A great website with great stories: Hitotoki
Gibson Dark Fire Guitar
First caught these news at Akihabaranews website.
Gibson will release the Dark Fire Guitar, A Robot Guitar combined with a Digital guitar towards Christmas. Personally, I am more interested in a conventional Les Paul Analogue Guitar.
Why am I writing about this? Because of the Gibson Dark Fire contest :
The rules are simple, write a song about the new guitar, post it in youtube, and the song with most views wins the contest. I LOVE the idea (though it disqualifies me from entering and winning).
Google 乗換案内 – Travel assistant
I am sure this is old news, but I just bumped into this Google service in Japan, and I love it!
From the Google.co.jp webpage, filed under iroiro (second tab). This screen capture may be handy:
Following that you can enter Address or station location and get recommendations on routes for either trains or a car. Now, Yahoo provide a similar (and very good) service for a long time, but what I found helpful is the integration to street view, when car route is selected.
See another screenshot
:
Rakuten proxy shopping services
Going through my wife’s emails, we have found a new service from Rakuten.
The Rakuten Proxy shopping Service looks like a great new service:
Rakuten will act as a proxy, purchasing the desired goods from one of the shops, handling international shipments! The service relies on PayPal, which is a proven platform for such services.
Fees seem a bit expensive, but I believe we will definitely use this service as we often want merchandise from Japan, and do not want to burden our family and friends.
Fees:
1) JPY980 per item ordered as handling charge.
2) 5% (!!!) of total product amount
3) Shipping
4) 5% of international shipping Charge
Sprint, Clearwire close Deal
Not news, but I have encountered an article in Ars Technica – Future of WiMAX is Clear as Sprint, Clearwire close deal.
There is a word game in the title, as the new merged network will be named “Clear”, which sounds a bit strange too me:
“I have called “Clear” and bought their “Clear” CPE” – doesn’t sound right. Xohm was better!
The article also discusses spectrum allocation and competitors LTE plans.