This is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list for KEITAI-L, a mailing list devoted to discussion of Japanese mobile telephony with an emphasis on mobile phones (keitai) that are internet-capable.
Discussions on technical and marketing issues are welcome.
The too-numerous-to-individually-name contributors to KEITAI-L have been, and continue to be, enormously helpful. Christopher Lowery and Danny Van Der Poel pointed out some good sites for beginning i-mode developers; Henry Minsky and Zev Blut actually supplied a couple of those sites.
The i-mode-specific FAQ portions were inspired by the efforts of Andrea Hoffman and Robb Satterwhite on the WestCyber i-mode FAQ.
KEITAI-L wouldn't be where it is today without the indefatigable (if somewhat laconic) Renfield Kuroda.
Keitai is what Japanese call their cellular phones (see
Japanese terminology.)
The "-L" is a conventional internet suffix for
"[e-mail] List."
If you are still concerned about viruses, please consult
the following URLs:
http://www.kumite.com/myths/
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/vinfodb.html
The KEITAI-L mailing list (hereinafter referred as "the List") is provided as a free service to its subscribers. The list maintainer does not charge anyone to subscribe and/or participate in the List. Subscribers are, however, responsible for the charges of their own ISP (Internet Service Provider) or on-line service.
The List maintainer is not responsible for any inconvenience or damage caused by errors in the postings or mail delivery problems.
Opinions expressed in the postings are those of the individual posters. The expression of individual opinions does not imply any endorsement of such opinion by the list maintainer.
Subscribers of the list are obliged to use the list in a good practice.
The list may not be used to publish or distribute any
material protected by copyrights, trademarks or other
corresponding rights without the permission of the rights
holder.
Non-working email addresses are automatically unsubscribed from
the List. The list maintainer also reserves the right to remove
any offending email addresses and/or users from the list.
No third party is allowed to have on-line archives of the
postings of the List without written permission from the list
maintainer. This prohibition does not include non-profit
organisations and/or individual list subscribers archiving for
their own personal usage.
No third party is allowed to create an on-line subscription mechanism to the List. Only allowed methods of subscription are via email and/or the List'ss official web page at:
http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/
(URL subject to change).
The pronunciation guide is necessarily approximate.
[alphabetize]
i-mode is a mobile-phone internet service operated by
NTT DoCoMo
in Japan.
Sort of. Up to 500 bytes of a page anyway. You can't scroll GIFs.
No Javascript. No frames. Tables? Might depend on handset.
Contain your excitement. That said, there are some cool things going on.
Yes, and this is very popular.
Here are some screenshots:
[Link]
Lots and growing. See for yourself:
[Link to DoCoMo stats?]
Stereotypically: the young and the female;
in reality, users are far more diverse.
You had to ask, didn't you?
WAP is a protocol stack, i-mode a proprietary service.
Yes. Some.
For example, the 2000 Okinawa G7 conference had some made up specially.
As a user interface, mostly Mari Matsunaga.
(She's the "mother of i-mode," anyway.
Paternity is, of course, much more widely claimed and disputed.)
Takeshi Natsuno was another leader (see Stanford course
"Industry Thought Leaders Seminar" (MS&E472) talk by
Takeshi Natsuno, executive director, Gateway Business Department, NTT
DoCoMo (
www.stanford.edu/class/msande472
).
"i" icon for "information"?
Also a play on ai - "love" - in Japanese [???]
No, you need residence status here.
Only if you qualify for regular phone service in Japan.
Yes. And on DoCoMo "official sites," this is easy.
These are DoCoMo-sanctioned sites, with special privileges and limitations.
[details here? or link to DoCoMo?]
Yes, for many of them.
The charges just show up on your DoCoMo mobile phone bill.
These are like regular web sites - you can put up your own without
DoCoMo's blessing.
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
A downloadable Java program for the 503-series phones.
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
Myriad and bewildering. As a start ....[details here]
You have to use NTT DoCoMo's dialect of CHTML, which can be handled
differently by different phones. You have to write to DoCoMo's
Java Virtual Machine subset as well if you are writing iAppli
(i-mode applet-like applications). If you are a DoCoMo
official site, there are social content restrictions. As with
other keitai services in Japan, pornography is illegal.
[details here]
DoCoMo, for official updates. KEITAI-L, gigahz/ml and other
mailing lists for rumor-stage information. [details here]
Here are some helpful sites for getting started with tools [Check?]
A variety of emulators exist. Among the more popular and useful are
There are some emulator classes for iAppli:
[details here]
Not exactly, no. [details here]
Promotion is much as it is for web and online services generally.
[details here]
DoCoMo's requirements are infamously vague, but continue shifting
in the direction of liberality. Here is NTT DoCoMo's official
statement: [URL needed]
DoCoMo's site. [details here]
Yes. [details here]
More and more every day. See Zev Blut's introduction to writing iAppli for one good start ( www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Cupertino/1621 ).
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]
[details here]