Due-East.org

Do the Japanese have some kind of blood flow problem? Are they all anemic or something that makes them all cold-natured? Is Japan a much colder country than I think it is? There’s something funky going on cos they’ve got this obsession with warming EVERY part of your body. They’ve invented USB-everything-warmers. Some things I can understand, like USB hand-warmers and maybe even USB foot warmers. But the newest product is the USB eye warmer! What the heck?! When was the last time you said, “Man, my eyes are FREEZING!”??? Probably NEVER, right? Yeah, that’s cos it just doesn’t happen. So what could be going on? Is there some kind of strange Japanese conspiracy going on that’s just too far above my little mind’s ability to figure out? I’m intrigued…

Products here.

In a move that pretty much everybody predicted, China re-banned its citizens from accessing Wikipedia only about a week after opening up access to the site.  The reason for the ban is apparently due to certain sensitive content on the site (Taiwan, the Falun Gong, Tibet, etc.).  And since the Chinese government can’t totally control the site and what’s printed on it, they decided it would be best to just not allow access to it all. 

Article Here.

This is a pretty interesting article on Gizmodo that speculates about that and which country will move in to take its place once it happens. 

Here’s a selected quote from the article:

“After all, the natural cycle in gadget production has been for a country to start out as a purveyor of discount knock-offs, then gradually reinvent itself as a premium supplier. We’re all probably too young to remember this, but “Made in Tokyo” was a sign of inferior quality circa 1950. And weren’t LG and Samsung considered cheaper alternatives to Japanese goods just a generation (or less) ago?

You can already see what might be the first stirrings of China’s maturation—the transformation of Lenovo into an IBM-buying global brand, for example, or the efforts of Japanese companies like Matsushita Electric to move high-end manufacturing operations to Shanghai. I’m not saying that the flood of cheap MP3 players from Shenzhen is gonna stop in the next twelve months, but maybe it’s time to start asking: when it comes to low-end gadgets, what’s the next China?”

It’ll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

Article here.

If you’ve seen Star Trek, you know what the universal translator is. If you haven’t, basically it’s a device that allows people to hear whatever language is actually being spoken in their own language. It appears that U.S. scientists are developing something similar, and they’re calling a “Tower of Babel” translator. It’s not quite like Star Trek, though. Here’s a description of it from the article:

Electrodes are attached to the neck and face to detect the movements that occur as the person silently mouths words and phrases. Using this data, a computer can work out the sounds being formed and then build these sounds up into words. The system is then able to translate the words into another language which is read out by a synthetic voice. The team currently has two prototypes: one that can translate Chinese into English and another that can translate English into Spanish or German. If the prototypes used a small vocabulary of about 100-200 words they worked with about 80% accuracy, researcher Tanja Schultz said. But, she added, a full vocabulary had a much lower level of accuracy. Professor Schultz said: “The idea is that you can mouth words in English and they will come out in Chinese or another language.” The ultimate goal, the researchers said, was to be in a position where you can just have a conversation. Chuck Jorgensen, a researcher at Nasa’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, told New Scientist: “This is showing the technology is really within reach.” Phil Woodland, professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge, said: “This work sounds interesting. Most groups are working on translating audio data into different languages, but this is different to work I have come across before because they are not working from a real acoustic signal.”

Pretty interesting, huh? I personally would much rather LEARN a new language than rely on something like this, but even I have some languages I have absolutely NO desire to ever learn (Arabic or Hebrew, anyone?). This kind of thing could really come in handy in situations where someone needs to communicate with someone in a language they either don’t want to learn or don’t have time to learn. It’s pretty cool.

Article here.

Since most of my readers (all 2 of you) know nothing about how the internet works, I’ll leave a lot of the technical details behind the article in this post.  Trust me, they would bore you (and me) stiff. 

Basically, the internet has been running out of IP addresses (every website has an address) because of the inherent mathematical limits of the current technology used to carry information across the ‘Net.  For a few years now, a newer protocol (IPv6) has been invented but not actually used much of anywhere.  Apparently, China is ahead of the United States, South Korea, and Japan in rolling the new technology out, and they hope to have the technology running on a trial basis by the end of this year.  The Chinese government is hoping that the early implementation of IPv6 technology will allow Chinese telecom companies to get their new IPv6-enabled products to market before the current leaders of the current technology (IPv4), American companies Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, can do so.  The goal is to make Chinese tech companies more competitive on the world scene.  Only time will tell if it works out well for the Chinese or if consumers will be brand-loyal to Juniper and Cisco. 

Link to article

News Corp (owners of MySpace.com) want to move into the Chinese market, but they may have a long road ahead of them. The Chinese government is pretty strict about digital media and foreign influence. So News Corp’s chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has decided to send his wife, Wendy Deng, a native Chinese speaker, to help pave the way for them. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out and what kinds of restrictions are placed on the site if it does indeed get up and running.

Link to article