japan

Vacationing in Japan this week I accidentally rode on the world's first diesel-electric hybrid train in commercial service: The Kiha E200 running on the East Japan Railway's Koumi Line. Aside from being a new train, introduced in 2007, it seemed like any other, but the photographers camped out for a shot along the mountainous route told otherwise.

The train is a working prototype in use since July 2007 with the aim of gathering data for eventual mass production. Like a hybrid car, the diesel-powered engine is used during acceleration and the electric motor kicks in to maintain speed … Read more

Japanese authorities are investigating a recent incident involving an iPod Nano shooting sparks while charging. The Trade and Economy Ministry suspects a defect in the Nano's rechargeable lithium-ion battery and has since ordered Apple Japan to conduct an investigation into the matter, according to the Associated Press.

The Nano sparking incident occurred in January in the Kanagawa prefecture, southwest of Tokyo. About 425,000 of the music players are estimated to have been shipped to Japan, though it is not clear if the specific model under investigation--the MA099J/A--is sold in other countries. The player was assembled in China, … Read more

If you hate having to change the video card in your PC to support multiple displays, here's a way that can help save the hassle. The Logitec LDE-SX010U, which is expected to be released in Japan in mid-March, is a USB-to-DVI dongle that lets you connect additional monitors to your computer via the USB 2.0 port.

The Logitec dongle supports a maximum 1,400x1,050 pixels, which is the standard native resolution for most 19-inch panels. Up to six displays can be connected to one PC, according to Akihabara News, though a more powerful computer is recommended as … Read more

The existing bandwidth between Asia and North America is crowded. Following FCC approval of a U.S.-China link last month, Google and five other companies have announced a Japan-U.S. link to be completed in early 2010.

The $300 million fiber-optic cable will stretch approximately 10,000 km (6,214 miles) under the Pacific. "Google's partners in the consortium, dubbed Unity, comprises Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet, and Singapore Telecommunications," Yahoo News reported.

Internet users in East Asia are familiar with sometimes sluggish speeds on transpacific transmissions. In my experience, connections are for some reason … Read more

Japanese engineers were quick to pour scorn on the MacBook Air. This critique comes courtesy of Nikkei Electronics, a major Japanese electronics monthly, which did a teardown of the Air.

Here's the seeming challenge: The Japanese PC industry must come up with a reason why their own PC suppliers--NEC, Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu--don't have a riveting 0.75-inch-thin notebook design on the market in the U.S. The answer, for them, is simple: a Japanese company would never approve of the design.

(Actually Mitsubishi did design an Air-thin notebook called the Pedion back in 1997, but the shallow keyboard … Read more

With its international focus, the GSMA World Congress offers great opportunities to see what smaller handset manufacturers are up to. We get enough Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Nokia news, so it's nice to see a different perspective. Our U.S. readers might remember NEC's brief entry into the American cell phone market. In 2003 and 2004, the Japanese company put out two phones for the old AT&T Wireless, the 525 HDM and the 515 HDM, before departing the States for good. Their brief stay was disappointing, since we liked the two models we saw (the 525 … Read more

It's always fun to see people try to map out the internet. The comparison to a spider's Web is apt, as things get a little complicated. While not nearly as humorous as efforts from Web comic XKCD (here and here), design agency Information Architects Japan has taken to the more calculated cartography medium of urban subway systems.

Last year the company created two versions of the map. Both were based on the Tokyo area train map (which is enormous) and organized 200 popular Web sites by neighborhood. This year, the firm ramps the number sites up to 300, … Read more

On Thursday, Japanese authorities announced the arrest of a college student and two associates who are alleged to have written and distributed a Trojan horse via a popular peer-to-per network.

Because Japan currently lacks computer crime laws, the three (whose names were withheld) were instead arrested on copyright violations. Between October and November of 2007, the author of a Trojan known as Harada used images of a popular anime character to entice users of the Winny P2P network to download the malware.

Computers infected with one strain of Harada displayed a message saying, "You're already dead. Come here. … Read more

Even before full-HD reaches mainstream, the Japanese government is already embarking on an ambitious joint project to develop the next-generation high-definition TV system. Dubbed Super Hi-Vision or 8K, this new visual technology boasts 7,680x4,320-pixel or 33-megapixel clarity. That's 16 times the resolution of today's 1080p panels and a fourfold enhancement over the latest commercial 4K displays. The latter, in fact, is barely making its presence felt in Asian cineplexes with Spiderman 3 being one of the first 4K movie releases.

Japan's communication ministry is expected to inject 300 million yen ($2.7 million) into research … Read more