世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research into mobile information devices. On the last day of June and the first of July they interviewed by means of a private internet survey amongst their monitor group 330 people, 64.8% male. 10.0% were in their twenties, 30.6% in their thirties, 33.6% in their forties, 19.1% in their fifties, and 6.7% in their sixties. Note that this survey was looking at personal, not business, requirements.

I was suprisised that more people said that their ideal mobile environment would contain a spreadsheet editor rather than a scheduler, but perhaps this reflects the fact that many people already have sufficient mobile scheduling capability, be it either a pen and paper diary or a mobile phone’s function; most phones nowadays come with a rather functional scheduling application.
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The Yomiuri Shimbun (Osaka only?) recently published the results of an opinion poll conducted in conjunction with goo Research to find out what users of Hankyu and Hanshin think about the takeover plans by Hankyu. Over four days at the end of June they got 1,065 members of the goo Research monitor group who were resident in the Kinki area to respond successfully to their internet-based questionnaire. 2% of the sample were under twenty years old (actually just 18 or 19 years old), 20% in their twenties, 41% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, 9% in their fifties, and 3% sixty or older. 58% of the sample was female. Note that sample sizes for the various sub-groups are not described.

For those of you not familiar with the Osaka private railway situation, both Hankyu and Hanshin run between Osaka and Kobe, along with a few other lines, of course. Although price-wise both services are much the same, Hankyu are nominally the first-class service, Hanshin third-class. (The ex-state-owned JR is second-class.) Hankyu has plush green seats with wood-panel effect walls in the carriages, and their line runs at a higher elevation between the two cities; the line, in fact, when passing through some of the posher areas like Shukugawa, Ashiya and Mikage defines the land prices to some extent; the hill side is more pricey than the sea side. Hanshin on the other hand passes through a lot of council housing estates, industrial areas, and the like, and while their trains are kept in tip-top nick, like almost all trains in Japan, of course, they are built to a much more basic design and finish.

The other business area where the contrast between the two companies could not be clearer is in their most famous subsidiaries; the manly and sweaty Hanshin Tigers baseball team versus the trying-to-be-manly-but-not-succeeding and definitely not showing any sweat Takarazuka Revue, the all-female song-and-dance theatre.

Finally, just as a bit of trivia, the name 阪神, hanshin, is just an abbreviation of the kanji for Osaka and Kobe, whilst 阪急, hankyu, is a contraction of Osaka Express.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, published the results of a survey carried out in the middle of June into advertisements in search results. This was part of a bigger survey on search engines in general, but sadly the results are not available to the general public. They interviewed 1,031 members of their monitor panel by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.8% of the respondents were female, with 23.9% of the total sample in their twenties, 40.8% in their thirties, 25.8% in their forties, 8.0% in their fiftiesm and 2.0% in their sixties.

One very suprising result is that MSN has a mere 3.7% market share as a primary search engine. Given that MSN is the default page for Internet Explorer in most new installs of Windows, this indicates perhaps a serious level of dissatisfaction with MSN overcoming user inertia.

Another surprise is over two-thirds of users go at least three pages deep into search results. However, the question is not phrased explicitly to find out the maximum or the average, but I feel the answers given indicate the average limit of the user’s patience. I don’t know if this result indicates if people are bad at formulating queries or the search results are usually pretty poor.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with JR Tokai Express Research, at the start of June looked at what engineers thought about changing to Linux. They interviewed 330 engineers (not just software, I don’t think), with 90.6% male (a sad reflection on women in the workplace), with 12.7% in their twenties, 43.9% in their thirtiees, 37.6% in their forties, 5.5% in their fifties, and just one person, or 0.3% of the sample, aged sixty or over.

The reasons for people refusing to use Linux on their primary desktop seem interesting (just for the record, I would probably put myself in this category); the top answer, the lack of usable applications, doesn’t mention what sort of stuff people feel is missing. Next, Windows (Microsoft Office, I suppose) document compatibility; if my workplace is anything to go by, there are a number of (needlessly, IMO) complex macro-based documents that we use, which, I hear, causes major problems for the free software alternatives. The third reason, difficulty in set up and settings is mostly untrue, although there are problems if you have an unsupported device that needs a manual install. Other applications often don’t stick a nice friendly icon on your menus when they finish, which is a genuine problem.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked at how businesspeople manage their schedules. They interviewed 332 people employed by private enterprises by means of a private internet-based questionnaire. 82.8% of the sample were male, 12.3% were in their twenties, 36.1% in their thirties, 34.0% in their forties, 15.7% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.
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Having yesterday looked at what the workers think of being asked to do stuff for their boss regarding computers, today japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked into how bosses asked their underlings for help with computer-related tasks. They interviewed 331 people in management positions in private companies, but the male to female ratio was not specified, although it might have been a depressing figure. 68.3% were in their forties, 28.1% in their fifties, and 3.6% in their sixties.

Note that since this survey was an internet-based one there will be a bias towards more technically-competent bosses, so the figures should show the bosses in a better light than yesterday’s survey did! In addition, one would expect the workers to be more negative about their bosses and the bosses to be more positive about their own skills.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked into how workers helped out their bosses with computer-related tasks. There is the promise of them reporting later on how bosses view their subordinates’ use of computers, which I eagerly await! They interviewed 330 people in non-management positions in private companies, 79.1% male. 17.6% were in their twenties, 48.8% in their thirties, and 33.6% in their forties.

Rather than the typical Dilbert image of the Pointy-Haired Boss (hmm, I can’t find that cartoon strip on the internet!), I’ve chosen the Japanese equivalent for the title, the Bar Code-Haired Boss. The boss here refers, I believe, to anyone in management that is above the respondent in the office hierarchy, rather than just the direct boss.

I don’t have much direct contact with management, but do I see a lot of the effects of a lack of skill. My biggest gripe is the inappropriate use of tools; Excel seems the tool of choice for memos, diagramming, etc; and PowerPoint rather than Word for specifications and other technical documentation.
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japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked at the use of affiliate schemes by bloggers and web page maintainers. They surveyed 330 people employed in public or private businesses; 86.1% of the sample was male, 10.6% were in their twenties, 33.3% in their thirties, 38.2% in their forties, 15.2% in their fifties, and 2.7% in their sixties. Note that perhaps people who are ranking in vast sums of money from blogging wouldn’t be wasting their time filling in surveys for the chance of a few yen off a Green Car seat!

The survey did not mention how “affiliate” was defined; obviously sponsored links like with Amazon Associates would fall under this category, but as to whether AdSense (click that button on the left to find out more!) is also included, this survey does not clarify. Just for the sake of disclosure, at the rate I’m going at, my target for the year is in the 5,000 to 10,000 yen range (yes, just one hundred bucks!) although I had a bumper month last month where I managed to raise more than my hosting fee!
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My Voice recently performed a survey to see that the members of their internet community thought about airlines and their image. They interviewed 15,121 people via a private internet-based questionnaire. The group was 46% male, with 3% teenagers, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

Perhaps slightly suprisingly the local carriers come out on top, despite both ANA and JAL reporting high-profile problems with some of their fleet. I like Lufthansa myself, and Northwest’s food is awful and the staff scary soccer moms!
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Recently, japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, published the results of a study into the use of web site analysis tools. They interviewed by means of an internet-based questionnaire 1,085 people from all over the country. The sample demographics was 46.4% male, with 2.6% in their teens, 23.1% in their twenties, 39.7% in their thirties, 24.8% in their forties, and 9.8% in their fifties.

As I have previously mentioned, I have three metrics tools; the two public ones linked from the sidebar for Performancing Metrics and SiteMeter plus the back-end statistics packages for analysing my server logs; I prefer the AwStats tool of the three or four available. I’m on the waiting list for Google Analytics, if it ever opens to the public again, and just a couple of days ago I also heard about an extremely interesting new tool, Crazy Egg, that seems to do a thermal imaging-like heat map to highlight exactly where people are clicking on your page. It looks very interesting, although for a blog with an ever-changing variable-width middle column, I’m not sure what will happen, but no doubt they’ve thought of that issue. I’d love to see the results for a typical blog with an enormously long blogroll, as I wonder which of them get clicked. As you might have noticed, I just have a short randomly ordered blogroll.
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