With consumers in Japan, especially, it offers the peculiar yet powerful combination of privacy, anonymity, and intimacy - perfectly suited to the Japanese style of communicating. My latest kick is online finance. There are already 40 companies offering online retail securities trading services, and that number will grow to at least 45 by April of next year. More than 60 banks have started offering online banking services. Meanwhile, insurance companies, credit card firms, and financial aggregators are getting into the act.
Consumers can now apply online for auto, overseas travel, term life, and other types of insurance.
Credit card users can peruse their statements or apply for loans using the Internet. Soon it may even be possible to procure funds online. Looks like I might be on this kick for a while. This month we were honored to hear from Ken Lunde, Manager of CJKV Type Development at Adobe Systems, and author of Understanding Japanese Information Processing and CJKV Information Processing , two books that are acknowledged worldwide as THE authoritative works on double-byte computing. I simply think of myself as someone who wants to make others aware of the issues surrounding multiple-byte characters.