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<title>Haaze.com / darryltttt / All</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[AskGaijin launches crowd tool to help Japanese companies avoid embarrassing Engrish]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=askgaijin-launches-crowd-tool-to-help-japanese-companies-avoid-embarrassing-engrish</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=askgaijin-launches-crowd-tool-to-help-japanese-companies-avoid-embarrassing-engrish</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>darryltttt</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=askgaijin-launches-crowd-tool-to-help-japanese-companies-avoid-embarrassing-engrish</guid>
<description><![CDATA[While traveling in Tokyo this fall, Daniel Leuck went to the 7-11 for a caffeine hit and encountered a men&amp;'s  fashion magazine called &amp;''Men&amp;'s Fudge&amp;'' as well as a drink called &amp;''The Premium  Calpis&amp;''. Leuck, who speaks fluent Japanese and has lived for extended periods in Japan, had long grown accustomed to these sorts of wacky and sometimes apocryphal slogans. But this time a light bulb went off in his head. Why not create a crowdsourced tool to allow Japanese companies to bounce slogan ideas and product positioning off native English speakers and get a reality check before launching Leuck set his team at his Honolulu-based software and design company Ikayzo to work on the project in mid-December.[Full disclosure: Daniel Leuck is a personal friend of mine and  we've worked together as unpaid  volunteers to help build out and  provide content for TechHui, a  non-profit social network for the Hawaii  technology community that Ikayzo has spearheaded.]After 10 days of development, AskGaijin.com went live as a service yesterday. In a nutshell, AskGaijin provides a micro-consulting platform for small and medium  businesses in Japan to vet English-language slogans and branding quickly  and affordably using qualified native English speakers who also speak Japanese or understand Japanese culture. At present, there is no one else doing this in Japan for small companies on an ad hoc basis. Larger marketing and branding agencies will provide this service as part of a much bigger package, but that&amp;'s expensive for mom-and-pop and mid-size companies.True, it&amp;'s a narrow niche, but perhaps not as narrow as it seems at first. Tens of thousands of small and medium-sized Japanese companies use English language slogans and words on their packaging and branding. This practice extends well beyond Japan and into China and other parts of Asia. Then there is India, where the English sloganeering sometimes comes across as rather wacky in the U.S. or former British Commonwealth nations.More importantly, AskGaijin is tapping into a new and promising vein of the crowdsourcing phenomenon. To date, crowdsourcing has consisted primarily of rote, simplistic, repetitive tasks best accomplished by humans (think Amazon&amp;'s Mechanical Turk) or fairly complex involved tasks that require time and expertise (think oDesk or eLance or, in the case of translation, LanguageScape). But a rising tide of ventures are attempting to tap the need for quick bursts of highly informed opinions or information relating to complex or nuanced matters &amp;8212' like slogans or, in the case of LawPivot, legal questions. Users of these services don&amp;'t want to go through a long sign-up process, either. They just want an answer, pronto.This is where micro-consulting comes in. Think of it as Mahalo.com for actual business queries by real consultants who are paid enough to make responses worth their time. For participants in such micro-consulting platforms, answering questions can either be viewed as a viable revenue stream for times when a consultant is on the bus or the subway or just not swamped. Or the answers can be viewed as a means to upsell potential customers on a more diverse package of services. Whatever the case, there is certainly a huge need among small businesses for precisely these types of on-the-fly information dumps.Here&amp;'s more detail about AskGaijin: The platform is aimed primarily at smaller and mid-sized Japanese   companies that can&amp;'t afford to hire expensive marketing firms or   translation companies. &amp;''Japanese companies use English for marketing purposes for much the  same reason Americans use French product names or services &amp;8212' it sounds  cool / exotic / interesting. Because native English speakers are so rare  in Japan, this has led to a proliferation of &amp;8216'Engrish&amp;'. There are  successful websites dedicated solely to its hilarity (http://engrish.com),&amp;'' explains Leuck. &amp;''We wanted to create an affordable and easy way for Japanese  companies to get a  quick sanity  check on their English product names and slogans.&amp;''AskGaijin (Gaijin means foreigner in Japanese) is designed primarily to be accessed by mobile  phones and only comes in a Japanese language flavor at this point,  something Leuck chose to do to ensure that the sight was minimally  confusing for his initial customers. Potential consultants must speak Japanese, as well, even to be able to read and understand the registration process. Leuck says he is aiming for cross-cultural experts rather than simply anyone who speaks English.Leuck previously served as a Senior Vice President of Research and Development for Tokyo-based ValueCommerce, Asia&amp;'s largest online marketing company and Global Head of Development for London-based travel deals aggregator LastMinute.com, one of Europe&amp;'s largest B2C websites. AskGaijin used no external or venture funding and was built by Ikayzo&amp;'s development team in its spare time. The platform, which includes an e-commerce shopping cart, is constructed in mobile Jquery, a cross-platform scripting language that runs on both Android and iOS devices as well as many other smart phone systems.Initially AskGaijin is charging $12 per response. All requests must be composed  of a name or slogan (50 characters or less)  and an explanation of the product or service (200 characters or less). Response length is  limited to 400 characters to constrain the time responders spend on a  job.  Initially, Ikayzo (which is a multi-lingual shop and has an office in Japan) is going to use its own personnel to answer the questions and guarantees a response within three business days. &amp;''We are starting with an internal team of bilingual consultants to get a feel for the market before flipping on the crowd  source part of the system. We want to make sure we have good quality  controls in place,&amp;'' says Leuck, who has no plans to raise capital. If AskGaijin begins to take off, Leuck said, he anticipates the price settling at about $25. That&amp;'s a small price to pay to avoid naming your shredder the &amp;''Happy Life Creator.&amp;''Previous Story: VentureBeat on the prowl for DEMO startups in New York, TorontoPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: AskGaijin, Japan, micro-consultingCompanies: IkayzoPeople: Daniel Leuck          Tags: AskGaijin, Japan, micro-consultingCompanies: IkayzoPeople: Daniel LeuckAlex Salkever is an executive at a greentech startup in Silicon Valley and a former BusinessWeek.com technology editor and senior writer at AoL's DailyFinance.com, respectively. He just can't seem to kick the writing habit. VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[T-Mobile&'s 4G network speed doubling this year to 42 Mbps]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=t-mobilersquos-4g-network-speed-doubling-this-year-to-42-mbps</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=t-mobilersquos-4g-network-speed-doubling-this-year-to-42-mbps</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>darryltttt</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=t-mobilersquos-4g-network-speed-doubling-this-year-to-42-mbps</guid>
<description><![CDATA[T-Mobile has grand plans to double its 4G network&amp;'s speeds from 21 megabits per second to 42 Mbps in 2011, the carrier announced today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.The announcement makes it clear that T-Mobile is betting its network on HSPA+ technology, instead of competing 4G technologies like LTE and WiMax used by other US carriers.The company expects HSPA+ to dominate LTE over the next few years, reaching as many as 2.5 billion people by 2015. Eventually, an advanced version of HSPA+ could reach speeds of a whopping 672Mbps.T-Mobile said it has already activated the faster 4G service in Las Vegas, and offered up some details on how it compares to other 4G networks. In testing around the city, T-Mobile found that its 4G network was about on-par with Verizon&amp;'s LTE network with speeds around 8.5Mbps. Sprint&amp;'s WiMax network, on the other hand, lagged behind with speeds around 3Mbps.A brief demonstration of the improved HSPA+ network in the conference room showed average speeds of around 28.6Mbps (I assume being stationary helped the test to achieve such high speeds). T-Mobile also showed off a fast-paced online racing game, which seemed just as smooth as playing an online game with home broadband.The company touts its HSPA+ 4G network as the largest in the country, covering over 200 million people. At the moment, T-Mobile says its 4G network is 40 percent larger than Verizon&amp;'s recently launched 4G LTE network, and 40 percent bigger than Sprint&amp;'s, which has had a two-year head start on its competitors.T-Mobile also briefly showed its new G-Slate tablet by LG, but sadly it was nothing more than a photo opportunity. We expect to hear more details on that soon.Next Story: Tesla shows off alpha build of Model S Previous Story: Skype acquires Qik, expands into live videoPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: 4G, CES, CES 2011, HSPACompanies: Lg, T Mobile          Tags: 4G, CES, CES 2011, HSPACompanies: Lg, T MobileDevindra Hardawar is VentureBeat's lead mobile writer and East Coast correspondent. He studied philosophy at Amherst College, worked in IT support for several years, and has been writing about technology since 2004. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can reach him at devindra@venturebeat.com (all story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com), and on Twitter at @Devindra.VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Is Google&'s Facebook competitor almost ready]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-googlersquos-facebook-competitor-almost-ready</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-googlersquos-facebook-competitor-almost-ready</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>darryltttt</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=is-googlersquos-facebook-competitor-almost-ready</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The press has been speculating since the middle of last year about a new social networking product from Google &amp;8212' its big attempt to compete with Facebook. Now, some recent upgrades to Google products suggest that the company is advancing with its social plans and may be laying the groundwork for the big launch.The main news today was Googlea4a4s update of its social search service, a feature that has been relatively underwhelming until now &amp;8212' it allowed users to share and annotate links, but Google literally marginalized the feature by pushing it to the bottom of the search results. Starting today, however, Google said social results will be mixed into the rest of its links, making them more prominent.Google is also improving those annotations by pulling in content from other social networking services. For example, you can see when one of your friends has tweeted about a link. (Search Engine Land notes that this feature does not include Facebook a4Alikesa4. Last fall, Microsoft added likes to the results in its Bing search engine through a partnership with Facebook. Google&amp;'s Marissa Mayer, meanwhile, complained about all the content &amp;''locked&amp;'' inside Facebook and hidden from search engines.)To pull content from social networks, Google needs information about your social network accounts, so ita4a4s adding new options for connecting those services to your Google account. Ita4a4s also adding a prompt on the search results page asking you to connect your accounts.All of this seems like a significant improvement on its own, but it might really take off when Google launches its full social networking product. That product has been variously dubbed Google Me and Google +1, but whatever it&amp;'s called, executives said it will involve adding social features to Googlea4a4s existing services rather than building a standalone site. So as Google adds richer social features, more users will (presumably) be inclined to connect their accounts, which in turn will make Google Social Search more widely useful.Google has also been rolling out a new navigation toolbar thata4a4s visible at the top of the regular search page as well as in applications like Gmail. The company describes this as a a4Avisual update,a4 but TechCruncha4a4s MG Siegler notes that it looks pretty similar to the Google +1 toolbar that was leaked last year. Whata4a4s missing are the actual social features &amp;8212' like the a4Aloopa4 function for groups, and the a4Asharea4 button (which might allow users to share links in Google Social Search) &amp;8212' but therea4a4s definitely room in the toolbar for more buttons.The timing seems about right, since Mashable reported last September that Google&amp;'s schedule for the social launch had been pushed to spring of this year.Next Story: SoloPower wins $197 million loan guarantee for solar panel factory Previous Story: Team behind IBM&amp;'s Jeopardy overlord Watson stops by RedditPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: Google Social Search, Google toolbarCompanies: Facebook, Google, Twitter          Tags: Google Social Search, Google toolbarCompanies: Facebook, Google, TwitterAnthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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