8 Asians

Windows 7 launched worldwide this past Thursday, but in what has to be one of the strangest, most bizarre cross promotions I think I have ever come across, Microsoft teamed up with Burger King in Japan to promote Windows 7 by offering the 7 layer Whopper – that’s seven beef patties. The whole burger is about 2,000 calories, all for about 777 Yen, or about US$8.50. But what does a Whopper have to do with Windows 7? I s Burger King is going to be selling copies of Windows 7 at their stores? And it’s not like I’m more interested in upgrading to Windows 7 because Burger King is running this promotion; I guess the only value for Microsoft is that it gets some free press. [EDITORS NOTE: Like, you know, this blog post.]

For the non-technical: Yahoo! Hack Day is an event where web and software developers spend nights at the Yahoo! campuses around the world to develop anything they want using Yahoo! technologies. They try to make it fun (the US version brought in Beck one year, GirlTalk the next) and have awards the next day although it’s mostly for the camaraderie.

So when the event was held this year in Taipei, what did Yahoo! Taiwan do? They hired lapdancers. Needless to say, a lot of people formerly affiliated with Yahoo!’s developer programs — already smarting from the lack of females in technology — were pretty pissed. (Full disclosure: I also previously worked at Yahoo!.) But a quick straw poll from the Taiwanese members of 8Asians kinda shrugged it off: one commenter on Gawker even noted that “being Taiwanese, all I can say is this is considered harmless fun in Taiwan and is culturally OK.” Also, people completely up in arms about this: your outrage should have started last year.

Is this an example of Yahoo! Taiwan completely going over the line? Or is this truly just a cultural thing?

A loyal reader pointed us to this latest Sony commercial. In an ever-increasing field of HDTV manufacturers, Sony has been making the case that it’s worth buying their brand and claims, “You can’t fake Sony quality. It makes watching sports in HD better.”

Justin Timberlake chimes that the more sports you watch on a Sony, the better you get at sports (while playing a mean Forrest Gump-like match of table tennis with quarterback Payton Manning). A claim like this is actually somewhat plausible — especially watching individual sports like golf or tennis.

However, Manning then claims that watching HD on a Sony has also improved his Chinese in Chinese. Now unless Manning is watching a lot of Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, I have a hard time believing that a product from a Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer such as Sony will improve my Chinese. And Timberlake’s Chinese is just God awful – is he even trying? His feeble attempt at Chinese is almost as bad as Rosie O’Donnell’s (okay, maybe not that bad).

Chinese can be a difficult language to learn, especially given its tonal nature as well as learning Chinese characters. I have to imagine that had Manning and Timberlake claimed that watching a Sony would improve their linguistic abilities with another Indo-European language besides English, the commercial just wouldn’t be as funny.

I have to admit, I thought the commercial was funny. And Timberlake can be quite the comedian. But I have to wonder, are we going to see more Chinese and Chinese families being the comedic twist in commercials, television and movies as China and Chinese language grows in global prominence and popularity? If watching HDTV can improve my Chinese, I should be completely fluent by now!  Personally, my favorite Sony Bravia TV ad was an ad of bouncing balls in San Francisco that was ironically only aired in Western Europe.

h/t: David

Honda has developed a new personal mobility technology, U3-X. It is a compact experimental device that fits comfortably between the riders legs, to provide free movement in all directions just as in human walking forward, backward, side-to-side, and diagonally.

Lest one assumes that this is for lazy, fat-assed Americans, this prototype is actually addressing a coming need in Japan, one of the most rapidly aging countries in the world, and concerns about how the elderly get around. It can stand upright unaided and the rider sits on it as they would a stool, with their feet on footrests. The unicycle maintains its balance as it scoots around at (slow) speeds of up to 3.7mph.

The U3-X, shaped liked the number eight with a wheel at the bottom and seat at the top, was unveiled [Thursday] to reporters in Japan. The wheel comprises a series of smaller motorised wheels within a larger one, which enables the rider to manoeuvre sideways as well as forwards and backwards by leaning their body in the direction they want to go. [full story with another video]

Let’s face it. I love this thing because it’s shaped like the number 8! But unlike the Segway, which I thought was uber cool when I first saw it, I don’t feel like it’s a toy I’d buy for the fun of it. I guess if I had mobility issues, something like this would be a godsend, so Honda will continue research and development of the device including experiments in a real-world environment to verify the practicality of the device.

h/t: John

While Hollywood studios are busy making light of hate crimes on Asians,  Ryan “Nigahiga” Higa’s “Asian” style video channel is, at of time of this post, the most subscribed channel on YouTube.  In the video below, he thanks his fans for subscribing to his channel and making him #1.

We have talked previously about Asian American YouTube Celebrities like HappySlip and KevJumba and how a new generation of Asian Americans are using YouTube to create their own work that speaks to and reaches Asian Americans (and others too).  Higa has even parlayed his YouTube fame into a movie that was shown in theatres around the country.  Many well known Asian Americans on YouTube hang out and network together and are seemingly dominant (they joke about token white people here at 4:30).  The attraction to YouTube doesn’t surprise me seeing how Asian Americans are often washed out of traditional media.  Taking advantage of technology that make it easier to produce and distribute your own work makes a lot of sense, and many do take advantage.

I personally find nigahiga to be hit or miss – some of his videos are really funny to me while others are not.  Speaking of #1’s, another Asian has been the #1 in Australia  for a while.  Natalie Tran’s CommunityChannel has been the most subscribed in Australia for some time now.  I like this vlog about how she goes as Starbuck to a Sci-Fi type convention, but people think she’s Boomer because she’s Asian.

Ever since I saw the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics with a man flying on a jetpack, I’ve always wondered when I could have one of my own. Behold, Canadian-based JetLev, founded by Chinese Canadian Raymond Li. JetLev’s “jetpack” is actually a water-powered jet pack that can launch users 30 feet into the air by pumping water through a tethered 30-foot cable powered by a jet ski motor, and will only set you back a mere $130,000. Now I know what I want after I buy my Segway.

…and the Green Dam Girl doesn’t have anything to do with dental dams.

Actually, Green Dam Youth Escort (绿坝·花季护航) is “content-control software” developed in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Ostensibly designed to block pornography, Green Dam can actually be used to block other content, as well. A week ago China announced that as of July 1, 2009, all computers sold in China must be installed with Green Dam. Under the guise of screening out pornography, its true main purpose is for the PRC government to censor and spy on its citizens. Not only does Green Dam automatically download the latest updates of a list of prohibited sites from an online database, it also collects private user data.

Due to a public backlash to its original announcement, the PRC government later announced that the installation of the software is “optional.” While much of the outcry from users and computer manufacturers was surrounding issues of censorship, the real reason for the PRC’s about-face is because there are many security flaws within the software that allows hackers to take over computers. In fact, typical of what you might expect from China, a place where piracy of all kinds runs rampant, it turns out that Green Dam is built upon copyright and open source violations. ZDNet Government reports that Green Dam not only rips off Cybersitter software from Solid Oak, but that it also uses open source code without proper attribution.

Outside of the security vulnerabilities and its copied source code, Green Dam also has a number of major functional defects. From Wikipedia:

Green Dam Youth Escort recognizes pornographic images by analyzing skin-coloured regions, complemented by human face recognition. However, according to a Southern Weekly article, the software is incapable of recognizing pictures of nudity featuring black- or red-skinned characters but sensitive enough to images with large patches of yellow that it censors promotional images of the film Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. The article also cited an expert saying that the software’s misrecognition of “inappropriate contents” in applications including Microsoft Word can lead it to forcefully close those applications without notifying the user, and so cause data losses.

Wikipedia shows a photo of pigs, banned because the pink pigs “matched” the color of human skin.

Not surprisingly, says ZDNet Government, “Chinese youth mock the Green Dam program, kidding each other that if they don’t behave, ‘I’ll youth-escort you.’ Anti-Green Dam websites and petitions are popular. And a Manga-style cartoon mocking the thought police has appeared: Green Dam Girl (绿坝娘).” Chinese blogger Hecaitou says that the images of Green Dam Girl show “the creativity of the post 80s generation (i.e. those born after 1980). The character carries a rabbit (the Green Dam software’s mascot), wears a River Crab badge (a pun about ‘harmonious society that Chinese netizens use to mock Internet censorship), and holds a bucket of paint (or soy sauce) to wipe out online filth.” Says Greenormal, “The police cap emblazoned with a crab, a pun on the Chinese word for “harmonious”, the government’s euphemism for a society without unrest, controversy or opposition.”

Despite the temporary “good news” that Green Dam is now “optional,” it is clear that the PRC government will not give up its intent to control internet speech. It will be up to global citizens to be vigilant and pressure the global computer companies to refuse to be collaborators of such government control.

It sounds like a major FAIL, all the way around. But I did get a chuckle out of the picture of Green Dam Girl pulling down Windows XP Girl’s underwear. Come on, you did, too… didn’t you?!

PS – I normally would not be using simplified Chinese characters, but this is an article about the PRC, so the proper names of these things do actually use this bastardized form of Chinese.
PPS – You think if 8Asians wasn’t already being banned by Green Dam that this post will get it done?

Crazy weight loss gimmicks are certainly not unique to Japan, but I’m trying to figure out why anyone would use this “Boneless Belt” underneath their clothes. An anonymous commenter says that “the name supposedly comes from the term “boneless ham,” which is basically the japanese version of calling somebody a ‘muffin top.’ Imagine a big fat ham with that net around it, and the meat pushing out through the net.”

Yuck. So why would you do this on purpose? Supposedly, the belt actually helps you lose weight!

From Inventor Spot:

In effect, the structure of the rubber belt is a large mesh grid that splits the dieter’s belly, side and back fat into easily manageable blobs. This allows for increased metabolic consumption of calories and raises the propensity for increased blood flow values. More blood flow = more heat = more burning of fat. Got it? Good… What’s NOT good is that a multitude of fat blobs are squeezed out in a manner that disturbingly resembles mini-boobs.

If you really want to buy one, check out the Japanese Yahoo store which offers them.

Or, you can save yourself 4,000 yen and the trauma of seeing yourself as a blobular mess by just hopping on a treadmill, instead.