The shadow shogun is the man for Japan

Martin Hutchinson submits: Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan's narrow victory, last Tuesday, over Ichiro Ozawa for the leadership of the Democratic Party of Japan wouldn't normally get investor pulses racing - after all Japan has had five prime ministers in four years.

In a previous post, I introduced the concept of development’s information shadow (mediated from Tim O’Reilly), arguing that the development world will gradually produce an increasing amount of digital data with a relationship to real world objects (think, for example, of a digital map of safe drinking water sources in a given location).

HOUSTON (AP) -- Tis the season for red-capped Santas and red-nosed reindeers. Sleigh bells ringing and snowflakes glistening. Stockings carefully hung and yuletide carols being sung ... in an airport terminal. With a karaoke machine....

Shadow inventory fell 18 percent year-over-year in January to 2.2 million units, according to CoreLogic's latest report. This represents nine months' supply. It was down 28 percent from its 2010 peak of 3 million units. The value of shadow inventory stood at $350 billion, down from $402 billion a year ago.

A new report from CoreLogic shows that the shadow inventory of homes fell 12.3 percent in October from a year ago.  Also known as pending supply, shadow inventory represents the houses that are intended for sale but aren't yet on the market. There are 2.3 million units in the shadows, which represent a seven month supply.

Karaoke machine manufacturers and the distributors of karaoke CDs have had an uphill battle fighting copyright infringement cases brought by music publishers. One player in the karaoke business is fighting a joint venture of Sony and the estate of Michael Jackson over a $1.28-billion bill. Host Scott Simon has more.