Samples of my work

At a recent FITC event in Tokyo I had a chance to hear renowed artist Shantell Martin speak about her artwork, as well as her connections to Japan, a place that has played a central role in her development. Her work is sometimes so simple that it resembles doodles that you might have done the margins of your school text book – but yet at the same time it sometimes has overwhelming detail and scale.

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It has been a while since I last spoke to the folks from Rovio, the Finnish company behind the wildly popular Angry Birds mobile game. But I recently had a chance to catch up with a few members of their flock in Tokyo, as the company gears up to open a new office in the Japanese capital, likely this spring. And while it might make for a more dramatic story to say that the company is making a furious push for Japan, that’s not the case. In fact quite the opposite. They are taking it slow, and that’s how they want it.

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I recently got in touch with some representatives from Cygames to find out more about the process of bringing Rage of Bamahut to markets outside Japan. Cygames’ Yuito Kimura was one of three directors, along with Akihiro Iino and Koichi Watanabe who originally developed the Rage of Bahamut concept. I asked him if they were confident that such mobile game genre like card battle games – which at that point were only really proven in Japan – could excel in overseas markets.

Read full article on SD Japan

When I first heard of Japan-based startup Tokyo Otaku Mode it was little more than a Facebook page sharing content about Japanese Otaku subculture. But as far as Facebook pages go, there wasn’t really anything little about it. At that time I think they had about half a million fans, and since then they have gone on to crack through ten million.

Read full article at SD Japan

Recently there have been a number of Chinese technology companies that have enjoyed moderate successes abroad. Just last week we featured UCWeb’s mobile browser, which has surpassed 100 million downloads globally [1]. Similarly, Tencent’s chat application Weixin, which has been promoted in foreign markets as WeChat, also looks to be doing well. It was recently featured in a New York Times piece, overviewing its global aspirations.

Read full article on TechInAsia.com

Here's a visualization of all of Japan's Prime Minister's using data pulled from Wikipedia. Timeline JS has a very handy embed generator that plays nice with Google Docs, so it was only a matter of moving around my columns to match the TimelineJS Google Docs template. This is one of the few third party visualization tools out there that really looks sharp. Here it is in full screen.

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This weekend in Fukuoka, Japan’s answer to South by South West, Myojo Waraku, took place, spotlighting artists, music, and up-and-coming startups as well. As a part of the ‘startup showcase’ on day two of the event, ten startups from Japan and around Asia took to the stage to pitch their ideas.

Having already established itself as a powerhouse in the PC online gaming space, Chinese gaming company The9 (NASDAQ:NCTY) is now looking to change with the times and already has a decent foothold in the newer game spaces of mobile, social, and web. Its social gaming platform, The9 Game Zone, has accrued more than 12 million users since its launch in April 2011. I recently spoke with The9’s head of mobile, Chris Shen, to find out more about what they can offer developers, as well as the company’s plans for the future.

Read full article: Chinese Gaming Giant The9 Making Mobile Moves, Thinking More Global

An interview with the CEO of Rakuten Taiwan Yuichi Ejiri, who explains a little about how the Japanese internet giant executed its first venture abroad.

Read full article: How Rakuten's Global Expansion Began With Baby Steps in Taiwan

I dove into an Akamai dataset of broadband internet speeds for each country, by quarter, going all the way back to 2007. Using a combo of Google Fusion Tables and the Google Charts API, I whipped up this map (see below), which features bar charts showing quarterly internet speeds (in bps) when you click on each country.

Read more on TechInAsia.com: Average Global Internet Connection Improves, Still Dwarfed by Asian Speed Demons