Mobile Healthcare has been selected as a winner of the Red Herring 100 Global Award. This list of the best 100 privately held companies in the world recognizes those that play a leading role in technology innovation around the globe. The company has been getting a lot of attention for it’s LifeWatcher application and we are pleased to note that WWJ spotted the significance of this story – video interview here – way back in 2003. Congrats!
DoCoMo has just announced the F801i, a new child-friendly 3G mobile phone loaded with special features designed for children, will go on sale December 20. Building on the popular FOMA SA800i model that DoCoMo released in March 2006, the F801i offers many new or improved child-friendly features for security, theft/loss prevention, ease of use and more. The phone’s soft-rectangle shape and round speaker grille enclosed by a ring-shape LED were conceived by renowned designer Kashiwa Sato to symbolize safety, peace of mind, creativity and the future. The package also comes with a wristwatch style ‘amulet’ remote which can be used to make a lost phone beep if within a range of about 10 meters. If the handset remains out of the amulet’s range for more than five minutes, a message can be sent automatically to a registered DoCoMo phone.
Sharp announced on Friday that it has passed the five-million mark for shipments of 1Seg digital tv phones in Japan. Since releasing its first hanset in May 2006 – originally introduced by Vodafone KK – Sharp has deployed a total of eight models across all three operators. By reaching this milestone in less than 18 months, Sharp becomes the first OEM in the industry to ship five million 1Seg handsets.
Kyocera Wireless and INSIDE Contactless have announced a global collaboration to integrate the INSIDE Contactless NFC solution for mobile payments in select prototype Kyocera mobile phones. As part of the collaboration, Kyocera will build NFC-enabled models enhanced with MicroRead, allowing the technology to be used in various banking pilot projects and initial adoption globally.
Talk about Mega Games, wish we had seen this at TGS in Sept., Taito has announced it will release a motion sensitive music application for DoCoMo 904i-series handsets (D904i excluded) in December. Their so-called “Intuition Band” game also makes use of the built-in camera sensor and a/v output allowing ‘players’ to create their very own mobile music! It will apparently also do other instruments, such as drum tracks (not sure about vocals?), and the company will be offering a free trial version via the i-mode menu from early November.
LocationValue is running an interesting LBS play called Otetsudai (helper) Networks, a new service which enables people looking for temp. work to establish a profile listing their skills and download a GPS location reading app. to their mobile phone. Employers who need someone for a few hours can just send the request to Otetsudai Networks and within minutes, they will have a list of people who might be available. The list shows what each person is qualified for, how others have rated their work and exactly how far away they are.
