Manga Get

I have written about the mobile novel phenomenon in Japan and how it is not a birth of new genre of novels but is a birth of a new form of communication.
Authors write stories using cell phones, upload them onto novel sites. As soon as a new story or a chapter is uploaded, readers read it and leave comments. The authors read comments and fine-tunes the story lines. Thus, mobile novels are written through this collaboration between authors and readers. This is why I say that it is a new form of communication. It's a form of communication centered around contents called mobile novels.
Manga Get is a service which promotes a new form of communication, this time, centered around cartoons.
The service provides a PC based Web site for uploading cartoons, and a mobile site for viewing the cartoons.
The authors draw cartoons on a piece of paper, scan the paper, and upload the data to the Manga Get PC site. The site automatically cuts up the cartoons into indivisual frames which then are optimized for the cell phones' small screens.
Once all this is done, readers can view the cartoons using their cell phones. Readers can become fans of particular authors, leave comments, or communicate with other fans using bulletin board systems(BBS). In effect, it is a social-networking-service(SNN) type community which centers around cartoons.
Mang Get is run by a Japanese start-up called Spicysoft.
Like other online communities, advertisement is the base of their business model. They also sell members virtual goods such as clothes and accessories for the members avatars.
Spicysoft said they plan to share the revenue with popular authors. With magazine market in Japan is shrinking fast, Spicysoft hope to create a new marketplace to mach authors and readers.

Next book is on mobile and Asia

I have started collecting information on the Internet business in Asia. Especially I am interested in mobile space. I can collect information on Japanese mobile business without a problem, but I think it will be a bit harder to collect Korean and Chinese information. Any help on collecting Korean and Chinese information would be greatly appreciated.
This time I am going to write a book in English, and English only. I don't plan to write a book on this topic in Japanese.

mobile p2p framework "Spear"

Yoshidakamagasako Inc.'s mobile p2p framework "Spear" would make cell phones to communicate data without going through the cell phone operators' central servers.
Data from one cell phone is routed to the other at the local router level instead, therefore it takes much less time to communicate data between two phone sets.
While the response time of going through the central server is around a few seconds, by routing at the local level data travels almost real time to the other phone.
Yoshidakamagasako Inc also developed multi-cast framework called "Spear Multi." With Spear Multi, time lag doesn't increase as much even the number of the cell phone increases. With other typical P2P framework, it takes four times longer to finish sending data as the number of cell phone increases.

This near real time data communication enables quick response multi-player games such as table tennis.
Although you can do the similar games using blue tooth technology, with Spear p2p framework you can play with way beyond the blue tooth signal range which said to be around 10 meters.
First applications of this technology are games, of course. P2P games are already available to the general public in Japan through NTT docomo, au and other cell phone operators. Square-Enix just released a game called "Demon Chain" using Spear.
Other application may be real time handwritten chat on touch screen smart phones. After display the same map on two smart phones touch screens, one users' handwritten messages and images such as arrows on the map would show up on the other users screen. Sharp started a handwritten chat software called "Tegaki Chat" on smart phones using the Spear technology.
Demonstration video can be downloaded here.