Jay Alabaster

The head of TED, the organizer of conferences around brainy presentations on a wide variety of subjects, says online video will continue to play a central role for the group and he has high hopes for its new education platform.

TED Curator Chris Anderson said that the group's popularity surged after its decision to post its content freely online about six years ago, and that a million people watch a TED presentation each day around the world. But he said the current model of watching embedded videos on Web pages may eventually fade.

Japan's Softbank will launch a phone with a built in radiation detector, the world's first, it said Tuesday.

The latest model in the company's popular, bare-bones Pantone line, built by Sharp, has a specially designed chip that can detect gamma radiation in the air at doses of between 0.05 and 9.99 microsieverts per hour. The phone then uses its GPS to place readings on a map. Due to go on sale in July, it runs Android 4.0 and features standard functionality for Japanese handsets, including mobile TV, touch payments and infrared transmission.

A Japanese robotics lab has developed a new emergency response prototype that will soon be put to work at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan.

(See footage of the robot in action and other projects on YouTube.)

Sony on Friday released an iPhone app to access its streaming Music Unlimited service, part of its efforts to expand its online platforms to devices from rival manufacturers.

The app allows users to listen to and manage playlists and channels. The service is already available on Android phones and PCs, as well as the company's tablets, Walkman music players, home stereos and PlayStation game consoles.

Sony said Thursday it will pull out of its over three-year LCD TV panel joint venture with Sharp, part of Sony's ongoing attempts to reform its foundering TV business.

Sony said in March it was canceling a planned additional investment in the venture, and its eventual exit was widely expected.

FujiFilm said Wednesday it will begin sales of a digital camera in June that is waterproof, shockproof, sealed against dust and sand, and works at temperatures below freezing.

The company's new FinePix XP50 comes with a 14.1-megapixel CMOS sensor and five times optical zoom, with a 2.7-inch LCD screen. But its main sales point will be its durability -- FujiFilm says it can be operated at depths of up to five meters, will take drops of 1.5 meters and can withstand temperatures down to minus 10 degrees Celsius.

Sony on Tuesday showed a digital media hub that uses Wi-Fi to connect its PCs, tablets, smartphones and PlayStation game consoles, a product that it hopes will be part of its comeback.

The "nasne," which expands on a previous tuner for the PlayStation, is equipped with a 500GB hard drive and inputs for terrestrial and satellite TV. Sony devices can be used interchangeably to remotely access the device and set recording times or stream stored content.

Tokyo Skytree, the world's tallest broadcast tower, officially opened to the public on Tuesday.

The massive grey structure, which looms over the eastern section of the city, will serve as a digital broadcast tower for Japan's major television networks and radio stations when it comes fully online next year. It already broadcasts a special television and data service aimed at smartphones and other mobile devices, as well as wireless channels for taxis, and will be used for various broadcasts during natural disasters and other emergencies.

Nearly one in three smartphones sold in Japan last fiscal year was an iPhone, pushing Apple's sales far ahead of main rival Samsung in the country, according to data published by a local research firm.

In the year to March 31, 24.2 million smartphones were shipped in Japan, of which 30 percent were iPhones, making Apple the clear leader in the category, according to data vendor MM Research Institute. Samsung captured an 8.3 percent share, trailing Apple as well as domestic makers Sharp, Fujitsu and Sony.

Panasonic said Friday it booked a loss of nearly US$10 billion for the fiscal year that ended March 31, the largest ever loss by a Japanese manufacturer according to local media.

The Osaka-based electronics firm is in the midst of company-wide restructuring that includes the continued integration of Sanyo Electric and a shift to green technologies such as solar power and rechargeable batteries. It is also implementing a management shift, with Kazuhiro Tsuga, the head of its consumer electronics and TV business, to take over as President from Fumio Ohtsubo in June.

Softbank, which runs Japan's third-largest mobile phone network, is experimenting with using blimps as temporary cell towers for use during natural disasters.

The company said it will use helium-filled blimps that dangle antennas about 100 meters above the ground and provide mobile coverage over a radius of roughly three kilometers in a suburban landscape. Softbank will carry out trials through June of next year to test factors such as the coverage area, data speed and voice quality.

None of the recently leaked Twitter logins and passwords came from within the company, according to a message posted on Twitter's Japanese blog Thursday.

"We have confirmed that no one's information has been leaked from Twitter," the blog said, after apologizing to users for their concerns.