Via on What Japan Thinks, japan.internet.com and JR Tokai Express Research recently conducted a survey to find out about “meiwaku” mail (spam). They interviewed 330 mobile-phone owners, 60 percent male, from all around the country by means of an internet-based survey. 19.9 percent of respondents received at least 1 spam mail per day.
ACCESS CO., a global provider of mobile content delivery and internet access technologies, today announced its intent to acquire IP Infusion Inc., a leading provider of intelligent network software for enhanced IP services, with a total consideration of approximately USD 50 million (approximately JPY 5.8 billion). IP Infusion will become a wholly owned subsidiary of ACCESS after the completion of the transaction, which is scheduled in early March and subject to the approval from IP Infusion’s shareholders.
K-cab is a SMS-based service for calling taxicabs, which is available in Iwate prefecture. The service can also be used with QR codes that encode location information. Vending machines that bear such location-encoded QR codes are being installed in varous places in the prefecture so that people can easily call a cab just by taking a picture of a QR code with their camera phones and connecting to the K-cabs’ taxicab dispatch website.
This afternoon’s press conference at the swank Roppongi Hills Hilton saw Vodafone Japan putting on a brave face during a difficult news day for the global company. With five separate product announcements – links after the jump – and a good presentation from Ota-san, the famous director of their claimed-world-first photo-mail service, it will take us a day or so to sort through everything and file a more detailed story. While the 904SH handset with Sharp’s new VGA screen will get most of the main-scream headlines, some of the other things we saw were much more interesting… for better and worse (WWJ subscribers login for a peek at Vodafone’s concept TV phone that was also on hand without much fanfare).
Opening her daughter’s monthly cell phone bill, the woman’s jaw goes slack with astonishment. Three million yen (approx. $26,000 usd). This is surely a mistake, she thinks. Why, my daughter wasn’t even in Japan for most of that time. “The figure is correct,” confirms a staff member of the carrier company, in a no-nonsense tone. “You are obliged to pay.” This state of affairs, explains Yomiuri Weekly, came about when her daughter’s cell phone was stolen during an overseas trip. Ironically, this particular phone could only be used to make calls in Japan. (Theft like this underscore the increasing amounts of personal data & cash carried on phones in Japan. The point here is that even if the phone itself won’t work overseas, the UIM card will, once transferred to a compatible GSM/WCDMA phone outside Japan — and many Japanese, unfamiliar with GSM-era SIM cards and PIN codes — don’t password-protect their UIM cards. — Eds.)
Must be a slow news day.. none-the-less this is pretty cool..!! A day in the life of a Japanese Salari-man.. Parallel Parking!
East Japan Railway Co.’s new service that allows passengers to pay train fares with their cellphones has got off to a slow start. The number of compatible handsets is limited by JR East’s strict standards on scanning accuracy, designed to prevent accidents during rush hours. Cellphone carriers also blame limited geographical coverage and a JR East requirement for passengers to own the company’s View Card credit card. (Hmmmm… the credit card requirement could be a show-stopper. Give it 90 days… — Eds.)
Just as every human being has a name, every computer is identified by a unique IP address. While humans are intelligent enough to distinguish two people with the same name, computers aren’t so clever. Computer IP addresses have to be unique. Luckily, domain names make it easier to remember popular Web addresses; after all, Internet searches would be very difficult if you had to remember unique IP numbers, which can run between 4 and 12 digits long. But even though domain names are widely used on the Internet, they are still an unexplored topic on mobile phones. In this article, I propose implementing DNS on mobile phones to simplify calls and service transfers.
2005 was a big year for mobile gaming. $600 million big, or $1.5 billion if you want to talk globally. So where are all the mobile gamers? A quick visit around the busiest, most-trafficked gaming forums shows a mild interest in the mobile platform at best, and disdain for the medium at worst. It’s a given that the mobile platform will never generate the excitement and online chatter of the console or PC mediums, but why do hardcore gamers take such an apathetic stance towards mobile?
Index Solutions announced a joint venture today with Tokyo based Kuremen Technologies to trial an image recognition program using photos taken by the camera of mobile phones. The new service, called PicLin, will enable the company to provide users with additional information according to the picture sent via e-mail using image recognition technology powered by Kureman.
