Hasta La Gadget!

Much was made last year of the successful growth of Twitter in Japan, with even CEO Evan Williams coming over to Tokyo in 2010 and praising local users’ activities. Japanese tweeting recently set a new record, following on from their blitz of activity during the World Cup, with a momentous 6,939 tweets sent per second on January 1st this year.

The share of tweets in English has dropped to “just” half and recent stats are showing that Japanese is now the number two language on the service, covering 14% of messages. So, other than normal folks like us, who are the powerful personalities behind these tweets?

It turns out that the Japanese Twitter user with the most followers is, not surprisingly, an international figure, and none other than Yoko Ono. Of course, she tweets in English, which probably explains why she has over one million followers. (This pales, perhaps rather predicatably, in comparison to American celebrities like Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber, or even Brits like Stephen Fry, who has over 2 million followers.)

Ono’s tweets have a whimsical and optimistic ring to them, often harking about world peace and the humane means to achieve this.

A recent example is:

Let’s dance together in our hearts and play the game of life in peace.

…and the pithy

We laugh, we heal, and we embrace.

Technically Ono is Japanese but seems to tweet almost exclusively in her adopted language. Of those actually writing messages in Japanese, J-Cast reports that popular Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son is number one, with 730 thousand followers, with former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama (670 thousand) and outspoken ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie (560 thousand) coming up next.

Of course, large numbers of followers does not necessarily indicate much about the growth of Twitter in general other than that a lot of users are interested in certain people. It reveals the personalities appealing to Twitter users but they are a very specific type of consumer, the people with iPhones and no doubt all the other latest gadgets.

Hatoyama, though, did make quite a breakthrough when, as a political leader, he entered actively into SNS and online communities. His successor, Naoto Kan, has also made some gestures here but Hatoyama’s digital model has yet to be matched. Since stepping down, sadly Hatoyama’s Twitter account has barely been active, suggesting he is reluctant to become an online commentator when his offline career has been officially shut down.

10, 9, 8, 7… quick, get out your phone at tweet “Happy New Year” to all your followers before the ball drops! If you found yourself tweeting your New Year’s wishes instead of kissing your boyfriend, hugging your friends, or calling your mom as we entered 2011, you’re not alone. According to the Twitter Blog, just four seconds after midnight in Japan on January 1, an all-time record number of Tweets sent per second (TPS) was set as 6,939 TPS were sent.

The East coast time zone alone reached its peak of 3,000 TPS, which is almost more than the entire world sent during the peak moment of the World Cup. Twitter made a video which visualizes New Year’s Eve tweet data across the world. The circles get larger as more tweets are sent at that moment. It’s a neat because you can actually see the different amounts of tweets in each time zone as each one hits midnight. 

Check out the video after the jump!

Things are just getting underway here at CES in Las Vegas, and Kodak’s on-hand in order to serve up its latest smorgasbord of optical treasures. Without further ado, allow us to present to you the Easyshare Touch — a $149.95 offering with a three-inch capacitive touchpanel, a dedicated video record button, a 14 megapixel sensor, 5x Schneider-Kreuznach lens and an HDMI output. Next up is the $99.95 Easyshare Mini, described as Kodak’s smallest camera yet. It’s “around the size of a credit card,” offering a 3x wide-angle optical zoom lens, a built-in front mirror (you know, for those glorious self-portrait sessions), a ten megapixel sensor and a 2.5-inch rear LCD. Moving right along, there’s the $79.95 Easyshare Sport, which is the outfit’s first waterproof camera that can go up to ten feet underwater without any significant consequences. It’ll also shrug off dirt and dust while snapping 12 megapixel shots and previewing them on the 2.4-inch LCD. Sashaying over to the video realm, there’s the $149.95 Playfull camcorder, which touts an ultraslim design (it’ll “fit in the pocket of your skinny jeans,” according to Special K), a 1080p capture mode and an unmistakable ‘Share’ button to get your footage onto YouTube or a social network without any wasted time.

The company’s also using CES as an opportunity to launch the next generation of its Playsport video camera, with this $179.95 model being waterproof up to ten feet, shockproof, dustproof and capable of logging clips at 1080p. You can also snap stills at five megapixels, and that previously mentioned ‘Share’ button is predictably tacked on here as well. Speaking of revisions, the Pulse digital photo frame is also seeing a gentle refresh, with this one available in 7-inch ($129.95) and 10-inch ($199.95) sizes. The newcomers add the ability to comment on the pictures you receive from friends and family, with our favorite predetermined response being “Such a KODAK MOMENT!” Seriously. Oh, and these also have an ingrained activity sensor that turns the frame off when you walk away, and brings it back to life when you re-approach. Finally, the ESP C310 all-in-one printer will be selling for $99.99, but so far as we can tell, Kodak would rather extol the virtues of its ink-saving abilities than drum up interest in its cutting-edge feature set. Further details can be spotted in the full release after the break.

Continue reading Kodak intros Easyshare Touch, Mini and Sport cameras, Playfull and Playsport camcorders

Kodak intros Easyshare Touch, Mini and Sport cameras, Playfull and Playsport camcorders originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If everyone were like Cory Booker, maybe I wouldn’t still be trapped in this hotel room during an extended layover to New York. Okay, maybe that’s not true, but the Newark, NJ is getting all manner of accolade for his use of Twitter during the recent snow storm that buried the East Coast under feet of snow.

After the storm, @CoryBooker’s followers looked toward the mayor’s account (the real kind, not the Four Square kind) for advice. Booker responded, taking to the streets, shovel in hand, Tweeting like a madman about the storm.

Booker tweeted advice like, “If you don’t have to go out of the house, the best strategy for today is to stay in and off the roads.” And when people came to him looking for advice and guidance, he answered.

“I need street names and patience,” Booker responded when a user asked, “I have about 4 employees in Nwk stating their blocks still have not been cleaned. Resolution?”

“I’m stuck on bergen & grumman ave,” another told the mayor. “Please DM me your phone number,” he answered. There are several examples of responses like that over the last couple of days.

“This is one of those times you’re just pushing,” Booker told Time in an interview, while riding around the streets. “It’s an endurance test.”