Hitotoki – one second
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.
The Making of AU KDDI CM
If someone really cares about this, this link is not interesting, but provided a public service 😉
AU Box Commercial (CM) – Arashi
Arashi are a popular Japanese boy band. and they are the presenters of the AU (KDDI) Box.
As my wordpress video is broken (Yes, I need to fix this), the video will be provided a link, not embedded: