Items tagged with Japan
SanDisk themselves have publicly stated that no one can "out iPod the iPod," but evidently Sony did just that. According to a recent survey, Sony's own Walkman brand of digital media players outsold Apple's iconic iPod in Japan last week-- a feat that hasn't been accomplished in four years. Calling the victory "rare"...
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At long last, the inevitable has occurred. Nearly 1.5 years after the curtain fell and HD DVD was deemed dead, Toshiba--HD DVD's biggest fan, backer and producer of players--has agreed to join those on the other side. After years of fighting, the Blu-ray format won out over the other HD disc format, HD DVD, though Toshiba never once showed...
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Are you a university professor having trouble keeping track of which students are attending your classes and which ones are blowing them off? Well, Japan's Aoyama Gakuin University has a plan for you, using one of the most desired electronic devices around to sucker, we mean, give students an incentive to attend. The plus of joining the project:...
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Wow, who woulda thunk it? Just a few years back, solid state drives were found in only a few extremely high end notebooks. Today, we're looking at an SSD within a navigation system. Crazy, right? Over in Japan, Sanyo has introduced its NVA-GS1609FT and NVA-GS1409DT in-dash navigation systems, both of which fall in the company's 'AV Gorilla'...
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Google's Street View product has gain notoriety worldwide, but not always for good reasons. People at some locations have even chased the Street View car out of the area. But in Japan, due to privacy reasons (and short fences), critics have risen to the fore. Yes, Google was using cameras which were just a tad bit too tall for Japanese fences,...
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Somewhere, someday, we'll see OLEDs everywhere. You can pretty much bank on it. Unfortunately, you may be wearing inch-thick glasses and struggling to read your medicine labels before such a prophecy comes to fruition. That said, Sony's slowly but surely working towards that goal by first introducing a mega-expensive OLED TV, and now, by shipping...
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Sunsoft has announced that Leiji Matsumoto's newest manga, Out of Galaxy Koshika, will debut on the Nintendo Wii's Shopping Channel on April 14th. Sorry, all, Japan only, at least for now. Sunsoft already released Princess Ai in January. Unlike Princess Ai, however, this is a totally new manga title. The first episode will cost 500 Wii points...
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Hard to believe, but we think we just found the perfect date for the Robotic Einstein that was unveiled earlier this year at TED. Einstein, meet HRP-4C. (Psst... you can call her Harley.) The "female" humanoid was recently introduced by a team of Japanese scientists at Tsukuba City, and while it'd be easy to take one glance, affirm that she's...
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We've always been more of Robotech fans ourselves, but to many, the Gundam is the iconic anime giant mecha. As April 7th, 2009 is the 30th anniversary of the first anime series about Mobile Suits, Mobile Suit Gundam, an 18-meter (59-foot) Gundam statue will be built in Tokyo's Odaiba's Shiokaze Park this July. By the way, according to...
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Forget LTE. Forget HSUPA. Intel's still thinking WiMAX, and so is the entire nation of Japan. Shortly after hearing confirmation that Intel was still dead-set on its WiMAX investments being viable, along comes news suggesting that Japan could soon be the first nation to "unwire its entire country with WiMAX." And, you guessed it, Intel's chipping...
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We know that most of you buy both DVD and Blu-ray versions of your optical disc titles (insert sarcasm here). But while JVC developed a combo DVD / Blu-ray format more than two years ago, no titles have been released for it. That's soon to end, with the announcement that Japanese entertainment software developer Pony/Canon will release the...
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In case you don't know, an upskirt photo is one taken surreptitiously by pointing a camera upwards and ... well, we're hoping you can figure it out on your own, as well as the analogous downblouse photo.For some reason, with the advent of high-resolution camera phones, the practice of upskirt and downblouse photos have become very popular...
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Why give them the opportunity to get used to an ad-free experience? Twitter Japan is launching, but unlike the U.S.-based version, with ads from Day One.In a conversation Tuesday evening, Joi Ito of Digital Garage, the Japanese company Twitter tasked with some of the Japanese localization, told me that Twitter decided to launch in Japan...
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Well, we are trying to imagine just how the Wii's innovative controller could be used in this case, but we would prefer to ... make no comment.Within a game display in a random Japanese game store an ad for Osouji Sentai Clean Keeper reads “worldly desires are completely open.” Whenever you see something like that used to advertise a game...
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Coming soon to a country near you! If you thought ISPs throttling Peer To Peer (P2P) file-sharing was intrusive, I don't think you'll want to hear what Japan's doing to police illegal file-sharing. Organizations that represent copyright holders simply identify IP addresses of users sharing their content to the ISPs. That's easy to do. You...
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The four major Japanese ISPs, under considerable pressure by movie, music and software industries, have agreed to take drastic action against file sharers.In 2006, a Japanese ISP decided to plan measures to stop their subscribers using file-sharing software, by tracking their activities and disconnecting them from the Internet. The plan didn’t...
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And we're not talking about "hot sales" either.Japan is investigating a possible defect in Apple Inc.'s iPod after one of the popular digital music players reportedly shot out sparks while recharging, a government official said Wednesday.An official at the trade and economy ministry, which oversees product problems, said a defect is suspected...
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HotHardware told you yesterday about Sony and Sharp teaming up to build a tenth generation LCD factory in Japan. But Sony already has ... had a partner to produce LCD screens: Korean electronic powerhouse Samsung. What happened to make Sony fall out of bed with Samsung and team up with Sharp? Is it really just a Japanese thing?Against a backdrop...
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Japanese consumer tastes make for interesting analysis because they have a tendency to be early adopters for most kinds of tech hardware. The Japanese canaries in the worldwide silicon goldmine are signaling a profound change in consumer tastes right now: they've stopped buying personal computers.It's clear why consumers are shunning PCs.Millions...
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Ever see those cartoons where someone wakes up and smashes their alarm clock in exhaustion? That wouldn't work with "Clocky."A moving alarm clock on wheels that rolls about the room beeping and hides so users have to get up and turn it off has proved a hit in Japan following its introduction here. The...
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NTT DoCoMo has just announced plans to start testing its new prototype “Super 3G” system for ultra-high speed data transfer over mobile devices. Japan’s largest mobile carrier hopes to attain a remarkable 300Mbps in its testing trials over the wireless network. Although the Super 3G system will not be implemented in Japan until at least 2009,...
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When you think about it from a fundamental perspective, money is worthless. It’s a paradoxical statement, but money is simply paper/fibers with dead people printed on it. The only reason we value money is because we trust the government. So why not get rid of money altogether? Apparently that’s what they’re trying to do in Japan, and with...
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