Lithium rights deal for Japan to supply booming hybrid car industry

Breaking story on the Nikkei just a few hours ago: the Japanese government has teamed up with Toyota Tsusho and an unnamed Australian company to land rights to Lithium mines in Argentina. Starting at 15k tons/yr in 2012, the move is a first step to guaranteeing supply to Japan's booming hybrid car industry and the broader automotive segment. The two companies will create a joint-venture that will be co-invested by all three partners, although all materials excavated will be managed solely by Toyota Tsusho.

It is unclear what role the Australian partner will have, although my guess is they could probably run the heavy lifting part of the process (drilling, excavation, mine mgmt) with the Toyota Tsusho trading company taking over the logistics, supply chain and processing part. In a world where China is securing large commodity deals left and right across the globe esp. on the African continent recently, this is still a rather small deal for Japan in one of its more high-profile emerging industries. Expect to hear more deals like this.

(original source in Japanese only: http://www.nikkei.co.jp/news/main/20100120ATFS1903919012010.html)

Slim touchscreen Lenovo tablet at CES easily docks into lightweight "netbook skin"... flashbacks of Idoru

One of the two coolest things I've seen at CES this year (other than the Sony 3D gaming booth). Major flashbacks of the multicoloured tablets Korean kids carry around in William Gibson's masterpiece Idoru. I've been waiting for this since the book came out in 1996... already that long?! We're still probably about 5yrs off that vision (ie. no eyeplugs at CES as of yet), but we just got one step closer ;)



Now all we need is the nanotech construction goo to make the tablet docking "netbook skins" all the more lightweight and organic... oh well, another couple of years to wait then.

Apple's Phil Schiller paints pragmatic cloud future to JP media (and warns Google): "customers not looking for web-based computers"

In an exclusive interview to Japanese media a few hours ago, Philip Schiller - SVP of worldwide product marketing at Apple - warned that "customers are not looking for web display-driven computers".

Firing a shot across the bow to Google's all-encompassing cloud-based OS strategy, and making sure that Asian markets are listening, he predicts a more pragmatic approach to cloud computing with a growing distinction between cloud-friendly software, and other software that isn't and that will remain local.

"Lots of software and data, such as games, movies, and pictures, don't work well in the cloud [...][In the future,] high-performance computers loaded with software and browsers that are easily usable by the cloud will become mainstream".

(see the original Japanese article here).

Japan prime minister Hatoyama starts own twitter account on Jan 1st, starts tweeting few hours ago

The Japanese prime minister has just started his own twitter account, according to offbeat Japanese blogger Vocaloid (see post here, JP only). See also the PM's first tweets at @hatoyamayukio...