Hackers highlight Sony's need for new ideas

TOKYO - As Sony struggles to recover its shredded reputation in the wake of perhaps the largest ever cyber attack, it is facing a more worrying problem, say analysts -- it has lost the knack of innovation.
The April hacker thefts of millions of customers' personal records have been a bruising experience for the Japanese consumer electronics giant, not least because its network security failures have left it with a potential bill of up to $1 billion.
But also under threat is its core strategy of growing online revenues to replace income from appliances where it has been losing ground in areas such as televisions and portable music players.
"What is important is that they make attractive products. Unless they do that, why should consumers choose to buy Sony products?" said Toshiyuki Kanayama, an analyst at Monex.
"Sony says it wants to bring its software to its hardware. Look at Apple. Software followed its attractive products" such as iPhones, he said.
"The creative corporate culture of Sony was lost somewhere. It's not easy to regain that. But they must work at it to bring original, attractive products," he said.
Sony was once seen as a revolutionary force dismantling the old corporate fortress. Its history spans six decades during which its best-selling products have become part of mainstream culture.
Since it listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December 1958, the company has been first in the world with a slew of white-hot innovations including the portable television, the integrated circuit radio, the video cassette recorder and the CD player.
When the cool kids were listening to Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall" in 1980, they were doing so on their Walkman portable cassette players -- another world first for Sony.
The first PlayStation two decades later completely dominated the TV games console market and the PlayStation 3 is leading the way in the fantasy world of online gaming.
But the company is struggling to answer the charge that, unlike Apple in the age of the iPhone 4 and iPad, it has lost the ability to develop category-defining hit products.
"There is nothing that will drive growth," the Nikkei newspaper complained, adding that Sony's expected profit this year would come largely from cost cutting.
"It has been a while since Sony stopped bringing out innovative products that create new markets, like it did with the Walkman music player," it said.
Some analysts believe it has been all the more difficult for Sony to recover from the breach of its PlayStation network by hackers precisely because the company has lost the goodwill it built up in the glory days of the Walkman.
The cyber attacks since April involved the theft of personal data of more than 100 million accounts on its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment services.
Sony is only gradually bringing the services back online after promising to beef up security.
Meanwhile hackers have attacked Sony Ericsson's Canadian website, as they did with Sony sites in Thailand, Indonesia and Greece.
The company has estimated that the cyber attacks could cost it 14 billion yen ($172 million), not counting compensation claims.
But speculation has been rife that the security breach could cost anything from $1 per customer to $10 or more, including damages, bringing the total bill potentially beyond $1 billion.
"Who knows what will happen? This could end now. This could end with massive damage. The data could end up in wrong hands and result in real damage and costly lawsuits," said Kanayama at Monex.
Last week Sony posted a $3.2 billion loss, due in part to Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami. But it is not all doom and gloom.
Despite suffering its third annual loss in a row in the year to March, the company forecast a return to the black this year.
Goldman Sachs said the hacking scandal would soon blow over as the company faces up to the difficult challenge of doing business in post-quake Japan.
"We think it is a matter of time until concern over the attacks and the earthquake impact fades," the broker said in a note to clients.
Nomura Securities analyst Shiro Mikoshiba warned against excessive pessimism as Sony's earnings may rebound.
"Sony is gradually emerging out of the worst period, when it could not explain how the earthquake and security breach affected its finances," Mikoshiba said.
"The broad scope of the security breach is becoming clear. The impact (from the natural disaster and hacking) on Sony's earnings should be contained in the April-June quarter," he said.

Microsoft gives peek at Windows 8

The next version of Windows will look a lot like Windows Phone 7. But the familiar PC design is still there under the hood.
Microsoft unveiled the design for Windows 8 at the All Things Digital conference here on Wednesday. The software giant plans to provide a more extensive demonstration at a conference for application developers in September.
Windows 8, which may not be the final name for the operating system, won't be available in stores this fall, as optimists had predicted, said Steven Sinofsky, the Windows division president. Analysts expect it to be released next year.
The vast majority of PCs sold run Windows, but the tablet market currently belongs to Apple. Microsoft put a large focus on tablets during the Windows 8 presentation.
Microsoft has been taking stabs at tablet PCs over the last decade. The company failed at its attempts to effectively adapt the Windows desktop, Start menu and all, to touchscreens.
In a grand concession, Microsoft is now borrowing a page from Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Windows 8 takes the colorful tiles and finger-swipe gestures from the Windows Phone operating system and expands them to a larger screen -- in this demo, 10.6 inches diagonally.
Like a smartphone, the system lights up to a "lock screen," which has some alerts and diagnostic information set atop a background picture. Once inside, small squares represent each app containing snippets of information.
A finger swipe on the right side of the screen opens a menu of buttons for functions like search, sharing and a shortcut to the home screen. Swiping on the left side switches between open apps.
Microsoft will ask developers to write software tailored to the new look. But the system will also run older Windows programs. They open to a screen that resembles the classic desktop, but windows can be dragged with a finger.

Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's head of Windows, gave a demonstration of the next version on Wednesday.
Sinofsky, the Windows head, stressed the importance of not abandoning the established and reliable technologies from the PC era.
"A mouse has a precision that your finger can't approach," he said. "The mouse and the keyboard are just tools. They're not evil in and of themselves."
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who took the stage after the Microsoft folks, entertained the idea of building a Windows tablet. Thanks to a recent partnership, Nokia has "a very unique relationship with Microsoft," and Windows 8 looks "beautiful," Elop said.
Companies with less unique relationships with Microsoft aren't as enthusiastic. For example, Acer CEO J.T. Wang told Bloomberg that Microsoft was trying to set restrictions on software licensees.
Microsoft comes into tablets as the underdog. The modern tablet war is already a year old, and new entrants are marching.
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is targeting businesses with its PlayBook, and Hewlett-Packard plans to install its webOS software on the computers, printers, phones and tablets it makes. HP may also license webOS to other hardware manufacturers, HP CEO Leo Apotheker said here on Wednesday.
Windows 8 is still in development, so it's unclear how well the system will run on tablets. The demo was silky smooth, but the touchscreen Microsoft used was connected to a hidden desktop computer, rather than contained within the portable hardware.
Microsoft says Windows 8 will be able to run on processors designed by ARM Holdings, in addition to Intel chips. That's an important addition because ARM's technology is winning among most smartphone and tablet makers. ARM President Tudor Brown predicted on Monday that his chips will be used in at least half of all mobile devices sold, which includes laptops.

Google uses new tool to track dengue fever hubs

Google is using search patterns about dengue fever in an attempt to help health officials prepare for outbreaks.

It hopes to develop an early-warning system by monitoring dengue-related search terms by users in Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia and Singapore.

Google said that its results are collected in real-time, whereas official data can take weeks to be analysed.

In 2009, Google used a similar approach to track the spread of flu.

"Using the dengue case count data provided by Ministries of Health and the World Health Organization, we're able to build a model that offers near real-time estimates of dengue activity based on the popularity of certain search terms," Google software engineer Vikram Sahai wrote in a blog post.

"Google Dengue Trends is automatically updated every day, thereby providing an early indicator of dengue activity."

The project was developed together with Boston's Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

The methodology for the project has been shared in an article for the Public Library of Science's journal on neglected tropical diseases.

Real correlation
The tool is part of Google Correlate(http://correlate.googlelabs.com/), a new service which connects search analysis with data collected in real life.

Correlate was created following Google's success with Flu Trends in 2009, a tool which tracked searches for flu-related searches worldwide.

Public health officials were able to use the data to distribute vaccines and treatments more effectively.

Google published a report in Nature, the highly-respected journal, and soon received attention by other researchers hoping to use the service to monitor other issues.

Correlate, launched last week, allows experts to upload their own data sets to compare against Google searches.

The software highlights when the real world data and online searches share the same patterns, such as flu outbreaks occuring at the same time as a large number of searches for "treatment for flu".

Professor Peter Sever, an expert in disease prevention from Imperial College London, said the tool could prove very useful for researchers that currently collect data using slower methods.

"It will of course be highly selective because you'll be picking out the people who are using Google, but of course year on year that's an increasing proportion of the population anyway," he said.

China recalls contaminated drinks from Taiwan

BEIJING - The scare over a cancer-causing plastic additive in food and drink products in Taiwan has spread to the Chinese mainland, with more than 4,800 beverage bottles suspected of contamination recalled, Beijing's top quality watchdog announced on Friday.

The additive, DEHP, which makes plastic soft and pliable, may have tainted 792 cases of imported beverages from Taiwan entering Shanghai in March, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said at a news conference.

As of Thursday night, Chinese mainland importers had recalled 518 cases of the beverage, which was produced by Taiwan Yes Sports Drink, said Li Yuanping, a spokesman of the administration.

In 2010, 256 cases of the same beverage entered Shanghai in three batches, but none were found contaminated with DEHP and no other ports except Shanghai have so far reported similar entries, Li said.

Liu Junhai, vice-chairman of the China Consumers' Association, told China Daily on Friday that the DEHP contamination in Taiwan is comparable in severity to the scandal of melamine-tainted dairy products on the mainland in 2008.

Liable manufacturers from Taiwan should weather the crisis with honesty and care for consumers to avoid a disgraceful shutdown, which was the fate of the Sanlu Group after the 2008 melamine scandal, Liu said.

"Product recalls should be unconditional and smoothly handled without any hassle at supermarkets or store counters, like demanding purchase receipts from buyers," he said.

Liu also called for a zero-tolerance policy nationwide for companies producing harmful food products and a systematic re-evaluation of the health effects of food additives.

Sang Liwei, a food safety lawyer and the China representative of the Global Food Safety Forum, went further to say that using illegal food additives should be punished with the same resolve now demonstrated in cases of drunk driving, which are considered criminal offenses.

"The news from Taiwan was a shock, as people usually believe pricey imports have less quality problems," he said.

"It gives us grounds to question the effectiveness of China's import-export inspections. DEHP should have been detected before entering Shanghai in March."

There should also be a viable compensation scheme that promises to pay for possible future damages on the basis of recognized health risks, but it remains unclear which parties - including manufacturers and suppliers from Taiwan and importers and distributors from the mainland - should foot the bill, Sang said.

Wu Yixiu, a campaigner at Greenpeace China, told China Daily the unfolding beverage contamination scandal in Taiwan involved the same substance, DEHP, that Greenpeace recently identified as carrying serious health risks in plastic toys for children.

Safety concerns of DEHP exposure include hormone malfunction, reproductive toxicity and genital abnormalities in babies, especially boys, Wu said.

The European Union has announced restrictions on the production and use of DEHP in the region, which will come into effect within three to five years, while China has yet to set a timetable, she said.

Taiwan's health authorities announced on May 23 that DEHP had been found in some bottled beverages and dairy products, and has demanded 168 food processors recall more than 1 million tainted items.

The toxic additive was supplied by Yu Shen Chemical Co, whose owner, Lai Chun-chieh, 57, has been detained by prosecutors pending further investigation, according to earlier reports.

The disturbing discovery has sent shock waves outside the island. Hong Kong residents have been warned to stop drinking sports drinks imported from Taiwan, the special administrative region's Center for Food Safety said in a statement on Wednesday

Kang Jan-jou, a top official of Taiwai's food and drug administration, said his agency had informed the World Health Organization and health authorities of importers of the tainted products including the mainland, Vietnam and the United States.

■単語
beverage
[名][U][C]((形式))（水以外の）飲み物，飲料

intoxicating [cooling] beverages
アルコール性［清涼］飲料.

［中フランス語bevrage （bevre飲む＋-AGE）. bevreはもとはラテン語bibere（飲む）. △BIB（よだれ掛け）］

contamination
[名]

1 [U]汚す［される］こと，汚濁(pollution), （放射能）汚染；((比喩))堕落，汚れ.

2 [C]汚染物質，汚（濁）物，不純物；堕落させるもの，悪影響.

3 [U]言語学混成（語），混合文（brunch＝breakfast ＋ lunchなど）.

Pliable
[形]

1 曲げやすい，柔軟な，しなやかな.

2 従順な，言いなりになる；影響されやすい.

Taint
[名]

1 （害毒・病害などの）気味，痕跡(こんせき)((of ...))

a lingering taint of malaria
長くあとを引くマラリアの症状.

2 [U]汚染，腐敗，害悪，堕落

moral taint
道徳的な腐敗

There was a taint of bribery to his election.
彼の選挙は収賄でよごれた.

3 不名誉，汚辱，醜名，汚名

taints and honors
不名誉と名誉.

━━[動](他)((通例受身))

1 …を（…で）汚染する，よごす((with, by ...))

The drinking water is tainted by pollutants.
その飲料水には汚染物質が混じっている.

2 …に（…で）感染させる；…を（…で）腐敗［堕落］させる((with, by ...)).

3 〈名誉などを〉傷つける.

━━(自)腐る，いたむ；腐敗［堕落］する.

［アングロフランス語←ラテン語tingere（色づける）. △TINGE］

hassle
[名]

1 けんか，口論.

2 面倒，煩わしいこと.

3 ひと踏んばり，努力.

━━[動]((略式))(他)〈人を〉悩ます，苦しめる，〈人に〉しつこく言って［せがんで］困らせる.

━━(自)（人と）口論する，けんかする((with ...)).

Scandal
[名]

1 [C][U]（…についての）醜聞，醜事，スキャンダル((over, about ...))

a political scandal
政治疑獄

a bribery scandal
贈収賄(わい)汚職

expose [uncover] a scandal
スキャンダルを暴く.

2 [C][U]とんでもないこと；恥辱，（…にとっての）不面目，名折れ((to ...))

What a scandal!
なんという恥辱だ

It is a scandal that he should do such a thing.
彼がそんなことをするとはあきれた.

3 [C][U]（不面目な行為に対する世間の）反感

to the scandal of the people
国民が憤慨したことには

give rise to [=cause] scandal
世間を騒がす.

4 不名誉な［反感を買うような］ことをする人.

5 [U][C]中傷，悪評，陰口

talk scandal
陰口をきく

create a scandal
悪評をたてる.

［中フランス語←後ラテン語←ギリシャ語skndalon（スプリング式のわな）. △SLANDER］

Google launches tool for early dengue outbreak detection

Search engine giant Google yesterday launched a surveillance tool in Singapore that aims to provide the public with early warning signs of a dengue outbreak.

Called the Google Dengue Trend, it does so by tracking the popularity of dengue-related search terms - including words related to dengue symptoms - on a daily basis, as an indication of dengue activity in Singapore.

Data for such dengue-related search terms ( via http://www.google.org/denguetrends/sg/#SG) is available as far back as 2005.

According to Google Southeast Asia manager for corporate communications Therese Lim, the search term trends have a "high level of correlation" to the actual number of dengue cases logged over the same period based on official estimates.

In a statement, Google said that "even if not every person who searches for 'dengue' is actually sick, a pattern emerges when all the dengue-related search queries are added together".

The tool is also available in four other countries, including Indonesia and India.

Other dengue-tracking tools in Singapore include OneMap, an online interactive map launched last year by the Singapore Land Authority, which provides data on the latest dengue clusters on the island based on updates from the National Environment Agency.

■単語
dengue
[名][U]デング熱：熱帯の感染病.

Outbreak
[名]

1 （戦争・火事・悪疫などの）突発((of ...))；（感情などの）爆発；突然の出現［発生］；（害虫などの）急激な増加

the outbreak of war
戦争のぼっ発

the typhoid outbreak
腸チフスの発生.

2 暴動，一揆(いっき).

Surveillance
[名][U]

1 （被疑者・囚人などの）監視，見張り；監査，査察

put ... under surveillance
…を監視のもとに置く

multilateral surveillance
（国際的な政策協調における）多角的監視.

2 監督.

Symptom
[形]〈人が〉（病気の）（自覚）症状のない.