Japan

At CEATEC 2010 in Chiba, Japan this past week, more than a few companies were showcasing tablet computers, due in no small part to the success of Apple's iPad. The most notable among them was the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Read More

At CEATEC 2010 in Chiba, Japan, Panasonic exhibited the Lumix Phone, amid some significant excitement as they had teased the specs in a release the previous week. While it remains to be seen exactly how good the Lumix Phone is, it's certainly interesting to see a product that at least approaches the model of a camera with a phone rather than a just another phone with a camera. Read More

TDK has been showing off its new OLED film at the CEATEC conference in Chiba, Japan. This flexible film surface can even show images while bending, giving it an immediate advantage over glass displays. TDK hopes to begin production of the film displays within one year, so it might not be such a long time before we see them popping up in our mobile devices. Read More

It wasn't so long ago that we reported on the Roadrunner supercomputer breaking the petaflop barrier. But this week Fujitsu announced that it will begin shipping its next-generation supercomputer which has a lofty performance goal of 10 petaflops – that's ten thousand trillion operations per second! The computer is nicknamed the 'K', a reference to the Japanese word "Kei," or 10 to the 16th power. If the K could reach this goal, it would hold the first place title – at least for a while – on top of the top 500 supercomputers list. Read More

Six years back we covered the amazing 3.4 meter bi-pedal exoskeleton from Japan known as the Landwalker. Imagine our surprise when we found that its producer, machinery and robotics manufacturer Sakakibara-Kikai, has developed a smaller exoskeleton called the Kid's Walker. It didn't get that name because of its diminutive size either – the Kid's Walker is a functioning bi-pedal exoskeleton designed to be piloted by children! Read More

With 3D TV still seen as not much more than a gimmick by the majority of consumers and a lack of content available for anything other than computer animated features and the odd sporting event, 3D gaming might be the best hope for getting people to embrace the technology. The sense of immersion offered by 3D games highlights the strengths of the technology so it isn’t surprising to see arcade machine makers bring the current generation of 3D technology into arcades to suck the coins from gamers’ pockets. Konami’s Road Fighters 3D racing game is one such machine that is already hitting arcades across Japan. Read More

The folks over at Tokyo Flash are at it again with yet another crazy LED watch design that inspires both awe and confusion. This latest optical illusion watch design makes use of the famous (or infamous?) magic eye phenomenon to display the time. Of course to most onlookers the zig-zag pattern will make no sense, but if the owner can train himself to see the time displayed behind the pattern he will be sure to both astound and annoy friends and family. Read More

We usually accept it as a given that we can't change the weather. When it comes to extreme situations like hurricanes or earthquakes, such disasters are labeled "acts of god" because we generally feel helpless to in the face of nature's wrath. But recently an ambitious Japanese manufacturing firm Ise Kogyo has boldly claimed that they can help weaken the impact of typhoons. And even more surprising, the company's weapon of choice is the submarine. Read More

While augmented reality still hasn't quite lived up to the initial hype (at least in terms of practical applications), it's still a great source of eye candy and geeky fun, especially in Japan. Panasonic is the latest company to jump on the AR bandwagon, as they recently released an iPhone app called '3D VIERA AR Greeting' that uses augmented reality to promote the new 3D VIERA TVs. Read More