Sony’s share value surged by as much as three percent in Japan on Tuesday after a rumor that Apple was considering it a buyout target. The rush was triggered by speculation by Barrons that the company’s $51 billion in cash might be used to buy a major company, with Sony as just one of the targets. Original author Eric Savitz has since said it was "pure speculation" and was likely taken too seriously by Japanese investors.
Apple chief Steve Jobs had defended the company’s refusals so far to offer share dividends …

Norio Nakamura (Senior Research Scientist), Human Ubiquitous-Environment Interaction Group (Leader: Akio Utsugi), the Human Technology Research Institute (Director: Motoyuki Akamatsu) of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST; President: Tamotsu Nomakuchi), has developed "i3Space," a system that presents a tactile sensation (sense of touch) and a kinesthetic sensation (resistance) in the air when a user views 3D images; this system enables us to design shapes of objects and to simultaneously confirm how we feel when we touch the objects. This system has been developed by combining 3D …

After 31 years and over 200 million units sold, Sony is officially putting the cassette model Walkman out to pasture. Introduced in 1979, the portable tape player defined the following 10-plus years of mobile music playback. It was even a leader in the era of optical media, with its Walkman line of portable CD players eventually known as Discman. But in the era of the iPod, the brand name has diminished in value. Radios and digital media players still go by the name Walkman, but the moniker has always referred …

Dentsu Facility Management Inc will start taking orders for the "Chef’s Farm," a small vegetable plant that can be installed in, for example, a restaurant, in June 2010.
The vegetable plant, which will be released in the summer of 2010 in Japan, was exhibited at International Food Machinery & Technology Exhibition 2010 (FOOMA JAPAN 2010), which took place from June 8 to 11, 2010, in Tokyo. It is priced at about ¥8.3 million (approx US$90,552). Dentsu Facility Management claims that it is possible to harvest 60 heads of lettuce per day …

Online retailer Rakuten Inc has petitioned the Japanese antitrust watchdog against plans by Yahoo Japan Corp and Google Inc to work together on Internet searches and advertising, the Nikkei business daily reported.
In a filing with the Japan Fair Trade Commission earlier this month, Rakuten argued that once Yahoo Japan adopts Google’s search and advertising technologies, Google will dominate the Internet in Japan, and pose a threat to free competition, the paper said.
via Rakuten opposes Yahoo Japan-Google tie-up.

Sumitomo Corp., JGC Corp. and Electric Power Development Co. and other companies are cooperating with the government to sell geothermal power technology overseas.
Twenty companies, including Itochu Corp., Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., have set up a working group to promote the Japanese technology, said Hiroyuki Kudo, general manager of the international cooperation division at the Energy Conservation Center, which serves as the group’s secretariat.
The group plans to first pursue opportunities in Indonesia, where demand for geothermal power is forecast to increase, said Satoshi Nakamura, assistant director …

Saturday during CEATEC 2010 in Japan, TDK Corp revealed a prototype dual-sided optical disc with a total capacity of 1 TB, trumping the current BDXL specification of 100 GB and 128 GB. One side of TDK’s prototype was shown to contain 16 recording layers of 32 GB each, adding up to 512 GB per side.
According to TDK, this was accomplished by creating a disc material with a high light transmittance. "The material has already been used for part of a Blu-ray disc," the company said during the show. "So, it …

Japan will build a backup satellite to take over if a malfunction occurs in a pair of radar satellites now under construction, officials said.
The backup satellite will probably be launched in 2014, and would give Japan three fully operable orbiting radar satellites, The Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
Japan’s two intelligence-gathering satellites have broken down, and their replacements won’t be orbited until 2011 and 2012, the report said.
Japan will save money by building the backup satellite using parts and technology from the two satellites now under construction, officials at the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence …

Two Japanese, Prof. Ei-ichi Negishi and Prof. Akira Suzuki, and one American, Prof. Richard F. Heck, have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of “palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.”
Read the rest of the story: Two Japanese and an American win Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The news was cause for pride within Japan, leading to immediate television reports, newspaper special editions, and comments of praise to the winners from Prime Minister Naoto Kan on down.
Japanese news reports stated that the awards are the 17th and 18th Nobel …

Making its debut Tuesday at CEATEC in Japan, the new Lumix camera phone has arrived and is much more camera than phone for those wishing their phone took better pictures. You will probably recognize Lumix as Panasonic’s popular camera line that is sold worldwide but now the brand has expanded to introduce their first Lumix brand mobile phone.
The Lumix Camera Phone is expected to have removable storage, Wi-Fi capability, a 13.2 megapixel image sensor, integrated flash and a touchscreen that allows the user to perform phone functions.
Read the …