Mediba has launched the Au One Health mobile portal which includes; medical symtoms Q&A, Dr. office, hospital and drug store locations along with health insurance details, physical fitness and healthy cooking tips. According to the announcement over 150,000 locations are searchable in the database, including dentists, with over 10,000 over the counter items listed as well.
Tech-On has a great article on the digital future of robotic security services, with this An9-PR on display by ALSOK sporting an impressive laundry list of gadgetery. Aside from range of LCD touch panels, we’ll get to that after the hop, it touts a face-recognition camera, embedded FeliCa RFID functions, human range sensors and WLAN connectivity for positioning and reporting. Standing 160cm (about 5ft) tall and tipping the scales at 200kg this real-life cousin of R2D2 comes with a hefty price tag of about $150k and will be available for monthly lease of about $3,000 including on-going maintenance fees.
Aplix announced [in Japanese] they will introduce their Mobile Game Deployer – MGD – application targeted at domestic content providers in order to enable auto transcoding for the Windows Mobile Marketplace. Designed to convert existing i-Appli programs, originally configured to run on i-mode terminal specs, the software will apparently also handle the tricky touch and rotation panel functions.
As first announced on March 31, the JV between DoCoMo and leading department store chain AEON group launched on 24 July. The new entity, AEON Marketing, will combine RFID point of sale details from purchasing preferences along with targeted marketing via mobile phones in order to increase efficiencies, leading to higher purchase ratios at stores, as well as improve customer loyalty. The new company was founded on 800 million yen (approx. $8M usd) and is mainly owned by AEON group with 71% of the share, with DoCoMo holding the 29% balance of stock.
This press release [J] just came through from KDDI with news they have won a D&AD Yellow Pencil in the environmental design category for their PLY exhibition, see Mobile Marketing segment for more lucky winners. Also announced, the folks at Canne have awarded KDDI a shiny bronze Lion for their funky iida calling – mobile music generator – campaign, details on video Here. Sony Music grabbed some hardware for their very cool Pair Movie series, watch the video Here. More notes after the jump
DoCoMo launched it’s i-concier service in November 2008, along with 22 new handsets, and has apparently managed to gain 1M subscribers as of April this year according to the Mobility Quarterly newsletter [.PDF]. While famously introduced by Vertu some years back, and offered by Toshiba last spring with their Cosmic Shiner model, for $4k a pop, the service allows members to opt-in for a variety of info feeds from weather, transportation and sports to special coupon offers. The system can warn users if a storm is approaching their area or if service is delayed on a local commuter line and will let them know that a favorite TV show will start soon.
DoCoMo is taking the wraps off their new compact Femtocell base transceiver station [.pdf] developed for their “Home Area” platform. The concept of course is to off-load mobile data access to fixed-line PC’s when their customers are keitai surfing while at home. This latest model also will enable e-mail notification for parents when a child arrives home, as their handset is detected, while another possible service centers around electronic coupons sent from a store to nearby potential customers.
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.
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.
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!
