The Uko ferry abolition: Even Shinkansen can't ～

The news about the abolition of Uko ferry, the connection between Takamatsu and Tamano, is very shocking. (*As of 5th March, partial continuation after 26th March is announced.)

Major newspapers introduce an opinion that the confusion of national policy has caused this time abolition. But it seems to me that multiple factors have affected. Therefore, this case is difficult to solve and it also suggests the fate of the transportation system in Japan.

What kind of factors affect in this matter?

In my opinion, below factors seem to affect.

1) The advancement in means of communication:

The necessity of direct meeting itself is shrinking due to the appearance of Internet and cellar phone.

2) The advancement in energy-efficient automobile:

Hybrid cars and kei cars have enabled us to move with less gasoline consumption.

3) The actualization of well-developed traffic information systems and flexible trip planning.

4) Falling population due to the decrease in the number of children.

5) As ever-increasing economy ends, incomes have been decreasing.

6) The improvement in the comfort of the highway shuttle bus trip.

If complete deregulations of highway-related matter were done under these conditions, perhaps, the highway shuttle bus would finally achieve super-low price.

The ferry abolition of this time seems to be the inevasible consequence caused by above factors.

This logic is entirely applicable to the Shinkansen case too.

If complete deregulation and innovation around highway shuttle bus were done, Shinkansen would be the train only for big company's business trip. Ordinary people will manage to make a shuttle bus trip, which would be much cheaper than today.

Even Shinkansen wouldn't be able to keep today's popularity.

How can we place an IPAD on a messy desk?

This Elecom's PC-desk (Photo) has mini drawers embedded underneath the desk top panel. Starting next month, I guess, such desks with partially transparent area & embedded drawer will become required. Mightn’t it be so bad, on this occasion, to reinvent i-Desk and add it to the option list of IPAD? In the far future, IPAD itself might become one component of i-Desk. Sooner or later, integration of PC and desk would be an interesting issue. In the far far future, i-Desk might become one component of i-Room.

A foldaway wood desk sold by Craft Voice (co) also is equipped with embedded mini drawers. As this desk is made of wood, its processing may be relatively easy and possible within the range of DIY. With thick acrylic panel, plug terminal and AC cord, an attractive and convenient desk would be produced. For Japanese, the integration of wood design and iron-covered PC body seems to become an important theme.

On NW-A845: (2) Using NW-A845 as an external storage device of Willcom-03.

By connecting NW-A845 to Willcom-03 with USB cable, various types of files on NW-A845 can be accessible from 03. After connecting them, file-explorer of 03 on WM6.1 displays NW-A-series-defined and user-created directories. I had created a DOCUMENT directory in NW-A845 and put PDF, XLS and doc files into it. Every format was possible to read with the Adobe Reader LE or Office Mobile of 03. Music files I had put in the NW-A-series-defined directory (by normal method described in manual) can be heard with 03’s internal speaker.

On NW-a845: (1) Back to a Drag and Drop

Recently, I noticed that the location of my itunes' itunes Music folder had changed into a different HDD automatically. I had allocated its location on a specific HDD, which had relatively large free space. The reason of automatic location change is not clear.

To be more precise,

"G:\IPOD\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" has changed to

"C:\Documents and Settings\ ZJFZMQ7S \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊"

1) I had once experienced the procedure of combining "G:\IPOD\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" with "C:\Documents and Settings\ ZJFZMQ7S \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" into one directory by using an iTunes’ command. But this time I felt cumbersome. Finally, I left the "G:\IPOD\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" directory as a debris. The accumulations of such a decision may be one of the reasons why lots of MP3 debrises are dispersed.

2) To reinstall damaged MS-windows, new folders are usually created on other HDD to pull-off some data. In such situations, iTunes-related matter tends to be buck burners. Consequently, the itunes data which is pulled off into "d:\Backupdata-of-C-drive\Documents and Settings\ ZJFZMQ7S \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" directory remain untouched even after recovery. Furthermore, I sometimes exchange internal hard drive to keep enough storage capacity. If the drive, which contains the "d:\Backupdata-of-C-drive\", is removed from the desktop PC, the existence of back-up-data tends to be completely forgotten.

3) In addition to above reasons, the possibilities of multiple user accounts exist.

"C:\Documents and Settings\ ZJFZMQ7S \

"C:\Documents and Settings\ ZMQ6S \

Due to the combinations of above 1), 2) and 3) factors, my mp3 files have been dispersed over different folders on different HDDs so far. At present, I can’t find many MP3 files, which certainly I had imported from various sources.

Therefore, attractiveness of Drag and Drop MP3 file management with SONY NW-a845 were becoming stronger.

Necessity of mouse-pointer-trajectory recognition software for desktop PC users

Apple’s new tablet machine, which is said to come out in the spring of coming year, I guess, might be grown to a good platform for reading electronic-newspapers. Meanwhile, as a MS-Windows desktop PC user, I hope mouse-pointer motion recognition software is developed and available for desktop computers sometime in future. Right-click-required mouse operation while reading through news articles seems to be an obstacle for prospective prevalence of e-papers. Zooming and page-flip should be able to become possible only by an automatic recognition of simple and discriminative trajectory (Fig) of the mouse pointer in the era of Windows8.

The possibilities of A4 size newspaper

These days, financial difficulties of newspaper companies based on paper-based newspaper delivery system are frequently reported. Independent journalists, analysts and lots of bloggers are forecasting that paper-based newspapers will be replaced by Internet-based electronic newspaper services sooner or later. But in my opinion, paper-based newspapers still have possibilities of reestablishing their delivery systems and sharpening the competitive superiority by using them. There are various situations on which the advantages of paper-based information can be useful.

One of the undiscussed reasons of decreasing subscribers of major newspapers is their size. The unpopularity of paper-based newspaper seems to be related with its bulky image. In recent years, I come to feel that the size of A1 two-page spread is too large to handle. Why has this feeling been formed? Perhaps, it may be related with the A4-nization of various kinds of documents in today’s office work. In office documentation field, A4-nizing tendencies are prominent. As a result of A4-nization, even the handlings of B4, B5 or A3 size documents have come to be felt onerous. In such aspect, A1 two-page spread size tends to give us uncomfortable impression occasionally and become disadvantageous more and more.

The advantages of A4 size paper-based newspaper are easiness of handling, scanning and filing. When we find an important article in A4 size newspaper, only procedures we need to do next are extracting the page and putting it into A4 size document folder. Loose binding of each page would be possible by using flammable threads, which enable easy disposability.

Though the distribution by PDF file may be possible, both-side printing on thin papers is bothersome. In addition, PDF readability by compact device is still not so good. Therefore, delivery of papers already printed on very thin and cheap papers would be required for a time.

The developmental and maintaining costs of rotary press would be decreased, because the utilization of the compatible components for commercially available printer can be possible. When the transportation system problem occurs, the distribution by PDF file can substitute.

By using commercially available cheap printers, starting small sized paper-based newspaper company will become easier. It will follow that the borderline between weekly magazine and daily newspaper might be ambiguous.

Introducing: The World is made of music 2 Volume set.

‘The World is made of music.’

These two volumes are the guidebook for world music.

On YouTube, there are lots of world music videos uploaded from all over the world, which are not familiar to usual Japanese people. I sometimes download some of them and transfer them to my MP3 player. My selection from Youtube has been on a hit-or-miss basis and deviated to popular music related to my specific concerns. So, I had been searching for genealogical guide for world popular music. In 2007, these two volumes were published and I bought them soon. Though most of the descriptions are in Japanese, the artist’s name and the album title are adscripted in English with the picture of the each album’s cover. Most of the artist’s names in these volumes can be found on YouTube if you input an artist name or an album title to YouTube’s search dialog box. I picked up lots of artists from these volumes and put their names into YouTube’s search dialog box to check if there were someone whose works couldn’t be found on YouTube, but I haven't found such an example so far. On the contrary, I found that all the artists I picked up have incredibly large view counts, even though most of usual Japanese people might have not heard of even their names.

The first volume: Latin America, North America and Africa

The second volume: Europe, Asia, South Pacific, Russia and NIS