A man arrested in connection with a rampage Sunday that killed seven people in Japan's popular Akihabara electronics district allegedly posted messages on the Internet warning of such events, according to news reports.
Tomohiro Kato, 25, was arrested on suspicion of driving a two-ton, rented truck into the crowded Akihabara district, then jumping out and stabbing 17 bystanders, according to the Associated Press.
In the hours prior to the rampage, Kato allegedly posted dozens of warnings on the Internet. A Reuters report that cited Japanese newspapers included these alleged messages from Kato:
"I will kill people in Akihabara."
"I will crash my car and when the car becomes unusable, I will use a knife. Good-bye, everyone!," the Asahi newspaper reported.
"I'm used to acting like a good person. I can fool everyone easily," the Mainichi newspaper reported.
Kato allegedly used a cell phone to post his messages to an Internet bulletin board, according to the Associated Press.
The motive for the killing spree is still under investigation, according to press reports.
Tomoyasu Suzuki
(Credit: Plat'Home)I had the chance to do a question-and-answer session with Tomoyasu Suzuki, president and co-founder of Plat'Home. Plat'Home makes a cool palm-sized Linux server, and is one of the early drivers of Japan's Linux market.
Suzuki, a graduate of Tokyo University, co-founded Plat'Home in 1993 and eventually took the reins as CEO in 2000, the same year it IPO'd in Japan. He has a wealth of experience pushing Linux into developing markets, making it a real treat to get some of his time for this Q&A:
Asay: After generating several billion dollars in value in two different satellite company IPOs in Japan in the early 1990s, you turned to energies to building a Linux company. Why?
... Read moreSuzuki: Satellites and entertainment are certainly big business and continue to grow. Those were early days in the Japanese satellite industry, and it was exciting to be involved.
But, ultimately, I believe the opportunity for Linux expanding into a wide range of devices, including, of course, entertainment devices like set-top boxes, cell phones, and other mobile devices, radically dwarfs the opportunity for broadcast entertainment. Even today, when you search, when you make a phone call, when you do online banking, you're using Linux. And it's only the beginning. I wanted to be a part of that.
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, but the origin of the battery was unclear.
It has been discontinued since September 2006, according to the ministry. Apple Japan "did not contest the ministry statement," according to the AP, but did not provide further comment.
(Source: Crave Asia)
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 faster in Beijing than in Shanghai, but everywhere I've gone in China there's been some lag. (Speeds in Tokyo were very fast when I was there in late 2004 and 2005.)
The previously announced cable, dubbed the Trans-Pacific Express, is scheduled to be partially operational before the Beijing Olympics begin on August 8. It will be the first direct connection between the United States and China.
[h/t: Kaiser]
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.
(Credit:
Apple)
(Actually Mitsubishi did design an Air-thin notebook called the Pedion back in 1997, but the shallow keyboard was almost unusable--and no one bought it. IBM Japan and Sharp, among others, have made ultrathin notebooks but none that wowed consumers like the Air.)
So, let's do a teardown of the Nikkei Electronics teardown piece.
Though the English is here, let me dissect some of the original Japanese (I worked, reluctantly, as a part-time translator at a Japanese communications company in Tokyo for close to four years.) The article headline uses the phrase "muda nashi" to refer to the exterior, and "muda darake" to refer to the inside of the Air. In short, the exterior of the Air is clean, with no waste (muda nashi), but the internals are a complete waste (muda darake). My (not literal) translation: the Air looks good on the outside but is a piece of junk on the inside. This criticism seems beyond constructive to me and borders on spite. (I will explain why below.)
Let's look at another part. "Sugoi to kanjiru tokoro wa hitotsu mo nai." Translation: "There is not one thing (about the Air) that impresses." Then the engineer adds: "If it was us, we could make it cheaper." This sentiment (that the Air doesn't have even one redeeming technological quality) shows that the person making the statement almost holds an animus toward the Air.
My question. If this guy's company (NEC, Toshiba?) could make a cheaper, better Air, why hasn't it done it?
Other alleged shortcomings: an engineer asserts that the keyboard has too many screws and alludes to possibly less-than-perfect hinges. The team also hazards a guess that the Air was made by HonHai Precision Industry of Taiwan.
That's not to say the article is all gratuitous criticism. An engineer speculates that there wasn't enough feedback from the factory (or factories) that made the Air. And, along these lines, another engineer said the design indicates that Apple's main focus is on software and user interfaces, not the particulars of system manufacturing. These may be valid observations. By definition, any PC company that uses a contract manufacturer is removed from the manufacturing process. Certainly more than, let's say, Compaq was in 1994 when it made its PCs within the same building complex in Houston that housed its executives. But all PC makers today outsource manufacturing, including the Japanese.
That said, the problem with the Nikkei Electronics article is that the engineers are from major Japanese PC makers (though their affiliations are never revealed). It seems clear that at least some of the team may have a vested interest in poking holes in the Air's design because they work for companies that directly compete with Apple and are likely archrivals of Apple. Imagine asking a team of AMD engineers about an Intel chip design. The response would be nothing short of libel.
Also, the Japanese press never targets a domestic manufacturer in this way. In other words, it is not politically correct (in Japan) to tear down a device from Sony or Fujitsu or Sharp and subject it to open disdain (though I'm sure this is done internally at Japanese companies). This kind of hypercritical analysis is reserved for foreign manufacturers: Amercian, Korean, Chinese, and others. The upshot: this assessment by the Nikkei team may contain some valid points, but the premise of the article seems bogus.
Author's note: Though I translated extensively (as part of my job) in Japan for a number of years, in this case, I have consulted with native Japanese speakers too. In short, the dynamics of pairing "muda nashi" with "muda darake" changes the combined meaning. Muda darake alone means "a lot of unnecessary waste" or an "excess" of waste. But, in my opinion, the implication is more harsh, i.e., the outside is nice but the inside is junky.
I am in Tokyo this week as we launch MuleSource in Japan. Pics and posts to come as I recover from the 11-hour flight. Somehow I managed to forget my watch, so I am not convinced that the flight was only 11 hours. It felt like multiple lifetimes.
At our Wii-off last week several people asked me if they should start considering expansion into global markets and specifically Japan. The answer is if your company is doing less than $10 million in revenue, probably not. The reason we're going for it is because there is a big push of SOA and open source and we found ourselves a great partner to work with and act as our reseller.
The big question you must ask yourself if you choose to set up sales in another country is whether it's worth it (meaning, will you get dollars?) There is a significant advantage for both OSS and SaaS companies for international expansion vs. BigCos that have expensive sales staff and marketing efforts to undertake. The downside is that expansion takes your focus off of where the money is at the moment. To smooth the economics you need to use a partner or other channel to get your offerings out into the world.
Here are the questions we asked ourselves at MuleSource (reminder: we are open source):
Do we have users? And, if so, what is their stage of deployment?
Generally speaking for the U.S., we've found that users need the most help while moving from development to production. In the U.K. it seems more like users wait until something breaks before they get involved with support subscriptions. In Japan we have users that are self-sufficient, but large companies do the majority of their IT work through systems integrators who are also VARs.
Do companies pay for open source in this geography?
This is a tough one. In many markets asking if people pay for Red Hat Linux vs. do they pay for JBoss ends up with very different results (RH yes, JBoss, no.) Regardless, going into a market that has no history of paying for OSS means you will have to educate during the sales process, which introduces overhead that you don't want to carry.
Do we have salespeople or a method by which to sell in this region?
To the extent that you can go international with inside sales, you should. However, certain markets like the U.K. are often channel driven, which means you need feet on the street. In Japan, it seems like you have to have SI partners.
Can we support the customer timezone?
This depends on how you set up support and applies more to OSS than SaaS.
What is the difference in relationships versus the U.S.?
This is by far the hardest thing to figure out. Do cultural differences play a role? Do you have to take the buyer to play golf? If you are in Japan do you have to go out for cocktails?
If all of these items (and the other things you figure out to ask) pass muster, here are a few tactical quick hits that can really bum you out:
- Tax implications--international tax laws and things like VAT
- Currency rates
- Material ownership
- Legal items like contracts, etc.
- Employment rules (Germany and Italy, for example)
Eyeing the virtual printer.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)CHIBA, Japan--Canon wants to take you into a virtual world so you can learn how to change toner cartridges better.
The headgear you see in the photo, along with the cube with the squiggles, is part of a "Mixed Reality Technology" prototype coined by Canon, which showed it off over the weekend during a special future-tech exhibit at Ceatec, the large Japanese trade show here.
It's called mixed reality because virtual and real-world images are mixed into one frame. When you put the goggles on and stare at the cube, you don't see squiggles. Instead, you see a virtual 3D image of a copier. You also see your own hands move around the virtual world. You can lift the lid of a printer or copier, flip switches, etc. It was actually kind of cool.
Bang the drum slowly.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)Virtual reality was one of the more prominent themes in the future-tech exhibition. The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology also showed off a virtual device it concocted with the Phantom haptic tech from Sensable Technologies of Woburn, Mass., that combines virtual visual, sound and touch stimuli. Basically, you put on the virtual-reality glasses and see a drum and set of bells. Strike it with a mallet and you hear the appropriate virtual sounds over the headset. The top of the drum also "feels" rubbery, while the side is hard. Sensable did the visual and feel parts, while NICT did the sound part.
That second picture, with the guy sitting in front of what looks like a projector, is the Sensable-NICT project. You can see the virtual image above his head.
Waseda University, meanwhile, showed off something called Interactive View, which lets you manipulate and move virtual objects.
CHIBA, Japan--The finger is the new mouse in Japan.
At the Ceatec show here this week, a whole raft of Japanese companies are showing off prototypes or upcoming products that users operate by making gestures or moving their fingers.
Controlling a Toshiba PC with gestures.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)Toshiba showed off a PC that you operate with hand gestures. Hitachi Metals had a product in their booth called "Magic Waters." You wave a wand and point it at a fountain and the waters jump, sort of like the fountain at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Sharp has a screen that will let phone manufacturers put on an iPhone-like interface. Citizen Watch showed off a glove that lets you control certain things. And Pioneer has a car navigation prototype that relies on finger gestures. Flick a 3D hologram-like image of a gas station pump and the car navigation system points out all of the gas stations in the vicinity.
Chalk it up to Wii fever, says writer Tom Samiljan. You'll probably start seeing stuff like this in America in a few years.
CHIBA, Japan--Remember convergence? The idea that the TV and conventional technologies would merge? It came out about the same time as that series ER and has aged about as well in North America.
A TV phone in action.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)In Japan, it's another story. Watching TV on your PC is actually quite common. A huge number of desktops and notebooks come with TV tuners and people actually use them, according to several residents.
"There are a lot of ads for TV PCs," he said Yasutoshi Magara, managing director of Microsoft Japan. Sharp Electronics, he noted, just came out with a PC-TV combo with a 42-inch screen.
Part of the surge here relies on local factors. There isn't a lot of spare space in most cities in Japan. As I type, the chair I sit upon is butting up against a suitcase on the floor, for instance. Combining the TV and the PC screen into one slim package makes sense.
TV on cell phones has also become big. Japan started offering 1Seg, a service that lets you get free digital TV channels on your phone, in April 2006, according to Sharp's Myuki Nakayama. Ten million TV phones from all manufacturers have been bought by consumers since then, she added.
SugarCRM is pulling out both barrels in Japan, announcing today that it has signed an agreement with Softbank Technology to distribute SugarCRM solutions in Japan, including as an ASP/hosted service.
This is exciting news, as relationships are key to cracking the conservative Japanese market, and Softbank Technology (along with existing partner CareBrains) is a great channel into Japan.
But the real news is in who SugarCRM beat to get Softbank's nod:
... Read more
