Archive for June, 2009

Taking Wireless to a New Level

Real-time control of wheelchairs with brain waves ― A new signal processing technology for brain machine interface (BMI) application. The BSI-TOYOTA Collaboration Center announced it has succeeded in developing a system which utilizes one of the fastest technologies in the world, controlling a wheelchair using brain waves. Plans are underway to utilize this technology in a wide range of applications centered on medicine and nursing care management. Video after the jump.

Posted: 29 June 2009 | Filed under: Japan Market, New Tech & Services | ..Continue >> 

Samsung Jet Test Flight on Video

Wireless Watch Japan spent an interesting week in Singapore at the annual CommunicAsia conference and trade show recently where we managed to shoot this demo of the latest Samsung Jet offering which made it’s debut there on June 15th. Billed as ‘Smarter than a Smartphone’ the AMOLED display is super crisp at 480dpi and it’s 800MHz processor lends power to the speedy brand name. The companies Touch Whiz UI, with drag and drop widgets, and the newly minted Dolphin browser featuring one finger zoom while enabling tabbed browsing of up to five web pages at one time were all impressive additions. Watch the video and see for yourself — Special thanks to Mr. Shin from Samsung for taking the time!

Posted: 27 June 2009 | Filed under: Editor's Note, Terminal Technology | ..Continue >> 

Sharp Solar Powered Handset Tests

The Teardown Squad over at Tech-On took the latest solar-powered handset offered by Sharp for a test drive and have filed their observations Here and Here. KDDI released the device, also available via SoftBank Mobile, in Tokyo on June 9th. The jist of their testing seems to indicate that, while it does indeed work, the time to get free juice takes somewhat longer, like 85-mins charging for 5-mins of talk, than suggested. To be fair, as with most first wave products over years, surely the performance will improve with future revisions.

Posted: 25 June 2009 | Filed under: New Tech & Services, Terminal Technology | ..Continue >> 

Coupon Shopping with Shufoo!

Toppan printing, one of the worlds largest printers and famed for producing newspaper coupon inserts, rolled a offering called Shufoo! back in 2006. Targeted at house-wives, and utilizing the network of some 350 large distribution companies; mostly major supermarkets, and 16,000 store locations, this platform has been providing the very same printed material as content […]

Posted: 25 June 2009 | Filed under: Japan Market, Mobile Users | ..Continue >> 

Mixi Opening API for Developers

The dominant Japanese SNS by subscribers has been under the gun since it’s recent results are off and several newcomers are sniping at their heels. The Japan Times was on-hand recently to hear CEO Kenji Kasahara speak, at a workshop organized for the Geeks on a Plane delegation, and filed this report. In essence the company has announced several upcoming initiatives including an open API for 3rd party developers to create and deploy apps and they will lift the invitation only requirement later this year.

Posted: 24 June 2009 | Filed under: Editor's Note, Japan Market | ..Continue >> 

NTT Calls for i-Aroma Testers

NTT Communications announced they have started recruiting monitors for their planned service to “send text or audiovisual content together with formulas for creating and dispensing fragrances”. We posted about this last spring, and actually had a sniff of the pilot at their R&D labs in late 2006, where we also saw the holographic projection demo during that visit at Yokoska - 4G killer app. anyone!

Posted: 22 June 2009 | Filed under: Japan Market, New Tech & Services | ..Continue >> 

QR Code Book with Twitter Feed

You just gotta love this simple yet effective innovation. An online bookstore in Brazil launched a campaign using a new exclusive book with only QR Codes inside.. so far so cool. However, the ‘never ending story’ routinely pulls keywords from Twitter feeds to keep updating the content! The first edition is already sold-out and they are looking at this platform now for future concepts as well. No doubt the good folks over at Denso Wave would be thrilled to hear about this one.

Posted: 18 June 2009 | Filed under: Content Providers, Sign of the Times | ..Continue >> 

Japan Social Networking Survey

Point On Research conducted this survey, in Japanese, on Japan SNS in early June, with interesting results. The questionnaire targeted demographics, representing 50-50 sample of male to female and equal 25% ratio on the age split between teens, twenties thirties and forties, for feedback on platforms and access with Mixi the clear leader at 72% and mobile preferred to PC by more than 4 to 1 margin. Another note of interest shows that over 65% of the group indicate they are daily users!

Posted: 15 June 2009 | Filed under: Japan Market, Mobile Users | ..Continue >> 

Innovation in Japan - Taking on the Economist

We just could not let This Article go un-challenged - hence see our ++ respond inline below.

The most important factor that led to America’s stunning success in information technology was not the free market but government regulation. Federal trustbusters made AT&T lease its lines to others and eventually broke up the giant telephone company.

++ The Japanese government made similar moves with NTT. Perhaps a more valid point passed over is how the respective governments historically manage and allocate the public wireless spectrum. Results clearly show a "Regulated" Japan approach enabled the mobile industry here to significantly trump the progress of a so-called "Free Market" USA (highest bid auctions) model.

Later they forced IBM to separate its hardware and software businesses. These actions opened the door to competition and lower prices. More important, they changed the industry’s structure, replacing monoliths with smaller, specialised companies which have to work with others with complementary skills. The result has been tremendous innovation. …**Counterintuitively, fragmenting these industries helped common standards to emerge, they say.

++ All of the major vendors have smaller spin-off suppliers here doing the piece work.. often the deepest source of innovation is coming from bottom up to the likes of NEC, Fujitsu and Panasonic et all. **Yet standards in Japan - especially for mobile as mentioned below - are somehow less relevant? Continued after the jump>>

Posted: 12 June 2009 | Filed under: Editor's Note, Japan Market | ..Continue >> 

Girls Mobile SNS to Farm for Boys

CyberAgent introduced an unusual mobile SNS platform last month, sensing spring was in the air, targeted at women shopping for a husband. The angle appears to be that ladies create an account, adding portrait profiles of all the guys they know, to share details within their ‘hopefully growing’ network of like-minded girl friends. The twist here - in cute icon loving land - is that the boys are represented as lambs, cows or horses depending on their flirty, lazy or agressive nature.. can you imagine! Any bets on how long until someone comes up with the jungle version of this dude ranch?

Posted: 12 June 2009 | Filed under: Editor's Note, Sign of the Times | ..Continue >>