March 2008 Archives

NPR on Gedde Watanabe and Sixteen Candles. I am definitely among those who always winced at Watanabe's role in Sixteen Candles. It's amazing to think that the actor, a) does not speak Japanese, and b) had no idea how his role would have had such an impact on pop-culture and Asian-American stereotypes. I guess he was too young to realize.

It's good to see the Giant Robot guys still doing well. I met them when they were still struggling in the late 90s when I was working for Toyota in LA.

In 1984, when Sixteen Candles came out, some Asian-American groups decried Long Duk Dong as stereotypical, racist and part of a long history of Hollywood's offensive depictions of Asian men.

"It took me a while to understand that," Watanabe says. "In fact, I was working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I was accosted a couple of times by a couple of women who were just really irate and angry. They asked, 'How could you do a role like that?' But it's funny, too, because at the same time I laugh at the character. It's an odd animal."
...
The situation for Asian-American men in Hollywood has improved a bit since 1984. There are more Asian Americans behind the camera, and more substantial roles, especially on TV. As far as film actors go, many people mention John Cho. He is best known for playing Harold in the comedy Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and in an upcoming sequel.

But Asian-American actors are still trying to overcome several big issues. They want more roles that are simply American, not ethnic.

And, says Watanabe: "We really need an Asian-American star, and it hasn't happened." Hollywood may be importing leading men from Asia, one oft-heard argument says, but it has a ways to go with Asian Americans.

Stephen O'Grady will be very jealous.

I get to see the Sox vs. the Hanshin Tigers here at the Tokyo Dome today thanks to a good friend.

Some links of note...

• What I Learned at (Mashup) Camp: There was one common denominator, however: JavaScript. Nearly everyone was using it in some capacity, and one or two applications were nearly 100% JavaScript.

• Apple pushing Safari downloads on Windows users: It now appears that the Cupertino-based company aspires to use the advantage presented by the Software Update mechanism to muscle its way further up the browser charts at the expense Microsoft's Internet Explorer and other third-party Windows browsers.

• Where By “Interesting”, I Mean “Annoying”: This is disgraceful. It fails the user in favor of serving Apple. It is, in fact, malware-level tactics.

• More Kotoeri (Japanese input) tips: Note that in OS X 10.5, there is a fair amount of (Japanese) Koeteri input method help in English accessible by choosing 'Koeteri Help' in the Input menu.

Gyao, a subsidiary of Japanese broadband ISP Usen, looks to be jumping on the YouTube bandwagon. magibon is the faux-Japanese lonelygirl15, who has a huge following (many of her short videos have over 1 million views on YouTube) among otaku worldwide.

A few months from now, we'll see magibon with representation in Japan and then all over the mainstream media like Leah Dizon.

I don't ever use Gyao because their platform requires Windows/Internet Explorer.

I don't write about my work at Mozilla on this blog as I have another blog (with comments that work) where I post all of my Mozilla-related information. However, this recent article with Mozila CEO, John Lilly, Forget Facebook. The Web's platform is Firefox by Matt Asay is a great overview of why I love working at Mozilla and why it's such an exciting time to be working on the web.

Asiajin reports that anti-virus software vendor, Trend Micro's website was hacked recently, and the hackers were then serving various viruses for 3 (!!!) days, March 9-12th) from the Trend Micro website. There's a statement on the Japanese website but no statement on any of the English or other language news sites.

If a security services/software firm can't keep their own web servers secured, and left their own hacked website up for 3 days, there's no logical reason to expect that their own security services are any better.

HEY TREND MICRO! DISCLOSE THE BREACH IN ENGLISH ASAP! TRYING TO HIDE THIS WON'T WORK!

The probable reason Trend Micro's website was hacked? They're running Windows 2000 (is Microsoft even supporting Windows 2000 Server anymore?)

Richard Katz of The Oriental Economist has a very good op-ed in the WSJ, Japan's Stress Test, on the topic of the challenges facing Japanese economic reform. Katz summarizes his points in a recent post to NBR.

To quickly summarize my views, I see two obstacles to growth, one on the supply side and one on the demand side.

1) Supply side obstacles. Growth is the sum of how many additional people are working plus how much more each person can produce. With the working age population falling and more people working only part-time, the sole source of GDP growth has been productivity growth. Reforms that exposes firms to fiercer Darwinian competition will bring Japan's myriad backward sectors up to world benchmarks, and improve overall potential growth. This can certainly be combined with social safety net features and other measures so that, while some current firms and jobs will disappear, individuals are protected, true security is enhanced and income equality is restored.

2) Demand side obstacles. In my view, anemic consumption is not the result of culture, but of lack of money. Real wages per worker have fallen 2.7% since 2002 and so people have lowered their savings rate drastically to maintain consumption. This problem is simply the exacerbation of a longterm structural problem stemming as far back as the mid-1970s. The household share of disposable income--e.g. wages, interest, dividends, rent, income of self-employed--has been too low a share of national income relative to support consumer-led growth. Give them money and they will spend.

Wretch.cc now #1 site (by traffic) in Taiwan. If the reported purchase price is true, it was a very good purchase.

Wretch.cc was ranked the top Web site in Taiwan in a top-100 list tabulated by Business Next, a local magazine, and Taiwan's Access Rating Online (ARO). ... But despite Yahoo's best attempts to keep up with new features such as blogs, Wretch.cc continued to grow and gain popularity. It proved such a difficult battle that Yahoo Taiwan finally used cash to end the battle, buying Wretch.cc for an undisclosed sum. Local newspaper reports valued the deal at NT$700 million (US$22.7 million).

Yahoo Taiwan came in second in the ranking overall, but it remained number one against other Internet portals.

Rounding out the top five overall Web sites in Taiwan, PChome Online came in third, Yam.com ranked fourth, and Gamer.com took fifth place in the Business Next/ARO list.

The U.S. version of Google ranked first among search engines, and 14th overall, while Google Taiwan came in second, China's Baidu ranked third and video search engine Flurl came in fourth.

Yahoo Dethroned in Taiwan

WWNPHD, originally uploaded by the sweetchuck.

Awesome!

Mark Pesce (Wikipedia) has moved to Australia and is running a consultancy called Future Street Consulting. Pesce has a great blog post on his site, That Business Conversation, talking about stuff we know and use every day, Craig's List, Trip Advisor, and all of the social network software and services we use. I think this essay is a great read for people who are not on the Internet all day (like some of us) and gives a good overview of how the Internet has impacted communication between people. It's obvious to most of us who work on the Internet but for those who don't, it's not obvious.

Jason Gray, who writes for Screen International and does other work in the film industry in Japan, covers the Kazuyoshi Miura cold case very comprehensively on his blog: L.A. Giwaku: Two-Bit Celebrity Kazuyoshi Miura & The Homicide Case That Was Never Properly Laid To Rest. While there is no smoking gun, there's so much circumstantial evidence that points to Miura's responsibility in his wife's death that I do hope that the LA police have new evidence (or new techniques) that can put him away for what he did to his wife (and potentially other women as well.)