A Journey to the Levant
Visited Ulsan, Korea for KSCA (Korean Supercomputing Center Alliance) workshop.
Was quite impressed with UNIST building and environment. Recently opened, UNIST is trying to Foster Elites in Science and Technical Fields . Even more interesting is, that ALL lectures are planned to be given in English.
Some Photos:
For more, go to my Flickr UNIST set
This is not a first, but I experienced it myself last night.
As I was attending last night’s Geeks on a Plane event, the adjoining space was being used to shoot a Promotional Video (PV) for an unknown (didn’t ask their name) band.
3 DSLR cameras were being used with different lenses (from wide angle to Zoom).
Here are the Photos:
And a Video:
HMV Shibuya posted a sign notifying customers that the shop will close in August.
In the past few months HMV already gave up the top floor for a guitar shop, but the end came faster than expected.
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.
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:
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.
Canadian Tranzeo Wireless acquires Aperto Networks .
No further details on the deal, but I can just assume Aperto was sold for close to nothing.
Which company will be next?
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.
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.
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.
