Category: tech
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Or better yet, design your product so no FM is necessary.
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Or better yet, design your product so no FM is necessary.
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Kindle in Japan: Any questions?
The International Kindle, released last week, finally came into my eager hands last night. This is my first eReader. The reason I purchased it is — ironically enough — my love for paper books. I love to annotate, but I would rather not deface my books. For me there is just something wrong with marking…
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$20 refund on international Kindle
Just got this email from Amazon: Good news! Due to strong customer demand for our newest Kindle with U.S. and international wireless, we are consolidating our family of 6” Kindles. As part of this consolidation, we are lowering the price of the Kindle you just purchased from $279 down to $259. You don’t need to…
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Unchain the Office Computers! Why corporate IT should let us browse any way we want.
Public complaints about the modern day Stasi: the IT department. I have been saying this ever since I was victimized by my first corporate IT department in 2002. Then again, when only 8% of people even know what a web browser is, I think my opinion might change if I was in charge of thousands…
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the problem of software development in Japan
@gen Kanai reacts to Tabuchi’s NYT article by discussing how the Galapagos problem applies to software development in Japan. I love how he picks apart Takeshi Natsuno’s solution to “focus more on software and must be more aggressive in hiring foreign talent, and the country’s cellphone carriers must also set their sights overseas.” The “foreign…
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Japanese cellphones may be clever, but that doesn’t make them smart
Hiroko Tabuchi’s NYT article on Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global has been making the rounds. It is a good article, but she makes one unfortunate mistake: she uses that amorphous term “smartphone” to describe Japanese cellphones. Luckily, she only does it once in the whole article, but I fear the damage has been done.…
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iPhone’s disappointing lack of effect on keitai UX
Softbank and DoCoMo have released their summer lineup of mobile phones, one year after the initial release of the iPhone. I was truly optimistic. When the iPhone hit Japan last year I was excited at the prospect of a shakeup for Japanese mobile handset makers. I hoped they would be forced to abandon their horrid…
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Mobile sales ‘in record decline’ (except the iPhone)
The number of phones shipped worldwide in the first three months of the year dropped by 13% … The iPhone, the first phone by computing firm Apple, had sales of 3.8 million, up from 1.7 million units the previous year. Mobile sales ‘in record decline’ (except the iPhone)
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Softbank posts ¥15B Q4 loss
Softbank says the loss was due to one-time costs, including the launch of the new hikari service. Though this was a rough quarter, their yearly profit was down only 3.7 percent, which was slightly better than DoCoMo’s drop of 3.9 percent. DoCoMo is exclusively a mobile phone operator. Softbank is involved in a wide range…