April 25th, 2008

Twitter Tweets in Japanese

I posted a story on Wednesday about the new Japanese version of Twitter over at The Next Web.
Of course you can always follow me on Twitter with @mikesheetal

April 23rd, 2008

Dutch-Japan GameJam winner decided

I spent Tuesday evening at the Dutch Embassy to sit on the final jury for the Dutch-Japan GameJam. I was in good company with representatives from Cell, Taito and the Dutch Embassy in Japan joining me on the jury.
This was the second jury stage of the GameJam, with the first being back in March, when [...]

April 21st, 2008

The three stages of relevance and why the social web is broken

I have been wanting to do this story for a while based on my experiences of working with social media and trying to make sense of the growth and subsequent abandonment of many social networks.
It seems it is every month that we have another star social network, social web concept, or interaction model. Right now [...]

April 7th, 2008

Sneak a peak at USN’s bookmarks

I have been a little bit off the blogging for the last couple of weeks with a busy schedule. Never fear though, we have lots of new things happening at UltraSuperNew Inc.
Freshly added to our website is the new Bookmarks page.
The page shows our latest links, images and videos pulled off the web. This is [...]

March 21st, 2008

Kevin Rose is copying me!

I just read that Kevin Rose is growing a mustache for Amsterdam… surely Kevin has some more original ideas as I managed to do that already several weeks ago as my own special tribute to Holland when I visited Amsterdam and Utrecht to sit on the jury of the Dutch-Japan GameJam.

See here proof and execution [...]

March 19th, 2008

New articles up on Japan Times and The Next Web

Japan Times just published my latest article for their technology section, Techno Times. This time I am writing about the Japan GameJam, for which I was invited to go over to The Netherlands a week and a half ago. I was over there with my business partner, Marc Wesseling, to give a lecture about mobile [...]

March 4th, 2008

As the world opens up, Mixi (Japan’s biggest SNS) starts a content ownership lockdown.

I will try not to double blog too much, so here is just a link to my post at TheNextWeb looking at the new Mixi terms of use policy that should impact a large number of people here in Japan.
As the world opens up, Mixi (Japan’s biggest SNS) starts a content ownership lockdown.

February 25th, 2008

Samurai.FM fundraising drive

My good mate and Samurai.fm founder, Hash, just announced the start of a fund raising drive for Samurai.fm. This is a great opportunity to give a little back to a great source of free music that has been running for over 4 years streaming music from great DJs and musicians and providing the soundtrack to [...]

February 21st, 2008

Feature on Web2Asia

I recently had a nice chat with Georg Godula from Web2Asia about what it takes to make in the interactive industry in Japan. He followed that up with an interview with me and has recently published that on Web2Asia. Check it out here : Scene Report: Japan – UltraSuperNew Inc.
In the interview I talk a [...]

February 17th, 2008

Dependent Records hoax and blogger research standards

Recently Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten of The Next Web (a blog I also write for) reported on what was a breaking story on independent record label, Dependent Records, closing shop and making their entire catalog available on file sharing site, Pirate Bay. It turns out the story was a hoax, republished by a number of [...]