btrax blog

Silicon Valley is the place where Netscape lost its war. The competition of browsers is fierce and harsh here. But without fear, a new browser has entered the market. It was born in Japan. It is named Lunascape. It is very Japanesque when you see the design templates of the background which you can choose from. They have samurai and kimono color backgrounds.

Lunascape opens multiple windows vertically

Lunascape is the world’s first and only triple engine browser. It has been downloaded over 15 million times and it’s available globally in 11 languages. The download is free and you can open three different web design engines in one page and they are Trident (Internet Explorer), Gecko (Firefox), and Webkit (Safari and Google Chrome). They say they are very fast with the triple engine and triple add-ons.

Professionally, I enjoy it when I have to test sites with different browsers. All I need to do is to open all three of them in one page and compare the layout. All three pages can be displayed vertically or horizontally in one page. It is pretty convenient.

The question is how much market share Lunascape can get in this competitive market. Internet Explorer is dominating because Microsoft bundled with computers. Since Mozilla has Mozilla Foundation (non-profit) and Mozilla Corporation (for profit organizations) to support Firefox, the non-profit gets donations which are used by Mozilla Corporation. Firefox gets money from Google by having its search engine on the browser, but besides that it is said that they get donations.  And the strength of Firefox is that it is an open source browser. Everyone tries to fix the problems andmake it better. Lunascape is not an open source browser yet.

Black pins of Firefox Photo by flod

Since Google came out with its own browser, I doubt how much longer it will stay generous to other browsers. The competition will be fierce. But all browsers have passionate fans to protect them. It seems that Lunascape survival depends upon how many passionate fans it can create.

The Live Audio Recording Question
btrax often gets requests involving recording and publishing voice using a computer’s microphone – from people such as educators and musicians.

Given all the demand for tools to create, edit and distribute images or videos, it would seem a third-party solution for audio would already exist.

But amazingly no one seems to have tried since Odeo (previously run by the Twitter founders Evan Williams, Jack Doresey and Biz Stone) gave up on recording podcasts and reverted to being a multimedia playlist portal four years back.

Odeo used Adobe Flash technology, which has since become even more sophisticated.

Solutions Outside the English Sphere
It turns out my mistake was researching for solutions only in English. Once I started digging around search engines in Japanese I found a fantastic voice recording and publishing start-up called Koebu.com.

Koebu is more than a glorified online tape recorder, having created an engaging social network for people’s voices. As a site member you can broadcast your stories, sing songs, introduce yourself, or even just vent.

Imagine if you could publish a blogFaceBook with just your voice? Or publish your music on MySpace straight from your microphone? Or you can also use the site to search people’s voices through categories or theme, etc.

Japan’s Social Networking Habits
For Japanese audiences Koebu is not just a novel distraction – it has taken off in many areas with potential business applications. One example is for aspiring voice actors for Anime movies.

Many members record themselves reading lines from anime to use as their portfolio. Musicians are using it to record songs for auditions. This saves time (and money) on the aspiring side and those casting parts.

To give an alternate view of Koebu, I’ve attached one of their widget players:

Back to Privacy?
Another key aspect is that Japanese people like privacy. Few users of Mixi, Japan’s largest social network at 16 million users, put their real name on their accounts or even real profile details. The trend worldwide, however, has been toward verified identity and real user names.

However, there is some good sense in the Japanese approach – new paid tools like People Search allow anyone (bosses, potential bosses, ex-girlfriends, etc.) to extract photos and other data from your social networking profiles with little more than your email address as a starting point.

On the other hand, your voice doesn’t reveal anything about you except for what you sound like, which makes it palatable to Japanese users.

Koebu’s Quirky Background
Koebu is run by Kayac, whose formal legal name is “Omoshiro Hojin Kayac,” which translates into “The Interesting Company Kayac, Inc.”

The offbeat name matches their location – unlike the vast majority of Japanese companies and startups, which are headquartered in Tokyo or Osaka, Kayac is in the sleepy historical city of Kamakura. The town is mostly known for its giant Buddha statue and surfers.

In that sense, Koebu has more in common with the Bay Area’s well-known successful startups than their Japanese counterparts.