Technology
North Korea Turns Cell Phone Use Into War Crime
As if living in North Korea wasn’t hard enough. Now the regime is instituting a 100 day mourning period, which prohibits the use of mobile phones. And they’re serious about it: “[T]he ruling Workers’ Party has warned that anyone found using a mobile phone during the 100 day mourning period following Kim Jong-il’s death will be punished ‘like a war criminal.’” Now I wonder if this applies specifically to using your cell phone to make [...] Continue »
China Tries (And Fails) To Fix Rail Tickets Problems Online
In 2010, I spent six months in Beijing battling the crowded mobs on the subway lines praying for a little space to breath on the central No. 1 red line. But that was nothing compared to when I wanted to travel to other parts of China. That was a whole different kind of battle – the buying rail tickets kind. Think about the lines at Disneyland or to get into a store at midnight on [...] Continue »
Japan Uses Monkeys to Measure Radiation at Fukushima
Via the Telegraph: A new project by researchers at Fukushima University will use monkeys to test radiation levels in the forests around the Fukishima nuclear plants devastated by last spring’s earthquake and tsunami. Outfitted with collars that have radiation meters and GPS transmitters, as a professor involved said, this is “the first time such an experiment has been carried out with monkeys.” Well, yes, that seems unsurprising to me since the headline alone was enough [...] Continue »
The Full AsiaD Interview: Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang
The last time I blogged about Nvidia’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, was when he was on The Charlie Rose Show. This latest interview was a few weeks ago during All Things D (Digital) Asia conference in Hong Kong. Being in the mobile space professionally, I’ve been quite interested and impressed with Nvidia’s entry into the smartphone and tablet space with the Tegra line of processors. In this interview, Huang talks about Nvidia’s latest upcoming Quad-core processor [...] Continue »
China Will Never Become a World Power Until It Learns to Respect Intellectual Property
A Chinese businessman tells me offhandedly that he’s under federal investigation. He doesn’t know enough to explain that he’s being investigated for massive amounts of trademark infringement. Those words aren’t in his vocabulary. IP isn’t part of his knowledge set. Instead he says, “You ever heard of Chanel? My factory in China makes Chanel bags. I ship them here and sell in America, in Chinatown. Oh, but my bags are much cheaper than what Chanel sells [...] Continue »
Mysterious White Structures Found In China’s Gobi Desert
China’s been up to something and everyone wants to know what it’s about: “New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert…It’s located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert…The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit.” So, any theories of what this could [...] Continue »
J-Pop Group AKB48′s Newest Promotion: “Make a Baby With Me” for $19 a Month
Oh, the things that people will do for 48-member J-Pop group AKB48. From the Japan Times: “Hardcore fans who cough up ¥1,480 ($19) a month will be able to use the AKBaby app that allows them to see what kind of baby they might have in the extremely unlikely event that they got to impregnate their favorite pop idol.” AKB48′s members, by the way, have members as young as 15 years old.
Siri Doesn’t Understand Japanese Accents
So my mom has been bugging me about getting her an iPhone. First I got one (because I’m cool like that), and then my dad decided to be “hip” and get one himself (because he’s a poser like that) and now my mother is hinting that she’d like one, too. She already owns a PowerBook, an iPod, an iPad and emails me incessantly from her Gmail account so buying an iPhone 4S would only complete [...] Continue »
Cloned Super Sniffing Dogs Detect Drugs in South Korea
While South Koreans scientists have been known for cloning beloved pets that have died, they have also found much more practical applications of this technology. Cloned super sniffing dogs nicknamed “Toppies” (for “Tomorrow Puppies”) now patrol Korean airports, checking for drugs. These Labrador Retrievers have proven extremely successful in their job. You might ask, why is this a big deal? It turns out that the economics of training sniffing dogs make cloning, despite its expense, [...] Continue »
DUDE WTF ASIA: Japanese Company Creates Super Realistic 3D Human Faces
What is up with Japanese people and their fascination of making face replicas of themselves? Back in August, we found out that LaughingSquid, a Japanese CloneFactory can make 20” dolls that look exactly like you. Now, there is a Japanese Company called Real-f that makes 3D human face masks or 3D human face heads. The technology they use can even get down to the individual pores on your face. For a whopping price of 3,920USD, [...] Continue »
Photojojo Founder Amit Gupta Has Leukemia, Searching for South Asian Bone Marrow Donors
Amit Gupta, founder of popular camera website Photojojo, has been diagnosed with Acute Leukemia, and is appealing to South Asians on the Internet to get swabbed for a possible bone marrow match. The National Bone Marrow Registry has 9.5 million records on file, yet the chances of someone from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000. Author Seth Godin has also offered $10,000 to the first person who is a [...] Continue »
Hong Kong Teen’s Graphic Tribute to Steve Jobs Goes Viral
Apple’s former CEO, Steve Jobs passed away a couple of days ago and it caught many of us by surprise. On the day of October 5, 2011, we saw many people tweeting about it, updating their Facebook statuses, posting pictures and quotations of Steve Jobs on tumblr, and even cracking jokes about it. Jonathan Mak, a college student from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, designed this logo, which became a worldwide Internet sensation. Mak came up [...] Continue »
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