Daily Ski and Snow Reports From Niseko, Japan on New POWDER TV Internet Station
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NISEKO, Japan, Feb. 12  /PRNewswire/ -- Powder TV, an internet-based TV station committed to delivering high quality content from ski resorts around the globe has established a base in Niseko, Japan.  Niseko Japan is one of the premiere skiing and boarding capitals of the world.
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By Ben Winslow Deseret Morning News  Another round of snowstorms caused a series of crashes during the morning commute and there's a chance for a repeat during the drive home.  Dozens of accidents were reported on the freeways along the Wasatch Front.
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Here's a development we can all overinterpret to a fare-thee-well if we're of a mind: It snowed in Baghdad this morning, for the first time in living memory. Video And The Lede has the video to prove it, shot on a cell-phone camera by Ahmad Fadam, an Iraqi employee of The New York Times, as he drove [...].
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Indoor skiing is coming to the United States. Depending upon your perspective, this is either the next big thing in snowsports or a sign that the apocalypse is creeping closer to the skiing and snowboarding industry.
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By Warren Cornwall, Seattle Times  Mar. 2--When meteorologist Mark Albright stepped into his front yard in North Seattle yesterday morning, it was covered with 4 inches of snow.
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A delicious new trendy dessert for sale in Tokyo's electronics district replicates the sensation of eating fresh powdered snow. By Chris Kohler.
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(InfoWorld) - A powerful earthquake that struck northern Japan Monday morning has caused disruption to communications services in the country. The earthquake struck at 10:13 a.m. just off the coast of Niigata prefecture, which is north west of Tokyo. The magnitude 6.8 quake registered an intensity of 6+ on Japan's scale of 0 to 7, in three locations. Citing figures collected at 1:30 p.m. Japan's NHK television reported at least two people were killed and more than 190 people injured. Television images showed dozens of collapsed buildings and damage to structures such as bridges. At one point black smoke was seen rising from the Kashiwazaki nuclear plant but the operator said this was from an electrical transformer that had caught fire and the reactors had shut down safely with no release of radiation. Japan is one of the most seismically active countries in the world and buildings standards are high to avoid widespread damage during strong quakes. As a result of the temblor major telecommunications carriers have imposed restrictions on phone calls into and out of the affected area. NTT East, the major fixed-line provider in the area, has activated its "disaster dial 171" service that allows people in the area to leave voicemail messages that can be checked by those in the rest of the country. An Internet version of the service, Web 171 has also been activated and allows those affected to leave voice, still image and video images for friends. The major cell phone carriers have similarly restricted calls and activated their own disaster message board services on wireless Internet sites. The restrictions are put on telecom networks to keep lines free for emergency purposes and also to avoid a collapse of the network due to the massive surge in calls often seen after a powerful earthquake.
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FUJIKAWAGUCHI, Japan -- If you look up from the forests at the foot of Japan's Mount Fuji, the volcano's graceful slopes rise into the distance and peak in a nearly symmetrical, snowcapped cone.
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By Doreen Carvajal  Perhaps it is fitting that a 50-second video clip of an ear- shattering explosion of 13 shortwave radio antenna towers on the Spanish Costa Brava is getting viewers on the Web site YouTube.
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Nikon leads SLR market in Japan...gaming the Creative Commons...new geotagging tech...30-minute Olympus E-3 video...Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 3...Microsoft Popfly video humor
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(InfoWorld) - It's been a year since a Mobile WiMax service was launched in Seoul and one of the world's most wired cities became one of the most wireless. The service is based on WiBro, a South Korean system that has become a part of the 802.16e Mobile WiMax standard. Whereas Mobile WiMax encompasses three frequency bands and several signal bandwidths, WiBro covers a subset of these and is limited to 2.3GHz and an 8.75MHz bandwidth per channel. To mark the launch of its WiBro service last year, KT Corp., the former state-run telecom carrier, took journalists on a trip around Seoul to try out the service in a WiMax-equipped bus. The reporters came away impressed, able to watch Internet video streaming while surfing the Web and video conferencing all while driving down the street. But what's the reality a year later? Last week I returned to Seoul to test the service again, this time outside the controlled environment of a promotional bus ride. Seoul is among the first cities in the world to have Mobile WiMax, so the results provide an indication of what the rest of the world can look forward to in the future. I accessed the service while on the subway, in a bus, and sitting in a coffee shop, and the results were as impressive as they were in last year's staged demonstration. This was especially true on the subway. Riding the number 2 line from Samseong Station to City Hall, the journey has both underground and overground sections. It connects the Teheran Valley high-tech district in the south, crosses the Han River and ends in the heart of Seoul's business and media district. Throughout the 30-minute journey I did not lose the signal once, although the speed did fluctuate somewhat. It would often drop when the train moved out of a station and increase again when it arrived at the next stop. Web and e-mail access worked so well that I decided to try something a little more demanding and accessed streaming video news clips from the Yahoo Japan portal. The clips are encoded at 300k bps (bits per second) and played without any problem, even while the train was in motion. Equally surprising was that my little experiment did not draw the attention of the passengers sitting next to me. In a country where most high-end cell phones have TV reception, watching streaming video on the train doesn't seem to impress anybody! I also accessed an FTP site in the U.S. from the train and started to download a 40M-byte video file. The software indicated a download speed of up to 660k bps in stations, and about 320k bps when the train was in motion. Access from a bus produced much the same results, and while surfing from a coffee shop I enjoyed a connection that hit those same top speeds and remained stable. Technically the WiBro service appears a success, at least if the results of my small trial are anything to go by, so it's a surprise that it has attracted less than 10,000 users in its first year of service. The service costs a flat fee of 16,000 won (US$17.60) per month for unlimited use during the current trial period, and KT even throws in a WiBro adapter, which plugs into laptops via the USB port. So what's holding people back? Until now a limited number of WiBro adapters has been available. said Yeom Woojong, a spokesman for KT in Seoul. But now more companies are offering them, he said, and KT expects to attract more subscribers as the year goes on. At the start of the year it set a target to have 200,000 WiBro users by the end of 2007, and it's sticking to that number, Yeom said. Â
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We review the best winter coats, stereos and VOIP services. Oh yeah, and we also settle the Wii vs. PS3 debate. From Wired magazine.
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As I said above I'm glued to the TV, but I'm also on Twitter, and blogging, and email, and IM and I'm subscribed to hundreds of RSS feeds, and I've been noticing that slowly the TV news organizations are integrating new Internet services with their TV offerings. They're all getting started, and eventually I'm pretty sure they'll be where Yahoo is now. The thing is, it works. For example, newmediajim is a cameraman for NBC News and he's on Twitter and sometimes I'm watching the other side of his camera on MSNBC and twittering with him before and after. A guy named creepsleepy is a radio guy in Manchester, interviewing presidential candidates, wouldn't it be great if I could listen to his interviews while he twitters his progress? Well, there's no doubt that soon we'll be doing that. We're finally really at the convergence so many have predicted for so long. With the help of a few members of the community Yahoo can get there first. BTW, I read on the NY Times site that Yahoo is going to open up more to developers. Hmmm. If you want to impress end-users and shareholders run it in MSM. If you want to get through to developers, use the developer blogs. Let us have the story first, otherwise you don't seem very serious about it.
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IAC/InterActive spins off the online travel service. Also: PCs sprout second brain.... Nielson ratings show broadband users surpassing dialup.... and more.
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Microsoft's new internet streaming service attempts to replicate terrestrial stations, without all the annoying chatter -- and without permission. By Randy Dotinga.
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Snow and rain fell in pockets of the nation Monday.
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Reward Russia with its first Winter Olympics? Take the games to a new Asian market in South Korea? Or return to the Austrian Alps for the first time in nearly 40 years?.