'Made in Japan' Brand May Be Threatened By Japan

I'm not sure how this will affect Wacom.

It could lower the tablet prices depending on where they choose to move manufacturing. Hopefully Wacom won't compromise on quality.

The "Made in Japan" brand is at a crossroads as more firms face a tough choice over whether or not to move production overseas to escape the impact of the relentless rise of the yen, say analysts.

According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, some 46 percent of large manufacturers it surveyed in August said they would move production bases abroad if the yen stays around 76 yen against the dollar for half a year.

Currently near 77 yen to the greenback, the unit's strength risks causing the "collapse" of the Japanese auto industry, Toyota executive vice president Satoshi Ozawa said last week.

via google.com

Wacom Tablet Making the Wine Industry more Efficient

Geographic information systems (GIS) technology plays an important role in the wine industry.

The prestigious Chateau St. Michelle Wine Estates in Washington uses the combination of the Wacom DTZ-2100 interactive pen display with Esri software to display precision canopy density in the vineyard. The aerial imagery is converted to the NDVI format (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), which displays the photosynthetic output of plants, based on their spectral bands in aerial imagery. The DTZ-2100 pen’s accuracy makes it possible to pinpoint specific plants easily, so their fruit can be picked separately to take advantage of certain flavor characteristics.

“We’ve found a correlation between the size of the canopies and the grape flavors,” says Jennifer Smithyman of St. Michelle. “Many of our winemakers have preferences, such as grapes with more vegetal characteristics and others prefer more fruit flavors. Because the Wacom display allows our georeferencing to be so accurate, we can divide the vineyard into different zones for separate picking to give the winemakers what they want.”

“GIS is providing new insight into the importance of maps and is making industries like wine more targeted with resource allocation, which in turn leads to greater efficiency. This increased efficiency is especially important in these current economic times,” says Gabriel Schmidbauer, GIS professor at American Sentinel University.”

via directionsmag.com