Japan’s XP migration solution: Remove network cable
A Japanese local government has come up with a rather unusual solution to the problem of Windows XP migration – keep the venerable OS but disconnect the remaining PCs running it from the internet.
In around a year’s time, April 8 2014 to be precise, Microsoft will end free support for the operating system which is still installed on around a third of machines in the Land of the Rising Sun.
This will mean an end to free security patches and fixes for knackered code – exposing organisations to a host of potential info-security risks. Read more...
Two factories, two fates: Foxconn ascends on cheap labor, Sharp hangs on
Shige Watanabe remembers the boom days.
"It was solid cars on the roads. The factories ran full steam, constantly," he says, standing in front of the electronics shop he has run for 30 years in the Japanese town of Yaita. A car occasionally cruises by his shop window, packed with Aquos TVs and other Sharp appliances, but the giant Sharp plant across the street is still, its windows dark on a quiet Friday afternoon.
About 1,500 miles to the west, in the outskirts of Zhengzhou, China, the scene is very different, with the sounds of traffic and construction heavy in the air. This is Foxconn Electronics territory, and thousands of assembly workers roam the streets between shifts, walking around piles of bricks and construction equipment. Building crews scramble to finish dormitories next to bustling factory lines, and tractors flatten fields nearby to build more. Read more...
Japan’s DoCoMo unveils cloud services, including a translator and 5GB of storage
Japan’s leading operator DoCoMo has announced a series of cloud based services that will soon launch under its new ‘docomo cloud’ initiative, that seeks to tap into the country’s growing smartphone market.
DoCoMo has been working on language translation technology for some time and, on June 1, it will introduce a Mail-Hon’yaku-Concier service that helps non-Japanese readers. The application will translate SMS, email and social network messages between Japanese and English, Chinese and Korea using cloud-based technology, the company says. Read more...
Sony’s PlayStation Vita hits stores in Japan
Sony's long-awaited PlayStation Vita portable game machine hit stores in Japan on Saturday as thousands of game enthusiasts lined up early in the morning to be among the first to buy it.
Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is predicting brisk sales, even though the launch may have missed some holiday shoppers. A successful debut would help the company offset the rest of its struggling business. Sony projects a loss of more than $1 billion for the fiscal year through March 2012, which would be its fourth straight annual loss.
In Tokyo's Ikebukuro shopping district, some 300 game enthusiasts lined up outside a major electronics chain that opened a few hours earlier than usual for the event. Many of the purchasers had made advance orders on the Internet so they could start playing immediately. Read more...
LinkedIn launches in Japanese
LinkedIn Corp. on Thursday launched its online professional networking service in Japanese, the first Asian language platform for the rapidly growing company as it pushes to expand in the region.
Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn also established a small Tokyo office, following the opening of its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore in May.
Arvind Rajan, head of LinkedIn's Asia operations, described Japan as a key market for the company because of its technologically sophisticated work force. LinkedIn hopes that the lessons learned in Japan will ultimately translate into new offerings for the rest of the world.
LinkedIn has about 120 million members worldwide, with 20 million in Asia and the South Pacific. It began moving into Asia in late 2009, concentrating first on English-dominant markets like India and Australia. Read more...
Samsung files to stop Japan, Australia iPhone 4S sales
Samsung launched another volley in its global legal battle with Apple on Monday, filing claims to block the sale of the iPhone 4S in Australia and Japan.
The Korean electronics manufacturer said it had also filed to immediately block sales of the older iPhone 4 and iPad 2 in Japan. The legal attack is the latest in a series between the two companies around their competing tablets and smartphones, which has seen Apple win several early victories.
"We will no longer stand idly by, and will steadfastly protect our intellectual property," Samsung said in a press release.
Samsung said it had filed a legal injunction in the Tokyo District Court based on one patent related to High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and three user interface patents. The Australian motion was filed in the New South Wales Registry on three patents related to Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) and HSPA. Read more...
Japan to launch smartphone-only TV broadcast channel
A television broadcast viewable only on smartphones and tablets with special tuners will go live across Japan next year, according to a venture funded by the country's largest television stations and mobile operator.
New broadcaster nottv said at Ceatec, the Japanese electronics show running this week, that it will use bandwidth frequencies left over when the country ended its analog broadcasts earlier this year.
Because it will function as an over-the-air broadcaster, its quality will not suffer as the number of viewers increase, and it will be able to deliver digital content, including games and newspapers, simultaneously to a mass audience.
"Television is currently designed for viewing at home, with everyone sitting around a TV. We want to be more personal and interactive," said Hiroaki Ban, a manager in the corporate strategy division of mmbi, the company that will operate nottv. Read more...
Hackers hit Japan’s biggest defense contractor
Japan's largest defense contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, today acknowledged that scores of its servers and PCs had been infected with malware, but denied that any confidential information had been stolen.
The Daily Yomiuri, citing confidential sources, first reported the attack, which involved as many as eight different types of malware, including Trojan horses.
A U.S.-based Mitsubishi spokesman confirmed that the company had uncovered a large-scale intrusion that had planted malware on 45 servers and an additional 38 individual PCs in several locations around Japan. Read more...
Disaster hits Japan’s semiconductor demand
The March earthquake and disaster in Japan are still affecting the global semiconductor market and may continue to do so for months to come.
But one industry analyst said that, unlike the months immediately following the disaster, the problem now isn't that Japan can't keep up with supply needs. Shane Rau, an analyst with IDC, said the problem now is on the demand side.
"The supply chain [in Japan] was able to adapt fairly quickly to any disruptions," Rau said. "The longer-term issue has been more on the demand side ... This has affected people's ability to function and survive. When they're trying to find homes and necessities, they're not thinking about buying PCs." Read more...
How Japan’s data centers survived the earthquake
Smart construction and good planning allowed Japan's data centers to escape virtually unharmed from the massive earthquake that rocked the country in March, a Japanese data center executive said Thursday.
Operators there had to grapple with blackouts and shortages of generator fuel and equipment. They have also fought hard to be exempt from nationwide power caps that go into effect Friday. But despite enduring the biggest earthquake in recorded history, none of Japan's data centers were severely damaged or knocked offline by the disaster, the executive said.
"So far there has been no critical damage reported to the Japan Data Center Council," said Atsushi Yamanaka, a general manager with data center operations company IDC Frontier, who gave a talk at the DatacenterDynamics conference in San Francisco about the impact of the quake. Read more...
Japan answers China’s supercomputing surge
A new supercomputer from Japan whose performance passed the 8 petaflop milestone ended China's brief period atop the list of the world's fastest supercomputers.
The Japanese system also set another all-time Top 500 record -- a 10 megawatt power rating while running the Linpack test used to determine system performance. Despite the significant power consumption, the K Computer achieved "extraordinarily high computing efficiency," said RIKEN and Fujitsu, in a statement.
The new Top 500 leader, the K Computer housed at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, runs 68,544, eight-core Sparc chips made by Japan-based Fujitsu. The system is expected to eventually run some 80,000 of the Sparc processors. Read more...