11月14日（火）、サンフランシスコのLINE-Intertrust Security Summit にて、パネルの一人として登壇いたします。プライバシーに関する政策のパネルで、英語での議論となります。
会議の情報および登録はこちらからどうぞ → https://www.intertrust.com/company/events/line-summit/
Anonymous - "Oops, wrong Kasumiga..."
Japan is working on the new copyright law to press criminal charges against illegal downloads, and recently the infamous Anonymous declared Cyber War against Japanese government. Japan's equivalent of "Capitol Hill" is "Kasumigaseki", a district in Tokyo where all the government buildings are gathered. And of course, Anonymous attacked...
"Kasumigaura River Management Office."
"Kasumigaura" is a dull and polluted lake in northeast of Tokyo, approximately 2 hours away. Oops...
Source: 2 channel (^^)v
IPO winners and losers in Social Media 2011-12 so far
People talk about Facebook IPO as "failure" so much, but I kept hearing the same story - disappointing IPO of social media stocks - since last year, so I went ahead and made this chart. There were 19 "social media" IPO's last year according to Mashable, and I also added Yelp and Facebook which went public this year.
My impression was right, most prominent IPO stocks have not been doing well. Among them, LinkedIn and Zillow are the stellar exceptions.
It makes me happy to see the very bottom pair, FriendFinder and Jiayuan are both dating/adult sites.
Of course, Facebook IPO is in a totally different world, as the sheer size ($16 billion) is more than 10 times of last year's biggest, Yandex (Russian search engine, which raised $1.3 billion) and the impact is so much bigger. It is just one week from IPO, so things may change over period of time. But still, the Wall Street side story sounds very different from the dot-com bubble time.
In the meantime, over here at Silicon Valley, the air feels bubbly. So many insiders made money out of these IPO's, and the housing market is soaring again. Things look differently from this side of the coast, as usual.
Michi
My monthly column on Nikkei Business Online, "Big Data and Privacy" issue for this month, is up.日経ビジネスオンライン今月のコラム「ビッグデータとプライバシー」が公開されました。
http://business.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/world/20120327/230277/
Apple should build plants in Mid-West, instead of burning cash
Yesterday Apple announced that they are paying dividend and will acquire companies.
I have always wondering - why don't they build a factory in the U.S., if they have money to burn? Japanese auto companies, for a long time, have made SO MUCH effort to build and operate plants in the U.S., even though it could increase their production cost. Why? because they wanted to be a part of U.S. community, not just through their products but also by providing jobs to the local community.
As seen in SOPA incident, Silicon Valley companies have suffered weak political position in Washington. I think it is not just they don't spend enough money on lobbyist, but also because they don't provide enough jobs (=buy voters) in the U.S. Heartland. They are building data centers, but data centers don't hire people like factories. They provide so many jobs in China, but not in the U.S.
Build more factories, not just in China, but also in Mid-West. The Heartland. It will help not just people in the Heartland, but also Apple's long-term reputation.
Strata conference streaming
Strata conference is on today, and you can see the sessions in streaming as below: 今日からStrataカンファレンス開始。下記にてストリーミングでセッションを見ることができます。
at Strata conference
I will be attending Strata 2012 conference at Santa Clara tomorrow and the day after. If anyone who will be attending and want to talk to me, please go ahead and say hello! I am still learning about this "Big Data" field, so I welcome any input.
New article on NBO "Superbowl as America's top contents"
I just wrote about the Superbowl, as the last and the greatest contents for American TV world, in my column at Nikkei Business Online (Japanese). http://business.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/world/20120209/227042/
My article on SOPA
I have a monthly column on Nikkei Business Online (Japanese), and a new article got just uploaded. It is about SOPA, and "California Civil War" between Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
One aspect of SOPA is the new type of "trade friction" against overseas pirate sites, and it became a political issue because it relates to jobs. I explained the basic facts about the debate, about Hollywood's position ("protect media workers' jobs") and Silicon Valley's position ("but it is too much for us, and it does not work").
The heart of the matter is that Hollywood is now aggressively trying to establish a system to harvest enough money from online video/music business, and that money gets distributed among many people in guild/union of media workers. In contrast, I think that Silicon Valley does not have a convincing system of distributing wealth among many people (not just top nerds but all the way to regular middle class workers).
It will take some time till we can establish such system... or can we??
App for autism "Voice4u" won Japan's "Android Application Award"
Android App for communication of autistic people, "Voice4u", just won the top prize at "A3 (Android Application Award)", organized by Nikkei BP and sponsored by major Japanese carriers and international device vendors.
Voice4u is created by my friends Yumi Kubo and Sei Higuchi, and I have been supporting them from early on. Yumi is mother of an autistic boy and she developed this app, as portable, affordable and "cool" tool for kids with communication problems.
ustream of the award presentation
And by the way, my son is working as a volunteer to help this app. If you know anyone with autism who has problem communicating, please let her/him know about this app!
Michi