Joi Ito's Stuff

Air-H and DDI-Pocket PRIN service

In Tokyo, I use this NEC Air-H AH-N401C. It's a little CF card that fits into a PCMCIA adapter so it works in my 15" PowerBook. There are also a USB Air-H device from Fujitsu which I used on my 12". The Air-H service uses the DDI-Pocket PHS Network. The PHS network was originally a micro-cell phone technology developed at NTT. The idea was that your land line phone would use PHS inside your house as a sort of cordless phone technology, but you would be able to walk out of your house and it would work as a mobile phone. The public phones which had 64K ISDN lines would be turned into cells. This was very nifty idea in densely populated Tokyo, but in the scuffle of breaking up NTT into regional local loop carriers, wireless Docomo, the long distance business and the holding company, the technology fell through the cracks and into a niche. They could set up a wireless network, but it was not to be allowed to be an extension of land line phones. doh... oh and it should try not to compete too much with Docomo's core voice business. PHS ended up becoming the poor person's alternative to the traditional cell phone.

The niche where it ended up doing well was in was data services. The hand-offs became better, they figured out a way for you to pick up two base stations and get 128K instead of 64K. They wired up the subways and buildings. They made the drivers better so that between cells, instead of dropping the connection, it would hold you over and hand it back to you when you got back in range. I am able to get pretty decent connectivity on trains and on highways and can travel hours sometimes without losing my connection.

I used to use NTT's P-in network, but I switched to DD-Pocket because they have better coverage. The competition has helped both the pricing and the coverage I think. Both networks have a Internet service so you can get (almost) flat fee Internet connectivity.

It costs 4950 JPY / month for the heavy user plan. This gives you 25 hours free and 10 JPY / min over 25 hours / month for the IP connectivity and 5 JPY / min with a cap of 1500 / month for the data connection. So if you use it for 25 hours, that's something like 12,450 / month. Today's exchange rate is 106.18 JPY / USD so that's like 117.25 USD / month. So that's about the price of a nice musk mellon. How much would a similar plan be in the US and Europe? Hmm...

I'm not going to explain all of the different Japanese networks in this entry, but we don't have GSM in Japan and instead we have a bunch of proprietary networks except for CDMA, which is an international standard.

HP 12C

The HP 12C is my favorite calculator that I've ever owned. I LOVE the touch of the HP keys, I LOVE reverse polish notation (RPN), I love the simplicity. The HP 12C has just about every function you need and very few function you don't need. It is also the perfect size. It's a pretty standard tool so I feel a bit silly writing about it, but just in case you don't have one, I decided that maybe I should blog about it.

First of all, RPN makes more sense once you get used to it than any other way of talking to a calculator. You hit the keys the way you actually think of equations. For instance, to calculate 1 / ( (2 + 3) * 3) on a normal calculator you would do something like 2 + 3 = x 3 MC M+ 1 / MR = probably. With the HP you would do something like 2 ENTER 3 + 3 x [1/x]. In other words, enter 2, take 3 and add it, take another 3 and multiply it, then invert it. You sort have have to get used to it, but trust me. It's more natural.

The HP 12C also has a bunch of very useful financial functions for dummies like me. You can listen to an entrepreneur give a pitch and punch in... 5 years, projections for the first 5 years, starting cash, then pow you get expected cash at the end of 5 years and pow, you've got your internal rate of return (IRR). Or if you're buying a house, punch the interest rate, how much down payment, how many years, how often you pay, and pow, you've got your monthly payments. You can do date calculations and some simple programing too.

Anyway, I can't live without it and I have software on my palm and my PowerBook that emulate the HC 12C.

Matsushita HE-RQC2W heat pump / bath

After a month of construction, we restored the old bath at our house. It is a very traditional bath with lots of room and a bathtub that fits 2-3 people. Antipixel has a good blog entry about the art of Japanese bathing worth reading. Basically, you wash before you enter a Japanese bath and the baths are more for soaking than cleaning inside. You don't bring towels or soaps into the bath itself. There is a lot of room outside the bath to clean.

The tradition for older baths is to fill the bath up with hot water and keep it warm through the day, everyone sharing the hot water. In the old days, there was a boiler that the water would circulate through to keep it warm. The heat pump water heater we installed keeps a tank of hot water for the whole house including the kitchen and the bath. The heat pump takes care of filling the bath with hot water, managing a reserve of hot water for the kitchen and shower, and also circulates the water in the bath and maintains the temperature as you like. It's quite an amazing synthesis of modern technology and tradition.

Maybe after washlets, Japanese baths will become popular in the US. What about it Sergey and Larry?

Kinesis keyboard

On every desktop computer, I have a Kinesis keyboard. They take a while to get used to, but once you've got the hang of them, there's no going back. They're great for your back/posture, have remapped keys for minimum stress on your fingers, force you to touch type, increase your typing speed and and look cool. All of the bad-for-your-pinkie keys like control, alt, backspace, delete, home, end and option are hit with your thumbs, other frequently used keys like the arrow keys are typed with your middle finger. They used to have them only in off-white, but they recently released them in black. Now all they need to do is put a trackball in the middle...

My Vonage setup

I blogged about my Vonage service back in May 2003 and I have become totally addicted to it. I am now working at home quite a bit and it has become much more integrated into my home. I have it hooked up to an el-cheepo cordless phone and a Plantronics vista headset. The headset lets me talk while I'm at my computer hands-free and the cordless phone lets me walk around the house.

I've been using Vonage for awhile now and it is as clear as can be on my el-cheepo ADSL service in the backwaters of Chiba. Don't believe any of the carrier FUD about latency or quality of service. It works. So for $.39.99/month, I can call anywhere in North America with unlimited minutes walking around my house in Japan with a cordless phone.

The Vonage Terms of Service say:

1.3.2 Use of Service and Device by Customers Outside the United States: While we encourage use of the Service within the United States to other countries, Vonage does not presently offer or support the Service to customers located in other countries. If you remove the Device to a country other than the United States and use the Service from there, you do so at your own risk, including the risk that such activity violates local laws in the country where you do so. You are liable for any and all use of the Service and/or Device by any person making use of the Service or Device provided to you.

So if you live outside the US (which is the most useful application of this setup), you will have to have an address in the US to buy the Vonage box and you will have to be prepared for your local telephone carrier to come break down your door for the illegal trafficking of bits.

Zip-Linq USB chargers

From my favorite gadget site, MobileWhack:

Just as Bluetooth is finally coming into its own as dongle-replacement (USB-replacement in particular), I've been coming to see USB as Bluetooth with power-replacement, suffering only from a mild but tolerable bit of tethering.

For a few months now I've been carrying a lighter load, a fist-full of Zip-Linq cables rather than lugging all the heavy charging bricks for mycellphones, PDAs, Firewire drives, and other assorted gadgets. There are both the additioonal dimensions and weight to consider -- and when you tote as many gizmos as I've come to, these count in large amounts. While of course there are various brands of these dongles, the Zip-Linq is retractable, taking up only 3 inches or so in a cargo-pants- or laptop bag pocket.

I have always been a big Zip-Linq fan, but I hadn't gotten into the chargers. When I saw Rael whip this little guys out, I was instantly in love. I just ordered them and am waiting for them to arrive.

insTand

I saw Jerry Michalski with one of these at a conference and I got the URL from him and ordered it on the spot. I had it delivered to the next hotel along my travel path and at the next conference, I was prepared. It's an amazing little device. It is a little stand that folds up into a pretty light weight package that I now tote with me across the ocean. It allows you to adjust height and angle and lets you use your notebook PC in the most comfortable position even if you end up with a crappy seat at a conference. A MUST HAVE for hardcore conference bloggers.

New blog about my stuff

I don't know if I need a separate blog for this, but I'm going to try it. This blog is a blog about stuff that I have, why I have it, and how I feel about it.