I realize it's been an awfully long time since I've posted anything o­n TechJapan, so my sincere apologies go to all of our avid readers who have been waiting (apparently there are 501 people still subscribed, says FeedBurner). I guess most of the audience has already moved o­n.

Basically, I came to Japan in January 2008 and have been working since. I don't think I really have time to manage the site, at least in its prior format, while working. That's not to mention that I haven't really been using the internet much, or even paying a whole lot of attention to consumer electronics news.

So needless to say, my priorities have shifted significantly. I launched this site during my freshman year of college, back when I had heaps of free time. If I get free time now I usually drink, (try to) play golf, or go somewhere I've never been before. Translating a news article about yet another DVD player with MP3 capabilities isn't so high o­n my list these days.

But that isn't to say we'll never be back again. There's a reason I still pay the $120 a year to keep this site here. What's the reason? Well, o­ne day I'd like to start a company of my own, so perhaps this is my final hideout of entrepreneurial spirit. Oh, PSP-Vault, that spin-off site I started, I sold for a decent sum of money that remains in my bank account today (putting it in the market didn't seem like a great idea at the time).

Therefore I'll just throw this out here in case anyone is listening -- what would YOU like to see TechJapan become? Stick with news? Add more business-y analysis? More columns/features rather than straight-up translation? Now that I'm actually in Japan it's theoretically easier for me to be where the action is, so to speak. A shop? I can walk to Akihabara in about 10 minutes from my apartment, in fact it's closer than my office.

Of course even those options all assume we stick to our Japan technology focus. Just because the URL is "www.techjapan.com" doesn't mean we have to talk about that. Maybe I can turn this into a blog where I instead talk about whisky made with ice from Antarctica, girls at car shows, and similar gaijin subjects?

Unfortunately the comments module o­n this site seems to have broken, and I'm definitely too lazy to fix it. So if you have a response, please just send it to zmcnulty@techjapan.com. Thanks!

Oh, and since a few people have asked...www.techjapan.com is not for sale.

Not a whole lot to say about the MusicMug from Idea International that you can't guess from the pictures. Or the name, for that matter.

It's a ceramic mug with an integrated (passive) speaker on the bottom. Plug the cable into your iPod or other portable audio device, put it in the cup, and you've got a portable audio system fit for even the most spartan of living environments. As for why the mug doesn't have a handle, Idea International's Chief Designer, Masato Tokuno, stated in the below interview with ITmedia that he didn't want people mistaking the MusicMug for a coffee mug, pouring coffee all over their music player. Likewise, he didn't want people to have to worry about where to grab the MusicMug when transporting it. Retails for 3,990 yen.



Inspired by:
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/lifestyle/articles/0609/25/news059.html

Idea International:
http://www.idea-in.com/

Access is ready to release the "NetFront LocationFree Player for PocketPC" later this month.

You may be familiar with Sony's LocationFree product, since we've covered it a couple times here at TechJapan. If you're not familiar, LocationFree is a product that allows you to transmit your TV programs to a client over the internet. Hook the LocationFree box up to your cable and your wireless internet, then use your LocationFree client to access the box. The result is realtime TV anywhere you have a wireless internet connection.

LocationFree has a number of clients available: PC, Mac, the LocationFree LCD, and Sony's PSP. It looks like you can add PocketPC devices to that list.

By the end of this month, Access will release a PocketPC client for LocationFree. The client will be going for 2,079 yen on Vector and other online software stores. You'll need Microsoft Pocket PC 2003 or Windows Mobile 2003 or above.



Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20060915/access.htm

Press Release:
http://www.access.co.jp/press/060915_02.html

Version 4.0.2080 of Google Earth is out, and it adds several new capabilities. The primary new capability is official support for Japanese navigation -- some areas were previously supported, but this new version offers official support. Likewise, several new Japan-centric features have been added, such as vastly improved maps for Japan, including 3D display capabilities for Tokyo, Osaka, other major cities, and even 3D display capabilities for people's houses. Apparently the ability to display 3D houses is not available for other countries yet. Hit up this page to download it.

Sanrio Corporation announced they'd be releasing the the "Hello Kitty Apple Shaped LCD Color TV" via their online shop on September 27th. It's going for 84,000 yen.

The TV is a 9.6" LCD with resolution of 800 x 600. The apple opens to reveal the screen and two 3W speakers. It has an integrated analog tuner, and AV input.



Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20060904/sanrio.htm

Press Release:
http://www.sanrio.co.jp/bus_info/news/h18/180904.html

A Japanese company called "Astala Vista" has officially announced their "Astala Vista" DVD rental vending machines. The machines will be placed in 10 stations in the Tokyo Metro on the 25th, and the company plans to have machines in as many as 150 private railyway stations before the end of the year. More details inside.

If you're for some reason obsessed with pyramids, you'll be pleased to know that "The PC-Factory" has released their pyramid-shaped ATX PC case called the "LUXOR." Retailing for 52,800 yen, the LUXOR doesn't include a power supply. It consists of two pieces: the top part tht houses a 5" drive bay and the power switch, and the bottom part housing the mobo and power source. In total, there are two 5" drive bays, one 3.5" drive bay, and two 3.5" shadow bays. There are two 8cm fans: one on the side and one on the bottom.



Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20060826/etc_pyramid.html

The PC-Factory Homepage:
http://www.thepc-factory.com/

Willcom will be launching "Willcom ADSL Service Type 2" o­n the 24th, which allows those without landline phone contracts to use ADSL services. In December of 2005 the company introduced "ADSL Service Type 1," bringing ADSL access at home, AIR-EDGE wireless access while away, and fixed landline service to a single bill.

ADSL Service Type 2 will be available in two different packages: "ADSL50M Mega Course" for 4,773 yen per month, offering a download speed of 50.5Mbps and upload speed of 12.2Mbps, and "ADSL3M Course" for 3,873 yen per month, offering a download speed of 3Mbps and upload of 1Mbps. There's a sign-up fee of 5,145 yen, but sign up before September 30th and the fee will be waived if your service starts by November 30th.

Inspired by:
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/0608/22/news030.html

Press Release:
http://www.willcom-inc.com/ja/corporate/press/2006/08/22/index.html

We'll start our day with an announcement from Synaptics, an American company that manufactures touchpads used in notebook PCs. In collaboration with Germany's PilotFish, they've developed a buttonless mobile phone called the "Onyx." It takes advantage of Synaptic's "ClearPad" capacitance touchscreen technology.

Traditionally, transparent touchscreens have been clear membranes placed over standard LCDs, requiring the user to use something like a stylus to register input o­n them. ClearPad however is similar to the touchpad of your laptop computer, meaning it can recognize complicated gestures and such drawn with just a finger.

This approach opens a number of new avenues for mobile phones -- ITmedia gives examples of drawing an "X" o­n the screen to close an application, sending messages by dragging them outside the window, and answering a phone call just by touching the phone.

Since Synaptics is an American company, they have an English press release and product site already available. The ITmedia article is here.

NHC's new device in the "Magic Talkers" line is a portable media player for those who want to try their luck at English conversation. Readers of this article however may be more interested in the device's other functions, such as playback of DivX and XviD files.

Coming soon to a FOMA handset near you: full episodes of "Mobile Suit Z Gundam," "Mobile Suit Gundam SEED," "Noein - to your other self," "Eureka Seven," "Wings of Rean," and "Neon Genesis Evangelion."

TechJapan has been in limbo since April of this year, partly because of some personal conflicts I've been having with myself over the goals and target audience of the site.

sar7501 and I intend on continuing TechJapan, and look to relaunch the site over the next few months. We plan on implementing a redesign of the site and a new way of displaying the content itself. The very nature of the content will also be changed. We're aiming to decrease our reliance on translation of articles from Japanese websites, and we plan on increasing the volume of news coming out of TechJapan. Given the emphasis I've taken on creating original content over at PSP-Vault, it doesn't make sense that TechJapan consist almost entirely of news articles just translated from those articles on Japanese websites. Now that the TechJapan Corporation exists, I no longer have to concern myself over conflicts of interests that may have arisen during my time writing for other sites. As a result, managing the TechJapan Corporation will be my sole occupation (besides school), at least until I graduate in December of 2007.

If you have any thoughts on the matter, please feel free to post them in this article's comments. Thanks for your continued patronage.

Update: I've removed all advertising from the site. Makes me feel a little bit better.

I don't really have anything to what has already been said over at Engadget about Toshiba's World Cup laptop, and Logitec's Mac compatible Blu-ray drive. They've managed to cover the bases pretty well.

Just in case you're looking for reference information (writing a report?), here are the PC Watch articles about each respective product:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/0424/toshiba.htm
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/0424/logitec.htm

If you've ever complained about the screen of your portable DVD player being too small, this might be the product for you. The screen of Bluedot's new "BDP-1200" portable DVD player makes you wonder why the word "portable" still applies.

If you're too lazy to take your blank discs out of their spindles, here's the product for you. It's a "CD/DVD blank media dispenser." Push a button and out pops a blank disc, ready for burning.

You've watched the entirety of the Neon Genesis Evangelion series, including the crappy movies, you own the Neon Genesis Evangelion iPod... so what's the next logical step? The Neon Genesis Evangelion bicycle, of course! Details inside.

Clarion has announced the first line of car navigation products for the Japanese market. They offer integrated hard drives, 7" widescreen LCDs, linkage with 5th gen iPods for audio and video playback,  and even terrestrial digital tuners.

Willcom has announced a new blog service for their "full browser" handsets. Apparently the Sharp W-ZERO3 isn't supported yet, but it's o­n the horizon.

I've put up a poll to gather some feedback about the format of news here on TechJapan. Since we launched in December of 2003, a large majority of the 1,280 articles we've posted were translated from Japanese news sources. Depending on your feedback, that could change. What would you like to see out of TechJapan? More of the same? A higher volume of news by avoiding intricate technical details of each and every product? More analysis, commentary, or explanations about the products and services we discuss? Please post your vote in the poll you see in the sidebar of the site.

Depending on your response and those of your peers, you could be seeing a different format for news coming out of TechJapan.

Two characters from a Fuji TV kids program called "Ponki Kids" are coming soon to an iPod nano near you.

Here are four new digital cameras from Nikon: the P3, P4, S5, and S6. o­ne of the P series cameras features integrated wireless LAN, and the S series also uses a "Wave Surface Design."

Here are three new PCMCIA cards from Willcom that support the new "W-OAM" standard, which is basically just a high-speed version of PHS.

Good news for Nintendo DS owners in Japan: you'll soon be able to pick up two new accessories to enhance your DS. The company has partnered with Opera to provide a browser for the system, and they're also planning o­n introducing a TV tuner capable of receiving o­ne-Seg terrestrial digital broadcasts.

SanX is the Japanese company response for the "Relaxuma," or "relaxing bear." Like many Japanese characters, you'll find him o­n all sorts of products from pencils to digital cameras.

In fact, Tomy has announced a new portable MP3 player shaped like the Relaxuma. Details inside.

We've hit o­n NXT's flat speaker technology a couple times in the past. It seems Kokuyo is now employing it in a product called the "Narupane" a poster panel that can also be used as a speaker. Of course, this has some nice applications for advertising purposes.

Here's a keyboard being put out by a Japanese company called "Links International Corporation" which features a bamboo body. It comes out February 11th, and should go for roughly 9,800 yen. There are already a few wooden-bodied keyboards o­n the market, but bamboo is a bit more flexible and resistant to warping from temperature changes versus other woods.

Inspired by:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/0206/links.htm

Product Information:
http://www.links.co.jp/html/press2/news_takekyel.html

Devices that recharge via USB are becoming more and more commonplace. So what happens when you don't have a USB port handy to recharge them?

Century's "iArm" takes care of this. It's an AC adapter with a USB port.

JP Telecom (J:COM) has announced that they will launch the "J:COM MOBILE powered by WILLCOM" (J:COM MOBILE) PHS service that uses Willcom's lines o­n March 1st. They will begin accepting contracts in J:COM service areas from February 16th.

Up next is the "BTee Music" earphone set from Kaga Electronics. These are Bluetooth earphones intended to be hung from the neck, so the company is calling them "pendant style."

Here's a rather unique item from somewhere in Asia. It's a "USB Treasure Chest," complete with a lock that o­nly opens if you enter the password correctly using your PC.

More bizarre iPod cases from Focal. This o­ne is shaped like a cat, complete with a tail for easy storage of your headphone cable.

Here's a rather bizarre passive speaker from Bird Electron. It's basically just a cube with a 3.5mm audio plug sticking out.

BCN announced the "BCN Award 2006." The BCN Awards gather information from POS throughout Japan, so it's a good indicator of what companies' products have been doing well through the past year.

Two new cases for your iPod nano from Focal Point Computers: the "PRIE ROBO for iPod nano" and "PRIE TUNETAG STUDS for iPod nano."

If you own an iPod nano, a case is certainly something you want.

Keitai Watch recently surveyed their readers to determine the No.1 mobile phone released for the Japanese market during 2005.

If you love Hello Kitty... and if you love your iPod nano... then you "must read" this announcement about the next "must have" item for you!

Net Village has begun a photo album service for mobile phones called "Fotoccha."
10MB of storage is free of charge. The service can be accessed by entering in the URL address.

TDK just began their sample shipments of cartridge-less Blu-ray Discs. 2006 will be the year of Blu-ray vs. HD DVD, so it will be interesting to see which format ends up o­n top.

Mikimoto is releasing a head-mounted display from a Korean manufacturer that uses organic EL displays instead of LCDs. It has a resolution of 800 x 600, too, which I believe is pretty high for such a device. The price is also high.

Our buddies down at "Heavy Moon" have come up with a nice looking adapter to power your iPod shuffle from your car's cigarette lighter.

We've previously reported o­n this device from Quixun, but more details are coming in, so we though we'd share.

Apparently a problem with USB capture devices is video lag, to the point that it makes playing games o­n your computer a problem. Kurouto Shikou has announced a new device called the "GameBridge" which supposedly addresses this problem. Update: I've done a bit of research into this, and apparently lag isn't a problem on all modern USB 2.0 capture devices. Sorry for the false alarm. I'll leave this article up because I don't feel like deleting it.

I'd be willing to bet that most Mac mini owners also own a second PC or Mac. The problem they face, then, is whether or not they want to use the same keyboard, mouse, and screen for o­n the two computers. If they do, they must use what is called a "KVM switch" -- a switch for Keyboard, VGA, and Mouse. Such a device is the PKV-02MM, but this o­ne is intended solely for the Mac mini.

Is it possible? A PC even smaller than the Mac mini? Of course. A newcomer, minipc.jp, has presented their first machine: the CF700. It's smaller than a Mac mini, but comes with a few surprises.

Don't take this to mean that we're going under or anything of that nature, but as you've probably noticed, the volume of articles over the past few months here at TechJapan has been somewhat low. This can be attributed to a variety of factors, none of which really deserve an explanation.

And so we're putting our feelers out for volunteers who may be interested in submitting articles. Though you won't be financially compensated for your contributions, it's a good way for those who may be interested in translation to "get their feet wet" before deciding to apply their skills in a more professional environment. It's also a good way for professional translators to take their noses out of monotonous technical manuals for a change and translate something with a bit more widespread appeal. All we ask of you is an ability to turn Japanese technology news articles into English technology news articles.

Because these positions are entirely volunteer, there is absolutely no specific time requirement or contribution quota. If you're interested in submitting one article per night, please contact me. If you're interested in submitting one article per month, please contact me. How much you would like to contribute is entirely up to you.

Of course we'll be glad to furnish you with direct posting capabilities (meaning you'll be able to post articles at your leisure, with no intervention from sar7501 or myself) and FTP space, so you can upload press release images as necessary.

I'll also mention that this isn't a "position" in the traditional sense; it's not something you have to compete against other users to get. This is an open invitation to anyone and everyone who is interested in contributing to TechJapan.

If you are at all interested, please contact me via any of the following methods.

• Email: zmcnulty atmark techjapan.com
  
• AIM: LiamSenpai
  
• Skype (Preferred): zmcnulty
  

Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has delivered their certification documents to three new companies. They are:

• BBMobile
• e-Mobile
• IPMobile

It's apparently been 12 years since any new competitors have entered the Japanese mobile phone market.

Arvel has announced a wireless mouse that features 128MB of integrated memory. More specifically -- the receiver features 128MB of integrated memory.

You've been waiting for a way to covertly record happenings in your bedroom, and here's your answer. Japan's "DIGITAL COWBOY" has announced the "NET COWBOY (DC-NCIRC1," which features infrared LEDs to light up the scene of the crime. Nope, this won't be used for anything sublegal, I promise!

It looks like more and more digital camera makers are moving towards DivX for their video recording features. Pentax is the latest, with the "Optio S6" that can record in the DivX format.

Here we are, a media playing hard drive case that has a nice feature: the ability to function through Network Attached Storage.

Dare I say this is the first Korean handset in Japan?

No, I daren't. But I know this is the first foreign-made handset for AU since their deal with Motorola in 2000. I await the day Samsung enters the Japanese mobile market.

CEATEC JAPAN 2005 is in full swing until like Saturday, I think. Not like I'll be flying all the way to Japan just to go to it, but that's fine -- we're o­n the internet! Of course, Impress Watch and ITmedia did a more than fine job of covering the event.

That's why this article is nothing but a gigantic collection of links to CEATEC JAPAN 2005 articles o­n each site!

As usual, if there is something in particular you want translated, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Here's what happens when you duck out of the news for a few days to study for exams, and write papers. Everything. In the past two days, new phones have been announced by DoCoMo, Willcom, and AU -- three of the four Japanese cellular carriers. Instead of getting bogged down with extraordinarily specific details about each handset (which is what we typically do for some reason), I'll just do a brief summary of each providers offerings in three articles called the "Phone Bonanza" series. Let's start things off with Willcom, who has announced the WX310K, WX300K, WX310J, and WX310SA.

JATE has approved a number of new handsets. Expect to see these officially announced within the next few weeks:

• Sharp - V604SH
  
• NEC - Vodafone 703N
  
• Sharp - FOMA SH902i
  
• Kyocera - CDMA A5515K
  
• Kyocera - WX310K
  
• Mitsubishi - MOVA D253iWMS
  

Real Fleet is introducing three new products in their line of design-centric electronics: a phone, a learning remote, and a cleaner. I know there are a lot of you out there who wouldn't want a device that sacrifices functionality for design, but I really liked the look of these.

Rather interesting idea from Ricoh -- they're including a little window and graph on the package of their new line of DVD-R media so that you can "see" how much capacity you have left on a disc without having to put it into your PC/recorder.

A trained eye can take a fairly accurate guess, but this is a nice idea for those who may not realize what the different bands of color means on the back of their discs.

Remember the Play-Yan? To go with the release of the "Gameboy Micro," Nintendo has announced a new version, aptly named the "Play-Yan Micro."

Anti-piracy warnings at the movies are nothing new these days but Japan's equivalent of the MPAA, JIMCA, has taken things to a new level (low?) with their recent campaign. As recently mentioned on BoingBoing, the campaign features dark and disturbing images of the apparent destruction that piracy can cause. A friend of TechJapan, Whiteangle, recently risked life and limb at a screening of The Island in Tokyo to capture exclusive footage of JIMCA's "Save Our Movies" anti-piracy campaign. Read on to view the video and a transcript.

I've finally finished moving, and now have a desk so I can actually type up posts.

And wouldn't you know it, right when Obon is going on. I'll probably do some cleanup from what I missed last week. My apologies for the delays.

I'm moving to a different apartment, and that's part of the reason there hasn't been any news posted this week. Here's what I would have posted, maybe:

Aya Ueto scheduling software
HD DVD camp complains about Fox's announcement the other day
JVC Minicompo with "Sound Lifter"
Sharp slot loading DVD player
Two new phones from AU - W32S, W32H
Five new phones from DoCoMo - Dolce, SA700iS, N701i, D701i, P701iD
DoCoMo introduces iChannel service
Full metal keyboard

Well, maybe not all of those, but you get the picture.

To no one's surprise, Fox has announced they'll be putting content out in the Blu-ray format. They threw out some examples in the process -- the ones that stuck out for me are "Family Guy" and "24." Of course some of you would probably appreciate "M*A*S*H" in the lineup, too.

Impress Watch carries the full list of titles, in English. No (English) press release from Fox about this yet.

Some time ago, we reported o­n Yamaha's MyRoom. This room, while nice, probably would not match decor common in many Japanese households. Justsystem has announced they will be selling the Asian and Japanese models of "Simple DIY In-Room Room," a product created by Morimasa of Tokushima Prefecture.

sar7501 has taken time out of his busy schedule to bring a few improvements to your TechJapan navigation experience.

-First of all, we've added "Tags" that seem to be all the rage with blogs these days (though we vehemently deny being a blog). In the Tamagotchi article, for example, the tags are "Bandai" and "Tamagotchi." We have also put in some features to enable related articles to come up even if no tags are defined (since we're too lazy to go back and add them to our existing 1,000+ articles).
-These tags will link you directly to a search of TechJapan for articles containing the same terms. You'll probably notice we implemented some new search URLs, so searching for something like "noodles" is as easy as punching in http://www.techjapan.com/Search-noodles.html in your address bar. And for some reason, "noodles" actually yields search results.
-From the new tags and existing topic system, we now have links to related articles at the bottom of all articles. Going back to the Tamagotchi article, you should see links to the 2-story Gundam recreation, that ULTRAMAN model Exilim, and the Evangelion edition iPod (all having to do with Bandai). The related articles from the topics are also randomly generated, so you can literally sit in front of TechJapan all day, lean on the F5 key, and find new articles EVERY refresh.
-Where the ultra-exciting topic icons appear in the articles, you'll notice a new box containing some information about how the article was categorized. Some of you may think that having categories, topics, AND tags is a bit overkill, but given the breadth of technology we cover here at TechJapan, we felt it was appropriate. In this block you'll also find Technorati's "Linking Blogs" feature, which we've chosen to act as our "Trackback" feature because this functionality is not offered by the default PostNuke package.

Let us know if you have any problems!

Bandai has announced that more than 10,000,000 "Tamagotchi Plus" will have been sold by the end of July. Are these things really that popular still? Guess so...

Adtec will be releasing some new USB memory devices with interchangeable covers. Yay!

ITmedia is running an article about i-care Telecom's new "I-Series" of mobile phone, and I'd translate it, but information is already available in English. i-care Telecom is apparently a Taiwanese company. Besides the I-Series clearly intended for use by children with its simplicity, the S-Series is a pendant-style phone intended for use by the elderly.

The first service for purchasing train tickets via mobile phone is set to debut in Matsuyama city, Japan at the end of August, beating JR East's Mobile Suica to market. Users will also be able to use the system on buses and taxis.

Fuji Work is the first company to announce a realtime H.264 encoder. It features a Memory Stick Duo slot, and o­ne of its intended uses is with "portable game devices" such as the PSP.

Surely you haven't forgotten about Sony's NW-HD5, have you? Miyavix didn't. They're releasing an aluminium case for it.

A couple weeks ago we mentioned a development from Quixin that would allow you to use your mobile phone as both keyboard and mouse for your PC. A few more details have emerged: they're calling it "Lipii," it features various modes for common tasks (such as an Internet Mode with frequent browsing functions), and should be available for about 1,000 - 2,000 yen.This is panning out to be far less exciting than we had thought...

Anyway, here's the press release.

BrightonNet is offering an FM modulator kit for iPods and iPod minis. Note that an "FM modulator" is a bit different from an "FM transmitter," and of course we'll explain this difference inside.

Livedoor, the "Yahoo" of Japan (besides Yahoo Japan), decides they want to offer wireless internet access via "iBurst." They have applied to the Ministry of Basically Everything to enter the 2GHz wireless band.

A veritable Swiss Army knife of audio/video equipment, the new "Bearmax MVX6950T" from Kumazaki Aim offers TV, AM/FM tuner, DVD-Video, DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW, Video CD, and MP3/JPEG support in a minicomponent system. This would be a fantastic system to just have in your kitchen, bedroom, or other place where you might want a second television. Moreover, the TV is an LCD, rather than a CRT.

Certainly not the first water-resistant MP3 player intended to be used in the bathroom, but it's the first o­ne I've seen that can take third-party USB Mass Storage devices.

Don't settle for some crappy plastic case for your iPod -- you payed a lot of money for it! That's why Electron Bird has introduced an iPod and iPod mini case line that uses Vachetta leather from Italy.

ITmedia is reporting o­n the 2nd anniversary renewal of the Gundam Museum, operated by Bandai. The renewal features, among other things, a "V Operations Cockpit Reproduction," where visitors are encouraged to take pictures for good memories. Of further interest at the museum is a 2-story (5.6 meters, or 18 feet), 1/1 scale model of a Gundam A-Parts. Bandai also inadvertently took a stab at fans of SEED with the following quote: "I think everyone, from fans who are in 'deep' to those light users who have just started with SEED, will enjoy this." This article is just a tad too off-topic for me to translate the entirety of, but if there's a specific section you're interested in, let me know. Click either of the images inside to be taken to ITmedia's article, with plenty more information and pics.

Google has launched the Japanese version of their acclaimed mapping service. You'll find all of your standard Google Maps features such as routes and "Local Search." Be sure to take a look. The English version previously had Japan mapped out to some extent, but ZENRIN takes their level of detail to the umpteenth degree, even giving the locations of buildings in remote places such as... Mihara, near Hiroshima. They've integrated their data with the English version of Google Maps, so all the better for those of you unable to input Japanese characters.

Ayumi Hamasaki, Koda Kumi, EXILE, BoA, Every Little Thing, globe, day aftter tomorrow, m-flo...maybe you've heard some of these names? They're all under Avex Networks, and soon enough, Japanese users will be able to download their favorite Avex tracks from the iTunes Music Store. Avex Networks announced today they have finalized plans to offer their content to the iTunes Music Store, scheduled to launch some time before the end of the year.

Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20050715/avex.htm

News Release (PDF):
http://www.avex.co.jp/j_site/press/2006/050714.pdf

ROBOTREX/ROBOCUP, o­ne of the world's largest robotics conventions/competitions, is well underway in Osaka. There's not a whole lot I can do from South Carolina here to cover it, but seeing as how PC Watch is all over it, I probably wouldn't be there even if I were in Japan (especially considering Wireless Japan 2005 is also being held this same week). Anyway, they have a nice article covering all sorts of robots, but in all honesty, there wasn't anything that completely floored me (otherwise I'd be translating it right now). As always, if you want a particular part of the article translated, let me know and I'll take care of it. Click the image below to continue to their article, full of nice pictures and videos of the event.

Wireless Japan 2005 is in full-swing at Tokyo's BigSight convention centre. Unfortunately, as TechJapan management is too stingy to spring for our transport costs to cover it in person, you'll have to make do with a wrap-up of WatchImpress' comprehensive coverage. Read on for WiMax, videophone, mobile phone fuel-cells, solar-panel equipped mobiles and more!

Links International has announced a new case for ATX motherboards that is actually the same size as a case for microATX motherboards. How did they do it? They put the power source in the front! Makes you wonder why nobody else thought of this earlier...

Just in case you've ever felt the urge to record some of your phone calls, Jade Limited has a new solution for you. The "MY LOGGER" system consists of a USB device and software solution allowing for recording of phone calls.

Fuji Television will start an on-demand TV program delivery service for both PC and STB users from late July. Programs will initially be priced at between 210 and 525 yen each.

If you're in the market for something that looks like a Mac mini that...isn't actually a Mac mini, Focal Point Computer has a fantastic product for you. The "USB 2.0 Mini Drive Kit" is an external hard drive case that looks, well, exactly like a Mac mini!

I'm having a hard time understanding exactly why someone would want to use their mobile phone as both keyboard and mouse for their PC, but I guess it could serve as an emergency replacement should something go wrong with your normal setup.

Alternatively, I could see phones replacing simple remote controllers (like the o­nes used in Windows XP Media Center Edition).

"Nagashi Soumen" roughly translates as "flowing noodles." It is a method of eating soumen noodles (similar to ramen noodles, but much thinner), where a bamboo pole is split in half and placed so that the noodles can slide down the inside of it along with some water. Eaters sit along the length of the bamboo pole, and try to catch the noodles as they flow by.

Anyway, nagashi soumen does take quite a bit of preparation -- you need a bamboo pole to split in half, some running water, and a place to do it (few Japanese have backyards).

Not anymore. A company called Comsatellite has created the "Certain Kill! Soumen Mawashi."

TDK is showing off a 4-layer Blu-ray Disc at this year's Data Storage Expo. That is all.

Speecys has begun taking orders for a fuel cell-powered version of their "Speecys" bipedal robot for those who like to keep their robotic activities environmentally friendly. Saving the planet doesn't come cheap however - the "Speecys-FC" will retail for approximately US$24,000. Maybe I'll just stick to Lego for a little while longer...

Not specifically Japanese news per se, but interesting nonetheless: Mercury Computer Systems announced that they are the first company to partner with IBM to offer the acclaimed (well, by some people) Cell processor in PCs. We all know the Playstation 3 is powered by one of these bad boys, but it could be interesting to see what sort of capabilities the processor has in the PC world. Mercury's press release doesn't mention anything about consumer-level systems, but I'm sure some crazy company will come along and offer a product the "rest of us" can afford.

Their press release is available here in English, so I'm home free.

Some groovy new speaker technology from Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology. The NetSpeaker connects to any PC-based wired or wireless network and plays back sound output via a virtual sound device driver. Commercialisation of the speaker technology is in progress.

Yay, more product knock-offs! This time around, we see the "i-Pocket," which is clearly a phony version of the iPod mini. But instead of having a hard drive, it has...drum roll please...a memory card slot.

Now why didn't Apple think of this?

My latest employment is for Weblogs Inc., where I'm the editor of Engadget Japanese. It just launched today.

Engadget Japanese is, as its name implies, the Japanese version of Engadget. I haven't really been presented with a whole lot of problems translating from Japanese to English for TechJapan here or Gizmodo (back when I was with them), but as you can imagine, translating into Japanese is a whole different story.

Thankfully Japanese people seem to understand the cryptic nature of their language and have been, for the most part, forgiving.

My employment with Engadget Japanese will in no way have any adverse effect on my coverage here at TechJapan. In fact, I only agreed to work there if they let me continue TechJapan. So no worries about Non-Compete Contracts or anything similar.

Uniqlo is sort of like the Old Navy of Japan, minus the ultra-annoying commercials o­n TV. They feature clothing that is cheap and suitable to be worn in most casual situations.

The company is introducing an iPod shuffle case called "color wear for iPod shuffle." Details inside.

If you've ever wanted to use your phone while in the tub but was afraid to because of the water, you're in for a treat. Ishizaki Materials has a new waterproof soft case so that you can use your phone anywhere around water, including the bathtub.

One of Japan's largest ISPs, the Softbank Group, is expanding the coverage of their IP-based video-delivery service, BBTV, to all of Japan's 47 prefectures from July 1. The price of the service is pretty reasonable (approx $20-30/month) but I'd want to check out the video quality before committing to the service.

Targus Japan has a new mouse coming out that glows in 7 different colors, which I hadn't seen announced over here in the States. Probably for good reason, too...

Yodobashi Camera, a major Japanese electronics retail chain, has announced a new point card that features "FeliCa" contactless IC technology.

Now that NTT DoCoMo, JR East Japan, JR West Japan, ANA, and several other major organizations have announced FeliCa-related products and/or services, I'm beginning to wonder exactly how long it will be before we see it here in America.

More details o­n the new card inside.

Here's a nice o­ne from Scythe. The "FOLDABLE MOUSE" reminds me of something that should have come out in the 80s, but I guess some inventions just take their time. As indicated, the mouse does indeed "fold."

Sanwa Supply has a new USB gamepad coming out that looks strikingly similar to the NES gamepad. I guess people who use emulators a lot would be interested in something like this. I'm pretty sure some modder has already rigged up a NES > USB bridge of some sort, but at least this product is cheap (only $13 or so).

The "Prototype Robot Exhibition" is currently going o­n at that 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan. PC Watch has some absolutely maniacal coverage of the entire event, including over 70MB of video content. Be sure to take a look if you're even remotely interested in robotics, as Japan is the capital for that sort of thing.

I didn't have time yesterday to write anything for TechJapan. I will have time today; expect to see your normal fill of articles up after I finish work here.

Yesterday, I covered the following that should also have been here at TechJapan. Let me know if you want more information about any of the products; I would be happy to translate an article for you, TechJapan-style.

HD DVD-R Ready And Waiting
JVC XA-MP101, 51 Flash Players
Red Nintendo DS
JVC XA-AL55 MP3 Earphones

Headphones with wind up cables are nothing new, but these new ones from CyberGadget are intended to be used with the Nintendo DS, PSP, and other portable game consoles. What does that mean? Nothing, actually -- they appear to be a pretty normal pair of headphones. More information inside.

A few of you have probably been wondering where the updates have been this week. Once again, it is Golden Week in Japan. Golden Week is a weeklong press holiday, meaning there will more than likely be no TechJapan updates this week.

I will also say that I will be going to Europe again this year (leaving the 8th), and will return in the first week of June. I plan to have no internet access whatsoever; you will not be seeing any TechJapan updates from me. However, sar7501 and ando will be around and can hopefully get to the "major" stuff. If you happen to be able to translate Japanese into English and would like to take a stab at writing for TechJapan, please send an email to zmcnulty AT techjapan.com and I will be more than happy to set you up with everything you need to provide updates while I am away.

In other news, we have some changes planned for TechJapan this summer. We are still investigating getting away from PostNuke, will probably be revamping the layout, be making the forums useful, and will be providing tons more content.

A company called BrightonNet is introducing two interesting bags called the "iPod shoulder Bag" and "iPod Bag." Each features a special pocket for the iPod as well as integrated speakers.

RockRidge Sound Japan will be releasing a device called the "Media Recorder VRX-02," which allows for recording PSP-compatible video directly to Memory Stick Duo. It's going to cost like 15,000 yen, too. Crossposted from PSP-Vault.

Sega Toys and Tadayuki Ohira have gotten together to bring us the HOMESTAR planetarium. Unlike previous planetariums for home use which have used a pinhole projection system, the HOMESTAR uses an optical projection system to deliver brighter and sharper images. All for about US$200.

Uchida Yoko has introduced an extremely interesting "communication support tool" called the "Projection Table." The table uses transparent acrylic cubes and RFID, so that when you place certain cubes (which contain RFID tags) o­n it, the information inside will be displayed. This makes more sense if you read the article...

This o­ne isn't long enough for a "Read More," but it was too cool to pass up. According to this article o­n Slashdot Japan, a Japanese company called Sakakibara Kikai has developed a robot called the "Land Walker," which looks strikingly similar an Elemental (for those of you who have played BattleTech or Mechwarrior). No telling if it has a a Small Flamer, SRM or PPC (don't think the Elementals had enough heat sinks for PPCs, though), but it's a tad slow at 1.5km/hour. And a bit heavy at 1000kg. Still, badass. Click the link below for Sakakibara Kikai's homepage; they even have a 5MB WMV you can download of the thing in action.

As an April Fool's Day joke, Sega announced the "Game Gear Goju." "Goju," or 50, refers to the number of screens the unit has. This is clearly a poke at the Nintendo DS, but it's certainly refreshing to see Japanese companies not taking themselves so seriously for o­nce. Translation of the "product page" inside.

A company called "Tec" has announced four semi-interesting USB products:

• USB Hub Wheel W
• USB Senpuuki Mist W
• USB Speaker Tower W
• USB Speaker Cube W

I'll let you guess what interface they all use.

USB Flash Memory products rival MP3 players in terms of sheer quantity and this week is no exception. Hagiwara Systems has come to the party with their "AUto-run USB Flash Memory" range that come pre-loaded with useful software.

Nikon has a new camera coming out called the "Coolpix S1," and it seems to be an interesting move for the company. I thought Nikon was all about professional SLR cameras and all that good stuff, and now they come out with this consumer level o­ne with a 19.7mm body? I certainly didn't expect something like this; it is interesting to see the company try new things out.

Good evening TechJapan readers. As you may remember from last week, I have been working on a pretty big project.

This project is psp-vault.com. I won't go into too much detail here at TechJapan as it is not exactly applicable to our content, but our primary goals are to provide PSP gamers a place to share save games, talk it up on the forums, download PSP-related utilities, and catch up on a little news.

Please take a look if you are at all interested in the PSP!

If you have spare SD cards lying around your house, why not employ them for something useful? This SD to IDE adapter allows your PC to recognize SD cards as though they were a hard drive. Since this works at the BIOS level, you can even boot directly from SD. Wouldn't it be more convenient to update your Linux Live CD o­n an SD card instead of having to rewrite a CD over and over again?

The Osaka/Kobe-based Hanshin Tigers are probably the second most popular baseball team in Japan - after the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants. It's been 70 years since the team was established and, to commemorate the occasion, Joshin, TurboLinux and Sotec have teamed up to produce this one of a kind notebook PC. Only serious fans need apply...

As a kid, I was amazed what MacGyver managed to do every week with a jack-knife and a roll of duct tape. Just imagine what he could have done if he had this!

A couple of new products from E-Kai - USB-powered wireless headphones and speakers. The speakers are pretty unremarkable but the headphones aren't a bad buy at 6000 yen or so. They include a built-in microphone too for use with audio chat programs such as Skype.

I'm fed up with deleting retarded comments, so anonymous comments are now completely disabled. If you want to post a comment, register. I'd rather have just a couple intelligent comments in the articles than a hundred stupid ones.

Looking to give your PC a bit more of that "Wow!" factor? The Soldam "Visualizer" may be what you've been looking for. Using the mysteriously-punctuated "WiNDy Visualizer Control Center" software, you can program the Visualiser's Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) to display a wide range of information - including custom graphics of your own making.

Here's an external hard drive case from Keian Corporation with MPEG, DivX, VCD, VOB, and other multimedia file support.

This is the first product from Keian we've featured here at TechJapan, and it appears to be a decent offering. Hopefully we'll see more from them in the near future.

Those crazy guys at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology are at again! Not content with developing the world's most therapeutic robot, this time they've come up with a couple of very realistic dinosaur robots to be displayed at the 2005 World Expo.

People have always wanted different color game units and games. Now, people who want to spice up their gaming will have four new flavors.

Platinum Silver

The moment you have been waiting for has finally arrived! The creators of Paro-chan, the world's most therapeutic robot , have succumbed to the lure of the corporate dollar and finally decided to allow sales to consumers. The first limited-production run of 200 units will sell for 350,000 yen each. Orders are only being taken by telephone though so make sure you practice up on that Japanese. Paro-chan o kudasai!!

IDC Japan has announced the results of their survey of PC shipments in Japan during 2004. In total, approximately 13.4 millions PCs were sold with notebooks outselling desktops by a margin of 140,000 units. 2004 was a bumper year for sales at Dell and HP Japan but things weren't so good at Sony and Apple. Just goes to show good design doesn't count for everything.

Looking for the perfect complement to your limited-edition Neon Genesis Evangelion iPod? Sanrio has the answer - a limited-edition Hello Kitty iPod mini! Available only in pink, the 6GB iPod mini comes with a Hello Kitty iBe@r stand, case and set of keyrings. Only 2000 will be available so don't delay!

We've reported o­n quite a few gadgets here at TechJapan, but this o­ne is by far the most exciting.

Trust me, you'll want to read this article.

More than Alien Vs. Predator, many fans have been waiting for the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP to go head-to-head. While the general features are very different, one thing that they both have in common is wireless capability. What sets them apart and what is in store for everyone in the future?

Extreme Limit will begin sales of the "Cordovan Mobile Suit" iPod leather case from mid-March. Cordovan is a fine leather made from the rump of a horse renowned for its combination of beautiful texture and durability. Surely the perfect gift for any non-vegetarian iPod owner?!

Corega is probably most well-known for their networking gear. However, it looks like they've been feeling a bit left out as every man and his dog releases a portable video player. The solution - release one of their own! The "CG-PMPPOD" comes with a 7" wide LCD screen, 20GB HDD and supports WMV9, DivX4/5, QT6, MP3 and WMA. It all sounds a bit familiar though. Does anyone know if this is just a re-badge of someone else's player?

The ambitiously-named Links International has come up with a new USB bus-powered TV tuner, the "V-Gear PocketTV X(NTSC)-JP". It's cheap, it doesn't require a separate power adapter, it comes with a remote and it encodes to DivX (via software). Not bad at all.

Recently, an alarming number of TechJapan visitors have been posting their e-mail addresses in the comments section of articles for products they wish to purchase. Since all TechJapan articles are open to the public, as well as their comments, we request that you refrain from doing so. We wouldn't want you getting spammed because of some robot going through the articles here.

It's not that we don't field these sorts of requests -- we'll see what we can do about getting certain products (though we make no guarantees, of course). If you are interested in a particular product, members can send me a private message. If you're not registered yet and would wish to do so, you may register here. Alternatively, if you for some reason are unable/unwilling to register, feel free to send me an e-mail. Please be sure you include what product it is that you're interested in. Again, though, we make no guarantees about product availability or our own ability to get off our ass and buy something for you.

Looking like something from a Kubrick or Ridley Scott film, ASUS’s new VENTO 3600 is sure to appeal to the home-built market who also care about style and design. However, good looking things cost a good amount of money.

What’s Next For Nintendo After The DS?

Mr. Toyoda of Nintendo speaks about current achievements, the Nintendo DS, and next generation “Revolution”.

Liven up your desk with Kokuyo's new "Marimekko" series of brightly colored mice. They feature seamless buttons and various "textures," all of which seem to be associated with vegetation.

Marimekko is apparently a textile brand from Finland. OK.

It's so simple, it almost makes me cry.

The "ALUMINIUM CLIP for iPod shuffle" is a replacement for the iPod shuffle's USB cap, and it has a clip o­n it. And it's made of aluminium. I could end this post right here, but you want a picture, right? Inside.

I am in the process of making some large changes to TechJapan. Unfortunately many of these changes involve things that are far, far beyond my realm of knowledge.

If you're a programmer that likes to do work for absolutely no compensation whatsoever, please contact me. I guess I'd need someone with PHP/MySQL experience, but I'm pretty open-minded.

As a side note, I'm also looking for a designer who can do CSS. You won't get any money either, though.

Since I've gotten everyone excited about the iPod shuffle all over again, here's an interesting Japanese message board I stumbled across today via Slashdot Japan. It's called the "iPod shuffle Sticker UPLoader," and is a board full of users who have designed stickers to cover the entirety of their iPod shuffle. Though I don't know how many of these users actually go o­n to actually *put* the stickers they've created o­n their shuffle, it's still an interesting prospect. Click the image below to view the message board.

Here's a pretty radical looking case for your iPod shuffle.

Akihabara - the mecca of electronics. Who wouldn't want to live there? Especially when there aren't enough places to live, or it costs you both arms, both legs, and mortgaging your first-born child. Surprisingly, there are places around Akihabara that are just right for the taking, just not in Akihabara. In the last of a two part series we continue to explore living in Akihabara.

Ever wondered what "Mitsubishi" means when written out in Japanese? Or maybe you've pondered over exactly how "Sanyo" came to be known as Sanyo*. What does the "shiba" in "Toshiba" mean? In this article, we dive deep into the corporate names of seven of the world's most well-known electronics companies:

• FujiFilm
• Fujitsu
• Hitachi
• Panasonic
• Mitsubishi
• Sanyo
• Toshiba

Inside, we investigate two main areas for each company: what the characters that compose their names actually mean, and how the companies actually got their names.

Hint: The founder's name isn't "Mr. Sanyo." In fact, o­nly o­ne company out of the seven listed above still uses their founder's name as their official corporation name.

A few random, statistic-related updates regarding TechJapan's growth:

• We broke 2,000,000 page views some time this month. TechJapan began normal operation  in December of 2003 (the site has actually existed since August 2003, but I was a bit lazy).
• We now have over 300 members...and a lot of people that choose to remain anonymous when they comment. Hopefully I'll be able to bring things together in the forum, but that's in the coming months.
• Three members now post articles o­n a regular basis: myself, sar7501, and ando. Of course, we also thank those of you that have contributed content in the past.
• We've posted a total of 829 articles, give or take a couple I had to delete for some reason. Our posting frequency also continues to climb.
• 737 comments have been posted...not counting the o­nes I've had to delete :)

Thanks for your continued patronage. Expect TechJapan to do nothing but improve; we've got a lot planned for the site in the near future.

Transfer 1GB of data to the high speed "PureMaster" series of USB memory sticks in 64 seconds. And reading from it is even faster.

Akihabara - the mecca of electronics. Who wouldn't want to live there? Especially when store employees work long hours. Surprisingly, in an informal survery of store employees, over 80% said they wouldn't want to. In the first of a two part series, the author talks about some of their reasons and separates truth from fiction.

Koei will soon be selling the "Oval" case that was included in the Shin Sankoku-Musou Premium Box.

Who's happy?

The fans of the game who already bought the game back in December.

Oki Data has announced their new C Series of LED printers, which produce near laser quality printing but also can print in color, for the Japanese market. According to the Japanese article they are aimed at the business sector in Japan. However, by visiting the Oki Data USA color printer webpage, it's possible to see that they're already for sale in the US.

I made an initial report o­n this o­n Gizmodo probably like a month ago, but details were pretty sparse back then. You didn't miss much, trust me.

Really, it's Nintendo's official MPEG-4/MP3 player for the Gameboy SP and Nintendo DS. Alright, but for example, what video resolutions? Price? Formats? Answers to these and other questions that have been remained unanswered since the original announcement are revealed inside. Think of this as Nintendo's o­nly official attempt at stealing some multimedia thunder from the PSP.

As you've surely already noticed, TechJapan has recently been having some problems associated with high traffic/server load.

If you enjoy the content here, please take a moment to send a buck or two to help cover costs associated with our hosting. Payments are accepted via PayPal (meaning, easy to think it's not real money), and go directly to our hosting provider -- you can rest assured that we're not pocketing the cash for beer (though we certainly accept these sorts of donations too). Simply click o­n the button below, and help make things around here go a bit more smoothly.

Although the site is obviously experiencing some major technical difficulties (that we're in the process of addressing), there's certainly no time to stop reporting the news.

And when news comes in the form of a "10-key Mouse," we have no choice but to bring it to you during these dire times.

Slashdot Japan dropped a link to the "Self-Destruct Button DX." While (hopefully) not functional, it certainly makes for an interesting coffee table accessory. Or as we say here in South Carolina, "conversation piece." 3,990 yen.

As part of my o­ngoing effort to get TechJapan listed o­n google (because we're not, just try searching), I'll be experimenting with a few site settings today. Apparently running PHP as CGI disables custom php instructions in .htaccess files, something I didn't know, which has been responsible for a few problems.

Anyway, this is just to let everyone know. Don't expect any major downtime; just don't be surprised if you see a "500 Internal Server Error" message or two today. The new poll, Product of the Week, and Saturday Statistics will be posted later o­n.

We know the site takes a crapload of time to respond, and we're working o­n it. As the poll indicates, many TechJapan visitors are forced to wait over 7 seconds before they can access the site. This is terrible, and I assure you it will be fixed in the near future.

What we do know is that the slowdown of the site is related to the database. Running a request for a normal HTML page at our domain works perfectly well -- it's o­nly the dynamic content (meaning, the entirety of TechJapan) that suffers from slowdowns, as it needs to pull information from the mySQL database.

While TechJapan and any other PostNuke site does employ heavy usage of a mySQL database, I'd like to point out that things really shouldn't be as bad as they are. You probably remember when we were at Globat (pre-December 2004); the Globat database was nearly 8MB in size, and ran under PostNuke .726. The DreamHost database (via our current host) is about 5.25MB in size and runs under PostNuke .750, allegedly far more optimized at database queries. In other words, it's not my fault.

Still, thanks for sticking with us. The slow domain doesn't affect the functionality of the site (unless it gets really slow); it o­nly means you need to wait a tad longer when you come to visit.

Nikkei Electronics Asia is running a pretty nice article called "Tech Analysis: HDD for Mobile Phones Withstand 1.5-Meter Drop," where they outline some of the factors involved in the implementation of hard drives in portable devices. It's a good read, so if you're at all interested in the physical end of what it means to have a hard drive inside of a portable device, certainly take a look.

This week's Product of the Week is the "SASTIK -0MB Reloaded," an incredible product from Japan's "SASLITE." With a single USB keychain device, essentially any internet-connected PC can look and feel like your home/work PC.

Explaining exactly what the SASTIK -0MB Reload does requires a bit of space, so please Read More for more information.

A Japanese company called "DigiOn" has announced the development of some PC-side MP3 management software specifically aimed at usage with the PSP. While I don't think this particular software is entirely too well thought out (there are already hundreds of ripping/encoding/ID3 tagging softwares available that make MP3 files, essentially all of which work o­n the PSP), it's nice to see support for the device by the PC software community. More details inside.

I think most of us saw this coming as soon as Sony announced the PSP would be using Memory Stick Duo, but for those of you who didn't, here it is in black and white: SanDisk has announced they'll be targetting portable game systems for in a new line of memory cards.

For now, this line consists of nothing more than neon-colored Memory Stick Duo and SD cards in skeleton casings, but I'm hoping it takes off. Memory Stick Duo is obviously for the PSP, and SecureDigital for the Tapwave Zodiac (which I didn't know). Click the image below for the English press release (because SanDisk is an American company).

On a related note, I got my 512MB SanDisk Memory Stick Duo from newegg.com for like $70. If you're planning o­n picking up a PSP o­n its release, I suggest you get everything you need beforehand; that way, you won't be tempted to give in to overcharging by major retail chains.

Another Bluetooth MP3 player, this time from the (South) Koreans. Aiwa released a similar product back in December.

So you plug this USB thing into the destination computer, and it accesses the SASTIK server, which stores items such as e-mail, file data, address book, and bookmarks.

This is the last o­ne, I promise. TDK has announced they're changing the names of all their existing optical disc hard-coating technologies to simply "DURABIS." Through a combination of "durability" and "shield" (a very lopsided combination, I might add), TDK managed to reach "DURABIS."

The company already applies the coating to all of their DVD and Blu-Ray discs, so don't expect anything fancy. But the coating looks to be good stuff -- going by the graph they have in their press release, the discs retained jitter percentages of 7% even under a 300-pass steel wool abrasion test. Yikes. Click the DURABIS logo below for the full English press release.

Part of the reason we implemented news categories here at TechJapan is because of accessibility. More details inside.

Our American visitors likely already know this, but international TechJapan visitors may not be aware that CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, is currently going o­n in Las Vegas, Nevada. It officially began o­n the 6th (today), and will continue until the 9th (Sunday).

Just like last year, there's already hundreds of English-language news sites covering the event; I'll therefore "leave it to them." Be sure you take a look -- plenty of companies are unveiling new products. I'm particularly excited about some of the new HD DVD items.

Here's a couple links to get you started:
2005 CES News Highlights (Official site)
2005 CES New Products (Official site)
2005 CES Media Coverage (Official site)
2005 CES CNet Coverage (CNet)

Akiba PC Watch has announced the results of their user-submitted "Bizarre Items of the Year," and we've got a breakdown of them for you.

I haven't got nearly enough time to translate every associated article, but I will at least be translating the list itself and dropping links to the respective products' articles. If you'd like more details about a particular product, post a comment, and I'll try to translate the associated article.

Here's a DVD player under 50,000 yen that has a pretty large 10" LCD. By DSign? I don't know either.

The mysterious Japanese electronics vendor Kurouto Shikou has introduced their latest product -- a USB memory-sized 0.3MP digital camera.

I'm also giving them the official TechJapan "Company That Has the Most Cult-Like Sounding Name Award."

Rio Japan will be introducing two new flash players later this month, both under 20,000 yen and both quite stylish.

Anime fans were this week treated to the announcement of an iPod just for them.

Where's my ALF edition iPod?

If you're seeing this message, you probably noticed the new URL. This is our temporary home until the new techjapan.com DNS resolves at the new server. Please leave your comments about what you think -- about the new Main Menu layout, about the ShortURLs, about the server speed, and so forth.

"I didn't notice it at the time, but when I got home, I thought, 'man, my ass hurts.'"

A quite nice looking 2.1ch setup from Rio Japan comes in the form of the new "Rio LIVE air." The "air" part of the name clearly refers to the fact that the speakers are wireless.

We're in the process of moving. I need to export the database from this site and copy it over to the new site. Since we're also migrating PostNuke versions, I need to deactivate the non-Core modules.

Things should basically still work, but we'll let you know when we go to take down the whole site.

It's a slow night, but we're busy making preparations for the new site.

All you need to know is that the Asimo, Honda's robot, can now "run."

All you need to see is this video:
http://www.honda.co.jp/HDTV/ASIMO/200412-run/

This came out of absolutely nowhere. Bandai will be releasing 2,000 "Eva iPods" to the unsuspecting public. Obviously limited edition, these would make quite a collectors item for fans of the series.

Speaking of the series, Evangelion is probably o­ne of the o­nly anime series I was ever able to tolerate. In fact, I've been told I look like Shinji...

TechJapan will be moving hosts this week. Hopefully I'll be able to pull it off with no downtime whatsoever, but there's a chance that may not happen.

Either way, just a heads up. I'll let everyone know again o­nce I actually "pull the switch."
We're leaving Globat (our current host) due to non-existent customer service and their daily bandwith limitation buried within the Terms of Service.
Our new host will be DreamHost. Hopefully things will work out better for us. Also, we've got 120GB of monthly bandwith through DreamHost, giving us quite a bit of room to grow. Read inside for more changes that will be taking place.

Another case of a phone getting runover by a vehicle, but this o­ne was left overnight, too.

Two quick items that aren't exactly news, but deserve some attention.

First of all, there is a massive discussion going o­n over at Slashdot about the "tech deficit" between Japan and America. It's pretty interesting to read some of the responses. It was apparently inspired by this article. I'm staying out of things over there, but o­nly because I've got a lot to do today :( And finals continue.

Next, I'm requesting anyone who has potential questions for the next "Ask TechJapan" submit them to me. More details o­n this inside.

Some mobile phone statistics for everyone to ponder. NTT Docomo continues to dominate the 2.5G arena and has made up some ground on au KDDI on the back of strong 3G sales. Vodafone continues to play a meaningless role in the overall scheme of things. The launch of Tu-ka's simple phone, the "Tu-ka S", gives them their first growth in subscriber numbers for a couple of months.

Walt Disney Pictures has announced that they are joining the Blu-Ray group and will produce software titles in that format. However, at the same time, they haven't completely ruled out also producing titles in the competing HD-DVD format. Looks like the race for ownership of the next-gen DVD standard is far from over...

Not o­nly is it shaped like a dolphin, this new wind-powered generator from Zephyr claims to have the highest electrical output in its class.

Explaining exactly how Mediaseek's new "Motion Detection Engine" for cell phones with cameras is somewhat difficult. Especially in the space I'm limited to o­n the front page!

So, "Read More." This is a pretty damn exciting technology.

A pretty enormous announcement from Sony this week came in the form of the "NW-HD3," the company's first actual MP3-supporting Network Walkman.*

*Note: Sony had previously offered MP3-compatible devices through the Aiwa brand, but that's another story

BB Watch has done an excellent overview of Japanese electronic music distribution services, and we've translated it for you.

If you're wondering where iTunes is, Apple hasn't introduced iTunes Japan yet. I don't know if they have plans to or not, but for now, they're nowhere to be found.

Here's two new mecha from Toyota, o­ne of which looks like a cheesy sci-fi movie "car of the future."

I don't think these technically qualify as robots, because a "robot" is "a machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control." According to google, at least. Rather, you need to ride inside of these to make them work.

Please note that this is o­nly an extract of the Impress Watch article, because the rest of it doesn't deal with these two mecha. Also, there are videos at Impress Watch, so take a look if you're interested.

Your gift awaits inside...

Something for those Godzilla fans looking to complete their collection. All yours for a lazy $1000...

Occasionally, the Japanese tech news sites turn up something not available elsewhere - like a pic of the new iPod-compatible car AV unit from Clarion! The unit will support control of the Apple iPod via its 7" wide touch-screen LCD, as well as power supply and charging functions.

I am perplexed as to the value of such a feature, but it looks like a company called "Utobia" has hacked the firmware of NEC's ND-3500A DVD burner to include the bizarre capability to convert DVD+RW discs to DVD-ROM discs.

Don't ask me why, either. Is -ROM more widely compatible or something?

Seems like it's taken too long for someone to finally integrate these two. I've never really used the floppy drive in my PC, except for when other people in the dorm would print out papers, but something like this may actually lead me to use it.

Or wait, no it won't. This is an external USB floppy drive. I wish someone would come out with an internal floppy drive that supported flash memory.

Gimmick head-mounted display system with slight amount of sex appeal AHOY!

Sumitomo Electric has come up with something quite interesting - a new type of satellite antenna. The "LuneQ-40" uses something called a Luneberg lens to allow it receive satellite broadcasts from multiple sources simultaneously. The technology also allows the antenna to be installed in positions that may not be perfectly aligned with the satellite direction - such as flush-mounted on a wall or flat on the ground. And it looks funky too.

A company called VisualWear will be the Japanese representative for Icuiti of America's "Video Eyewear" display system.

Icuiti will likely be releasing this same product here in the USA, but as the product has not yet been announced domestically, I am reporting o­n it here.

Well I'm back in Atlanta for Thanksgiving now, so don't expect too much news out of me. This week, next week, and the week after probably will be a bit slow around these parts as exams and such kick into high gear at school. But December will be a very exciting month here at TechJapan, so please keep a look out. Thanks for your continued support!

I'm sure you've seen the Boyfriend's Arm pillow, created by Kameo Corporation. By the way, it looks like they're taking international orders for them now.

Anyway, I've got something worse for you. It's the same concept, but aimed at a different audience altogether. The "Lap Pillow" is best explained by the following pic:

Yeah. "Read more" for a translated interview with the developer.

A Japanese company called "Bird Electron" has new speakers intended for use with the iPod that are handmade from actual gourds.

Gorgeous! Sorry, I just had to. These are in obnoxiously limited quantity. In fact, there are o­nly about 80 being produced.

I liked the design of this hard drive case, so I'm posting it here. C'mon, it's Saturday, lighten up!

Tokyo Forex Financial has a new portable hard drive that has Linux already installed o­n it. It's USB, so by just plugging it into a computer that can boot from USB, you've got an instant Berry Linux or Knoppix installation.

It's 20GB, and features 10GB for Linux and 10GB for something else. The "something else" can be recognized by Windows as an external hard drive.

"Girl's Lab" (yeah) conducted a survey of girls aged 10-15 about what they wanted in cellular phones, and the results were pretty interesting.

These are, of course, Japanese girls. I'd expect the demands in cell phones of 10-15 year old Japanese girls to be different from 10-15 year old American girls. But hey, I'm sure it's still applicable.

Which FeliCa-equipped mobile phones are users buying? What services are they using? Network and Security Research Institute conducted a survey.

As per request, I've moved the Product of the Week feature from the forums to the main page. This will give it better exposure (as our RSS readers will now be able to see the feature), and allow for easier commenting.

So, comment away, or I'll be a sad panda.

The poll results from the past week shows TechJapan users strongly favoring the PSP over  the Nintendo DS. I attribute this to our audience -- since you TechJapan users are most likely interested in gadgets, I suspect that for the most part, you're more interested in the "extra" features offered by the PSP over the Nintendo DS. In other words, while the Nintendo DS is more "games o­nly," the PSP is "games and some other stuff."

This week, our poll revolves around a statement from a Sony employee regarding the company adding MP3 support to their hard-drive based players. The question is simple, so please respond!

We've installed a new comments module here at TechJapan. The module is far simpler than the previous module -- you need only type your message and push "add." No hoops to jump through. We've also got anonymous posting enabled for the time being, so to encourage discussion.
So, discuss!

By the way, the new comments do support basic HTML. Bold, images...that sort of thing.

Vstone has begun sales of 3 robots developed by Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) - "Robovie-R ver.2", "Robovie-M ver.2" and "Robovie-MS". The robots are being promoted as teaching resources and will be sold at prices as low as 100,000 yen. The Robovie-MS is the coolest (and cheapest) of the bunch - its modular construction allows it to be turned into such things as a dinosaur, dog and robot arm. "Transformers - Robots in Disguise ..."

goo Research and Mitsubishi Research Institute have announced the results of a survey on mobile phone GPS usage. Looks like there is still a fair way to go before these services become popular, with only 1.2% respondents using it daily. My expectation is that these types of services will get more popular as more people move to flat rate data plans for their phones.

An FM transmitter for the iPod mini from Sun Denshi. Of course, it can be used with any portable audio player as well (a suction cup is included to attach non-iPod mini players). Power is provided by a cigarette lighter adapter, AA batteries or an AC adapter to allow you to impose your musical tastes on people in almost any location!

Maxell, Victor/JVC and TDK have all released new data DVD media this week. Readon for the wrap-up on Maxell's 16x 4.7GB DVD+R, VIctor/JVC's 6x 4.7GB DVD-RW and TDK's 2.4x 8.5GB DVD+R DL media.

It was o­nly back in July that I posted our "100 members, and growing" article.

So, in other words, the number of members at TechJapan has doubled in about 3 months! Awesome! sar7501 and I are doing everything we can to keep the features coming (and we have many more thanks to the contest entries), so let's keep the members coming too :)

Courtesy of Taito, one of the most anticipated first-person shooters, "Half-Life 2", is coming to an arcade near you in 2005. Tatio will use their original "Type X" circuit board to power the game.

I'd personally never even consider putting something like this o­n the front of my computer, but some people like to have all sorts of "vitals" of their PC right at their fingertips. This is a round LCD (that takes up two 5" drive slots, no less) to be inserted in the front of your case.

If you're not familiar with case LCDs, they're mainly for monitoring what's going o­n inside of your computer. For the "hardcore gamer" types, it's often critical to know what speed internal fans are running at, be able to adjust those speeds, what temperature their CPU is, and how many GHz it's running at.

SanDisk went and announced these 4GB Memory Sticks and 2GB SD cards today. Click the image below for the English press release. SanDisk is an American company, after all.



By the way, this interested me because Sony hasn't even announced 4GB Memory Sticks yet. You'd think Sony, having invented Memory Stick, would be the first to make an announcement like this.
Now that we know the price of the PSP, and that it can play MP3s from a Memory Stick Duo, I suspect the demand for Memory Stick Duo will be o­n the rise in the coming months. Though SanDisk's 1GB Memory Stick Duo is set for $205 right now, I'm sure it will come down sharply.

Well, I'm sure you noticed, but TechJapan was down for most of today. My current host has been abysmal at offering support (no returned phone calls, unanswered emails), so I'm probably switching to someone more responsive. I've heard DreamHost is decent; if you can testify to that, please contact me. Or if you've got other hosts you think might suit TechJapan well, please contact me as well.

But anyway, we're back for the time being. Sorry about that.

In other news, this month has been TechJapan's most successful month (with ~200,000 visitors). We are rapidly approaching 1,000,000 page views. This is, of course, thanks to sar7501 and his superb coverage of the PSP this week.

Nintendo has revealed some details of the number of Nintendo DS units that will be shipped in preparation for its release on 2 December.

It is planned to ship 300,000 units for the first day of release and, with shipping continuing weekly, have 1 million units available by year's end. It's a tough call to say whether these numbers are large or small but there is always a shortage of stock when a new game device is released. Nintendo said that it released the information in response to "a large number of calls concerning product availability and advance orders."

Several large toy chains have been displaying signs that read, "Pricing, stock numbers not yet available," indicating that the number of inquiries has probably been increasing. Regarding advance orders, Nintendo stated that "advance orders will begin at retail stores nation-wide from 3 November" (i.e. one month before the release date).

Inspired by: http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20041027/nds.htm

EK Japan make a wide range of kits for those with an interest in electronics, robotics and audio technology. The upgraded "TU-873LE" stereo power amp is available in a limited edition run of 500 units at only 83,790 yen. Get them while you still can!

Pentax's low-priced but full-featured digital SLR for beginners, the *ist Ds, will go on sale from 19 November. The *ist Ds has a number of new functions, including an "Auto Picture Mode", in comparison to the camera on which it is based, the pro-sumer *ist D. Of course, it also has the classical Pentax shutter sound and action.

Just thought I'd remind everyone that I'm still taking entries for TechJapan's first contest. You have until Friday to submit your entry.

I've seen plenty of "home theater PCs" be released, but I felt that this o­ne should be covered here at TechJapan. I feel that way because of its appearance; most HTPCs still say "PC," which could potentially cause certain audiences to lose interest.

Well, the new "DREAMSYS KLA2285" doesn't have that problem. In fact, if you just saw a picture of this PC without any explanation, you'd probably think it was a stereo component.

The strangely-named "bydsign" will begin sales of its "d:684" in-car DVD system from 13 October. The system comes with a DVD player unit and two 6.2" wide LCD displays - making it perfect for keeping multiple rear seat passengers quiet.

DDI Pocket will be changing their name when they separate from KDDI.

In case you have forgotten, DDI Pocket is o­ne of the last surviving PHS providers in Japan.

Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) has announced preliminary figures for the spread of BS Digital television as of the end of September. Since last month, the number of households with BS Digital TV reception has increased by approximately 220,000 to approximately 6.74 million.

Overall, the number of BS Digital receivers increased by  140,000 units to approximately 4.09 million.  This is composed of approximately 1.03 million BS Digital standalone tuners (approx. 10,000 units up), 1.57 million Digital Hi-Vision TVs (approx. 30,000 units up) and 1.49 million PDPs (approx. 10,000 units up) with internal tuners.

The number of households with cable TV increased to approximately 2.65 million, an increase of approximately 80,000 from last month. The number of analog subscribers decreased slightly to approximately 1.92 million (approx. 10,000 down) and the number of digital subscribers increased substantially to approximately 0.73 million (approx. 90,000 up).  Approximately 80,000 BS Digital antennas were sold.

Source: http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20041012/bsd.htm
News Release: http://www.nhk.or.jp/digital/news/041007/index.html

WorldWatch is a world clock that can display the current time in any number of cities located around the world. The look and feel of the program are completely customisable and it works in both Japanese and English. Get it while you can!

Note: This story is the first of what hopefully will be many in a new series of articles for TechJapan - reviews of software available at "Windows Forest", Watch Impress' software review site. Think of it as a Japanese version of download.com.

Thanks to TechJapan user "mid0ri" for suggesting we give this a go. Let us know what you think via the comments or in the forum. Suggestions for software to review are most welcome!

Today is National Health and Sports Day in Japan. It used to always be o­n October 10th, but I'm guessing because of the economy, they decided to move it to the second Monday of October. This is because people get a three day weekend, which studies have shown increase consumer spending.

I'll still have news for you though. Just not right now...later tonight.

That's right! You can win an actual item! As in, I send you a package in the mail!

It's not much, but it's a pretty cool item. Details of the contest and pics of sample prizes inside.
By the way, this contest is open to all TechJapan members, regardless of geographic location. Providing you have a mailing address, I'm willing to send your prize there.
If you aren't a member, become o­ne today. It's free of charge, and I don't spam your ass, so you've got nothing to lose.

Read this if you want to. My host is running a 3-day promotion, so I thought I'd give it a little publicity here.

Since I'm doing my CEATEC JAPAN 2004 coverage over at Gizmodo, I'll just post these here for you to oogle at. Thanks goes to Impress Watch for these three images, because I still don't live in Japan.

I'm posting these here because I don't think I've ever seen a screen look so good.

Remember this article?

It's about distributing "scents" to PCs using the internet. Just read the article.

Anyway, it appears some drama is unfolding right here o­n TechJapan. More details inside.

This is actually two different surveys that I'm going to combine into o­ne news post.

The first found that "Sony" is still the preferred PC maker in Japan, and the second found that price is the most influential factor of the purchase of new hard drive-based portable audio players. Also, more women want a Vaio Pocket than men. What the shit?

Everyone's favorite blank media maker is the first to announce DVD-R media supporting CPRM.

What's CPRM?
Just ignore the part that says "except for DVD-R" because as you can see that's no longer entirely true.

Not exactly the most "Japanese" news I could come up with, but since HD-DVD's primary backers are Hitachi and NEC, I think this qualifies.

Here is the HD-DVD logo, as approved by the DVD Forum Steering Committee:



Well, I'm not impressed. I guess they were going with some product recognition, because we all know how o­ne of the key features of HD-DVD is its backwards compatibility with standard DVD. Still, they could have been more creative to than just putting "HD" in front of "DVD."

In other news, the required audio codecs for "HD DVD video" have also been finalized. They are "Dolby Digital+", "DTS++ Lossy," and "MLP 2Channel Lossless." As an option, "DTS++ Lossless" is available. For those of you that forgot, the video codecs have already been finalized as MPEG-2, H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), and VC-1 (Windows Media Video 9).

Here's the English press release:
http://www.dvdforum.org/27scmtg-resolution.htm

First ever "Ask TechJapan." I guess I'm pretty long-winded. Oops!

I didn't expect to see this for quite a while, but oh well. Taiwan's MediaTek Inc. has announced that they are developing a front-end LSI with support for Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, DVD, and CD. That's right, no need to compromise o­n next-generation optical medias!

Maybe burning PS3 games will be a reality soon enough

Yes, add another contender to Sony's side for support of Blu-Ray. LG Korea has announced a new DVR unit that features Blu-Ray writing capabilities.

Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) began leasing the "world's most theraputic robot" today, in honor of Respect for the Aged Day.

This robot, officially dubbed "most theraputic" by the Guiness Book of World Records, can be used in nursing homes.
This article even includes video footage of the robot in action.

Today is a Japanese National Holiday - 敬老の日, or "Respect for the Aged Day."

I'm still not sure how this will affect news, because I haven't even looked at anything other than Impress Watch yet. I'm sure I can come up with something for you, so sit tight.

Update: appears to be alright, I have some interesting items tonight

The USB jack is mounted o­n some sort of hinge, so it can be "deployed." I find this to be a much more efficient usage of space than your typical methods of just covering the port over, so here I am reporting o­n it.

There's probably a good reason this is the world's first mouse with an internal speaker. I doubt there's much demand for such a thing.

Now a mouse with an internal microphone; that would be a different story. It would remind me of the part in Star Trek IV...where...bah, nevermind.

Japan's CODA (Contents Overseas Distribution Association) has announced the establishment of a new logo which they think will somehow protect the rights of Japanese content developers from overseas pirates.

I'm not going to act like I own the ideas of the articles posted here at TechJapan (they are, after all, written by the fine folks at Impress Watch), but I'd like for everyone to take a look at this:

http://www.esato.com/news/article.php/id=317

That's obviously the article that I translated.

Here's the problems I have with this:
-The full text of the article is used
-There isn't even a link to TechJapan
-Hell, the word "TechJapan" isn't even o­n the page
-There isn't a link to the page that linked to this site (see textually.org)

I don't do this site so people can pass off news as their own. What, is esato.com above actually linking to other sites for content?

update 12:30 AM Friday: It appears they've pulled the article. Now I feel kinda bad...

You may remember this article we did back in July about Japan's National Police Agency conducting tests of their new law that states it is illegal to use a cellular phone while driving.
Well, you guessed it - those plans have been finalized, and it will go into effect o­n November 1st.

Just sitting around tonight, so I figured I'd post this information for anyone who cares.
Tomorrow, you can expect to see some of that statistics and sales data info I told you I'd put up earlier this week.

Basically, these charts tell you how phone numbers are divided to carriers - for example, if the cellular phone number is 090-328-XXXXX, you can tell it belongs to DoCoMo Kansai.
This makes more sense if you look at the charts. I'll be doing pager (020), PHS (070), cellular (080 and 090) this time around. Part 2 will be "fixed," and you know what that means. I've decided to break this down into two parts, because there is a pretty large amount of data o­n the fixed numbers. I'm not sure when I'll get around to Part 2; might be tonight, might be next week, might be never.

Anyway, I had tried to do tables right here in PostNuke, but it was simply too time consuming. I'll just upload the Excel file I worked from, as well as an HTML file for you non-Excel having folks. If you want the information in another format, say, CSV or XML, let me know and I can export/upload it as well.

Japanese Phone Number Distribution - Part 1 of 2 - Excel Version
Japanese Phone Number Distribution - Part 1 of 2 - HTML Version

You've seen USB ducks, USB blankets, USB fish tanks, USB clocks, USB ovens, and now TechJapan presents you with USB CORNERS.

OH THE HUMANITY.

Interesting idea - it's just a hard drive case that plays a variety of video files from the hard drive within. I like it because it's pretty cheap, and it provides a quick way to playback video o­n a TV - all you need to do is connect it to your PC with USB 2.0, transfer your files, and you're done.

As you can see, there's not much news tonight. So I've got a question for you.

This software has been out for a year, and I haven't noticed. The company that created this atlas went through a lot of trouble. As a matter of fact, they photographed three urban areas from a scale as much as 1/5,000 - you can even see cars driving down the road.
Of course, it has all of your standard features, such as navigation, address search, and so forth. Also of note is how the software uses JPEG2000 for storing images; o­ne of the first applications I've seen of the format.
According to the Impress Watch article this software was reviewed o­n, if the company were to photograph all of Japan in this manner, more than 1TB of space would be required. Ouch.

I can't explain why, but Ito Ham has announced they will put QR codes o­n their ham products. I assume they mean the packaging.

Here's all the images I could find from the "First Annual Cube Type PC Meeting."
Some bizarre, some cool, some uh...not. Enjoy.
Please note that many of these aren't explained real well, so I guess you can request more information, but I can't guarantee you'll get it.

Japan's Ministry of Basically Everything has announced their plans for the 800MHz zone. In short, they're kicking out everything currently using the frequency range to free up room for 3G technologies.

Two posts below this o­ne I told you about a position at another website -

That website is www.gizmodo.com; please take a look if you haven't before. Not o­nly will it be featuring hot hot gadget news from Japan (compliments of me and a French guy), it features plenty of other hot hot gadget news not from Japan. Now that TechJapan and Gizmodo are TOGETHER FOREVER, Gizmodo ought to become your end-all be-all of gadget news sources.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, that's not to say TechJapan will become Gizmodo's *****. I will lean towards more specific and technical information here at TechJapan, while Gizmodo reports o­n more of the "fun" side of modern electronics. Moreover, this relationship between the two sites hasn't been entirely solidified yet; but it should work out better for everyone in the long run. Thanks for your continued patronage!

If you're wondering where in the hell all of the Japanese news has been since Friday, it's because I've gotten another job now. Of the tasks of this new job is doing something similar to what I do to TechJapan. Since I do get paid, though, the editor of the site gets first "pick," and exlusive rights to my translations, of articles - meaning that TechJapan gets what is left over. It may sound like a shitty formula, but as far as I'm concerned, it's great. This will allow me to focus o­n more involved technical articles here at TechJapan, kind of what I've been doing from the beginning, yet still cover basic gadget releases over at my job's site. And rake in some $$$.
This isn't the "death" of TechJapan by any means, so don't worry. There is plenty of news coming out of Japan o­n a daily basis, and I'll still be here to cover it. If you have any questions, please contact me.
By the way, I'll announce exactly what site it is when I get clearance. But you should be able to figure it out...

You go to these cafes, look at an image o­n the computer screens there, and SNIFF.

I've always wanted a device like this - I think producing certain odors could give games, in particular, a HUGE leap forward in terms of atmosphere. But o­ne thing I've been concerned about is spammers and such taking advantage of the technology. Like if I navigated to a porno site, I don't want to have to sit there and smell sweaty sex. I guess I'd unplug the thing before I went browsing.

Update: 10/1/04 - It appears that there may be some patent infringement going o­n with this technology. Please see this TechJapan article for more information.

Not a bad idea, if it didn't look so dumb.

Vertex Link has a new network AV player that supports Windows Media Video 9; this is the first time I've seen it o­n a player like this.
For those of you that don't know, Windows Media Video 9 supports HDTV resolutions. This player supports output up to 720p. It's got integrated 802.11g as well, which is nice.

Not the video compression format DivX, I mean that Circuit City experiment conducted a manner of years ago. You would buy a disc for a low price, and then have to pay to play it in your player at home. When you're done, just pitch the disc.
Anyway, this Japanese company Ebis Trade probably doesn't know either, so they don't realize what an utter failure this new service will probably be.

A new solution from Agtech allows for the use of a spare PC's display as a secondary display for your primary system.
Confused? It's pretty simple; imagine two laptops' screens being used as two monitors for the same computer. If you've got a spare notebook or other computer sitting around and don't feel like investing in some sort of switch or new video card, this is an excellent software-based solution.

Some sort of joint announcement event was held today, where a bunch more details about HD-DVD were publicized. Rejoice, because I've got them all for you.

Looks like I'll have to finish it up tomorrow. Sorry!

37 companies are in o­n this, including JCB, Visa, MasterCard, DoCoMo, KDDI, and Vodafone. Yet for some reason, it's the first time I've heard about it.
It's officially named the "Infrared Credit Settlement Convention." Or at least that's the best translation I could come up with.

I'm a day late, but here's the coverage I've translated for Day 3 of the WIRELESS JAPAN 2004 convention. Not much was going o­n in its 3rd and final day, it seems - just a lot of talk about HSDPA and 4G.

It seems like everything in Japan is some how related to a fashion. This article on BCN shows that the latest iPod Mini is no exception.

Read more to find out which iPod Mini colors are all the rage in Japan!
I wonder if they did the same kind of ranking with the iMacs when they came out as well?

Our coverage of WIRELESS JAPAN 2004 continues today.
Plenty of interesting stuff to read and see. Just like yesterday, if you see something you're interested in and I didn't translate, let me know.

"Secom Robot X" is the name of this new security robot. It hasn't got any guns, but damn...it should.
It's got smokescreen though, so I guess you could put VX in there and that would take care of your intrusion problems.

A lot of good news, a lot of information.
I say "Day 1" but I'm not sure I'll be able to do Day 2 tomorrow - I've got kendo, so I may not have time.
The convention is 3 days long, so this will probably bleed over into the weekend.
There's a lot of new stuff, but there's a lot of just...demonstrations of previously announced products. Because I'm pretty constrained for time, I'll o­nly be covering the new stuff. If you're interested in something specific, let me know and I will see what I can do. But run a search for it first o­n this site - I call it "not new" for a reason.

There's something wrong with translating an article about something occurring in my own country, but hey...Yomiuri is a large newspaper, so there's no reason why they couldn't find out about something before other American sources.
Thus the reason I'm posting this article - I don't see it anywhere else yet. Not a direct translation (yet), but I promise my article will contain the same information.
Anyway, it's about being able to tell what someone is looking at by recording a high resolution image of their eyeball.

While I cannot explain what good a full color LCD would do around your neck, I can admit that it's the first time I've seen an MP3 playing necklace.
Anyway, the design of this player is very futuristic. It reminds me of a lot of those "future concepts" pages that major electronics corporation's keep buried in the depths of their R&D website. Except...this is an actual player.
It's really a Nextway product - a Korean company.

They look like balls!

It works o­n so many levels.

I'm very pleased to see that TechJapan now has 100 members. As soon as I finish it up, I will be posting a link to special members-only content in the forums. It's not much, and not exactly applicable, but...I have put a good amount of time into it.
So far this month, TechJapan is averaging 1300 unique visitors per day. The site is steadily growing, and I'm certainly glad to see it. As I have recently renewed both the www.techjapan.com domain and my hosting for another year (good until at least July 2005), I look forward to the coming year posting news here. If you've got friends that may be interested in this sort of content, please do not hesitate to refer them. Submit our links to your favorite news sites, etc...whatever you can do to help this site grow would be awesome.

These things are getting like how CD-R drives, with more and more "xs."
One of the good parts about high speed flash memory though, is that it's actually got a use beyond allowing the user to just save time - higher sustained transfer rates mean flash memory could theoretically be used for more demanding applications. Since 6.75MB/sec (the 45x transfer speed of these cards) is enough transfer speed to provide bitrates higher than a majority of today's DVDs, you should see my point. Another reason for high speed cards is recovery time o­n digital cameras - as cameras get more and more megapixels, more data needs to be recorded to the flash memory in the same span of time.

Bizarre name, bizarre product.
These are earphones, but also include a speaker. To use the speaker, you stick the headphones into the speaker itself.

Four companies ALL announced 4x DVD+R DL (meaning 16x DVD+R) writing drives o­n the same day. Those companies are:

-Logitec
-Buffalo
-IO Data
-Pioneer

Coincidence? Since they all use the Pioneer drive, no.

Japan's National Police Agency (because there is such a thing over there) has finalized o­n their plans for the new anti-cell phone while driving law: you get o­ne point o­n your license and are fined 6,000 yen.
The cool part is it's not just talking - if you are caught even looking at the screen, like for mail or whatnot, you have to pay up.

Finally, an accessory for the Game Boy Advance I'm interested in.
It may cost $180 or so, but the "Campho Advance" (as in, "Camera" and "phone" not "camping" and "whore,") connects to a typical analog phone line and lets two users use a complete video phone system.
Bizarre? A bit.
Coming to America? Not likely.
Badass? Yes.
Laugh it up FOMA.

By "high speed" I mean "can encode a 4.3GB MPEG-2 file to 50% compression in 12 minutes."
And it's a piece of software, not hardware.

Don't get too excited, because it's basically useless for now.
More information inside.

I didn't know DDI Pocket still offered phones.
This is a "straight" type phone. Not o­ne of those "homosexual" phones.

Just kidding.

On a serious note, this phone packs a punch. It supports Compact HTML, POP3/SMTP (so you can use your real email from it), has a USB port, supports PBX (for work), and has a whopping 6.5 hour talk time.

I start tomorrow.
For you, this likely means two things:
-updates will come later in the day, unless I can fit them into my work day somehow (I will be at a computer). The position is a 9-5, so...yeah. Sorry.
-weekends here will be more exciting
If push comes to shove, I could completely change my sleep schedule so that I wake up at like 3 AM, write, then go to work. Since Japan has a 14 hour time difference (during DST), updates to Impress Watch come at the wee hours of the morning. It's the end of the work day for them. But I don't know, I've never done well with different sleeping schedules.
I'll be at this job until classes start, I believe August 16th. My schedule for next semester has me going to class at like 12PM, so hopefully I'll get some time in the morning to write. But, I did tell the people at this job that I wanted to work PT during the school year, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Good luck!

Four types of products are in the lineup.

You can transfer your DV movies from your camera using your USB 2.0 port, in case you don't have IEEE 1394 for some reason. This cable even supports the USB Video class, so it might even be better than using IEEE 1394.

It costs a lot of money, but it's really small too.
This thing is 76 x 106 x 12.5mm (W x H x D)! In other words, it's roughly the size of a wallet with nothing in it.

One of which is the company's first 1" drive. 5GB! How's that for a capacity/space ratio?

We may have had bathtub speakers yesterday, but today we have foldable speakers.
Both the speakers themselves and the stand fold into the main body.

This is an update to the Arex PocketMX as reported back in April.
Improvements include:
-3.5" screen (previous model was 2.5")
-Lithium-Ion battery (previous model was AA)

Remember those small speakers that came with the Rio SU40? Well, they're going to be sold individually now. Rio Japan is also adding a white color to the lineup.

After missing a few days of news (Monday and Wednesday of this week, if you weren't paying attention), I'm finally settled in my apartment in Columbia. News will resume normally.
I'm going to try and cover some stuff over the weekend too, to make up for it. Computex Taipei is going o­n right now, so that should give me a good amount of material.

I know my title sounds a bit apprehensive, but this player is pretty nice. It can play MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD, as well as other formats, and costs about $165.

I'm back from Europe. It was fun.
I'm glad to see Cynix and Harvey have both posted articles while I was away. Nice to know that the sense of community I have been trying to get going is going somewhere - I intended TechJapan to have multiple posters.
I've been looking over the news from last week, and I see that Cynix has already done the major announcement from au, about the 3.2MP camera phone.
With that in mind, I'll resume news normally today. Tomorrow may be a bit slow - it's the day I'm travelling to Chicago, and since I don't have access to a PC where I'll be staying, it will have to be done in the morning.

The OpenSource Community OpenOffice.org announced o­n May 21st that their free office suite, OpenOffice.org 1.1.1 Japanese Version has been officially released. It is currently available as a free download o­n their website.Side note, the OpenOffice.org website is stating OpenOffice has been localized in Aynu! This is the language spoken by the indigenous people of Japan. Someone has got too much free time...

TDK has announced their super strong DVD+R media, 100 times more resistant to scratches, to be released on June 21. Too bad it's only 1x~4x compatible.

I will be going to Germany and Austria tomorrow. This means that there will be no updates* until the 24th. I've contacted Harvey about perhaps writing some articles, but he may be too busy to get around to it.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

zmcnulty

*UPDATE: the wee hours of May 15th - cynix now has posting capabilites, and will perhaps add some stories this week while I'm away. Everyone thank him!

CDs21 Solutions is reporting that the worldwide CD-R production for 2003 was 10,000,000,000 discs. Asia accounted for 89% (with 52% from Taiwan) of the discs, Europe 9% and America 2%. Golly, that's a lot of discs.
Original article here.

Uhh...isn't that a contradiction?
Lots of technical jargon that I don't understand in this article, so forgive me if I make some mistakes.

Today is move out day here at USC, so I probably won't be able to do any articles today.Sorry, I'll see if I can't come up with something over the weekend.

CDs21, o­ne of the many standardization organizations of Japan, has announced that they have finally standardized card-sized CDs.

To start today off, I'd just like to mention that Impress Watch is saying they will be off Friday the 30th through May 5th - news is to resume o­n the 6th.
I'll do what I can during this period, but don't expect much. However, I will still be here, so feel free to get a conversation going o­n the forum or whatever. Also, while Impress Watch may be down during this period, I'm hoping that other sites will still update. I'm looking at YOU Slashdot Japan.

It seems like just yesterday, I was writing about a portable DivX/XviD player with a 2.5" LCD and a 20GB hard drive. Wait...that's because I did write it just yesterday.
"System Talks" (whose motto is "VALUE YOU UP!!") answers with a player that not o­nly plays DivX, it can record MPEG-4. And what's more? It uses a CF card slot by default - the 20GB hard drive is optional.
Pricewise, however, you will find that the mPAVIO offers a 20GB HD model for 45,000 yen, while this device is 34,000 yen without a HD at all.

Golden Week starts o­n Wednesday.
What does this mean for news? Since there are four national holidays in the span of seven days, I assume this means that there won't be news for these days. You can check the calendar at the link above for the days I am referring to - the o­nes in the stronger color red. Impress Watch seems to be rather liberal with their vacation days, though, so I expect news from them to be non-existent for the period spanning April 29th until May 5th.
However, when looking over the same period during 2003, they o­nly missed o­ne day of news. So I really don't know what to think. What I'm trying to say is...be prepared for a slow next two weeks.

Say goodbye to low quality audio o­n video cameras and voice recorders. Oki is introducing an LSI which allows for audio recording/playback at essentially the same quality as CDs.

It may look like an iPod ripoff, but it plays Ogg Vorbis, is smaller, lighter, has a remote with a backlit LCD, and more importantly, cheaper.
More information and plenty of pictures inside. Also, the article includes a handy-dandy comparison chart comparing this player to other similar 20GB models, including the iPod itself.
And what's better? This player is actually part of Korea's Cowon Systems' iAudio line. The Cowon Systems distributor in America is CompUSA. So, there's a chance that this player might make it stateside.

Turbo Linux and Cyberlink announced o­n April 15th that they are planning to get Linux more involved in the Multimedia Desktop environment. o­ne of their plans includes the strategy to bundle CyberLink's "Power DVD" software with Turbo Linux.

I can't say I didn't see this coming, but Adtec will release waterproof miniSD cards.
They just announced waterproof SD cards the other day, so...yeah.
They're also going to release a 10-in-1 media reader supporting USB 2.0.

It's not just a funny name, it's funny products!
We have:
-a QR Code stamp from Shachihata
-Buffalo starting a pre-loaded USB flash memory service for companies
-Kyocera's talking 3D avatar technology
-This odd looking "talking" speaker

They're not kidding about the "slim" part. 7mm.
Other features include a 256MB capacity, FM tuner, voice recorder, USB 2.0 connection, WMA playback, etc.

I've actually got two different articles for you today about a new removable medium called "iVDR." Well, I think it's new - this is the first time I've heard about it. However, the "iVDR Consortium" was formed back in 2002, so maybe I'm just behind.
The first is this article, which breaks down some of the basics of the technology. I suppose the easiest way to sum it up would be say that the medium itself comes in three flavors - "iVDR-Secure micro," "iVDR-Secure mini," and finally "iVDR-Secure." The "micro" has a 4GB capacity (and is 1 inch), the "mini" has a 20GB capacity (at 1.8 inches) and the standard model offers 80GB in 2.5 inches.
Other features include something I found rather bizarre, but still pretty neat - instead of plugging a media into the drive, users can plug a "module" in, such as a TV tuner, wireless LAN, etc.
More information inside.

I'm posting this before I go to class this morning:
The Japanese Fair Trade Commission has entered Intel's offices in Japan. No details have emerged yet as to WHY from the Commission, but it is suspected that the investigation has something to do with disturbances to other companies in the same industry. With the Intel Developer Forum Japan Spring 2004, plenty of American Intel officials are already heading to Japan.
The JFTC has also issued a warning to Buffalo about a misleading speed posted o­n o­ne of their MO drives.
They have also issued a warning to manufacturers of wireless products, who claim things such as "54Mbps" for 802.11a/g products, but in reality, it is "impossible" to get these sorts of speeds.
Update: There doesn't seem to be much else coming up about this for today, I guess it will have to wait until tomorrow. The word "antitrust" is coming up again... Here's the Reuters article.

Hmm, this would help if you left the thing in your pocket when you washed your pants, but unless your camera is completely waterproof as well, this might not get you real far.
Oh, and they're also "shockproof," but I can't imagine this took a whole lot of engineering knowhow. First of all, it's a flash memory, so there's no moving parts. And secondly, SD is so small and light that it really doesn't have enough mass to break even if it falls.
But still, if you need waterproof memory for some reason, these don't cost that much more than standard memory.

Today, I posted my 200th article! As you can see from our statistics, we are rapidly approaching the 50 member mark, as well as 200,000 page views. Our monthly traffic has been steadily increasing as well; the statistics reflect this. I'd like to thank all of our guests, and especially our members, for making this site a success. I look forward to continuing and building upon this success. If you are a guest, please don't hesitate to sign up, and participate by adding your comments, submitting news, voting for polls, referring your friends, etc... Hey, it's not like it costs anything! I hope you enjoy reading TechJapan as much as I enjoy running it. Thanks again! -zmcnulty

Please note that this report is based o­n Japan.
It's still an interesting statistic, because if you ask me, the American cellular phone market is o­nly following the trends of the Japanese market...though we're a couple years behind. Anyhow, this demonstrates youth's increasing reliance o­n technology. Whether or not this is bad, though, is up to you to decide.

I was under the impression that Microsoft Japan o­nly released products originally released in the USA, just because of the nature of the company. This announcement, however, has caused me to think otherwise. I've looked through the Microsoft USA site, and didn't see any mention of either of these products. Maybe I just missed something, but even Google didn't find any English results.
Microsoft Japan pulls a "Panasonic" and is introducing two colors you really wouldn't expect to see o­n a Microsoft product - they're releasing "Night Vision Green" and "Groovy Orange" o­n a Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer, and Wireless Optical Mouse, respectively.
Pictures inside.
UPDATE: Microsoft has announced that these mice will be available in the USA.

RWC announced their portable AV player today, and it seems like a pretty good deal - about $200. Then again, the specifications make no mention of it coming with a SD card (the device reads videos off external memory), so you'd need to get o­ne of those. Add how it doesn't support USB 2.0, doesn't support XviD (or at least the specs don't say it does), doesn't have rechargeable batteries, and you get closer to it being a rip. Still, this is a step in the right direction, so you may want to wait a couple months before the next version.
What I do like about this player, however, is the size - especially after that brick from Archos.

You know what they say about guys who have 1.8" hard drives...

SMK announced that they have developed a touchscreen that has "force feedback." More specifically, it can have 8 different types of "vibration" depending o­n input.

I generally don't report o­n stuff like this, but I thought this was a damn cool looking case. It also has a nice amount of functionality. The "JAZZ Take5" may remind you of a Mayan pyramid with its step-based shape. The case has 6 different drive bays. Also, this case *could* see a USA release, as Soldam USA does exist, and they do indeed sell computer cases.
Hey, I wonder how much this would weigh with 6 case rocks in it!

This is pretty neat. It's a USB cable that just has a 3.5mm stereo plug o­n the end. The hardware is integrated with the USB plug end.

Rio Japan has announced that they will make a new Rio, which doesn't have much that's so special about it, except that it comes with some portable speakers that have an integrated subwoofer. The speakers are actually not that much larger than the player itself, so I think this is pretty nifty. It's like a tiny little boombox.

Do you feel as though your PC is too light? Does it vibrate too much?
Well, the Japanese company "riforma" has a solution for you. Put a rock in it.
But not just any rock. The "Hard Style Rock Anchor" will set you back 9800 yen.

For the Japanese student in you, Personal Media is bringing out a new notebook with "Ultra Kanji 4" pre-installed. Think of "Ultra Kanji 4" as an operating system specifically designed around the Japanese language.

I really don't have much to say today, since CeBIT is going o­n. The Japanese sources that I use to write the news to this site are all writing about stuff from CeBIT, but then again so is everyone else.
The few news items that I have for you are inside; you really won't miss much if you don't feel like it though. Sorry everyone, this is what usually happens when conventions happen in places that aren't Japan.

Radius announced that they will be releasing some printable DVD-Rs which allow o­ne to print in a greater radius (sorry, I had to) than those of previous.
You know how normally, in the middle of CD/DVD media, you have that clear plastic area near where you stick your finger? Well, this is really the first time that printable media of this sort is available to consumers. Those of you who are pirates can now make your bootlegs look even more convincing.

Novac is releasing two new portable DVD writers. Why am I reporting about this, when Mastushita already announced the same sort of product?
Because they both support English OSes.

Ricoh will apparently display some DVD+R DL technology at CeBIT 2004.
I guess this is to compete with Sony's announcement yesterday of their DL drives.

Those of you who do not have access to USB (or other common Bluetooth interface) can now use your serial port to connect to your devices.

There are three different robots - o­ne is a bit like the Asimo, with two legs. Another looks like o­ne of those guys out of the old Nintendo game "Base Wars," in that he has a human-shaped upper body but two wheels instead of legs. Finally, there is a chair with legs, if that can be considered a robot.

It's a digital camera, but resembles the old roller style reflex cameras. Even the two lenses, and the top-down viewfinder.

In the event that you cannot talk/hear, or need to call the police in secrecy, this is the service for you.
Users simply access http://hyogo110.jp/ from their cellular phones, and input information such as if it is an accident or incident, where they are, etc.
The service also supports picture attachments, as well as GPS data.

The "V-Mouse" is an optical mouse, but it can also be used in the same way as a pen tablet. But unlike a pen tablet, there is no tablet.

A newcomer to the scene, Zox Corporation, will release a portable DVD player that also plays DivX and XviD files. This product was displayed at the recent Tokyo International Gift Show, but a few more details have been released about it.
Unfortunately, the price for the player is getting up there - 49,800 yen. Regardless of the cost, you cannot defeat the portability aspect of having an all-in-one unit.

I'm still wondering how this works. It's a device that plugs into your USB port, and can be used in three different modes: Mouse, Note, and Tablet.

I guess I'm wondering if it's really completely wireless or whatnot. If so, does it just use some sort of location positioning system to determine where the pen is?
Neither the article I'm about to translate nor the official product page go into explaining how the thing works, but apparently it does.
Regardless, it's still badass. Those of you who have used tablets before should understand that there's some people who like to see how their hand is moving (me for example, this is the biggest problem I had with using a tablet.) Being able to actually write o­n a piece of paper, as you can with this product, is a MAJOR improvement in pen based input devices, IMO.
More details and pictures inside.

The T-Kernel is a combination of Windows and Linux technologies, whose main debut product (12/03) was the T-Cube, a computer a bit smaller than a Rubik's Cube.

JR East Japan will begin allowing Suica fare cards for purchases at shops in train stations in the Tokyo and Sendai area. There are a total of 196 shops in 64 stations that will begin accepting Suica as a form of payment.
Suica is the contactless IC card system introduced by JR in the greater Tokyo area, which allows users to pass through the gate by simply waving the card over the fare machine - even when inside the wallet. More recently, however, Sony has developed the Felica system for NTT DoCoMo cellular phones allowing the same capabilities, but users wave their phones over the fare gates rather than a seperate card.
The Suica name comes from three different sources. First of all, it stands for "Super Intelligent Urban Card." Also, "sui sui" is Japanese for "smooth," which is the primary promotional factor of the cards. Finally, "suika" is Japanese for "melon," which explains the green color of the cards and logo.

A slew of companies in Japan are getting together, apparently to decide o­n the integration of home electronics such as TVs or whatnot with realtime internet connectivity.

The limit does not apply to Flet's ADSL users, rather to other users of Flet's. I believe they offer 12mbps FTTH connections. Things are supposed to be limited starting o­n the 23rd.
This restriction o­nly applies to upload; download traffic does not count towards the daily limit.

This week starts off with two LAN cameras from Corega - o­ne of which is wireless.
Get your mind out of the gutter, because these surely have some legitimate applications, too.

Just when you thought the i-Duck was as odd as it gets, INAX nearly claims the throne of the bizarre by announcing a toilet that supports MP3 playback. It's also nearly $3000...

When the Limited Edition Kasumi Chan Blue XBox is released in Japan o­n March 25th, those who purchase it will find a special present.
I guess this would be alright if it were a normal sized pillow, but it's 160cm. That's life sized. Please see the "Inspired by" for photographs, and formulate your own opinion o­n this.

DNP has launched a service that will allow cell phones to read bar codes from displays. Imagine watching a TV show and taking a picture of the screen to purchase a product being discussed. Pretty cool!

Those of you interested in projectors will be pleased to know that Plus Vision Corporation will begin selling a limited edition version of their "V-1100Z" model, aptly named "V-1100Z Limited."

On January 16th.The company Alpus released their cell phone application "Keitai Mini Tokyo Map", which uses QR code to allow for very user oriented content delivery. The price is 714 yen.

A new service has been launched for email users in Shinjuku in Tokyo. This service hopes to use the high concentration of cell phone users which support email in the Shinjuku area, to provide a medium for police to broadcast updates on child related criminal activity.

I should have seen this coming, but today is Seijin no Hi (成人の日) in Japan, which is a national holiday. So there haven't been any updates reported. I will resume news updates tomorrow, and I will also begin paraphrasing them in accordance with the article I posted Saturday.

A few changes are in order for TechJapan, hopefully temporarily. And with some luck, nobody will even even notice them.
Last night, Harvey and I were talking about whether or not this site is legal - as in, taking articles and just translating them, without permission. So we've reached a few conclusions.

This time around, we look at the number of new subscribers for cellular phones and Personal Handyphone Systems (PHS) for the month of December, 2003.

Don't forget to look at the original StatsMania if you haven't already!

It just so happens that USC hasn't decided to reconnect the dorms to the network yet. I had to come to the library to write this.
Right when CES 2004 is going o­n, too. But it just so happens that CES takes place in the USA, meaning every piece of news/new product is presented in English. In other words, there are thousands of other sites already writing articles about what is being debuted. So I don't really have that much to do anyway.
For the duration of CES, I don't know if I'll see a whole lot of actual "Japanese" news out of my sources. They all seem to be too busy translating the CES reports into Japanese for their readers.
Here is the Cnet link for their CES 2004 news...
Have a good day everyone!

Shizuoka Prefecture will equip each mandarin with its own personal history, stored o­n an IC chip. Full deployment (meaning, every mandarin accounted for) of the technology isn't until 2006, but testing in certain areas will begin as soon as next year.
Oh, and this is a Yomiuri article. So you know the drill - paraphrasing.

My own, personal status update!
This is to let my readers know what the hell I've been doing.

I *just* found out that I am going to Helen, GA. for the next 3 nights.
If any of you have been to Helen, you'll realize that I certainly won't have internet access in the house. I should be able to post a story or two tomorrow, but Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday...no. Sorry about this; I had no idea myself.
But do not despair. I am going to print out a few long features that I've been meaning to translate and get cracking o­n them old-school style. That way, when I come back o­n Saturday, I'll have some good stuff to post. Or at least that's the plan...
Anyway, till tomorrow.

Japanese people like their statistics. Here are some for your browsing pleasure...do with them what you will.

Chuubu Telecommunication, otherwise known as CTC, will begin offering wireless access via their "BroadDive" service. It uses optical fibers which deliver data to wireless modules, and employs the 802.11a standard. But not the standard 802.11a standard, apparently. Details inside.

There don't appear to be so many updates from the East. It's likely the fault of the holiday. I'll keep you posted as soon as anything comes up!,

A rather unique idea...it is not o­nly a subwoofer for laptops that gets power from the USB, it can double as a single speaker. And the cable is retractable.

For o­nly 398 yen, you can get a cup of noodles that comes with a DVD where an attractive Japanese female explains how to make the noodles!

This report comes from the TRONSHOW 2004, currently going o­n in Japan. The computer is based off of the T-Engine, an "open, standardized real-time operating system development environment for constructing a ubiquitous computing environment."

The teddy bear contains an infrared sensor, recording capabilities, and even the ability to be connected to a cellular phone. Sorry, no pictures of the bear yet.

At 11:00 AM this morning, above ground digital television broadcasts began in three of Japan's major metropolitan areas. Prime Minister Koizumi was o­n hand to do the countdown.

It's been a while since I've written anything for this site, and I plan o­n making it work again. Now that I'm "settled in" here at college, I should be able to keep it going.