世論 What Japan Thinks

Despite having over 300 followers (I’m shocked, not boasting about it!) I still don’t really see the point, as do most Japanese, according to this survey from iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com into Twitter.

Demographics

On the 6th of July 2009 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.3% of the sample were female, 19.0% in their twenties, 39.0% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, 10.7% in their fifties, and 4.7% in their sixties.

I did once try Twitter from my Japanese mobile but it was through a bit of a dodgy web page script. Searching around the Japanese web I have come across an interesting site, in Japanese, of course; the using Twitter from a mobile phone Wiki, which includes a section with a number of iAppli for docomo applications that can be used to access Twitter. I should download a couple and review them!

Other surveys on Twitter may be found by following that link.
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As the average Japanese man does just the least amount of housework amongst the developed nations, perhaps that is one reason that this survey from iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com found that robotic home appliances were viewed favourably by many Japanese women.

Demographics

On the 29th of June 2009 300 female members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 19.3% of the sample were in their twenties, 38.3% in their thirties, 26.7% in their forties, 11.7% in their fifties, and 4.0% in their sixties.

Q1SQ1 asked about “domestic appliance robots” and “Robotic domestic appliances”; I think the difference that this is trying to highlight is a general purpose robotic helper (your very own personal ASIMO) versus a single-purpose item with autonomic actions, such as the Roomba cleaner.
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The headline figure is not really surprising to me, partially because it has taken so long to get a survey out on the new search engine Bing from Microsoft, this one being conducted by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

On the 22nd of June 2009 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. There was no split by the the sexes listed for some reason, but 12.0% of the respondents were in their twenties, 36.0% in their thirties, 37.3% in their forties, 10.3% in their fifties, and 4.7% in their sixties.

I’ve tried Bing a few times, but I suppose I’m just too much of a Google fan to look objectively at it.

As for the name, the first thing I think of is a bing, a mountain of slag from a coal mine. The second is Bing Hitler, who now seems to be doing rather nice for himself as a host on a US late-night chat show.
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Although this survey from iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com into cosmetics shopping sites has as the survey base women who are already online, discovering that the majority of them who have shopped for cosmetics in the last year have does it at least once online in that period.

Demographics

On the 22nd of June 2009 300 female members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 24.3% of the sample were in their twenties, 38.0% in their thirties, 24.3% in their forties, 10.0% in their fifties, and 3.3% in their sixties.

I don’t think my wife’s bought online, except for a tester kit that cost a bit of money for delivery. She’s won quite a bit, though, including one that came with a Christian book that seemed to be part of a vaguely pyramid-shaped affiliate scheme…
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< ?PHP
include "/home/whatjapa/public_html/libchart/libchart.php";

$chart = new PieChart(400, 200);

$chart->setTitle(“Have you ever seen the ‘Train Channel’?”);
$chart->addPoint(new Point(“Yes”, 59.3));
$chart->addPoint(new Point(“No”, 40.7));

$chart->render(“/home/whatjapa/public_html/image09/seen-train-channel.png”);
?>
Here’s a whole lot of buzzwords relating to the business of digital signage, the subject of a survey conducted by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

On the 8th of June 2009 300 members of the iBridge monitor group resident in the Tokyo area completed an internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% of the sample were male, 15.3% in their twenties, 33.0% in their thirties, 33.7% in their forties, 14.3% in their fifties, and 3.7% aged sixty or older.

In Q1 I present both the English and the Japanese. For my readers who don’t understand Japanese, you’ll just have to take my word on the difference between “sign” and “signage” or “bulletin board” and “board”. For my readers who do understand, I cannot explain the difference in usage between “sign” and “signage” or “bulleting board” and “board”, except that’s just how the buzzwords have been coined!

In Q2, a number of the Tokyo lines have television screens in them that display information such as upcoming stops, platform exit information, news and advertising, colloquially known as the “Train Channel”.
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Although there are just 371 or so confirmed cases of the “new-type” flu, as it’s officially-labelled in Japan, a look by iBridge Research Plus at swine flu and other spam email and reported on by japan.internet.com found that within their sample swine flu-related electronic viruses were also infectious.

Demographics

On the 25th of May 2009 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 54.3% of the sample were male, 19.7% in their twenties, 36.7% in their thirties, 28.7% in their forties, 14.3% in their fifties, and 0.7% in their sixties.

I’m not sure why this survey used “swine flu” in all their questions whereas, as mentioned above, “new-type flu” is the almost universal name.

I’d love to know how 2% of the population managed to avoid hearing any news about swine flu!

I’ve not seen any swine flu virus spam, but in a couple of weeks I’ll be heading off to right by the Mexican border, so I might be able to experience it first-hand!

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This recent survey from iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com into the web tool of the moment, micro-blogging, found that certainly for the sample used, there are very few Twitterers in Japan.

Demographics

On the 11th of May 2009 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.7% of the sample were male, 22.7% in their twenties, 26.3% in their thirties, 24.7% in their forties, 21.7% in their fifties, and 4.7% in their sixties.

Despite me having a Twitter account and far more followers than I would expect to have, I never use the thing and quite frankly find the fascination with it inexplicable. In addition, it destroys the link structure of the web as everything gets routed through abbreviated URLs, and given that a lot of people use third-party tools to access Twitter, I don’t get full tracking of my incoming traffic.

I can confidently predict that Twitter or other micro-blogs (blogging in less than 200 characters per entry, a sort of blog for SMS) will not take off in Japan until they support emoji.
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This is not quite as entertaining a FAIL as yesterday’s post, but this report from japan.internet.com on a survey conducted by iBridge Research Plus into electronic mail focused at failures in the office with BCC, Blind Carbon Copy.

Demographics

On the first of May 2009 300 members of the iBridge monitor panel completed a private intenet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the sample were male, 13.0% in their twenties, 35.7% in their thirties, 39.7% in their forties, 8.7% in their fifties, and 3.0% in their sixties.

I can’t recall ever making a mistake with BCC, a feature I rarely use anyway, but I have been on the receiving end of huge To lists that would have been better handled with BCC.

Now I look at the results, I don’t really know what they demonstrate…
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I’ve covered the darker side of file-sharing through P2P software a few times on this blog, but this is the first time for me to look at file forwarding services, a survey conducted by iBridge Research Plus and reported on by japan.internet.com.

Demographics

On the 6th of April 2009 300 member of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.7% of the sample were male, 16.7% in their twenties, 33.7% in their thirties, 32.3% in their forties, 13.0% in their fifties, and 4.3% in their sixties.

I used to use XDrive for a bit, but recently I’ve had no reason to transfer a large amount of data, although if I did I’d probably just upload it to this site and pass the URL across. Our company has an internal system for large file sharing via email, but it is quirky to say the least and seems more like… ahh, I’m very tired and in rather poor humour tonight so I’d better not finish that thought just in case my boss is reading.

Looking a Q1SQ1 and Q1SQ3, 24 people have used free file forwarding services for sending files to people, but 38 people have used free file forwarding services for any purpose. Sadly there is no information about what the other 14 people were doing with such services.

I’ve never heard of any of the Japanese services before!
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With cable companies now offering some of the fastest domestic connectivity in Japan with a speed of up to 160 Mbps on offer at a price competitive with ADSL and FTTH, this is a good time too look with iBridge Research Plus, as reported by japan.internet.com, into CATV, Cable Access Television, with the focus in this story on internet services.

Demographics

On the 13th of April 2009 300 members of the iBridge monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 66.0% of the sample were male, 14.7% in their twenties, 36.7% in their thirties, 31.0% in their forties, 13.7% in their fifties, and 4.0% in their sixties. Note that the male to female ratio is higher than usual for iBridge, so I don’t know if that has had a significant effect on the research results.

We have cable television, but as the flat came already wired for FTTH and we get a very cheap price (2,800 yen per month, I think), changing to cable internet is not really that attractive. We also have our fixed-line phone through the cable company, which falls into the others in Q1SQ1, but their international dialing fees are stupidly expensive, so I stick with Skype where possible. I also looked at their mobile phone service, and while their fees were cheap, the only two phones they offered were very low-end.
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