example - after one year of my contract I can get the new TV-equiped Vodafond for half price, after 2 years, for about 1/4 the price, after three years, for free. Or something like that.)
When I bought this phone (in March) I got the cheapest (hence oldest) model I could find. I think I paid about $25 dollars for it. It is MUCH smaller and has more features than the new phones at home in Canada that I would have to pay $500 for. I also pay less per month than I used to to Canada.
On a side note, I find it far easier to write mail in Japanese on my cell phone than in English because of the nature of the langauge. A couple years ago in Canada I used cell phone mail for a short time. I had to pay extra for it in Canada, whereas it is just a normal feature of a phone here. It seems tortuous to write in English and keep having to insert a space between words and keep having to hit the forward button to be able to write letters that are on the same button. It takes a long time to write a sentence. But in Japanese there are no spaces between words (makes text entry on a cell phone MUCH quicker and easier). As well the predict funtion means that you probably only have to enter 1/3 or maybe even 1/4 of the 'letters'. Finally, since the Japanese language usage