Korean tech blog beSUCCESS is organizing the beLAUNCH 2012 conference, the first global startup event ever to be hosted in that country (from June 13-14). The event is a little light on games, unfortunately, but offers an interesting program with of speakers coming to Seoul from all over the world. There is one panel on gaming however (dubbed “The Serious…
Today is my last day as staff writer for TechCrunch.com. Thank you to everybody at TechCrunch, first and foremost Michael Arrington (now a venture capitalist), Erick Schonfeld (now editor-in-chief), and John Biggs (editor of TechCrunch Gadgets) for the last four years. I also thank the people at TechCrunch Japan, Ryuichi Nishida, Yasushi Okue, and the entire team of translators…
I received the confirmation that I will be delivering the keynote presentation for the SparxUp Awards 2011, a web and mobile startup event to be held in Jakarta, Indonesia on October 21, 2011. My topic will be “Innovation, Imitation and Hyper-Localization”. The event will be held in the Kempinski Hotel in central Jakarta. Please refer…
I finally found some time to make a few changes to this site. Everything remains unchanged update/post-wise (frequency and content), but some tweaks and additions were necessary: slightly new layout more focus on social media and social games in Japan (less e-commerce, for example) added the option to subscribe via Email to new posts (apart…
I will be in the US (namely San Francisco and LA) for a few days next month to visit various companies and do other things. By coincidence, the JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization) will be holding an interesting event during that time, on July 29, in San Francisco: Social Networks and Casual Games: Transition from…
NHK, Japan’s only public TV broadcaster, has started airing Connect earlier this week, a new TV show covering the latest news and trends in tech. The show naturally has a website on NHK Online, and I am lucky to be one of the columnists for Connect’s dedicated blog for the show. Here is the link…
Malaysia finally gets an incubator for startups: much like Y Combinator, TechStars, or Seedcamp, the aim of Grey Attic is to create eight to ten investment-ready businesses per year. If things go as planned, there will be up to two intakes a year, with a cap of six startups per batch. The programs last 100…
I received the confirmation that I am lucky to be holding a keynote presentation at the APAC Mobile Leaning Conference 2011 in Bandung, Indonesia (June 8-9). My topic will likely be “Mobile Learning In Japan”, which is not really surprising given my background. You can register for the event here soon.