Started two years ago, I have been writing about future trends for the upcoming years. Last year, I wrote about the top 5 green trends for 2016 so I thought I would repeat the idea this year but I would throw a twist by mixing green with techie as it is what Fullcircle Innovations's newest site: Grendz.com is all about it.

According to Wikipedia: “the word technology refers to the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function”.

A longtime shareholding on mine, Internet Initiative Japan (IIJI) (JP: 3774), is having its Annual Shareholder Meeting this Friday in Tokyo. I urge all ADR and Ordinary shareholders to submit their votes as soon as possible, but not later than this Thursday, 10:00 AM Eastern (NY) for ADR holders, or by Thursday, 11:59 PM Japan Standard Time for Ordinary shareholders. Also, please see my previous article detailing my activist work to-date with IIJ.

Time to mind our own green triple bottom line.

By Flavio Souza

It used to be that the 2D QR barcodes developed by Denso were everywhere on Japanese posters, magazine advertisements – in fact, anywhere where the advertiser wanted the reader to follow through with a visit to a Web site to learn more about the product or service. The idea was that customers would use their mobile phones’ cameras to take a pictures, and follow the Web site through to a long complex URL.

When I first came to Japan, long before the advent of mobile phones, I was impressed by the number of people I saw reading on the trains -- a literate society, I thought...

A Google Maps mashup makes it easier to find addresses if your kanji reading is not up to scratch.