Year: <span>2009</span>
Year: 2009

Year: 2009

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!