Reuters Investigates

All Japan, all the time

Two more special reports from Japan today: first up, a look at how globalization has made companies around the world vulnerable to a shock like the earthquake. ”Disasters show flaws in just-in-time production.”

The PDF version, here, has a nice graphic showing the location of Japan’s ports, some of which have been hard hit by the disaster.

The second report takes another look at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. It makes worrying reading:

TOKYO (Reuters)- When the massive tsunami smacked into Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power plant was stacked high with more uranium than it was originally designed to hold and had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks over the past decade.

 The Fukushima plant that has spun into partial meltdown and spewed out plumes of radiation had become a growing depot for spent fuel in a way the American engineers who designed the reactors 50 years earlier had never envisioned, according to company documents and outside experts.

The full story is here: “Fuel storage, safety issues vexed Japan plant.”

The battle of Waterloo

By Alastair Sharp

University of Waterloo students looking for a bit of extra cash and some experience in the world of technology often end up spending a semester in the bowels of Research In Motion’s sprawling campus next door.

Waterloo, a university town an hour’s drive from Toronto where RIM built its empire at the entrance to its mine, is a technology hub and its main university is often referred to as either the MIT or Stanford of the north by proud Canadians, with good reason.

Its mathematics, computer science and engineering faculties are among the best in the world.

But soon, students there will have another way to touch the tech world. Apple is welcoming job applications for one of its shiny consumer playgrounds slash cash registers in Waterloo, population 120,000. An Apple store is coming soon.

Sure, its retail rather than research, but the symbolism could not be more potent if Steve Jobs had personally delivered an iPad 2 and iTunes gift card for Mike Lazaridis’ 50th birthday this month.

RIM faces challenges in a shifting mobile landscape, and the appeal of Apple’s pitch-perfect design aesthetic is high among them. It’s hoping its powerful PlayBook tablet and a wider product refresh will do the trick, but the jury is still out.

A peek inside our layer

We stepped into the new new Media Universe for our report on Augmented Reality, creating our own app which will alert anyone using it (iPhone or Android-phones only so far) when they are near one of the new movers and shakers of the business. It wasn’t so hard — you can see how we did it here.

But for anyone who just wants an overview, here’s the contents of the layer we made and published through Hoppala (on a Firefox browser) and AR browser firm Layar. It’s our take on the movers and shakers in the AR industry, mainly linking to Twitter feeds, and Tarmo Virki is happy to learn of any updates. These entries are unadorned:

Company: Int13 What it does: mobile gaming firm ARDefender game for iPhone, bada  Weblink: http://twitter.com/#!/Int13

Parrot creator of AR.Drone plastic and foam-made helicopter controlled by iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/usa/ar-games

Forrester research firm sees AR as disruptive technology http://twitter.com/#!/Forrester%20Research

Total Immersion founded 1999, an AR pioneer makes AR apps for many industries strategic alliance with Adobe http://twitter.com/#!/totalimmersion

Hoppala AR technology provider makes easy-to-use Layar tools

Sleepy in Seattle — the future of Microsoft

The world’s biggest software maker once inspired fear in tech land. Today it’s mostly yawns. Is Microsoft no longer a growth company? Should Google be nervous, too? And are Steve Ballmer’s days at the helm numbered?

Seattle correspondent Bill Rigby’s special report has some answers.