Year: 2010

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Open Network Lab with HootSuite

Open Network Lab is a new incubation lab for Internet based Startups.

I joined last week’s meeting with Ryan Holmes, HootSuite CEO and Japanese Shinnichi Fujikawa, founder of Movatwi.

Open Network Lab goal is to encourage innovation and Internet based Start-Ups, which may explain the 40 minutes long panel on “How Engineers can start Companies”.

HootSuite recently launched a Japanese version of their service,with the aid of Digital Garage which is heavily invested in the Twitter phenomena and related tools/services.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4006/4650441303_46d0d1c8cd.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4006/4650441303_46d0d1c8cd.jpg

To me it seems Open Network Lab is the right tool for the current economic and social situation in Japan. In the past few months I have met many Engineers, Innovators excited to start their own companies, but fail in two things:

  • How to market their services to the mass market
  • How to go Global
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Another Round of Layoffs in Alvarion

Israeli The Marker, reports another round of layoff in Alvarion .

Magic number this time is 170m about 20% of workforce. If this is not another indication that WiMAX is doomed, I don’t know what is. According to the article, Alvarion is expecting new projects in India as well as rural US.

What I am saying: “Reinvent yourself”.

LTE is almost there, while WiMAX couldn’t grab enough market share. Which basically means that WiMAX will stay in Niches, 3rd world markets which never deployed 3G, vertical markets, private networks, etc.

So, either Alvarion matches her size to the market, or find another market.

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Japanese Girl – Hebrew Tattoo

While waiting for my train to arrive, I noticed a Tattoo in Hebrew behind her ear. Tattoos are not common in Japan, let alone visible ones.

I Just had to take a Photo, which she agreed to without hesitation.

Meaning of Tattoo – מופלא (Moofla) is: Wonderful, Exceptional, Mysterious.

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Cisco Quits WiMAX

Cisco has finally announced their pull out from the WiMAX business . Hardly surprising, as in the past two yeas, since Navini Networks acquisition, Cisco were not very successful with this new Wireless business.

Not sure if it was because the technology didn’t fit Cisco business, or just failure to execute. But, I can’t remember even one meaningful deployment from Navini (Cisco) .

The reason I am writing this post is to remind everyone that Alvarion was supposedly the first runner for Cisco’s WiMAX ambitions, when in the last minute (well, this is what newspapers preferred to portray), Navini was acquired. I am sure many people in Alvarion are happy today that it turned out this way.

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There Goes Advanced PHS (XGP)

As previously reported, Israeli Startup Altair Semiconductors was supposed to Supply chips to Willcom’s XGP network .

XGP was never a world-wide standard, but Willcom’s attempt to keep PHS alive. It now looks like XGP (or Advanced PHS) will not be deployed.

Willcom announced today their plan to file for bankruptcy  (See Japan Times and NYT for more details) after a steady decline of their customer base.

I don’t know what kind of commitments Altair Semi received from Willcom, but I certainly hope their WiMAX and LTE business will be more successful.

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JLPT Level 2

I failed JLPT Level 2 test.

Now, it may seem something that one would not want to share on a blog or brag about. But, the thing is, I DID NOT STUDY AT ALL for the test. In the 9 months since I arrived to Japan I attended maybe 20 hours of formal Japanese lessons.

Considering the above, the results I got are quite impressive.

Kanji/Vocabulary – 38/100

Reading/Grammar – 80/200-  Very surprising, considering I couldn’t really read the text

I am mostly proud of Listening test results:  64/100

JLPT L2 result - Fail

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Snow in Kawasaki, Feb 2010

As I was parking the car last night, the rain turned into sleet, which later that night turned to Snow.

Obviously, I went out early in the morning to take photos.  Here they are:

In one of the photos you can see Mejiro (bird) on a tree

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UQ WiMAX Repeaters

On the same day UQ WiMAX announced the installation of the 5000th base station , they also announced the availability of WiMAX Repeaters.

As any other wireless technology the biggest issue is Coverage. Or rather, how to provide the best coverage with lower costs. A repeater is a good solution to extend a cell (when more bandwidth is not needed).

A PDF from UQ [JP] shows 3 different repeaters and usage. Graphics are quite bad , but I’ll ignore it this time.