June 29, 2003
Meiji-era banking practice of personal guarantees cause of suicides
Japanese banks have a tradition of taking personal guarantees for corporate loans from the businessmen as well as their families. For instance, I was personally on the hook for millions of dollars at one of my first companies, Digital Garage, until we secured enough outside financing to pay off our debt, which in Japan is often the only financing available to new companies.
The Japan Times reports that this is a significant cause for the high suicide rate in Japan that I often write about. There are over 30,000 suicides a year in Japan, mostly be older men. It is more than three times the number of annual traffic accident deaths. The article describes people whose businesses go bankrupt or are unable to pay their debts and how this destroys the lives of loved ones and friends around them as banks run to collect from the guarantors. The people commit suicide in shame. Also, most people in Japan buy life insurance to cover most of their outstanding loans. The suicide, if executed properly will relieve these unintentional victims of the burden of paying off liabilities.
I have personal guarantees on many loans and have actually had to cover several payments for friends and others that have defaulted on their loans. The fact that it is such common practice in Japan makes it a real sleeping problem that faces society here as the economy continues to get worse. Another big problem with these guarantees is that they are difficult to assess and make quantifying default risk for banks difficult. Credit assessments for individuals who are exposed to such guarantees is also very difficult.
Comments (20) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Kabutoya-Ryokan
Mizuka and I just got back from Kabutoya-ryokan. It's a very old building 18 generations old. It used to be a silk-worm/silk facility, but now it's an inn. Very old fashioned rooms. Traditional irori typed grill in your room. (See pictures on my moblog.) This morning they made mochi, a kind of Japanese pounded rice. I took some video that didn't turn out that great, but it's available here as a Quicktime Video Stream.
Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 28, 2003
Sky-230DL Radar Detector with GPS
Mizuka just bought a CellStar SKY-230DL radar detector. It's amazing. It has a GPS receiver built in. It knows where speed traps are and lets you know 2 km before you get there. (In Japan, we have automated speed traps that take your picture and send you the ticket in the mail.) It also lets you program new information. For the tunnel exit based traps, it lets you know before you enter the tunnel, etc. It also detects police radio and figures out whether they are heading towards you in the same direction or on the other side of the road. It has a variety of special warnings for stealth pulse radar detection, etc. These things have come a long way since the last radar detector I bought. This is a good thing since we're going on a road trip today.
Comments (30) | TrackBack (3) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 27, 2003
NewsMonster OS X version ETA tomorrow
16:56 UTC » Blogging about Blogging
I heard that the OS X version of NewsMonster, the RSS aggregator/reader was finished so I went to the site and paid for it. Kevin A. Burton, the author was on the #joiito IRC channel so I told him. He told me that there was another bug left in the OS X version that he needed to fix. He offered to give me my money back. I told him just to hurry up with the OS X version. He promised he would do it tomorrow. ;-) Very excited about trying NewsMonster...
[16:15] burtonator | I will fix sifry's bug tonight... then OSX tomorrow
Comments (10) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Dave Winer is tentatively supporting Echo
16:44 UTC » Blogging about Blogging
Dave has written that he is tentatively supporting Echo. Echo is the name of the initiative to try to put disagreements about blogging standards aside and try to move forward. This is great news.
Kudos, Dave!
Comments (2) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
request for praise of privacy report
On June 11, we released a report on privacy technology and legistlation that was the product of a great deal of work by experts around the world. It was funded by the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications of Japan. I am urging them to make this an ongoing effort with annual updates. If you read the report and found it useful, please email me or post something here so I can pass on the praise to the Ministry. ;-)
The report can be found on my wiki.
Comments (1) | TrackBack (3) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Emergent Democracy paper in Japan Media Review
06:30 UTC » Emergent Democracy
The Japan Media Review just ran an edited version of the Emergent Democracy paper.
Thanks Michelle!
Comments (2) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 26, 2003
Good news from Larry about the Eric Eldred Act
08:02 UTC » Intellectual Property
Larry's been proposing an idea called The Eric Eldred Act to require a $1 payment to extend copyright. This would cause most works which are out of print and currently unavailable to the public to fall into the public domain while at the same time protecting the copyright of people who are using copywritten work commercially. I think it's a great idea. Larry reports that Congresswoman Lofgren (D-CA) and Congressman Doolittle (R-CA) have agreed to introduce the bill. That's great news.
Thanks to Victor for the heads up on this...
Comments (3) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 25, 2003
According to Sifry, the RSS controversy is over the name
08:50 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Technology Controversy
Dave Sifry, whose opinion I greatly respect, has been trying to get to the bottom of this RSS controversy. He has talked to Dave Winer on the phone in length and it appears that the issue is really the use of the name, "RSS". Please read the very interesting post (for those of you who care about RSS. ;-) ) by Sifry.
Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 24, 2003
Aaron says "Time for Forward Motion"
08:10 UTC » Blogging about Blogging
Aaron says "Time for Forward Motion" on weblog protocols. I agree.
The RoadMap is on Sam's site.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 23, 2003
Invested in Socialtext
23:44 UTC » Joi's Diary - Social Software - Venture Capital
Comments (14) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 22, 2003
Joined the advisory board of Mindjack
I just joined the advisory board of Mindjack, a cool online digital culture magazine. Donald Melanson is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief and Dan Richards is the Senior Editor. The other advisory board members are Gareth Branwyn, Mark Frauenfelder, Mikki Halpin, Jon Lebkowsky, Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff.
Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Technorati hits 400K blogs, starts wiki
11:37 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Software - Wiki
Technorati just hit 400K blogs and Sifry's created a wiki for his developers.
Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Philip Greenspun's theory of why US stocks are going up
11:10 UTC » Business and the Economy - Economics - Intellectual Property
Philip Greenspun blogs about the idea that stocks are going up in the US because more and more public domain is moving into the hands of large corporations. He gives the example of Disney being the beneficiary of the the copyright extension and the restriction on flying thru the airspace over Disneyland.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 21, 2003
Sony FSV-PGX1 Portable File Server
I just got my Sony FSV-PGX1 Portable File Server. It's an interesting device. It a little linux box that can run on batteries. It has nfs, samba, telnet, http and ftp. It has a 20G HD. There is a web interface or you can set it up with the little lcd display and arrow buttons on the box. If you get the cradle, there is an ethernet connector. The box has 802.11b built in. It's basically a file server. It can be set up as a DHCP access point, DHCP client or fixed IP address on both the ethernet and/or the wireless ports. It can be some sort of "bridge" although I haven't figured that out yet. Obviously many uses. Too bad it doesn't do rendezvous.
Comments (21) | TrackBack (10) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Party in DC July 7
It looks like most people other than Dan Gillmor prefer to have the party on the 7th at the beginning Supernova. I'd like to start closing in on the details. If you plan to be in the DC Area and would like to attend the party, please go to the Wiki Page and put your name in the wiki and vote on or suggest a venue if possible. You DO NOT have to be attending Supernova to attend this party.
Comments (5) | TrackBack (1) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
email gone
It looks like I may have lost all of my email from 07:00 thru 13:00 UTC/GMT or so June 20. If you sent something to me, please send it again. Sorry about the inconvenience.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Anatomy of a Well Formed Log Entry
10:36 UTC » Blogging about Blogging
There is an interesting discussion going on over at Sam Ruby's wiki about the Anatomy of a Well Formed Log Entry. He blogged about the idea. This is an important discussion for setting standards.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 20, 2003
Translation of Emergent Democracy Paper by Professor Shumpei Kumon of Glocom
18:02 UTC » Emergent Democracy
Professor Shumpei Kumon of Glocom has translated the Emergent Democracy Paper into Japanese and has been published it in their journal and is available online in PDF. I am a big fan of Professor Kumon and am honored that he has translated it himself.
Glocom is also in charge of the Creative Commons localization in Japan.
Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 18, 2003
Flash Mobs Take Manhattan
Very cool social hack. Time sensitive. Check it out.
Comments (31) | TrackBack (3) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 16, 2003
On my way back to Tokyo
2 great days in Finland. Nice seeing so many familiar faces and meeting a lot of new ones. See you all back in Japan.
From a SURFNET PREMIERE airport kiosk in the Helsinki Airport
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Finland Photos
Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Cory boasting about his eBay Hack
 My eBay query was thiiis big |
| TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Joined Creative Commons Board
I was invited to join and accepted a position on the board of Creative Commons. I think that the work they are doing is EXTREMELY important for our future. I am honored to be a member of the team.
Comments (13) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 15, 2003
keyboard for the thumb-generation
Kids in Japan can't type, but they can thumb. Maybe this will get those kids to use PC's....not.
Thanks for the link Adriaan
Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Copyright extension and DMCA-like bill passed in Japan
18:29 UTC » Intellectual Property
A bill just quietly passed in Japan. It extends copyright from 50 years to 70 years. Also, under-reported, is the fact that "circumvention of copy protecton or deterrence mechanisms" is now illegal and the defendant is responsible for proving innocence. I wish this legal spill-over from the US into Japan would stop. Especially for these REALLY STUPID laws. At least I have another project to work on in Japan. ;-P
Thanks for the heads-up Gohsuke.
Comments (2) | TrackBack (4) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Speed up your site - on my radar
I just read about "Speed Up Your Site" by Andrew B. King on a klog apart who links to an entry in meryl's notes. Sounds like a cool book. I think I saw some references to it in some email I got, but I thought it was spam. It's kinda scary how my brain has associated certain words with spam so it filters phrases such as "speed up your site". On the other hand, I'm glad that my RSS feed can help those catch those things that fall through my inbox.
Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 14, 2003
Off to Finland
I'm off to Finland to hang out with Dan, Cory, Clay and others...
2 nites... Short trip.
Comments (9) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 12, 2003
People talking about sex on IRC
This morning, I received an email from a person whose opinion I respect informing me that my IRC channel #joiito was being used by people to promote pornography. I rushed over to IRC and interviewed the regulars. Yes, there were some lewd URL's posted. Yes, people were talking about sex. So what, they said.
Then one of the regulars quoted David Weinberger
When I post to my blog, I think of all of the people who might read the post and try to write in a balanced way about things that I think are generally interesting. In IRC, I have a sense of the people in the room and chat as if I were among friends. I joke around, chat drunk and say rude things. I can imagine that someone joining some of the discussions without warning might find them offensive or strange as anyone joining any kind of intimate chat. We do talk about "important" issues, but it is peppered with lots of more personal comments and nuances. Since IRC is real time, it is also a lot easier to say riskier things since you get immediate feedback and are able to clarify your position before it escalates.David WeinbergerI don't see the Web as socratic. I see it as connective, and socratic dialogue is only one form of connecting, and a pretty paltry one at that. Yelling, joking, teasing, provoking, criticizing, grieving, and flirting are all forms of connecting. So is simultaneous masturbation (no, I don't mean blogging). What makes the Web utopian (in some sense) is that it's connective, not that it's polite, rational or even intelligent.
One of the most interesting topics for discussion and one the most culturally contextual topics that I know of is the topic of sex. I don't talk about it much, but some of my best friends love talking about sex and I don't have any problem with that. I have some problems with pornography, but pornography also drove the proliferation of VCR's and the Internet and we owe SOMETHING to the pornographers...
I'm now grappling with the issue of creating an open and chatty atmosphere on IRC and not restricting people's behavior very much, but still keeping it a comfortable place for people who don't enjoy talking about sex and are uncomfortable with pornography. I don't think pornography has any place on my channel and I officially ask people not to "promote" pornography. Having said that, in defense of "the regulars", it appears that a pornographic link was posted in the context of joking around and wasn't really "promoted." Also, as a rule, you probably shouldn't open a link you find in IRC that ends in .jpg without being prepared...
IRC's been around for a long time and it has its own colorful history and culture. My channel on IRC includes readers of my blog as well as IRC regulars who have drifted in. It's quite an interesting mix, but the tone is quite different from my blog and my wiki. I'm very interested in how it will evolve and would love people's thoughts on this. I still have not banned anyone from my channel and do not yet have any rules. Any pointers to good channel rules would also be appreciated.
Comments (15) | TrackBack (3) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Xeni Jardin starts a moblog
Xeni Jardin is one of those people about who you'd think, "Gee, I wish Xeni had a moblog." Well, now she has one. She just started, but it's cool. She's inspiring me to increase my caption space and be a bit more funny and thoughtful on my annotations. She's going to push us all to be more interesting in our moblogs. ;-)
Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 11, 2003
Blogstreet Blog Post Analysis
17:59 UTC » Blogging about Blogging
Blog meta search has to figure out how to identify blog posts vs. web pages. Here's a beta service from Blogstreet.
Blogs are different. They are made of blog-posts and not web-pages. So they have to be treated differently. The correct units when dealing with blogs are the blog-posts and their permalinks. Blog Post Analysis (BPA) is an attempt in building a platform for blog analytics by identifying and presenting the fundamental units of blogs, the blog-post.Maybe Veer can sell it to Google so they can filter blog posts. ;-)
Comments (3) | TrackBack (3) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
A Report of Research on Privacy for Electronic Government
We received funding from the Japanese government to produce a global report on privacy technology and legislation. The report is called "A Report of Research on Privacy for Electronic Government." We tried to get the best experts around the world to help us on this report. Please take a look at it. It is available for download in its entirety under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 license.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 10, 2003
Anonymous parody of some of the "A-List" bloggers
There is an anonymous parody of some of the "A-List" bloggers - "Simple Guide to the A-List Bloggers" on - on Scoble's site. I guess the "A-List" is defined as people worth wasting time writing a parody about. It's all very funny until you get to your part. ;-P
I'm going to link to this so it's not all laughing "behind my back."
Thanks to the dozens of people who told me to go read this on IRC. ;-)
Comments (17) | TrackBack (2) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Dinner with Ken Sakamura, father of TRON
21:45 UTC » Gadgets - Hardware - Software
Had dinner tonight with Ken Sakamura, the father of TRON, the realtime embedded OS which is a dominant and essential part of most embedded systems in Japan today. He is also the Director of the Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory. He brought a bunch of amazing gadgets to dinner. The most impressive were the 0.2mm 128K RFID chips in a little vial.
Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
posting IRC logs and testing emergent democracy
13:47 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Emergent Democracy - IRC - Wiki
While I was asleep, a debate raged on the IRC channel about whether IRC logs should be automatically turned into blog entries. kensanata pointed out that VotingIsEvil so I proposed a sort of deliberative democracy approach. Lets all have a discussion on wiki page and post our positions on the issue. The point would be to change your mind freely and try to sway the opinions of others and recruit them. Like neuronal recruitment. I don't feel strongly about this issue and it appeared quite controversial. I thought it would be a good experiment in emergent democracy on wikis. That and the emergent democracy of picking a party date. ;-)
Boris writes about it here.
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 9, 2003
The guy in Memento should have had a blog
21:42 UTC » Blogging about Blogging
If only the guy in Memento had a blog...
Comments (18) | TrackBack (3) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
To Google, what is a blog?
09:13 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Search
I haven't really commented on the "should blogs be in Google search results" debate, but one random question. What is a blog? What's the technical difference (from the perspective of a search engine) between my blog and The Register? I don't see how you can "filter" blogs. You can obviously change the page ranking mechanism to give certain types of sites an advantage or disadvantage, but I don't see how you can filter blogs. My blog is just a bunch of html created by a content management system.
If more people think that the google search results are poor because the top results are not "relevant" it means the ranking system is broken, not that something has to be "filtered". The whole point of a search engine is that it searches everything and finds the most relevant pages.
Comments (15) | TrackBack (4) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Attention Concentration and becoming a place
08:55 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Emergent Democracy - Social Software - Wiki
Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
Reid responds to comments on LinkedIn Wiki Page
06:07 UTC » Cool Web Sites - Social Software - Wiki
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us
June 8, 2003
Lunch with President Roh of Korea
16:42 UTC » Emergent Democracy - Global Politics - Joi's Diary
President Roh of Korea is visiting Japan and I was invited to attend a lunch with him today. He has been in office for about 100 days and was widely reported as being the world's first "Internet President". I wrote about it in Feb. Since then, his popularity has gone from about 60% to 40% because of difficulties in execution of domestic financial policy and constantly changing positions on the US and other issues. His trip to Japan was also very controversial back in Korea because Japan just passed a new law broadening the powers of the Japanese military's ability to defend itself on Friday. Former victims of Japanese military occupation are very negative about any expansion of the Japanese military.
I was very interested in how the Internet would play a part in his leadership and deliberations so I was anxious to meet him and ask him about Emergent Democracy. Unfortunately, the "lunch" turned out to be a pretty formal and huge lunch with 150 business leaders. There was only time for two questions and the people asking the questions were already pre-chosen. The discussion focused around free trade, helping each other's economies, China and about Korea trying to become a hub for Asia and a railroad gateway to Europe.
Mark Norbom, the CEO of GE Capital was at my table and I hadn't seen him for a long time so that was nice. Also got to see Chairman Nishimuro of Toshiba who I'd also not seen for a long time. Other than generally schmoozing around, it wasn't much fun and there definitely wasn't any emergent anything going on as far as I could tell.
Comments (11) | TrackBack (0) | View blog reactions | del.icio.us