10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling. La check-list forme et beauté du printemps. CD3WD Archives the Information Necessary to Rebuild Society. An intriguing glimpse of the woman who might invent faster-than-light travel. Real-life Simpsons. How life is imitating science fiction in Egypt. English: The Best Way To Get Second-hand, Third-Rate Distortions of Japanese Reality. Any information you get about Japan that’s not in Japanese is virtually guaranteed to be second-hand and third-rate. Information on Japan that’s not in Japanese invariably leads one to believe both good and bad things about this place that are simply untrue. Example the first: Japanese people are deep and Buddhist and Zen-like and uncluttered and value emptiness. And all Americans are Mennonites, right? Yeah…no. Most people here barely even know what Zen is (not to mention the fact that Zen actually originated in China as a sort of mix of this thing from India called Buddhism and homegrown Daoism).
As for uncluttered emptiness, I have two words for you: Yodobashi Camera. Don’t get me wrong: those “Zen” ideas do exist in Japan, and they are held in high regard in certain quarters. Example the second: so-called xenophobia. Japan simply doesn’t have real, deep-seated, I’m-going-to-tie-you-to-the-back-of-my-truck-and-drag-you-to-death-and/or-gas-you-with-insecticide xenophobia. BBC's Outcasts has crashed and burned. Ask Ars: What is the best way to use a Li-ion battery? Question: How do I take care of a Lithium Ion battery to prolong its life? Should I charge it frequently or drain it fully before charging it? Lithium ion batteries are particular about their operating conditions, and there are a lot of small things that can contribute to better quality of life. Li-ion batteries have a reasonably finite lifespan and can hold only a fraction of their original capacity after a few years, but things like operating temperature, how long the battery spends plugged in, how the battery is used, and the charge cycling you asked about can contribute to how long the battery lasts.
If Michael Pollan had to sum up ideal Li-ion battery usage, he might say something like, "Use your battery. Not too much. Mostly for small apps. " One of the worst things you can do to a Li-ion battery is to run it out completely all the time. There used to be certain types of batteries whose "memory" of their total charge capacity seemed to get confused by shallow discharges. An Overlooked Mother Lode for Hit Products -- Top Stroies --February 2011. Feb 7, 2011 21:27Motonobu Kawai These were not the only products that were wildly successful last year, though, or the only ones that everyone was talking about. Many consumers fell in love with products made exclusively for Japan, clearly not global strategic products. This trend-eagerly adopting global strategic products while simultaneously snapping up localized products aimed at specific regions-seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. Smartphones are hit products, but some region-specific products that were also hits include energy-efficient home appliances in environment-conscious Germany, soy milk making machines in China where food safety is a rising concern, and home study tablets in Korea where child education is a major issue for parents.
New Products Designed to Address User Needs A look at hit products in Japan in 2010 shows that the evolution of unique functions designed to serve user needs has been as successful as global strategic products. Pioneering New Markets. Why don't we see more stories about how technology can set us free?