Archives for the month of: April, 2004

NEW iTunes 4.5

2004/04/28 //

Wow, just one more reason to love this Mac OS. The next upgrade to iTunes is going to have some great new features:
- a free song every Tuesday
- iMix: publish your playlists
- Music videos
- Radio charts
- a lossless encoder (TOO COOL!)
- importing non-DRM WMA files
I’d love it if they would upgrade the mp3 encoder to something as good as LAME, but I’m really happy about the lossless encoder. That is a great tool for audiophiles who really care about sound quality but still care about HDD space.
iTunes 4.5 to add iMix, videos, trailers, WMA import, more [news.yahoo.com]

Categories Macintosh

Dartmouth: responsible investing

2004/04/27 //

Justin Ruben ’95 has a powerful op-ed in The Dartmouth on the topic of responsible investing and the trend for universities to invest via hedge funds, which often obscure their investment vehicles.

As institutional investors who collectively control almost $200 billion of assets, colleges and universities play a major role in the global economy. Students need to come together on the Dartmouth campus and many others to debate how we can reconcile college and university investment strategies with the values at the core of the Academy. But first, we need more disclosure about where our monies are invested, so we can ascertain the facts on which that debate must be based.

I worked with Justin and many others to convince the trustees to divest from their investments in the Hydro-Quebec project my first year. I am glad to see Justin is reminding the Dartmouth community of their responsibilities.
The Dartmouth Online -Responsible Investing – by Justin Ruben

Categories Dartmouth

Manzanar museum

2004/04/27 //

I’ve passed by the site of Manzanar on the way to Mammoth from LA. It is a desolately beautiful place. Wind-swept and dry high desert. I hope to visit the new museum sometime soon.

Eiichi Norihiro, 77, of Simi Valley had been imprisoned at Manzanar when he was 15 but was transferred to a camp at Tule Lake in Northern California after being called a troublemaker for refusing to wear a shirt labeled “POW.”
He recalled his parents’ bitter feelings.
“We were a family of eight, and we lost what little we had,” he said. “We went back to Japan after the war, then lost our land there. We lost on both sides of the Pacific.”
Norihiro, a retired accountant, returned Saturday because “I don’t want to forget it, and I don’t want the government to forget it.”

WW II Japanese internment camp opens as sad museum [news.yahoo.com]
Manzanar National Historic Site [nps.gov]

Categories News

photos from Gree night 1.0

2004/04/27 //

Gree.jp, one of two major Japanese social networking services (mixi.jp is the other), had a social event on Sunday. I didn’t attend but here are the photos.
GREE NIGHT 1.0

Categories Japan

“depachika” or Japanese food halls

2004/04/26 //

Elizabeth Andoh does a nice profile of the “depachika” (“depaato”= department store, “chika” = basement) or the basement-level food halls that are found at most of the major train stations in Tokyo.

Even the most optimistic economists concede that Japan’s retail environment is “challenging.” Yet in those department stores that succeed, depachika pull in astonishing sums. Gross sales for a best-selling brand of cake or cookies can, at a single location, come to about $4.5 million.
No one can say for sure just why Japan’s food markets were first placed at basement level, nor why they generate nearly a quarter of a store’s total revenue, but the most likely explanation lies in the pervasive train-taking and gift-giving culture here.

When I visited Seoul last year, I saw similar food halls in Korean department stores.
Culinary Delights Laid Out to Tempt Japan’s Commuters [nytimes.com]

Categories Japan