News On Japan - Latest News

Sony on brink of upheaval as analysts back British chief (Jan 5)

Nothing new here except that this looks to be the critical moment for Howard. If he can really make deep cuts, literally shed 20-35% of the business that is not profitable, then he has a chance of keeping Sony relevant. If Stringer can't make cuts that deep, he'll be replaced within a 1-2 year time frame with some lame Japanese executive who'd never make those cuts. This is the moment for Sony to seize the fact that Howard is NOT JAPANESE, and Sony is NO LONGER PROFITABLE, and to make the necessary cuts. As a shareholder myself, I demand no less.Koya Tabata, a Credit Suisse analyst, recently warned investors that the restructuring of Sony is perilously overdue and must be radical. Sony management needs to make a rapid shift in its business model to one driven by earnings in the content business, he said.

The focus of research and development must be on software, he said, adding: “The most important thing is that, to improve organisational strength in the areas of development, pu...

SILKYPIX Developer Studio Ver. 3.0.27.2 (Jan 5)

If you need the most recent update to Silkypix Developer Studio, Ver.3.0.27.2, and you can't download it from Shortcut Software because of the malware they are hosting on their site, you can download it from Ichikawa Soft Laboratory, the Japanese developer of the software:

Windows:
http://www2.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english/download/file/SilkypixE30272.EXE

Macintosh:
http://www2.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english/download/file/SILKYPIX_DS3E_3.0.27.2.dmg

2009 Tokyo Bloggers New Years Meetup (Jan 5)

Happy new year everyone.

I plan to attend the 2009 Tokyo Bloggers New Years Meetup on Jan. 17th here in Tokyo. If you'd like to attend, please contact TPR over at Trans-Pacific Radio.

Esther Dyson on Google vs. Yandex (Dec 22)

Esther Dyson on Google (vs. Yandex) and her preference of market forces for regulation of information on the Internet: Big Brother Google?

As it happens, I have a complex relationship with Google. I have fed at its trough many times – as a personal guest; as an advisory board member of Stop Badware, an NGO it sponsors; and as a speaker at its events. I also sit on the board of 23andMe, co-founded by the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

But I also sit on the boards of Yandex in Russia, one of a small number of companies around the world who beat Google in their local markets, and of WPP, a worldwide advertising/marketing company famous for its rivalry with Google. Finally, I’m suspicious of concentrations of power of any kind.

So I welcomed the chance to clarify my thinking. I took the con side of the debate: Google does not violate its motto. However, I do think there is a danger that someday it could.

...

A Google that is accountable to its users – searchers, advertisers, in...

mishandled from day 1 (Dec 19)

Reuters: Japanese group asks Google to stop map service

AFP: Japanese seek to scrap Google's Street View

Best read is this one-

SearchEngineLand: Japanese Lawyers, Professors Try To Block StreetView

2008 - Change and Japanese Politics (Dec 18)

If you read only one article on Japanese politics this year, make it Tobias Harris' overview of 2008 at Néojaponisme 2008: Change and PoliticsOne way or another, Japan needs political change. The latest economic downturn will only exacerbate the problems already facing Japan. It will make it all the more difficult for the government to provide pensions and other social services. It will delay the government’s efforts to pay down Japan’s national debt to more sustainable levels. It will swell the already swollen ranks of Japan’s temporary workers, who now constitute nearly a third of the labor force. And it will do little to encourage younger Japanese to marry and start families.

gree IPO (Dec 17)

Japan's second largest SNS, Gree, has IPOed, at 4800 yen for a total market cap of $1.2 billion with a b dollars (on annual profits of $10 million?!?!)

I have a gree account, have had one for a while. I'm an AU user too (AU's mobile SNS is gree.) Maybe I'm blind but I just don't see the $1 billion in value here.

How to save Detroit (Dec 16)

Barry Ritholtz is awesome.

How to Save Detroit | The Big Picture

Google and network neutrality (Dec 15)

UPDATE: Google says that the WSJ doesn't know what it is writing about and that this is about content caching, not network neutrality: Google Public Policy Blog: Net neutrality and the benefits of caching. If that's the case, this is either really shoddy reporting or there's something about "content caching" that is too similar to a real benefit in network access. If you're an entity like Google, and you're willing to pay ISPs around the world to put google content on cache servers all over the Internet, that amounts to a benefit that others without such pockets or agreements cannot get.

What say you?

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WSJ: Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.
Quite different...

Nomura and Madoff (Dec 15)

Nomura looks like a place that does not do enough due diligence.

Bloomberg: Nomura Has 27.5 Billion Yen at Risk Linked to Madoff (Update2)

Reuters: Nomura says has $303 mln Madoff-related exposure

Associated Press: Nomura: $306 million in Wall Street Ponzi scheme

AFP: Nomura says it could lose 302 mln dollars in Madoff scandal

Cerberus Capital, Chrysler and the bailout (Dec 11)

First, read Louise Story's piece on Cerberus and Chrysler.
Chrysler is the smallest of the Big Three automakers, but it stands apart from its peers in another crucial respect. While General Motors and the Ford Motor Company are public corporations, Chrysler is controlled by one of the world’s richest and most secretive private investment companies.

That investment company is Mr. [John] Snow’s employer, Cerberus Capital Management, which has used its wealth and deep connections in Washington to shape the debate over the foundering automakers to its advantage.

In recent weeks, Mr. Snow has personally lobbied Mr. Paulson and others for a federal rescue that would salvage Cerberus’s investments in Detroit. Cerberus has also deployed a corps of lobbyists and former government officials to secure a bailout and protect its interests.
Chrysler’s Friends in High Places

Then Dan Gerstein op-ed in Forbes starts to sound very important. More important than corporate jets worth $100 million...

The Automotive Rigs pool (Dec 11)

The Automotive Rigs pool at Flickr is small but impressive. Shots of cars either from the car being photographed or from a second vehicle, showing the car in question at speed.

CCTV Reporter’s Arrest Causes a Stir (Dec 11)

The Wall Street Journal is reporting about a the arrest of a CCTV reporter in Beijing by policemen from Shanxi Province, China, which is newsworthy because CCTV is the Chinese Government's official TV station: CCTV Reporter’s Arrest Causes a Stir.

I actually met this reporter last month here in Tokyo and heard her story first-hand. What is not reported on by the WSJ is a key point, the reporter, Li (which is not her real name), was not on the CCTV payroll when she was researching and reporting on this particular news item. Her tapes and reporting media were all confiscated so I'm almost positive we'll never see that article she was going to write or the information that she had gathered.

What I was impressed by was her commitment to ethical journalism and her desire to get the story out even if she wasn't on the CCTV payroll at that particular time. She deserves to be praised for what she did, not jailed, and Reporters Sans Frontieres should be supporting her (not to mention CCTV...

a global lost decade (Dec 11)

Bernanke is said to be a student of Japan's lost decade. And yet he clearly did not anticipate nor has he deftly managed this global economic meltdown.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Paul Krugman, winner of this year's Nobel economics prize, said on Monday that the world could face a Japan-style, decade-long slump.

...

"A scenario I fear is that we'll see, for the whole world, an equivalent of Japan's lost decade, the 1990s -- that we'll see a world of zero interest rates, deflation, no sign of recovery, and it will just go on for a very extended period," he told a news conference.

"And that's unfortunately very easy to see happen."

...

"We can easily be talking about a world economy that is depressed until 2011 and maybe beyond," Krugman said.

"If there's a safe place I can't see it."

Nobel winner Krugman's worst case: a lost decade

Tsujino to lead Google Japan (Dec 10)

SONY VETERAN TSUJINO SET TO TAKE HELM AT GOOGLE JAPAN