Items in category "Technology archives on Japan News" - Page 1 of 4
Hesitant launch questions success of PlayStation Vita
Sony has launched the PlayStation Vita in Japan but a series of bugs has forced the company to release an apology statement soon after. Analysts now wonder if the Vita will have the expected success for Sony, which is battling Microsoft and others on...
Japanese tsunami, most shared news video in 2011 on YouTube
Raw images of the tsunami waves entering the city of Sendai was the most watched news video on YouTube during the year 2011, according to a statement of the U.S. video sharing network. In March 2011, tragedy struck the nation of Japan where a 8.9-mag...
Sony shows how paper turns into power
Sony presented at an environmental fair in Tokyo a device that turns shredded paper into energy. An employee invited children to put shredded paper into a jar full of enzyme-enriched water and then shake the jar. After a few minutes, the liquid prod...
Hackers target 1.8 million accounts at game maker Square Enix
Japanese game maker Square Enix, which produces well-known titles like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, announced that hackers attacked its servers and data on 1.8 million clients may have been accessed. The company stores the customers' names and ema...
Olympus cleans up accounts, may need to sell or merge
Japan’s troubled camera and medical equipment maker Olympus managed to submit a financial report to correct balance statements from the last five years, just hours before a deadline set by the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Olympus avoided thus being delisted...
Japan gives Cyclone Power patent protection for high efficiency, clean-tech eng...
Cyclone Power Technologies, a developer of the all-fuel, clean-tech Cyclone Engine, has recently secured intellectual property protection from Japan for its engine technology. Christopher Nelson, the President of Cyclone, said that the company “have...
Panasonic returns to Europe with new smartphone
Japanese tech maker Panasonic announced it will try again to conquer the European mobile phone market after an absence of nearly six years. The company intends to launch its first “global” smartphone next March, in Europe. The product will then be b...
Nexon details highly-anticipated Tokyo listing
In a filing with the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Korean online gaming company Nexon gave several details about its initial public offering (IPO), set to become the largest at the Japanese exchange this year. Nexon said it would price its shares at 1,300 ye...
Olympus scrambles to meet deadline, avoid delisting
Scandal-plagued Japanese tech company Olympus has promised to release its second-quarter financial report by the December 14 deadline, in an effort to clarify the situation of its accounts and avoid being delisted. "We plan to submit by December 14 o...
Twitter, mixi form Japan tie-up as Facebook gains
TOKYO (AP) — Twitter Inc. and Japan's biggest homegrown social networking site mixi Inc. joined forces Wednesday to strengthen their ground against a rapidly expanding Facebook. For Twitter, the partnership with a local social network could point to...
Sony: A year to forget
Japanese iconic tech maker Sony was preparing for an year of triumph, but it all turned into a nightmare. The turning point was the March 11 natural disasters, its chief executive officer Howard Stringer says. This was supposed to be “the first year...
Ex-Olympus CEO makes dramatic comeback to Japan
The former chief executive of Japanese camera maker Olympus, Michael Woodford, has returned to Japan and met with prosecutors in Tokyo on Thursday, one day before facing the very same board which fired him one month ago over a scandal involving murky...
Apple may work with Sharp to make the “iTV”
American technology giant Apple is shifting partnerships in Japan towards Sharp, eyeing the production of a brand-new TV range which may be called iTV. The partnership with Sharp is made at the expense of South Korean rival Samsung Electronics, which...
Twitter rolls out new social features
Twitter has added new features to its service on Monday, making it more transparent and enhancing social functions. Users are now able to see who likes their posts as well as other Twitter activities of the people they follow. "You can now see when s...
Olympus shareholder wants back sacked CEO to “clean up”
One of the largest shareholders in Olympus has called on Thursday for the sacked British CEO Michael Woodford to be reinstated in order to conduct a “clean up” at the troubled camera and medical equipment maker and asked for new dismissals at the com...
New robotic dog can guide the visually-impaired
Japanese robot maker NSK has presented a robotic dog than can “see” around it using Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect device. The robot is moving on four wheels and is destined to help visually-impaired people. The robot uses a set of 3D-sensing video came...
New robotic suit may help nuclear cleaners
A Japanese company unveiled a so-called “exoskeleton robot”, actually a suit that can be put on by people in order to make heavy protection costumes easier to wear. The invention could help nuclear specialist wear heavy anti-radiation suits in contam...
Rakuten buys Canadian e-reader maker
Japanese online shopping-mall operator Rakuten announced it agreed to pay $315 million to purchase the Canadian e-reader maker Kobo Inc., the latest acquisition in a long string by the Asian company. Kobo debuted on the Canadian market two years ago...
Online gaming giant Nexon seeks $1.3 bn. at Tokyo IPO
Korean online gaming company Nexon intends to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December and get up to Y100 billion ($1.3 billion), the Japanese press reports. It would be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in Japan up to now during this yea...
Japan shows world’s largest 3-D glasses-free screen
A giant 200-inch 3D high definition screen that can be watched without special glasses is the largest auto-stereoscopic full HD 3-D display in the world, its Japanese creators claim. Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications (NICT)...
The iPhone helps Softbank report triple profit
Softbank Japan’s third largest mobile carrier by number of subscribers announced a three times increase of the net profit in the April-September period, mainly thanks to strong sales of the iPhone. Another factor that helped Softbank’s financial bala...
Olympus scandal goes on: new President faces old issues
Japanese tech company Olympus is under fire from several directions one day after its chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa resigned in an attempt to restore trust, amid a public scandal involving an ousted CEO and corruption suspicions. The company fired its B...
Japan shows “miniature UFO” to the world
The world’s first spherical flying machine was developed and presented by Japan’s Ministry of Defense. It can fly in all directions, hover like a helicopter and even roll over onto the ground. The machine weighs 350 grams and is made of off-the-shelf...
Japanese lawmakers’ e-mails, eyed by hackers
Hackers may have been spying on the e-mails of lawmakers in Japan’s lower house of parliament for a month, according to reports by the Japanese press. The computer network of the lawmakers was infected with a virus in July and passwords were stolen,...
Panasonic to axe 1,000 jobs, scale down TV business
Panasonic is undergoing big efforts to revamp its money-losing TV business, with new measures including more than 1,000 jobs cut and a downgrade of the business. Production of plasma panels at its plant in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, will be halted...
Yahoo makes more advertising money in Japan
Bigger advertising revenues, especially from clients in the fashion, food and auto markets, helped the Japanese subsidiary of tech giant Yahoo to score a 13 percent increase of the net profit in the third quarter. The net profit of Yahoo Japan Corp....
Eyeing Asian market, LinkedIn launches in Japanese
TOKYO (AP) — LinkedIn Corp. on Thursday launched its online professional networking service in Japanese, the first Asian language platform for the rapidly growing company as it pushes to expand in the region. Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn...
PlayStation Vita hits stores Feb. 22 in US, Europe
TOKYO (AP) — Sony says its PlayStation Vita portable game machine is going on sale in North America and Europe on Feb. 22, about two months after it makes its debut in Japan. The next-generation device will also launch the same day in Latin America,...
Samsung asks for a sale ban on iPhone 4S in Japan
South Korean technology maker Samsung Electronics has sued U.S.-based Apple and asked that the newly release iPhone 4S would be banned on the Japanese and Australian markets. Samsung has also asked that sales of iPad 2 and iPhone 4 would be halted on...
First ever non-Japanese Olympus chief lasted just 6 months
The first ever non-Japanese president of technology company Olympus has been stripped of his duties only six months after being appointed, and just two weeks after he had been additionally named as chief executive officer. British Michael Woodford wa...
New Japanese robot can learn in “human style”
A Japanese scientist is working on a robot that will be able to learn from the past and find out new information in order to solve tasks it had never experienced before, much like humans do. The robot looks around its environment and can also access...
New attack on Sony, over 90.000 online accounts closed
A large number of unauthorized sign-in attempts that occurred between October 7 and 10 forced Sony to suspend about 93,000 accounts on its online entertainment networks, the company announced on Wednesday. The compromised accounts were active on Play...
Japan appoints new taskforce against hackers
Prime minister Yoshihiko Noda’s cabinet has set up a special taskforce to deal with cyber attacks, a phenomenon that has been lately affecting more and more public and private computers. The new committee comprises members of the Ministry of Internal...
Sony in talks to buyout mobile venture from Ericsson
Japanese tech giant Sony is discussing a takeover of its share in the joint-venture with Swedish phone maker Ericsson, according to sources close to the matter. Sony is looking for ways to reorganize its activities, which are now rather split, at lea...
Japanese robot washes hair with human touch
Panasonic has developed a robot that can wash hair using advanced technology to replicate the human touch. The purpose of the robot is to help with the care for the elderly and handicapped in a rapid aging Japanese society. The machine uses 24 roboti...
Toyota showcases green technologies
Toyota Motor Corporation held a display of its newly developed technologies in line with its biotechnology and afforestation businesses at the Toyota Biotechnology and Afforestation Laboratory in Aichi Prefecture. These new technologies include a str...
