January 2005 Archives

Jeremy Wagstaff interviewed me for an article he did on tags for the Asian Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ is behind a firewall, so I can't point you to the article (ironic!) but I was given the bit with my pithy quote:

Last year a couple of free Internet services started doing something interesting, entirely independently of each other. Flickr (www.flickr.com) is a Web site for storing your photographs; del.icio.us (simply http://del.icio.us) lets you store bookmarks to your favorite Web pages. They share two features: Both let users add tags to what they are storing, and by default share that data with any other user.

So, say you upload a photo to Flickr, you might add a word or two to categorize it -- say, scuba, or marzipan. The same applies if you add a Web page to your del.icio.us bookmarks. But because both of these tools are public, it also means that you can see what other pictures, in the case of Flickr, or Web page links in the case of del.icio.us, have the same tags.

This wasn't intentional: Joshua Schachter, a 30-year old New Yorker who set up del.icio.us, did it primarily because he wanted to keep track of his bookmarks. But suddenly you could see not only what you are gathering, but also what other people are gathering. "The motivation was mostly because I was solving a problem I had, and then I solved it for everyone," Mr. Schachter says. Social tagging was born.

Others realized that this was a grass-roots kind of classification that could be extended. Instead of someone hiring dozens of drones to sit at a computer and surf the Internet categorizing Web pages and photos so that people could find them more easily, people were doing it on their own, voluntarily, just by adding whatever key words came to mind when they added a Web page or photo.

Instead of a committee sitting down and deciding on some hierarchical system of categorizing stuff, it was ordinary people adding whatever tags sprang to mind, on the fly. A sort of egalitarian taxonomy -- which is why some people are calling it "folksonomy," which may or may not catch on. It's not perfect but it works: As Gen Kanai, a Japanese-American based in Tokyo who has been working on tagging, puts it: "The user does a bit more work tagging, but it results in a wealth of information once the tagged information is cataloged and associated with other data that has the same tag."

If anyone has a PDF of this article, or a scan, I'd love to get a copy!

UPDATE: I now have a copy- thanks everyone!

Tagging the Internet - Jeremy Wagstaff - Wall Street Journal Asia (28 Jan 05)

UPDATE: My discussion with Jeremy is on his site:

Jeremy Wagstaff's LOOSE wire: The Tag Report I: A Chat With Gen Kanai

Hi folks,

I'm looking for a driver for a Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite. The MSFT site doesn't seem to have it as far as I can tell.

Anyone know where I can find one elsewhere? Google hasn't helped yet...

Seymour Hersh has a riveting speech last month at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York last month.

The frightening thing about it is, we have no intelligence. Maybe it's -- it's -- it is frightening, we have no intelligence about what they're doing. A year-and-a-half ago, we're up against two and three-man teams. We estimated the cells operating against us were two and three people, that we could not penetrate. As of now, we still don't know what's coming next. There are 10, 15-man groups. They have terrific communications.

Somebody told me, it's -- somebody in the system, an officer -- and by the way, the good part of it is, more and more people are available to somebody like me. There's a lot of anxiety inside the -- you know, our professional military and our intelligence people. Many of them respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as much as anybody here, and individual freedom. So, they do -- there's a tremendous sense of fear. These are punitive people.

One of the ways -- one of the things that you could say is, the amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease. It does say something about how fragile our Democracy is. You do have to wonder what a Democracy is when it comes down to a few men in the Pentagon and a few men in the White House having their way.

Seymour Hersh: "We've Been Taken Over by a Cult" [democracynow.org]

For more background on Hersh: Seymour Hersh - Wikipedia

THE GRAY ZONE: How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib. [newyorker.com] May 2005

and...

THE COMING WARS: What the Pentagon can now do in secret. [newyorker.com] Jan. 2005

Then this is awesome- the United States Department of Defense actually puts out a press-release to refute Hersh's recent New Yorker piece. How awesome is that! When your own government is putting out press releases to refute you specifically, you're probably doing some very good reporting.

Statement from Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Latest Seymour Hersh Article

This is some light reading for this weekend.

I never knew that ya-ku-za (8-9-3) was derived from a losing gambling hand.

The relationship between the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, and politicians in Japan seems to me a perfect mirror for the tatemae/honne that is so important to Japan.

The "Underworld" Goes Underground: Yakuza in Japanese politics by Eiko Maruko [fas.harvard.edu]

I'm sure all of you are on pins and needles wondering about Sony's revenue last quarter and forward-looking statements.

The [revenue] declines came as no surprise after Sony warned last week that its operating profit for the fiscal year ending March 31 would probably fall 30 percent short of its earlier forecast. Sony executives said the company had not been able to cut costs quickly enough to keep pace with rapidly falling prices and fierce competition in markets for flat-screen televisions, DVD recorders and video cameras.

"We anticipate that the intense environment within the electronics industry is likely to continue," Sony's chief executive, Nobuyuki Idei, said in a statement.

Oh really? We're so surprised....

Then later in the article...

Ken Kutaragi, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment and a favorite to succeed Mr. Idei, acknowledged in a speech last week that Sony had been late to the market for portable MP3 players, mainly because of worries at its movie and music units about copyright protection.

"Even three years ago, because we had music, Sony was reluctant about introducing an iPod-type of new product," Mr. Kutaragi said. "The situation in the last several years is a bit frustrating for everyone."

Analysts say Sony needs to break down such barriers to developing innovative gadgets.

Oh, only "a bit frustrating"? I would argue your shareholders (I am one) would say more than "a bit frustrating."

This is another one of those, "gee whiz,"-type relevatory quotes where you learn so much that you didn't know before.

Tell me something I don't know, PLEASE.

Tax Credits Give Sony Profit, Masking Troubled Quarter [nytimes.com]

More than 6 days after a pair of NYC radio disk jockeys played a racist song parodying the Southeast Asian tsunami disaster, the radio station has suspended (but not fired) the people involved.

This kind of racism and ignorance is sadly a reality, even in 2005. It's worse that it comes from an African-American host who had a co-host who is Asian-American.

Let us hope that the FCC steps in and penalizes Hot 97 and their corporate parent for what was a horrendously racist radio show.

Asian Media Watch | Hot 97 WQHT-FM Radio Hosts Sing of 'Africans Drowning,' 'Screaming Chinks,' and 'Chinamen' Tsunami Victims

also

Hot 97 suspends morning crew over tsunami 'parody' [nynewsday.com}

Japanese toilet.

Plays mp3 music files via SD slot.

NO JOKE.

TOTO、MP3再生に対応した便器を発売

No comment ;)

Here's Why Google Should Buy Technorati: The Industry Standard: Guest Blog: Russell Shaw

Greg Gorman does a really nice review of the all-new BMW K1200RS which he was lucky enough to ride on the Nurburgring in Germany.

I rode a new R12GS BMW in New Zealand last November, and was really amazed with it. What BMW does that few other bikes do, is ABS (which is more important on a bike than on a car, imo) and the best front suspension (Telelever) on any major brand. Suspension is critical on motorcycles because keeping the tire on the tarmac is so important when you only have 2 wheels and the contact patch is much smaller.

I'd love to own one, but BMWs are really expensive in Japan and bike theft is rampant in Tokyo. It doesn't pay to own a foreign bike, sadly.

I’ve never ridden a BMW before and have always thought of them as quirky looking but very functional motorcycles that were, in the most part, heavy and underpowered. That perception has changed.

The bikes we rode were pre-production bikes and they did have their problems – vibration and lousy throttle response at 3500-4000 rpm, various shifting problem, and a grossly inaccurate fuel gauge. These were all mentioned in various magazines but they are really minor problems.

What about a high speed weave you ask? I had the bike up to an indicated 270kph and it did nothing but go right where I pointed it. And believe me you’d notice if the bike did anything other than go where you pointed it when doing 270kph through the various sweeping turns of the Kesselchen section. If it does have a high speed weave it’s somewhere in the 270-290kph range – so what.

Overweight? The way it flicks from footpeg to footpeg, you’d never know it weighs about 550lbs with a full tank of gas. I’d say it flicks like 2000 ZX-9R or a first generation GSX-R1000. Yes, it’s that good.

The power assisted front brakes? TRULY AWSOME when the key is in the on position. Scary when it’s not, e.g. you’re pushing the bike, and try to stop. No power equals almost zero brakes.

The Electronically Adjustable Suspension (ESA)? A way cool feature I wish I had now. Set the bike up for the interstate, city, corner carving, luggage and/or a passenger with the touch of a button.

In all this is a motorcycle for the street. As such it makes the rider’s job easier. In my view, there is no high performance STREET bike out there that’s better.

My review of the BMW K1200S - GormanOnline.com

There's a great post by Fumiko Halloran on the NBR mailing list concerning both the crisis at Asahi Shimbun, as well as the crisis at NHK.

What I am hoping is that increasing weblog usage in Japan will lead to Japanese bloggers fact-checking or more openly criticizing the government or NHK or the mass media, whom are often in collusion with the government. I don't have high aspirations of this, because it is a cultural shift, and will take time if it happens at all, but I do think it is good to see these criticisms come to light and to have the spotlight on both Asahi and NHK, two organizations who are clearly failing the Japanese public.

So, basically read the paper in Japan with a lot of salt, 'cause the news is rarely worth the paper that it's printed on.

Asahi publishers and senior editors have firmly believed (their remarks have been reported in magazines and journals that were critical of Asahi)that the role of a leading newspaper is to "lead and shape" public opinion and influence the direction of the country; a notable example was its push for Japan to normalize diplomatic relationship with China and the result was to paint favorable pictures of the communist regime. Reporters had to write copies that were politically correct reflecting the top management's stand.

There is little sign that this media war is going to come to any conclusion in the near future. This is a rather remarkable development in a society that loathes open, upfront confrontation. There are many aspects of this incident that would be written up in magazines and journals including the issue of freedom of the press, for sure.

NBR'S JAPAN FORUM (POL) Political Pressure on NHK: NHK-Asahi

Here's a Washington Post piece on the crisis at NHK.

The latest allegations of political interference concerned the tens of thousands of women taken into bondage during World War II, whose history was explored in one in a four-part series addressing the issue of international war crimes. The charges against NHK, which holds a place in Japan comparable to the BBC's in Britain, have affected its reputation. Many critics are charging NHK with kowtowing to Japan's conservative ruling party.

"This has revealed the politics of yes men that exists at NHK," said Keiichi Katsura, professor of journalism at Taisho University in Tokyo. "It shows that NHK is beholden to LDP politicians rather than to its viewers," he said, referring to the governing Liberal Democratic Party.

Even before Ebisawa's resignation, public anger at the network was mounting, with more than 100,000 viewers withholding their subscription fees in protest. Ebisawa admitted Tuesday that the number of viewers who had stopped paying the fees was growing and could reach half a million by March. As a result, NHK is cutting executive salaries by as much as 15 percent.

Scandals Force Out Japanese TV Chief (washingtonpost.com)

Ok, this is cool.

Do you remember reading Gladwell's piece about Nassim Taleb a while ago?

gladwell dot com / blowing up

Well Nassim is reviewing books on Amazon.

Amazon.com: About N N Taleb: Reviews

Comments are back open now that I have patched MT. :-)

Peter Chang visits Pixar with a camera!

pjammer: "A Stranger from the Outside!"

Philip Greenspun goes to Chile.

I spent 6 months in Chile in 1992-3 while on an expedition in Patagonia as well as volunteering for Douglas Tompkins, an environmental conservationist.

I don't know when I will go back to Chile, but I look forward to that day.

Chile Travel Tips

Thanks to Brian, who braved the crowds at the Tokyo Auto Salon, for bringing us photos of the all the beautiful... well go see for yourself.

... a day IN THE LIFE » Something to smile about

Trends on smoking in Japan- a topic of interest to me for many reasons.

Public smoking remains commonplace in Japan but total or partial bans are spreading and the number of people smoking is steadily declining, due largely to health concerns.

The percentage of Japanese adults who smoke fell below 30 percent for the first time in an annual survey released last year by Japan Tobacco, the nation's sole tobacco producer.

Japanese men continue to be much heavier smokers than women. The survey showed 46.9 percent of adult men smoked compared with 13.2 percent of women.

The overall smoking rate was 29.4 percent, compared with 30.3 percent a year earlier. It was the lowest rate since the survey began in 1965, when public smoking was widely accepted at the start of Japan's rapid post-war industrialization.

Japan's government to fund crackdown on public smoking

If you are running MT 3.14, please be aware that there is a vulnerability in mt-comments.cgi. Six Apart is aware and is working on a fix. Please stay tuned for an update.

MT-Blacklist -> Hijacked comments.cgi

UPDATE: I have turned off comments until this is resolved.

UPDATE: MT 3.15 has been released.
Movable Type Publishing Platform: Movable Type 3.15 released

This is very decent-sized investment by Benchmark in Habbo Hotel, the multiplayer online, avatar-based, community site. I know of Habbo Hotel because of Imahima, who is the Japanese partner for Sulake, the Finnish company that developed Habbo Hotel.

It is great to see VC investment in community services like this, but I am seeing the tip of the iceberg where VCs are looking beyond Japan towards greater Asia (i.e. China) either because there is already a market (and competitors) in Japan, or because China is a much larger potential market (especially for mobile.)

Benchmark Capital today joined the Habbo success story by leading an investing round of $ 23.5 million (18M€) in Sulake Corporation – the creator of Habbo Hotel. Current owners of Sulake, 3i Group plc and Finnishtelecom company Elisa Group, co-invested in the financing.

Sulake is an interactive entertainment company specializing in developing, publishing and distributing multiplayer online communities and games. Sulake's top brand franchise, Habbo Hotel, is an online game environment designed for teens and has become one of the most popular and fastest growing teen websites in the world. To date, over 22 million Habbo characters have been created, with three million unique users visiting Habbo Hotel each month.

Sulake operates in various areas of the interactive entertainment industry, which is the fastest growing segment of the global entertainment and media market. Interactive entertainment is expected to grow from 25 to 55 billion USD between 2004 and 2008, averaging an impressive 20 percent compound annual growth.

"During this year we will focus on the further development of the Habbo Hotel concept and its launch in the promising Asian markets, particularly China and Korea," said Timo Soininen, CEO of Sulake Corporation.

Benchmark Capital invests in Sulake, the company behind the leading online teen community and game property Habbo Hotel

Clay Shirky's heading up a panel on Folksonomies with Stewart of Flickr, Joshua of Delicious, and Jimmy of Wikipedia. Should be interesting. Hope Adam Mathes can attend and put in his $.02...

O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005

"Freedom" 27 times; "liberty" 15 times; freedom wins over liberty.

On Lisa Rein's Radar: Daily Show Covers The Inauguration

j.p. Hung has an EXCELLENT comment about this idiotic ruckus over SpongeBob Squarepants.

I wonder what all these Bible thumpers would think about a guy in 2005 who was about 30, wasn't married, started a club with twelve 'members' - all men, would let a prostitute wash his feet and not even give her a reach-around, spoke of loving all man, loving your enemy, wore a dress, had long hair, a beard and fought the establishment.

gay.

posted by j.p. Hung at 11:45 PM JST on January 21

Jeff Barr blogs the Amazon Web Services developer's conference.

Amazon Web Services Blog: Amazon DevCon - Speaker Index

Now that I've left Sony, and am free to say what I want to, ironically I really don't care that much about Sony.

For digital cameras, I prefer Canon. For displays, I prefer Samsung. For computers, I prefer Apple. For game systems, I prefer XBOX.

In fact, the only Sony items I have in my apartment right now are some headphones and an older Sony Wega tube TV.

Even the PSP, as cool as it is, isn't lighting the fire in me that it is in others. It's a portable PS2 and you have to buy the games all over again. I don't see it as really innovative.

So, in essence, too little, too late.

Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., said he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because the Tokyo company had music and movie units that were worried about content rights.

Now, Sony's divisions are finally beginning to work together and share a common agenda, Kutaragi said at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo.

"It's just starting," he told reporters. "We are growing up."

High-ranking Sony officials have rarely publicly said their proprietary views were a mistake. Kutaragi, who has long been viewed as a candidate to lead Sony, was unusually direct in acknowledging Sony had made an error and blaming proprietary concerns from its entertainment division.

Don't believe the hype.

Oh, and one last thought:

It is very strange to have Kutaragi be the one to "apologize" when it should have been Idei. Kutaragi's the reason Sony has any relevance whatsoever since the first Playstation debuted.

Yahoo! News - Sony Video Chief Admits Strategic Mistakes

Looks like there is another Japanese weblog ping aggregator server. Hirata-san's ping aggregator is still king of the hill, but it's interesting to see folks joining the crowd.

BLOGSTYLE.JP　-PING-

This will be a funny place to watch trends break out from nichanneru to the wider weblog world.

del.icio.us/tag/2ch

John Nathan, who wrote the book on Sony, is speaking in DC on the 26th. I'd love to hear this speech.

Anyone in DC want to attend and do a write-up?

The Unraveling of the U.S.-Japan Relationship

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Sponsor: Japan Information Access Project

Speaker: John Nathan, Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, author of Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation’s Quest for Pride and Purpose (Houghton Mifflin, 2004)

Time: 8:15 – 9:30 AM

Location: Carnegie Endowment, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC

Books: Speaker’s book will be available for purchase.

Registration: reservations necessary, Lite Breakfast, $15 for JIAP members,
$25 Non-members, Students $10, 202-822-6040, aya@jiaponline.org

For more information, please contact the Japan Information Access Project at
202-822-6040, or visit our website at: http://www.jiaponline.org

Micah Sifry does a nice write-up of the emerging trends in open-source politics.

I don't personally spend a lot of time at political weblogs, but it is clear that they are becoming very important.

AlterNet: The Rise of Open-Source Politics

David Jackson points out that CNET has implemented trackback. I'm not sure if this is the first major media outlet to do so, but it's a good move by them. CNET and it's readers can now see more clearly who is linking to them, although the challenges of trackback spam begin for them too.

The Internet Stock Blog: CNET bows to the power of blogs

UPDATE: Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch.com posts commentary on Jackson's ideas. Sullivan argues that Yahoo doesnt need a weblog platform.

Technorati has launched a "searchlet" which provides code to install a Technorati search box on your blog.

You have to be a member of Technorati, and you have to have "claimed" your blog, but it is a very handy option.

Please try out my Technorati Searchlet on the left hand nav. of my blog underneath the google search.

Technorati: Searchlet

Google and Yahoo! and MSN have banded together with major weblog software providers and weblog service providers to announce that the weblog and search engine industries will be supporting the attribute (rel="nofollow") which will reduce the incentive for weblog comment spam.

Google Blog: Preventing comment spam

Dave Sifry of Technorati has called for a summit on this topic and has pledged the support of Technorati.

Sifry's Alerts: Call for a Web 2.0 Spam Squashing Summit

Let's hope this is a big step towards reducing the incentive for weblog comment spam.

Mathowie, who runs Metafilter.com tells us that he has added "tag" support to this very popular community weblog!!!

I am very curious to see what happens when more and more sites add similar functionality. Will this be de-rigeur like trackback?

MetaTalk | Community Weblog

Joyce Gelb (CUNY) has distributed some data on the rising number of workplace harassment cases brought to Japan's "Equal Employment" offices. In the 10 years since 1994, the number of cases brought to the government's attention is 10 times the number in 1994.

Sadly, I'll wager that the number is only going to rise as the gender politics of modern Japan are in tension.

1. : Number of consultation cases for workplace sexual harassment,
brought to the prefecture-level Labor Bureau Equal Employment offices.
(1994-2001)

o 1994: 850 sexual harassment consultation cases

o 1995: 968 sexual harassment consultation cases

o 1996: 1615 sexual harassment consultation cases

o 1997: 2534 sexual harassment consultation cases

o 1998: 7019 sexual harassment consultation cases

o 1999: 9451 sexual harassment consultation cases (4882 from female employees)

o 2000: 8614 sexual harassment consultation cases (5882 from female employees)

o 2001: 7633 sexual harassment consultation cases (5925 from female employees)

It's interesting to note that, for instance in 1999, only about half of the sexual harassment cases were from women (so it's safe to assume that the balance were from men.)

NBR'S JAPAN FORUM (POL) Japanese Discover the Lawsuit

I've got a few free gmail invites. If you'd like one, please leave a comment with a valid email address.

UPDATE- all gone!

An interesting argument that says that Ben and Mena will sell out to Yahoo!

On the surface it makes sense but... I dunno, it just doesn't feel right. I've been wrong many times before though...

The Internet Stock Blog: Yahoo to acquire Six Apart?

This is a great answer to the question I always get.

"But if we had to pick our most frequent recommendation for how to enjoy New York, it’s to walk around: New York’s never been safer, and every street is incredibly alive. Plus, if you get bored, there’s always a subway stop nearby and you can come visit Brooklyn."

The Morning News - The Non-Expert: When in Manhattan...

Rebecca Mead does an interesting profile of Collegehumor.com, a dorm-room startup now run by 4 guys recently out of school. For me it was a fascinating look into how a hobby turned into a job/company. Also, it's a fascinating look into the core of American youth culture. Sites like collegehumor and fark and a ebaumsworld are slowly but surely taking away attention from TV, and moving more towards amateur media (i.e. silly photos and home videos.) The challenge is whether they can grow the business while keeping their pulse on what it is that makes college kids laugh.

CollegeHumor.com was started in 1999 by Josh and Ricky, who grew up in a suburb of Baltimore called Timonium and have been friends since sixth grade. The site began as a place to collect all the jokes, links, and silly photographs that college students like to e-mail around, and served as a kind of nerdy diversion for Josh, who went to the University of Richmond, and Ricky, who was at Wake Forest. Eventually, they recruited Jakob, a student at Rochester Institute of Technology (whom Ricky and Josh met online, although he also grew up in Timonium), to help manage the site; Zach, a college friend of Ricky’s from Wake Forest, joined later.
...
The numbers were nowhere near that good, but they were good enough for the friends to decide that they could attempt to make the site their full-time job. In the year and a half since Josh, Ricky, and Jakob left college, traffic to the site has grown three hundred per cent. In December of 2003, CollegeHumor.com generated $45,400; in December of this year, the revenues were $405,000, nearly half of that coming from sales of faux-vintage T-shirts with slogans—“What Would Ashton Do?”; “I Gave My Word to Stop at Third: 1987 Teen Abstinence Day Suffolk County Public Schools”—which they started marketing last spring under the brand name Busted Tees.

FUNNY BOYS [newyorker.com]

Dave Sifry explains more about Technorati tags, the new feature of Technorati that merges the "folksonomy" features of Technorati, Flickr, and delicious.

What I like about this feature is that it makes the search results more interesting, integrating in photos and urls alongside blog search results. If it can make searching at Technorati more helpful, more relevant, then it's an important feature.

Sifry's Alerts: Technorati Launches Tags

also, Adriaan annouces that he'll be integrating this functionality into Ecto.

Full disclosure: I am working on Technorati Japan.

George has posted a very cool new plug-in for MovableType which allows users to add tags to Technorati via the "keywords" in MT.

90% Crud: TechnoratiTags

There's a profile of Miyazaki Hayao in the New Yorker of Jan. 17th.

The article isn't online (as far as I can tell) but there is a Q&A with the author, Margaret Talbot, who researched anime and Miyazaki on a United States-Japan Foundation Media Fellowship.

This part of the article resonated with me the most in terms of explaining why anime and manga are such a large part of Japanese media:

Are there countries other than Japan where animation is as popular across different age groups?

I think that Japan is unusual, if not unique, in its animation and comic-book culture. It's rich and developed there, and very respected as an art form. So you really do see people of all ages reading manga on the subway, for instance, and up to fifty per cent of book and magazine sales in Japan are of manga. There are ninety animated programs on television every week, and the genres are quite varied, from family dramas to violent cyber stuff to totally kawaii, or cute, kids' stuff. Anime fans here bristle at the idea that animation is just for children—though I think you'd have to concede that in the U.S. animation is more widely consumed by children than by adults. Miyazaki doesn't seem to have any problem with being perceived as a director who makes films primarily for children—he just thinks they should be sophisticated, good films in their own right.

The Animated Life [newyorker.com]

This is a great example of the Japanese maxim: "The nail that sticks out is hammered back in."

I've written a lot about Shuji Nakamura, the Japanese research scientist from Nichia Chemicals who developed the blue Light Emitting Diode (LED.) Nakamura was heralded as a hero by many everyday working Japanese because:

• he developed a technology that labs around the world had been unable to build
• he developed this technology in a small, back-water lab in Southern Japan (i.e. not a leading global research institution)
• he did so in an environment of little-to-no-support from his own company
• the technology that he built, enabled the creation of millions of new products that we use everyday from LED traffic lights, to DVD players to LCD televisions, and many other products

The start of the sad part of the story is that Nakamura was paid a $200 bonus for his ground-breaking, highly-profitable work. Nichia's blue LED patents made (and continues to make) the company hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

So Nakamura left Nichia, moved to the US and is now teaching at UC Santa Barbara. He sued Nichia and after many years of struggle, last year Nakamura won an award of $194 million. Nichia then appealed the case to the second-highest court in Japan, and the award was just recently reduced to a paltry $8 million.

Nakamura's bitterness is extremely palpable:

"Japan is treating people as though they're all robots," he said. "I'm so lucky I work in the United States. I can't imagine working in Japan again."

"The judicial system in Japan is rotten," Nakamura said. "I am outraged. That's all I have to say."

The problem is, Nakamura's right on both counts.

If Japanese companies don't compensate appropriately for ground-breaking, highly-profitable work, then you can rest assured that there will be no ground-breaking, highly-profitable work done.

If Japanese courts side with the company and not the individual, there's no recourse for the lone inventor, the lone businessman. Notwithstanding the fact that Japan is a nation of groups, where the individual is much less valued than the group (the company, etc.)

While I am sadly not surprised by the actions of this Japanese court in this case, it is a horrible precedent for Japan.

Do not expect ground-breaking, extraordinary work from Japanese people in big companies. If there isn't an incentive to do so, and there's actually dis-incentives to doing so.

Japanese Inventor Critizes Settlement [yahoo.com]

Greggman (and a few others) have asked why I like delicious over furl.net. It's a valid question and one that is worth answering.

Essentially it's because of:

• users
• transparency
• community
• extensibility

USERS: delicious, due to it's nature, has one of the most interesting user-bases on the 'net at the moment. I think it's safe to say that Flickr and delicious are the two services-of-the-moment, and thus there's a lot of new users and lots of energy near these communities.

TRANSPARENCY: Delicious is very transparent in the sense that it is a project run by Joshua. It is not a business, and the service is free for users. There's no promises for anything, etc. In that sense, it's a benevolent dictatorship, much like Metafilter is. Furl has an onerous "Privacy Policy" that I'm not going to deal with anymore.

COMMUNITY: Joshua hosts a vibrant and interesting mailing list at delicious-discuss. Furl has none of this kind of open-discussion. Of course Joshua has the final word on what happens, but he is hosting this service and provides the discussion space, and is open to requests. It's a good place to mention any bugs too.

EXTENSIBILTY: This is a big one. Delicious has an API which allows for all of these add-ons, plug-ins, visualizations, etc. Furl has none of this. Delicious also spits out more RSS than just about any other site I know. Almost every single Delicious page has an associated RSS feed. It's impressive.

Here's an incomplete list of all the cool ways others have used the delicious API:

• extisp.icio.us (a delicious tag visualizer)
• post to delicious from NetNewsWire
• Delicious mind map maker
• WordPress + Del.icio.us integration via Magpie
• oishii (popular URLs at delicious)
• cocoal.icio.us (delicious client for Mac OS X)

I do think it's easy to overlook the what makes delicious interesting. I've heard and read from a number of folks that, "I've tried it but didn't know what was so cool about it." The key to delicious, of course, is that once you start tagging your URLs, you can get more out of delicious than what you put in to delicious, which is what makes it really interesting. Humans are suckers for getting more out than what you put in, and delicious meets and exceeds that goal. Between the plug-ins, the community, and the users, it's clear that delicious is where you want to be storing your URLs and checking out what other URLs people are saving.

Had a very nice evening meeting Yoshimatsu-san with Kaneko-san last night. We talked about many things including why we enjoy del.icio.us so much. Kaneko-san really likes the Foxylicious plug-in to Firefox.

I've gone ahead and taken off the Furl links from my weblog home page and replaced them with my links from del.icio.us. I'm done with Furl. No more.

何はなくとも XML InfoSet: Very small geeks meeting

Yongfook.com is BACK!

Yongfook.com - The Japanese Food Blog Now With 42% More Death Wish

I wish I was in NYC to see Cory's new work. Please go if you are in NYC.

Cory Arcangel (Beige), Welcome to my Homepage Artshow

13 January through 12 February 2005

Team will present new work by Cory Arcangel from the 13th of January through the 12th of February 2005. The gallery is located at 527 West 26th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, on the ground floor.

This exhibition, entitled Welcome to my Homepage Artshow, is the first solo show in New York by Arcangel, a founding member of the Beige Programming Ensemble. The show includes a number of new hacked Nintendo game cartridges - the work that Arcangel has become known for - and a number of new works in the medium of video. In the former group are a fully interactive Ipod® programmed for the Nintendo® system and an absurdly slowed down version of Tetris®. In the latter group are Sans Simon, a video of Simon and Garfunkel in which the artist uses his hand to hide Simon's presence, and Geto Boys/Beach Boys in which videos by the two eponymous bands are played side by side creating an oddly harmonic synchronicity.

Cory Arcangel Press Release

The United Nations Development Program's Asia Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) is launching a month long online debate from Jan. 13th - Feb. 17th, 2004. If you have an interest in Asian Internet governance, I suggest you sign up to the mailing list.

Some goals of this effort include, "a regional multi-stakeholder survey on Internet governance priorities for the Asia-Pacific; a community-managed online portal and targeted research," which will result in a UN Internet Governance Working Paper.

Discussion Forum on Priorities in Internet Governance for the Asia-Pacific Region [igov.apdip.net]

For those of you who have Amazon Japan affliate accounts, there are now handy bookmarklets for Firefox for G-Tools, which is the best interface to Amazon Japan.

FireFoxの検索バーからG-Toolsを利用できるプラグイン：Goodpic

Matt's created a tag for users of extisp.icio.us, the visual extension of del.icio.us. Very cool!

Mine is here.

Blackbeltjones/work: Start-of-year mapping of my del.icio.us

NetRatings Japan has some new data out on Internet usage.

There's a lot of interesting bits of information but a few jumped out at me.

One is that the number one site in terms of growth (visits by Japanese month year to year) is Wikipedia.org!

wikipedia.org ウィキペディア (オンライン百科事典) 283 2,058 626%

That first number is visits (in thousands) in Nov. 2003, and then Nov. 2004, making for a 626% increase! I know Wikipedia Japan launched in 2004, so that had something to do with it, I'm sure, but I think it's a validation of the Wikipedia model, which is getting a lot of debate over on Many-to-Many.

Then there's a list of the top-trafficked sites which have been online since Nov. 2003 (i.e. less than one-year old sites.) Many of these are weblog services.

livedoor.jp ライブドアブログ 7,385 [weblog service]
exblog.jp エキサイトブロ&