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NTT DoCoMo admits to crisis over subscriber losses	01 November 2007
A senior executive at NTT DoCoMo said on Thursday the Japanese mobile carrier is in crisis over subscriber losses in the last year.DoCoMo, which is No. 1 in Japan, has lost about 1 million subscribers in the last year since number portability was introduced allowing subscribers to switch carriers without losing their telephone number."We have a sense of crisis," said Kiyoyuki Tsujimura, executive vice president and managing director of the carrier's products and services division. "In some months we had a net decline in subscribers."Customers have been switching to KDDI's Au brand and Softbank Mobile. Au is well known for innovative and well-designed handsets while Softbank has been winning customers with low prices and Japan's first free mobile calls scheme.Despite the subscriber losses NTT DoCoMo isn't in danger of losing its top spot anytime soon. With 53 million subscribers at the end of September it had a 53 percent share of the market. But executives at the carrier are conscious that the days when they could rest on their laurels are gone.As part of a push to keep subscribers and appeal to new ones DoCoMo introduced 23 new cell phones on Thursday -- the largest launch it has ever staged. The complete overhaul of its handset range includes models that can warn of impending earthquakes, help with language translation and show TV programming.Among the new phones is the L705iX from South Korea's LG Electronics. The phone is notable because it supports 7.2Mbps HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) data transmission. DoCoMo plans to offer the service, which is double the speed of its current 3.6Mbps service, from April next year.Also next year DoCoMo will begin a severe weather and earthquake warning service using the cell broadcast service. Data from the meteorological agency will be broadcast to phones from cell towers. Included will be earthquake warnings that should flow from a new system introduced earlier this year that attempts to gives a heads-up to people in the few seconds between an earthquake striking and the strong shaking waves reaching people.The new translation service works in English, Japanese, and Chinese. Users say simple phrases into the phone, and the audio data is sent back to a translation server where it is processed and delivered back in text form.Well-known consumer electronics brand names are among the new lineup too. Panasonic and Sharp have labeled their new TV phones with the same brands they use in Japan for flat-panel TVs: Viera and Aquos. And Sony's new phone carries the Cybershot name and offers an impression 5-megapixel image quality.None of the handsets will be offered overseas but some features might make their way into the manufacturers' foreign models next year. Prices will depend on retailer discounts, incentives, and the length of service contract signed.
How it's Made: Tofu	09 February 2007
If you've always wondered how tofu was made, then check out this interesting "How it's Made" segment. Tofu (Japanese Romaji), also called doufu (Chinese Pinyin) (often in Chinese recipes) or bean curd (literal translation), is a food of Chinese origin[1], made by coagulating soy milk, and then pressing the resulting curds into blocks. The making of tofu from soy milk is similar to the technique of making cheese from milk. Wheat gluten, or seitan, in its steamed and fried forms, is often mistakenly called "tofu" in Asian or vegetarian dishes
Japan's top searches: burgers, babes, betting	21 December 2006
(InfoWorld) - What do Japanese readers search for when they turn to Google? The search engine's operator Wednesday published its top 10 search rankings for the year and revealed that generic searches outnumbered those for specific topics in 2006. Top of the overall ranking was "maps" but that doesn't necessarily mean good news for Google Inc.'s own mapping service. A sample search reveals that rival services from Mapion, MapFan Web, Yahoo Maps and local search engine Goo all ranked above Google Maps in the search results. "Our policy is not to promote our own services in the results," said Kaori Saito, a spokeswoman for Google in Tokyo. "We don't change the ranking, it's the natural ranking." Second in the overall ranking was "translation" followed by "dictionary" and "video." The first focused search term was for "Aki Hoshino," a model and TV personality well known in Japan for her busty figure. She ranked in sixth place and was joined in the top 10 by only one other person: singer "Kumi Koda," who became Japan's most popular pop artist during the year and was ranked tenth. Between Hoshino and Koda were "weather forecast," cell-phone carrier "au," "price" for shopping comparison sites, and "post code." In other top 10 rankings the most searched for food-related query was "McDonalds," the top beauty-related search was for cosmetics company "Shiseido" and the top financial keyword was "lottery," said Google. Google didn't release information about the number of searches performed on each keyword. The rankings are for searches made by computer users on its main service and don't include mobile searches.
Programming less	28 November 2007
A programming lesson I keep relearning. The design of the central data structure of an app determines the quality of the app, in every way. Any extra thought that goes into this, will pay off in: 1. Maintainability of the code. 2. Size of the code (you'll write less code with a well thought-out central data structure). 3. Simplicity of the user interface (the structure inevitably shows through in the UI). 4. Ability to respond to feature requests. 5. Adapt to new hardware, OS changes, other apps. 6. More "it just works" experiences. This is why it's sometimes the right thing to start over from scratch. Programmers often want to start over because they look at the code and it looks complicated, and they think they can make it simpler if they start over. They're right, of course, it will be simpler when they start over, because it won't do nearly as much as the mature product does. Once they finish building out the feature set, it may well be just as complicated. It's a judgement call. I remember looking at the source of Unix kernel for the first time as a grad student in Wisconsin, and being amazed at the simplicity and obviousness of the code. I couldn't believe something so simple actually worked. Your code at its kernel level must have this simplicity. But at the edges, where you're accomdating the minds of users, inevitably it gets a little messy. The key thing to look for is how hard is it to add a completely new feature. It should be easy to do that. If it's not, it's likely because of a poorly organized (and therefore not well-understood) central data structure. I've rewritten apps many times, over many years, because when I wrote the first or second versions, I didn't understand the problem well enough, and the code had turned into a morass of patches and workarounds. Right now I'm recoding the internals of a special-purpose aggregator. I've written many of these, over the years, always quickly, trying to get something running fast, and then lived with data structures that resulted. This time I'm going slowly and carefully, with an installed base of one (me) and ripping up the pavement whenever I find even a slightly better way of doing something. I have other users who are waiting, but that's life. 5/7/97: "When a programmer catches fire it's because he or she groks the system, its underlying truth has been revealed."
Google: Jolly green giant?	28 November 2007
The search and advertising company is a force to be reckoned with across the Web. Now it's looking to do the same in alternative energy (along with many others, large and small).
Google service uses cell towers to locate users	28 November 2007
Google launched a location service for mobile users on Wednesday that doesn't rely on GPS.Google Maps with My Location, currently in beta, locates users who don't have GPS-enabled phones based on their location to nearby cell towers. The result isn't as accurate as GPS but works for people who lack the positioning technology in their phones."It helps users speed up search by showing the general neighborhood they're in," said Steve Lee, product manager at Google for the service. Without the location service, users must type in their address or neighborhood in order to find nearby businesses using Google Maps.Google Maps with My Location will use GPS data to locate the user if the phone has the capability. But even for users of GPS-enabled phones, the cell location service might be useful, Lee said. That's because the cell tower feature works better indoors than GPS, it doesn't drain the phone battery as quickly and can bring up a result quicker, he said.The service could be useful to a person who might be traveling in an unfamiliar city and looking for restaurants or other businesses. A user pulls up Google Maps and hits the zero key on the phone. A blue dot will appear on the map in the user's location. If the service used GPS in the phone, the blue dot will be solid. If the service used cell towers to determine the location, the blue dot will have a halo around it, indicating that the location isn't precise. The user can then search for nearby businesses.Google says the cell tower technique will locate the user within about 1000 meters. It doesn't use triangulation, which calculates a user location based on the user's distance to three nearby towers. Instead, it essentially shows the range of the tower that the user's phone is connecting to.But the accuracy should improve as more people use the service, Lee said. That's because Google is keeping a database of location queries, minus any personal information like individual phone numbers or names. That will allow Google to learn more precise information about the range of each tower so that it can deliver a more accurate location area to users. The coverage area of cell towers can vary from about a quarter of a mile to several miles based on whether the tower is in an urban or rural area.For now, Google Maps with My Location doesn't feature any advertising, but it could in the future. "This product makes a lot of sense for advertising," Lee said.In order to use the service, phone owners must download a free application from Google. The application will work on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones as well as many phones that support Java. A few notable exceptions include the Samsung Blackjack, Moto Q, and Palm Treo 700W, which don't support the APIs Google requires to find cell towers, Lee said.
OLPC sued for patent infringement	28 November 2007
A Massachusetts company has sued the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Association for patent infringement, charging the project with stealing its designs for a multilingual keyboard.Lagos Analysis Corp., or Lancor, filed the lawsuit Thursday in the Federal High Court, Lagos Judicial Division in Nigeria, where the company owns a patent for a four shift-key keyboard, said Adé Oyegbola, Lancor's CEO.OLPC illegally reverse-engineered the company's patented keyboard, which, with its four-shift keys, allows computers to better handle multiple languages, Oyegbola said. Lancor wants the Nigerian court to award "substantial" damages and issue a permanent injunction to prevent OLPC from manufacturing and selling its XO laptop.Oyegbola said he hopes Lancor can reach a settlement with OLPC before the Nigerian court issues an injunction. OLPC could have "sought a license and gotten it for a minimal fee," he said. "We're hoping ... they can come to their senses, and we sit down and come to a reasonable settlement."Lancor, based in Natick, Massachusetts, has tried to reach a settlement with OLPC but did not get a "reasonable response" from the project, Oyegbola said.OLPC released a statement, saying it has not yet seen the legal filings in the case. "OLPC has the utmost respect for the rights of intellectual property owners," Robert Fadel, OLPC director of finance and operations, said in the statement. "To OLPC's knowledge, all of the intellectual property used in the XO Laptop is either owned by OLPC or properly licensed. Until we have a copy of the claim and have had time to review it, we will not be commenting further on the matter."The goal of the nonprofit OLPC, founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte, is to donate laptops to children in developing nations. Through Dec. 31, residents of the U.S. and Canada can donate $400 and get one laptop for themselves, while sending a second to a child overseas.In addition to the Nigerian lawsuit, Lancor is looking at filing a patent lawsuit in U.S. court within three weeks, if the case is not settled by then, Oyegbola said.Lancor's Shift2 technology has been used to create region-specific keyboards called Konyin Multilingual Keyboards, according to the company. Lancor's lawsuit alleges that OLPC purchased two Konyin keyboards and used them to reverse-engineer the source codes for use in OLPC's XO Laptops.Asked about the goals of OLPC, Nigerian citizen Oyegbola said he didn't have a strong opinion. Laptops can be useful to children in Africa, but many of them have more basic needs, he said."Children might not need a laptop," he said. "Maybe instead they need a classroom."
Robots dazzle at Japanese exhibit (AP)	28 November 2007
AP - A robot math whiz breezes through a Rubik's Cube, using metal hands to twist and turn the colorful toy. A panda robot uses sensors to detect when people are laughing, and joins in. A dentistry student peers into the mouth of a new patient ? a humanoid practice robot with a complete set of pearly white teeth.
'Cleantech' Investing Gets Its Day in the Sun	26 November 2007
Everybody seems to be looking for ways to make money on technologies that are said to reduce fossil-fuel emissions, wean the country from foreign oil and, generally, save the world. Venture capitalists have invested $3.64 billion nationally this year in search of promising ideas in what they call...
WTO Rules Against Japanese Chip Duties	28 November 2007
A World Trade Organization appeals body upheld a ruling that Japan violates international trade rules applying punitive fees on imported South Korean computer chips.