PSP Phone coming soon?!
There are some rumors about Sony producing a PSP phone that can compete with the iPhone…The rumors are getting stronger apparently!
Is Sony finally taking aim at Apple’s iPhone? Over the weekend the Japanese business daily Nikkei reported that Sony plans to form a skunkworks team whose job it will be to design a hybrid video game-cell phone gizmo—one that taps the company’s years of producing PlayStation Portable gaming consoles and Sony-Ericsson handsets. A spokeswoman at Sony wouldn’t confirm whether the report was true, and would only say that executives were considering “various possibilities.” Combining elements of a PSP and handset would seem a “natural process of thinking,” the spokeswoman said, without elaborating.
This comes as a bit of a surprise. CEO Howard Stringer has often talked about Apple as one of a new crop of competitors that also includes Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. But in the past Sony has made a point of not making me-too products—even when those products go on to become hits. (No surprise there: Its engineers in Japan are too proud of their heritage to create a product that is a knock-off of a competitor’s.) That’s not a bad thing. Consider how many iPhone look-alike handsets have appeared in the past couple of years. None has even come close to the iPhone’s popularity.
The iPhone has shown how a cell phone can also work as a compelling gaming device: Of the 50,000 programs available on the iPhone through the App Store, games account for the biggest chunk, or about a fifth of the offerings. Many are given away for free or sell for just 99 cents. That, no doubt, riles Sony’s gaming division. Sony’s PSP has lagged Nintendo’s DS portable gaming console since the two machines were launched in late 2004. And sales of Apple’s iPhone, which was released in mid-2007, are fast closing the gap with the PSP.
If Sony has the iPhone in its sights, the question facing the Japanese tech giant is: Can it develop a phone that did more and generated more buzz than the iPhone? The jury is out. Sony’s best efforts to end the iPod’s dominance in portable media players can only be rated a mild success, at best. Coming up with software that rivals Apple’s iTunes continues to be Sony’s biggest challenge. (Sony isn’t alone, either.)
Rumors that Sony was working on a PlayStation cell phone first cropped up two years ago when Sony’s engineers filed a patent describing such a gizmo. The Internet rumor mill went into overdrive again in April, after Kazuo Hirai, who had led Sony’s video game division, was named as the head of a broader portfolio of networked products and services. The PlayStation Network is Sony’s biggest success story in online services. Under Hirai, the PlayStation group has rolled out online downloads of music, movies, TV shows, games and created a content platform for developers to create applications and games, sell videos, and post trailers and sneak previews. It’s clearly the model that Sony wants other divisions to emulate.
What’s unclear is why the video game group might have rejected having the PlayStation brand extended to Sony-Ericsson’s products in the past. (Sony says that’s not what happened but it hasn’t offered an explanation, either.) Sony’s gaming team could have been wary of such a product after Nokia’s failed attempt with the N-Gage gaming phone. Cell phone chipmaker Qualcomm also showed off a prototype, dubbed Slingshot, of a clamshell phone with a screen that swiveled around to reveal buttons and a joystick and could hook up to a TV but the concept went nowhere. One of the things that had made a PlayStation phone seem unlikely in the past was that fact that the PSP allow Net voice chat software Skype (over a Wi-Fi network). Still, Skype would seem a small thing to prevent Sony from pushing ahead with a PSP phone.
Source: Business Week
If Sony manage to produce the “PSPPhone”, it should be a pretty interesting competition for the iPhone…Hurry up SONY!
Fans steals Leonardo DiCaprio sneakers in Japanese Temple!
It seems Leonardo DiCaprio will take the oscar for the odd news of the day…
A TRIP to a Japanese temple left Leonardo DiCaprio (above) barefoot after ugly American tourists stole the star’s sneakers. During a visit to a hilltop shrine in Kyoto last week, DiCaprio was asked by a couple of fans to pose for a picture — but he declined, pointing to a sign prohibiting photography on the premises. Feeling slighted, the fans waited until he removed his Nike Dunks to enter the temple and then stole them. “They just ran off with them,” laughed our source. “The poor guy had to leave the place barefoot.” A rep for Leo had no comment.
Source: New York Post via F.Gaijin
I wonder what they are going to do with those sneakers?…Ebay perhaps?
More “animated” criticism for the Shrine!
There is some criticism for the Anime Shrine, PM Taro Aso wants to build to honor the Japanese Animation. The anime shrine or “Media Arts Center” (tentative name) is generating controversy because the animatiion industry in Japan has its own problems.
The debate over Japan’s National Media Arts Center — a proposed government institution that has been nicknamed the “anime hall of fame” and derided as the “national manga café” — has divided not only legislators, but also the animators. The Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA) supported the 11.7-billion-yen (about US$120 million) plan in a position paper submitted to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on June 23. (Despite the English connotations of its name, the ruling LDP is a conservative faction in Japan.) JAniCA considers the plan as a way to train and expand the animation workforce. 33-year-old JAniCA board member Daisuke Okeda said that young animators will train at the center’s in-house studio, which would serve a second purpose by putting the actual animation process on display for tourists.
However, some individual animators have voiced opposition to the proposal. 30-year-old Gonzo producer Junichi Takagi (Red Garden, Transformers: Cybertron) noted that the number of approved productions and their allocated budgets have shrunk since last year. Whereas the studios used to receive 1.8 million yen (US$19,000) for a 30-minute television episode, now they must make do with only 1.3 million yen (US$14,000). Takagi suggested that if there is money to build the center, he woud rather it be used to reorganize the Japanese anime industry. Nobuyuki Tsugata, a 40-year-old associate professor at Kyoto Seika University, added that small and medium-sized production facilities need assistance.
A 24-year-old male animator said that he has no disposable income and he could not marry even if he had a girlfriend. One year after entering the industry, he earns an average monthly salary of 70,000 yen (US$700). Ironically, JAniCA’s own survey of animators’ salaries supports this anecdote of low wages, although animation director and translator Cindy H. Yamauchi (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Sōten Kōro, Black Lagoon) disagrees with the survey’s conclusions.
64-year-old famed character designer Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (Mobile Suit Gundam, Venus Wars) described the proposed center as “totally useless. Anime has the vitality of a weed. I want it to be left alone. And with government support, I worry about potential restrictions being placed on freedom of expression.”
Manga and game creators are similarly split over the proposal. Manga creator Kei Ishizaka (I’m Home) criticized the planned center for vainly trying to attract visitors by “using government funds to hang up original manga drawings in picture frames.” Manga creator Machiko Satonaka (Lady Ann) responded to this and other criticisms by saying that the center is “urgently needed to preserve and restore our valuable original manga drawings from continuing degradation.” 51-year-old game creator Tsunekazu Ishihara (Pokémon) came out in support of the center as well, and noted that the proposed 11.7-billion-yen bufget is roughly the cost of just one theme park attraction.
It seems some animators and mangaka seems to agree that the Shrine idea should be abandoned…and ironically, this shrine is dedicated to them. I just hope they can really sit down and think everything wisely.
Pervert couple filming girl in toilet!
Some people do weird stuff, just because they are bored…or thats what they usually say to the Police once they are caught…Take for example this weird case.
A primary school teacher and his wife were arrested on suspicion of using a hidden video camera to secretly film people inside a women’s toilet at a public park in Yokohama on Sunday, police said.
Noriyoshi Sano, 44, a teacher at a private primary school, and his wife Naoko, 42, a company employee, from Kawasaki, were arrested on the spot, police said.
According to the police, at about 4:05 p.m Sunday, the suspects allegedly filmed a 43-year-old unemployed woman of Yamato in the prefecture with a video camera placed inside a toilet paper roll at the female lavatory of a gymnasium located in Hodogaya Koen park in Hodogaya Ward.
The police said the suspects admitted to the crime and quoted one of them as saying during questioning,“We did it for fun.”
Source: Daily Yomiuri Online / Image Source
For fun? Probably, they were too nervous so that was their best excuse…Perverts!… 
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