My article about Twitter (and Tumblr.) for ascii.jp came out just at the right moment:

-(Japanese) alpha bloggers lured by mini-blogging (the article is in Japanese)

When I finished writing this piece, Google search for "Twitter" showed mostly US results and Technorati.jp blog search showed about a dozen Japanese articles per day but as this article get published, it became one of the hottest article on hatena bookmark (Japanese equivalent of del.icio.us) at the same time, the technorati.jp search result has been doubled or trippled.

This past week was the Twitter week for Japan; I saw more and more early adopters getting on board with Twitter.

I also started to see the third wave of Japanese early adopters have started using Twitter around yesterday. Seeing Orkut, Gree and mixi case, this could be the most critical group of all.

Both Orkut and Gree captured some people of this group but they couldn't keep momentum among them. This group of people are knows computers and Internet but they are not necessarily following latest trends in web technologies and services.

This is a very colorful group and includes several big and significant clusters. One big cluster is Mac-fanatics in Japan. their occupations, generations and taste varies widely but they are very well connected through some extremely popular Mac web sites. They also tend to have closer relation with media, famous people, etc. thus are somewhat influential.

if you take a look at Mixi. "Mac", "Apple" and "iPod" group are some of the biggest groups there and that must be some sign; however, this is not necessarily the evidence that is tied to stronger Mac sales in Japan. Many people in this cluster are not using the latest Mac many of them are still tied to Mac OS 9.

Orkut failed because it didn't support Japanese characters and couldn't gain momentum among these people.

Gree failed because it didn't display well on Safari.

Mixi's success is often tied to the fact that they were targeted toward younger women. And I believe that is very true. But I also see some significance in the fact that mixi was one of the few Social Network in Japan which was optimized for Safari thanks to Kobori-san who has been using iBook back then. And thanks to Kasahara-san who bought a Mac after he realized this trends; back then, he was showing up for some mac user groups meetings as well.

My chat with Chris Stone @ O'Reilly is now on the web.

We talked about how Mac and iPods are percieved in Japan, etc.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2007/03/13/a-chat-with-nobi.html

It's been said that Apple TV is running on Mac OS X.

A Japanese web news service, ascii.jp/mac took out the internal HD from AppleTV connect it to a Mac and found it is actually running on "AppleTV OS v10.4.7"; the version number suggest that it is a variation of Mac OS X "Tiger"

The article also tries to boot Mac wth that OS and vice versa but both attempts end in vain.

If you think the new MacBook Pro is all about Intel Core 2 Duo, you are missing a big point.

There is a very tiny but astonishing differences between the new MacBook Pro and the previous one.

See this picture for a few second and see if you can find it:

Those owners of the previous MacBook Pro should notice a tiny dot is missing from the new MacBook Pro.

Yes, with the previous MacBook Pro, there was a dot right next to the iSight built-in camera.

The dot turned into green light when you turn ON your iSight, to tell the camera has been activated.

So does this missing dot means the new MacBook Pro won't tell if the camera is working?

NO.

Here comes the amazing part.

See this picture. Apple DID THE IMPOSSIBLE 'AGAIN':

Here is the magnified version:

It has become clear that Yoshiaki Sakito, the Vice President of Marketing at Apple Computer, Inc.(US) and representative director of Apple Japan K.K. is leaving Apple this month.

As a Mac-oriented computer journalist, I take this as a rather serious loss for Apple K.K.

Mr. Sakito was instrumental to Apple's success in Japan. He has been a great spokes person for the company. No one could reflect the Apple brand better than he did.

He has also been favorited by Japanese media from TVs,magazines and newspaper. With the style and charming smile, he was able to add momentum to Apple products.

He debuted to the Japanese public just when Apple introduced iPod mini for the Japanese market. He promoted iPod mini through female fashion magazine, etc.

He has been actively making public speeches in 2005 but since the beginning of this year, he has become less visible and so did the iPod in Japan.

In Tokyo, if you get on the train, you still see many people wearing iPods but today, we see just as many users using the new digital walkman made by SONY.

iPod may not be as successful as in the US.but I believe Japan still is Apple's no.2 market worldwide. If iPod is losing ground here, I believe it is due to less publicity (partially due to less product announcement) and to iTunes Music Store-Japan. But this is exactlly the kind of situation Mr. Sakito can help.

Mr. Sakito used to work for Disney Japan, so he was a good candidate for the liason between the two companies.

Neither Apple nor Mr. Sakito commented on the sudden departure, but my instinct says he might be another victim of Apple's global strategy.

Apple Computer, Inc. is deploying a 'global strategy.' And for once, I thought it was good for the company.

Many Japanese don't believe in 'global strategy' because they think they are and their market is special.