When it comes to consumer electronics, Japan is generally an excellent weathervane for forecasting the picture in the West a few months ahead. With that in mind, the latest electronics sales figures suggest a balmy Fall lies ahead. Data from the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) show some staggering increases in sales of Blu-ray players and recorders during...

Less than a year after it launched the world's first OLED television – the XEL-1 – Sony is looking to compete with an entirely different line of next-generation displays called FEDs. Sony affiliate Field Emission Technologies is set to begin mass-production of FED (field emission display) panels by the end of next year, according to Japanese media reports. This may be after acquiring Pioneer's...

We've all heard about Sony's strategy meeting in Tokyo yesterday (read my report here, if you're bored), but even more interesting than the news that everything's going to be connected in Sony's Brave New World and movies will be streaming left and right were a couple of demo videos unleashed on the underwhelmed journos assembled at the event. I managed to grab brief clips of both PlayStation Home...

The principle behind noise-cancelling headphones is as elegant as it is simple – sample the noise to be cancelled out and use small speakers to create an equal, but opposite, sound that effectively erases the problem. Now, Toyota has taken that concept and applied it to one of its high-end hybrid cars to reduce interior noise for the comfort of passengers. The company's 'Active Noise Control' sys...

Last month, one look at the work Japanese company Eitarosoft is doing with Android made it pretty obvious a closer inspection was in order before the fledgling big player hits the inaccessible heights of some of its current customers. So, we popped into the firm's Tokyo office for a chat with founder and CEO Eitaro Nishijima and to take a look at what goes on in a modern software developer. Dot com...