Tag: Japan

Epson A6 QXGA Electronic Paper

Epson epaper 

The technology of thin film displays marches on. I’ll take my place in line for a roll up computer monitor as soon as they hit the streets.

Epson announced that they successfully developed a A6 (7.1") QXGA (1536×2048) Electronic paper using the SUFTLA Technology (Surface-free technology by laser annealing) son poly-Si TFT-LCD.?
In order to realize electronic devices on plastic film, new technology has been developed that enables the transfer of thin-film devices from an original substrate to another substrate by using laser irradiation. This technology was termed SUFTLA, which stands for surface-free technology by laser annealing. A polycrystalline-silicon thin film transistor (poly-Si TFT) back-plane for liquid crystal displays (LCDs) with integrated drivers was fabricated using a low-temperature process (below 425/spl deg/C) and could be successfully transferred from a glass or quartz substrate to plastic film using this technology. This technology enabled us to fabricate an all-plastic substrate TFT-LCD having a display area of 0.7 in measured diagonally and a pixel count of 428/spl times/238. In addition, the operation of the integrated drivers and the displayed image could be confirmed for the first time in the world.

Epson A6 QXGA Electronic Paper

Initial Scientific Results of Hayabusa’s Investigation on Itokawa

 

It’s quite amazing that even after many problems the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency’s space probe Hayabusa has brought back some great science on the asteroid Itokawa.

Asteroid explorer Hayabusa observed asteroid Itokawa from the middle of September to the end of November last year. Hayabusa observed Itokawa form the altitude of 20 km to 3 km by using four observational instruments, and a lot of new results were obtained for the asteroid’s shape, geographical features, surface altitude variation, albedo, spectrum, mineral composition, gravity, and the main chemical composition, etc. These results are totally new information to understand the formation process of asteroid. It will be the important standard for all the future mission to asteroids to have revealed the detail features of the asteroid, which is a most common type in the asteroid belt. We introduce here the summaries of papers, which obtained excellent results of science.

Initial Scientific Results of Hayabusa’s Investigation on Itokawa

Hitachi Mechanical Toys

Simple and not so simple mechanical toys from the engineers at Hitachi. The designs are quite clear and should tickle your brain to come up with ones of your own. The ‘south’ pointing car is a classic design that could have some use as a maze solving robot, or at least one that keep track of what was was south when it started.

[via MAKE fourm] 

HITACHI : ????? : ????????????

Translated page via Google 

Free Fonts From Japan

Japanese Fonts

 These are a true jem, you can never have too many fonts.

In the first half of 2005, the Fontleech blog was offering an almost daily portion of links to and reviews of quality free fonts. Among them, a lot of Japanese ones. Since the Summer however, Fontleech hasn’t really been updated anymore, and comment spam is slowly taking over the place. As I’m afraid the site may go offline one day on another, I decided to reproduce its links to Japanese type foundries with free fonts, and added some of my own links too. Here we go, in no particular order:

 Nipponkan: Japanese type foundries with free fonts

An Archive of Canned Coffee

BOSS Coffee

One of my favorite things about Japan was the canned coffee. Not only could you find it in a vending machine every few meters but it’s served to you nice and hot. The perfect thing on a chilly night walking around Yokohama.

Canned coffee is more than a drink. It’s a whole fidgety, jacked-up subculture that bonds young punks, middle-aged office workers, fatigued students and even old guys in polo shirts. Enter the world, join the addiction and shop for caffeine-inspired art that would make Balzac proud.

 This site reviews many of the flavors that you can find on the streets. Some are good, some are.. well, unique… Read on…

Canned Coffee – Can Archives