Surprisingly, a positive story about Japan’s king of Eikaiwa (English conversation companies). Ginganet, the online English-learning service looks to be getting rid of the dedicated lease line and piggybacking on Yahoo! Japan broadband service. Note that this newsy is served up to show that I don’t just lambaste this company, but actually pay close attention to it. Just search for Nova in the box on the right to see some of my fire and vitriol!

About freaking time too. Ginganet was originally plugged as a service for online learning, but later devolved into “we run out of ideas, so we’ll plug it as a way for grandparents to connect with their grandkids” model. You know there is trouble when ads pretty much throw out the original purpose and just try selling it to old folk. The new sales model, however, would make a lot of sense as it is very easy to get an add-on to your Yahoo! BB connection and save the hassle for a seperate lease-line. I couldn’t be bothered reading details, but I think you still have to get the video conferencing unit, but it goes through the BB connection.

The company’s stock bumped up today on the news, but whether it comes into full fruition (and actually gets taken up by punters) is another question. A good idea with logic behind it.

The last big hitter for this company was a mutant pink rodent with a bird beak – which totally defied logic to become a key generator of income for a couple of years. This was followed by two talking pieces of wood – which followed logic and failed… miserably.

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