10/18/94

CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558

New computer window on Japan opening soon

STANFORD -- Surfers on Internet who are interested in Japanese technology, science, business, industry, government and culture soon will be able to access a new source of information about these subjects from their computers at work, school or home.

Using the latest Internet interface, the World Wide Web (WWW), they will be able to get electronically both text and graphics that previously have been available only in printed form, often only in Japan.

The new information service was announced Oct. 19 at the Second International World Wide Web Conference in Chicago. It is called the Japan Window project and is a research collaboration between Stanford University's US-Japan Technology Management Center and the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) Software Laboratories.

At the conference, Burton Lee and Michael Bayle, Stanford graduate students at the US-Japan Center, presented a paper that provides the international World Wide Web community with an advance glimpse of the service, which is planned for public release later this year.

Japan Window's principal objective is to build an integrated Internet information site useful to U.S. corporate, academic and government organizations in their daily U.S.-Japan activities. This will be achieved by developing:

• A new information source on Japanese science, technology, government, business and economics designed for the U.S. high-technology community
• A cutting-edge human-computer interface that features multi-lingual capabilities. Once fully developed, it could serve as a model for information exchange between a number of Asian nations.

Information provided by the Japan Window will be mostly in English and frequently also in Japanese.

In addition to providing a new online source of information via computer, the university-industry research project also will make the information easier to find and use. Among the features that are expected to be incorporated are improved search and retrieval routines, map-based navigation methods and bilingual information display.

Internet users who would like more information about Japan Window can contact Stanford's US-Japan Technology Management Center at their World Wide Web address (http://fuji.stanford.edu) or telephone (415) 725-9965. Information is also available by contacting NTT Software Laboratories at (http://www.ntt.jp) or (http://www.nttam.com). Japan Window is an official project of Smart Valley Inc. (http://www.svi.org) and is supported in part by WAIS Inc.

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