Motoko’s weblog

Starting March 18, I will be serving as a member of SEMPO board of directors along with 12 other members. I am very excited to have the opportunity to serve the organization, which has more than 800 organizations, companies and individual members from around the world, educating the industry and people about the search and digital marketing.

Since the day I joined SEMPO, I’ve believed in the cause and the role it has in the industry. I was a founding member of SEMPO Japan, which is the first regional group within SEMPO. After I helped establishing SEMPO India and SEMPO Singapore, I was appointed as a chairman of SEMPO Asia in 2007. In 2009, after establishing SEMPO Greater China, we grew to SEMPO APAC, and our activities now reach to Australia and New Zealand.
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On July 7th, Google Japan posted a logo using Marc Chagall’s art.

He was born on July 7, 1887.

Nagano police station received a report on April 24 about a bomb threat posted on Wikipedia Japan’s Nagano station page and Beijing Olympic page. The post said, “A hand made bomb will destroy Nagano station at noon on April 26. It will kill passengers, station workers and everyone there.” The post has been deleted, and Nagano police is investigating the case. Beijing Olympic’s torch relay is scheduled to go through Nagano on April 26.

User generated content is great, but it’s also true that the benefits of Web2.0 can also become issues and problems to the site owners and users. Beside the obvious issues such as:

• too much information makes it difficult to find what you are looking for,
• many conflicting information (not sure what to believe),
• difficult to manage and to control new content, Continue Reading »

I just came back from a little short of 3 weeks Japan trip. Everywhere I went, it seemed that Internet has become more and more a part of Japanese people’s lives. The search box was still very popular in ads. The QR code seemed to completely took over the bar-code as it was used on food packages, on appliance labels, etc. I even saw it on business cards!

The Internet penetration rate in Japan is very high (70%). However, especially in a country side and for older generations, it can still be a little intimidating. To help these people using Internet, I saw places like City Hall, Legal Affairs Bureau and Tax Agency set up several PCs in the office for people to file paper works online with the assistance of office staffs. Continue Reading »