Yahoo Japan Corp said on Friday night it suspected that up to 22 million of its user IDs may have been "leaked" and it detected an unauthorized attempt to access the administrative system of its web portal Yahoo Japan, the Kyodo news agency reported. (Reuters)

There's a change at the top at Facebook….in Japan, where the company has hired former McDonalds and Boston Consulting Group marketing exec Atsushi Iwashita as its new Managing Director. (thenextweb.com)

NTT Docomo Inc. said Wednesday it will set the prices of upcoming new models of its popular smartphones lower than for existing models. (Yomiuri)

NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile carrier, will use location data from its 61.5 million subscriber devices to build a platform that monitors traffic conditions across the country. (pcworld.com)

Line Corp., a privately held smartphone messaging company based in Tokyo, said Thursday that sales climbed 92 percent to ¥5.82 billion in the first quarter. (Japan Times)

Three-dimensional printers, which are capable of creating solid objects in a way comparable to printing letters and illustrations on paper, are sparking a revolution within the manufacturing industry. (Yomiuri)

The Metropolitan Police Department has made an unusual request to NTT Docomo Inc. to more strictly screen mobile phone rental companies before signing contracts with them, to prevent the phones' use in crimes, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned. (Yomiuri)

Live chats, a type of real-time webcast, have rapidly become pervasive in offering adult content at a low cost. However, the arrest of three men in February revealed that sites hosting such chats are breeding grounds for child pornography, particularly targeting runaway girls. (Yomiuri)

If used widely, "big data," the massive amount of electronic information that has been generated with advances in computing and Internet technology, could create a market worth tens of trillions of yen. (Yomiuri)

Japanese telecom companies are developing an extremely high speed mobile technology to be introduced in years to come. (NHK)

The Finance Ministry and the Bank of Japan plan to offer a free smartphone application that will allow the visually impaired to identify the value of bank notes through sound from November. (Japan Times)

The personal information of NTT DoCoMo Inc. customers in the U.S. has been leaked online after the server of its American unit was hacked, possibly by the LulzSec group, company officials admitted Saturday. (Japan Times)

Japanese entrepreneur Takahito Iguchi wants people to see the world through other people's eyes. But as a less ambitious jumping off point, he'll kick it off with a world that looks like a Japanese manga cartoon. (gigaom.com)

In Japan, it's not unusual for drivers to tune in to their favorite TV show while behind the wheel. And the popularity of "digi-navi," the Japanese term for navigation systems capable of receiving digital TV transmissions, has created a growing captive audience for TV-on-wheels. (Wall Street Journal)

Police in Japan are hoping to catch crooks using anonymising Internet services by stopping people "abusing" the Tor network which supports anonymous Internet use. (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Last week's legal green light to online campaigning for this summer's House of Councillors election has provided a golden business opportunity to information technology companies offering services that will help candidates get their message safely out to voters. (Yomiuri)

Only 6.7 pct of Japanese are using electronic book readers, a Jiji Press survey in March revealed. (Jiji Press)

Some 70 pct of Web sites with illegal or harmful content in Japan were having advertising revenues, a National Police Agency report showed Thursday. (Jiji Press)

More than 35,000 software applications targeting smartphone users in Japan have been found to be dangerous due to concerns such as misuse of personal information, a study by Netagent Co., a Tokyo-based information security company, showed Wednesday. (Kyodo)

If you thought Google Fiber with its 1Gbps speeds was fast, think again. A Japanese ISP, which is backed by Sony, is now offering plans with 2Gbps download and 1Gbps upload speeds in Tokyo and six districts surrounding it. (ubergizmo.com)