Lenovo and NEC officially launched their joint venture in Japan today.

The NEC Lenovo Japan Group, as the venture is called, will be Japan's largest PC provider. The two companies have a combined market share of nearly 25 percent in Japan.

Lenovo, which has a headquarters in Morrisville that employs about 1,625 employees, announced the joint venture earlier this year.

Lenovo as a 51 percent ownership stake in the joint venture.

The two have also reportedly talked about expanding the venture to include servers, to give NEC greater access to the Chinese market.

In a statement issued today, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing, said: "We would like to stress again that we are fully committed to the Japanese market and we are determined to continue to lead the PC industry in Japan and expand this strategic alliance beyond the PC business."

The first air samples collected by state authorities show that radiation wafting from Japan is at barely detectible levels and poses no threat to public safety in North Carolina.

Officials at the Radiation Protection Section expected infinitesimal increases in background radiation after Progress Energy and Duke Energy reported slight increases last week during routine monitoring at their nuclear plants in the Carolinas and in Florida.

State officials said today that initial air sampling confirms their expectations. The Radiation Protection Section, within the N.C. Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, analyzed four air samples taken Sunday and Tuesday.

The radioactive fallout is the result of malfunctioning Japanese reactors that were damaged by a tsunami earlier this month. The Japanese plants have lost emergency cooling equipment, resulting in melted nuclear fuel and radioactive releases from several reactors and spent fuel pools.

AUSTIN, Texas – There can definitely be a fiddling-while-Rome-burns feeling to being a part of the entertainment-media complex. That especially goes for this year at South By Southwest. It takes a lot to knock SXSW off the front page of the Austin American-Statesman, but it happened with Thursday’s edition. I guess you could say we’re rocking while Japan melts down.

Nevertheless, SXSW looks to be just as big a madhouse as ever. Travel logistics of getting into town took up most of Wednesday (a furlough day from the paper for me, anyway), which began with my alarm clock ringing at an inhumanly early hour so I could catch a pre-dawn flight. But I did see a few things before fatigue overtook me and I called it an early night.

PS I Love You was pretty fantastic, an unlikely-looking duo from Ontario, Canada – mountain-sized guitarist with a flair for bombs-bursting-in-air fusillades along the lines of Jimi Hendrix, skinny drummer with a flat-top who motored along at a breakneck pace – and they sure did fill up a lot of sonic space for a two-piece. First time I think I’ve ever heard garage-rock in waltz time, too. Also quite fine was John Fullbright, a young singer/songwriter from Oklahoma who shows an incredible sense of wisdom in his writing (he’s in Raleigh at the Berkeley Café on March 27; just sayin’). And Austin old-timer Jon Dee Graham had a band backing him up; that’s a nice bonus of SXSW, you get to see a lot of people who can’t afford to take bands on the road in a group setting. He was excellent, earthy and raw, although by then accumulated weariness was dragging me down from behind.

I’ll be back -- if the world doesn't end first...

Recently upgraded to 9.0 in magnitude, the earthquake in Japan was powerful enough to actually shorten the length of a day on Earth.

The report at Space.com explains that the seismic event sped up the Earth's rotation by 1.8 microseconds by altering the planet's distribution of mass, which also shifted the Earth's axis by 6.5 inches.

Japan shifted as much as 13 feet. GPS coordinates will have to be recalculated and pushed to devices.

The quake is expected to be one of the five largest since 1900.

All of Quintiles' 2,300 employees in Japan are accounted for and safe, although some have damage to their homes and some have lost family members.

The Durham-based pharmaceutical services company and other local businesses have raced to reach all of their workers in Japan after last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami. One problem has been making contact with phone lines jammed.

Here is the press release from AT&T:

    AT&T Offers Wireless, Wireline Billing Relief for Consumers Calling and Texting Family, Friends in Japan

    *AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.
 

A pair of former UNC basketball players in Japan contacted school officials that they are doing OK following today's earthquake.

Will Graves, who was dismissed from the team this fall and is now playing professionally in Japan, contacted UNC officials to let them know that while his home has lost power, he is doing fine.

Another former UNC player, Jackie Manuel, who also plays in Japan, contacted coaches and players soon after the earthquake with news that he is OK.

Graves would have been a senior forward and a contender for a starting position this season with the Tar Heels.

Triangle businesses with operations in Japan are working quickly to make sure employees are safe after the massive earthquake and tsunami.

Everyone at the Tokyo office of Raleigh-based Red Hat was accounted for, said spokeswoman Kara Schiltz. As of Friday morning, that area of Tokyo still had power, although employees have felt smaller aftershocks.

At Durham-based Quintiles, it will take time to contact all 2,300 personnel in Japan, said spokesman Phil Bridges. Many of those employees are sales representatives and not based at one of the pharmaceutical services company's seven offices in Japan.

Local Quintiles officials have reached some Japanese workers, mostly through e-mail because landline phones are jammed, Bridges said.

Google has launched a 2011 Japan earthquake person finder.

Japanese drug maker Eisai plans to eliminate about 70 employees at its research and manufacturing campus in Research Triangle Park as part of a broader U.S. restructuring that will cost about 600 jobs.

As with other pharmaceutical companies, Eisai is streamlining operations as it faces increasing competition from generic medicines, lower reimbursement fees and slower sales of its own products, including the Alzheimer's treatment Aricept.

Eisai, which has its U.S. headquarters in New Jersey, expanded its RTP operations last May, opening a $100 million, 65,000 square-foot facility. The company employs about 325 people at its RTP campus, which includes another, 190,000 square-foot manufacturing and research facility.