Last month, on Valentine’s Day, I wrote that in Japan, it’s a good day – the gifts are for the guys…
But did you read the details in my post? In Japan (also in Korea) we have a special day called White Day. Please read the rules for that day about how to handle things with your girlfriend…
Let me also explain the concept of “giri choco” – translated to “obligation chocolate”. If you live in Japan, you probably received chocolate or some other …
The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD is cheaper! And finally available in Europe and Japan!
Amazon today launched its largest slate, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9, in Europe (the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, to be exact) and Japan, where it’s been up for pre-order since late last month. That’s not all, though, as Amazon says having to make more 8.9-inch tabs for those markets has cut production costs, and the savings are being passed on to US customers in the form of a price cut. This isn’t one of the time-sensitive offers Amazon has a habit of pulling, so from today onwards, you’ll be able to pick up a WiFi-only 16GB model for $269, or the 4G option with 32 gigs of storage for $399. The higher capacity models — 32GB WiFi-only and 64GB with 4G — now tally up at $299 and $499, respectively.
Source: Amazon
Good news for those located outside the US. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is now available in a select number of countries in Europe, including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, as well as Japan. To celebrate the expansion, Amazon also dropped the price of the tablet to $269 in the US, with the 4G version now starting at $399.
Previously, the 8.9-inch version of the Kindle Fire HD was priced at $299, while the 4G version costed $499, which means that the WiFi-only model received a $30 price drop, while the 4G LTE model received a healthy $100 drop, making it even more tempting to jump with both feet in and grab the tablet at a good price.
The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 features a nice 1920×1200-resolution display, which provides 254 ppi of pixel density. The tablet comes with a Texas Instruments OMAP4470 dual-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 1GB of RAM. The WiFi-only version comes in 16GB and 32GB flavors, while the 4G model comes in 32GB and 64GB variants.
The Kindle Fire series of tablets are great companions if you’re particularly close with Amazon’s ecosystem. Prime members get a lot of exclusive features with the Kindle Fire software, including the ability to rent ebooks for free using Amazon’s lending library, something that normal Prime members can’t take advantage of.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 launches in Europe and Japan, US version now $269 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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While the world waits for the official release of Steve Jobs’ upcoming biopic starring Ashton Kutcher called jOBS, his life story will also be receiving the manga treatment in Japan in Kiss magazine, which is a publication specifically for women. Artist Mari Yamazaki has been chosen to illustrate Jobs in the officially licensed manga as she feels “sympathy for Jobs” as well as for her realistic and charming painting style. The manga will be based on the best-selling Walter Isaacson biography titled “Steve Jobs.”
A teaser image drawn by Yamazaki was released to show what kind of art style she’ll bring to Jobs image. As you can see above, we think she did a great job of Jobs’ portrait as she captured the majority of his likeness, even down to his slight face stubble. We’re curious to see what extent her talent can take the Steve Jobs manga as we’re sure he’ll be portraying many emotions throughout its story, especially towards the end of his life when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Yellow/Gold iPhone 5S In The Works?, iPads for Qantas In-flight Entertainment,
Japanese researchers from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology recently announced that they have cloned one mouse a total of 581 times. They did this by making clones, then making clones out of its clones and so on for 25 generations. The Nutcracker is screwed.
Original images by Karl Palutke and CJ Isherwood; resulting masterpiece by Lambert Varias
The researchers, who began their experiment back in 2005, used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. That in itself is nothing new; in fact it’s the same technique that was used to clone the legendaryDolly the sheep. However, according to Live Science and the researchers themselves, repeated cloning was usually highly improbable, if not outright impossible, probably because successive clones had genetic defects in them. Interestingly enough, Dolly lived for only 6 years, even though domestic sheep live 10 to 12 years on average.
To counteract the defects, the Japanese used trichostatin, a histone deacetylase inhibitor or HDI. HDIs are compounds that stop certain genes from being expressed. As a result, not only is my nose bleeding because of all these advanced biology terms, the 581 mice clones (seen above) “were all fertile, they gave birth to healthy pups and lived a normal lifespan of about two years, similar to normally conceived mice.”
The leader of the research team Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama said that they hope their breakthrough could be used to make “superior quality animals” for conservation and agricultural purposes. All I know is that it is imperative that these people not get their hands on Jango Fett, or we’re all doomed.
[via RIKEN, Cell Stem Cell & Live Science via Popular Science]
Two years ago today, Japan was ravaged by a horrible tsunami. And now, right on the anniversary of the disaster, there’s a new memorial to the people and things who lived through it: the “miracle tree” that survived the surge has now been converted in a sculpture. More »
When trouble looms, most people turn to the internet before anything else. As such, the search giant is ensuring that it’s offering public alerts to those in disaster-prone regions. Following a rollout in the US last year, Google is also adding disaster warnings to its local versions of Search, Maps and Now — using data from the Japan Meteorological Agency. At the same time, Google is teaming up with 14 Japanese prefectures and cities to make governmental data online during crises and that troubling period afterward.
Source: Google
Sony’s major Mobile World Congress product reveal turned out to be the very same slate it had already taken the wraps off of this past January in Japan: the Xperia Tablet Z. Now that the 10-inch Android tablet’s been officially announced for global availability, it’s time for it to start trickling out to market and (surprise, surprise) Japan’s getting first dibs. Starting March 9th, NTT DoCoMo will begin accepting pre-orders for the LTE-enabled tablet (in black or white) with a general launch date set for March 22nd. There doesn’t seem to be any indication of pricing as of yet, but we’ve seen figures that indicate this region-specific Xperia Tablet Z could retail for around ¥85,470 (about $900 USD). If you like what Sony’s done with this waterproof, Jelly Bean tablet and you live in the Land of the Rising Sun, well then you know what to do. For everyone else around the globe, there’s always the vague promise of a Q2 launch to cling to.
Via: Xperia blog
Source: NTT DoCoMo (Translated)
This bucolic Japanese bathroom is a temporary installation at Tokyo’s House Vision Expo. There should be no question as to whether you’d pee in it. As long as you don’t defile the bushes, that would be the best bathroom experience of your life. More »
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