Japan to pursue new Internet technology
The Japan Times, Sunday, Aug. 19, 2007—BRASILIA: Communications minister Yoshihide Suga said Japan will start researching and developing technology for a new generation of network to replace the Internet. The government would like to get the technology into commercial use by 2020, Suga said Friday in Brazil. He said an organization will be established as early as this fall…more...

Japan Inc. failed at this looooong ago in the 80s and early 90s with their “CAPTAIN System” (Character and Pattern Telephone Access Information System) at the same time the Internet was catching on in the real world. The CAPTAIN system is a VIDEOTEX system using existing telephone lines are used for transmission and home TV sets are used for the display units. This “walled garden”—closed set of information services for creating a monopoly—was 100% government controlled, expensive, and unneeded since the Internet was already making its mark.

The only reason why Japan has cheap and high-speed broadband now is that NTT made it defacto impossible to get affordable Internet until the 1996 and Korea’s advances shamed Japan into opening up. The whole purpose of an open Internet: freedom, anonymity, equality of ideal, independence, and creativity goes against Japanese love of elites and top down control. The new Japanese “Internet” will be just like it keitai web for cellphones: expensive, closed, corporate controlled, DRM locked down, and statist approach with two or three times the monthly service charge. Bah.

Watch slide-shows on the umbrella which will stop you getting lost
The Daily Mail, 13:01pm on 15th May 2007…The high-tech brolly allows you to take pictures with a built-in camera. These can be uploaded to Flickr (a photo-sharing website) via a wireless internet connection…the Pileus umbrella also has GPS and a digital compass, which uses Google Earth to help you navigate yourself around the world…more...

Actually, this wireless internet umbrella started out as academic research at Keio University in Spring 2006 by Sho Hashimoto and Takashi Matsumoto who are grad students at Keio University’s Okude Lab and co-founders of Pileus LLC. They view their Pileus Umbrella connection to the Internet as of way of making, “walking in rainy days fun.”

Pileus has a large projection screen on the inner of the unfurled surface of the umbrella, a built-in video camera, a motion sensor, GPS, a digital compass, all of which provides two major functions: Social Photo-sharing and 3D Map Navigation. According to the Pileus website: “these two functions can be switched by simply flipping a switch… putting context data on the Internet (e.g. geo-tags on photos), it will be able to provide social local-navigation, social local-ads, and real-time in-place communications… an augmentation of everyday life by synchronizing information on the Internet and from a real location.”

Watch the YouTube video of the porn umbrella in action on the streets of Tokyo Japan.

And for “Prior Art,” check out YouTube video: Salaryman With Umbrella On His Head.

Porn umbrella photo credits to super-sexy “Bloody Cherry” photobook from J-List.com and Pileus LLC.

news.3Yen.com exclusive report!

Enfour Inc’s Cellphone “Camera dictionary”

Using just a cellphone, Japanese can now look up English words in their phone dictionary only by taking a picture of a word with the camera of a cellular phone. It is all done in real time — automatic character recognition of the picture — translating — results — are displayed on a cellphone.

This thankfully eliminates the need pushing those damn itty-bitty buttons cellphone to input words.

Cellular-phone application called a “camera dictionary” that translates printed English into Japanese only by using the camera of a cellphone to take a picture English words. The advantage of this application is that using the camera of a cell phone the users do not have to use the keypad of the phone to input English words. The camera inputs the English and then the cellphone’s software uses the comprehensive online dictionary services provided by ENFOUR (Shibuya-ku, Tokyo) on their KDDI “au” mobile site.

This English to Japanese “camera dictionary” application is faster, easier and eliminates input mistakes. The comprehensive online dictionary services provided by ENFOUR mobile site lets Japanese people check for a more detailed meaning of an English word, look up example, and even listen to the pronunciation on their cellphone.

The cellphone “Camera dictionary” was a joint project with Media Seek (OCR gurus) and CJKI (Jack Halpern) for the original dictionary data that was edited down by the wizards at ENFOUR to shoehorn this Brew application into the tiny 700KB size limits for cellphones.

This service started August 31, 2006, on KDDI’s “au” EZweb, 105 yen/month. For more info, see the ENFOUR Inc. (Shibuya Tokyo) at www.enfour.com.

Sony to launch wireless broadband gadget in US
TOKYO (AFP) August 8, 2006 - Sony has said it will market in the United States a first-of-a-kind wireless broadband device allowing users to exchange online voice and text messages, browse the Internet and listen to music. The palm-size personal communicator, named mylo and aimed largely at university students, is capable of operating in Wi-Fi networks in public spaces or at home, the Japanese electronics giant said.
The mylo — standing for “my life online” — will be sold in September for about 350 dollars in the US marke…more...

Sony is going to sell Milo drinks, hee, hee. Actually, Sony has been flogging Mylo since 2001 as a pricey service but now they are claiming to be making the system open. In theory, I would be first in line to buy this device. But given Sony’s history as the maker of worst-in-the-world computer software full of DRM viruses…maybe I would wait until after Christmas to see how users are “enjoying” their Mylo experience.

UPDATE: For a more informative report, read The Register: Sony touts handheld Skype, Wi-Fi communicator.

YouTube video- Japanese Lingerie thief

Japanese guys are so clueless—The majority of the women from which these undergarments were stolen from would most likely like to meet a man, any man.

Cicadas causing Internet headache
Yomiuri News, June 17, 2006—While Internet firms often grapple with man-made worms, Japanese telecommunications companies have been working on ways to counter a natural Internet pest of their own–cicadas. Across western Japan, kumazemi cicadas have been disrupting Internet service by piercing fiber-optic cables during the summer months to lay their eggs….

Screaming cicada “locusts” are the most remarkable part of the Japanese summer. The sound is deafening EVEN in the concrete jungle of Tokyo—it is astounding that these bugs could thrive in the totally paved and nearly parkless Tokyo environment, but they do.

 Perhaps laying their eggs in the fibre-optic lines festooned on the concrete utility poles is the only way the cicada can survive in treeless urban Japan. From what I read in this Japan blog,”magnoysamsara” the crows of Tokyo are also tearing optical-fibre wires for their nests too.

 Also check out this news report from the Register in the UK: Spiders attack Manchester phone network“… a BT engineer his girlfriend was having problems with her phone because.. spiders had eaten through the line…”

Thinking the unthinkable…

Why Vodafone should ring off from Japan and America
The Telegraph: Sir John Bond, who becomes Vodafone’s chairman in July, should review its global strategy. The mobile operator is in investors’ bad books, with its shares trading at a steep discount to the sum of its parts.
But a change of strategy - if cleverly executed - could replace the discount with a premium. The solution is to sell Vodafone’s Japanese and US businesses. Not that it will be easy to exit them well. Take Vodafone Japan, which has been a particularly bad performer. It’s not obvious who would buy it. As a result, Vodafone may find it hard to secure the 7.7bn Pounds Sterling the business is worth on CSFB’s estimates.
That said, there is little strategic benefit in keeping Japan. Vodafone’s initial attempt to force Japan to use the same handsets as the rest of the group is one of the reasons it fell behind. What’s more, Japan’s poor performance has had a negative impact on Vodafone’s stock, disproportionate to its size.

Saaaaa.
Actually, Vodafone is cursed in Japan.
When British cellular giant Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) bought into Japan by acquiring J-PHONE, the Japan operation was neck and neck with KDDI in the market for the No. 2 spot. However, Vodafone Japan peaked just around the time officially changed its name “J-PHONE Co., Ltd.” to “Vodafone K.K.” (K.K. stands for “kabushiki kaisha”) October of 2003. It’s been a slide ever since.

At the start, he company was riding high on J-PHONE’s swift adoption to flat rate mobile data pricing of KDDI/au rather than the foot dragging attitude of DoCoMo.

Vodafone’s present woes come from it one-size-fits-all suite of handsets and services it has tried to unsuccessfully foist off on the Japanese rather than customizing their phones for Japan.

Vodafone has been claiming the its Japan operation has been on the mend for years now, when in fact its Japan business is suffering a steady decline without a hint of hope. It’s only a matter a of time before stockholders of the parent company Vodafone Group, demand a dump-and-run of Japan. As article in The Telegraph observes, if somehow Vodafone could get out of Japan (and the USA) the stock of Vodafone Group would be 30% higher. Yow.
To quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!!“

Japan’s 5 TV Stations to Start Webcast With Dentsu
Tokyo–Japan’s five major television networks, including Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. , plan to team up with advertising giant Dentsu Inc. to distribute their programs over the Internet from next spring….Dentsu to arrange ads for TV programs and to set up a new company to distribute the programs free of charge, the sources said. The five TV stations will provide the new company with programs for the Webcast.

This great news for you folks studying Japanese. TV provides you with real Japanese that people use and the drivel that is found in anime and manga. All the major TV network will be FREE: TBS, Fuji Television Network Inc. , TV Asahi Corp. , Nippon Television Network Corp. and TV Tokyo Corp. Cho bery godo (Really very good).

Manabe named leader of anti-spyware squad
MSN-Mainichi: TV celebrity Kaori Manabe has been named the leader of the “spyware extermination squad” during an event held Thursday in Tokyo….

Yikes, I want to use some spyware right now so I can call the “extermination squad” …. however, I don’t know how effective that would be. Like all the other other anti-virus companies, Computer Associates International Inc. –the sponsor of the squad– neither reported nor detected the Sony rootkit spyware until just recently. Meh.

Accton Launching Skype Cellphone
WWJ—Taiwan-based Accton Technology unveiled its Skype-enabled Wi-Fi phone, the SkyFone WM1185-T, in Tokyo…a talk time of up to four hours with a stand-by-time of up to 20 hours and is likely to be initially priced at over US$150 …

Combined with free phone service provided by Skype software, a WiFi cellphone here in central parts of Tokyo would be ideal. In the central areas and in the younger upscale parts of town there’s always an open WiFi connection available. Most of the train stations have a WiFi available at a modest (or free) charge and Yahoo!BB WiFi is quickly expanding. I’m such a cheapskate, I would just leach off open WiFi where I could find it,. At my previous job in the downtown banking district of Yokohama there was 100% free-WiFi coverage and there’s total coverage at no cost in my upscale neighborhood in the ‘burbs between Tokyo and Yokohama.
There are a couple GSM/WiFi cellphones already offered in Japan but these phone require the use for-pay WiFi networks and not free, non-cost Skype calls. This WiFi SkyFone(tm) by Accton uses a built-in Skype client that allow the cellphone to perform free Skype calls which previously required the use of a PC.