Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
Digital May 29, 2013
Online titans to profit from nostalgia
by John Naughton
You may have noticed the hullabaloo last week over the news that Yahoo!, a weighty Internet giant, had paid $1.1 billion to acquire Tumblr, a blogging platform allegedly popular with the yoof of today. What you may not have noticed is the declaration by ...
Digital | On: Games May 28, 2013
Revamped 'Shin Megami Tensei IV,' a new 'DoDonPachi Saidaioujou' and collectable merchandise
by Brian Ashcraft
Most collectible statues are a few inches or perhaps 30 cm tall. Typically, they are not life-size. But this is no typical statue.
Digital May 22, 2013
Is computing speed set to make a quantum leap?
by John Naughton
“Our imagination is stretched to the utmost,” wrote Richard Feynman, the greatest physicist of his day, “not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things that are there.” Which is another way of saying that ...
Digital May 22, 2013
Cracked cellphone screens become the latest youth status symbol
Brittany Lofton spots them all the time: teens and college students clutching their beat-up cellphones, with screens so cracked that spider-web-like patterns creep across the glass. Sure, the screen’s razor-like shards make reading text messages and taking photos super blurry, not to mention slightly ...
Digital | ON: TECH May 21, 2013
Apps to stay healthy, hear the news and keep in touch
by Rick Martin
Taking time to shake a leg If you work in an office, you probably spend a fair part of your time sitting at a desk, which, of course, isn’t very healthy. To combat that the Pomodoro technique recommends that you work in intervals with ...
Digital | JAPAN WEB WATCH May 15, 2013
Google Glass may shatter Japan's 'manner' mode
by Akky Akimoto
Google Glass is the latest mobile Internet gadget to grab headlines. Resembling a pair of glasses, the futuristic device enables wearers to access the Internet — in particular Google’s search, maps and translation functions — as long as they have a Wifi or Bluetooth ...
Digital May 15, 2013
Crude 3-D print tech will make a big bang
by John Naughton
The news that a few jokers in Texas calling themselves Defense Distributed have succeeded in creating a working handgun using 3-D printing technology has thrown the cat into the pigeon coop. The reaction from legislators in the United States has been hyperactive. Democratic Congressman ...
Digital May 8, 2013
Google Glass, half full or half empty?
by John Naughton
The Chinese name their years after animals — the year of the goat, the rat and so on. In the tech world, we name years after devices. Thus, 2007 was the year of the iPhone and 2010 was the year of the iPad. It’s ...
Digital May 1, 2013
Fragile systems make twits of us all
by John Naughton
On Tuesday, April 23, a tweet from Associated Press (AP) revealed startling news. There had been explosions in the White House and Obama had been injured. The tweet was a hoax — the AP Twitter account had been hacked via a clever phishing exploit ...
Digital Apr 24, 2013
Why big IT projects go wrong
by John Naughton
In 1975, a computer scientist named Fred Brooks published one of the seminal texts in the literature of computing. It had the intriguing title of “The Mythical Man-Month” and it consisted simply of a set of essays on the art of managing large software ...
Digital | On: Games Apr 23, 2013
The collectables
by Brian Ashcraft
Game otaku rejoice! A bounty of treasures is available while limited-edition supplies last, from commemorative figurines to superkawaii retro backpacks.
Digital | JAPAN WEB WATCH Apr 17, 2013
Shows on the road: mobile, on-demand TV a hit in Japan
by Akky Akimoto
There must be very few homes in the developed world that don’t have a television, and Japan is no exception. Even in the Internet era, as terrestrial TV is slowly being replaced by networked TVs, cable channels and computers, regular TV broadcasting still makes ...