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Mobile Oracle from Kyoto

One of the most famous tourist traps in Kyoto, Japan, the venerable Kiyomizu-dera temple has jumped on the digital bandwagon, their solution is a credit-card sized charm. Printed on its surface are eight deity of good fortune. The image of deity actually hides a URL encoded with an embedded FPcode (Fine Picture code). This is a code system developed by Fujitsu [see our CEATEC video — Eds], an extension of the QR code which has become the de-facto system for Japanese K-tai terminals. 2D FPcode pattern utilizes a near-transparent color ink, and easily printed over the existing picture without spoiling it.

Kyocera Cyclops on Virgin Mobile

Kyocera has announced a new handset for Virgin Mobile USA with two firsts for the carrier. The new Cyclops, as the handset is to be known, features Virgin Mobile’s TXT Tones and Virgin Audio Messaging, as well as other mid-range features and a sleek design. The Kyocera Cyclops also features a built in 1.3 megapixel camera, 65k color TFT LCD display, and 14MB of on board memory. Additionally, phone features like a speakerphone and voice-activated dialing are also included.

Japan's Still the World's High-Tech Testbed

This past week, WWJ’s own Lawrence Cosh-Ishii, our hard-working director of digital media (and pretty much everything else in our humble shop), appeared on US Web radio program "Into Tomorrow," hosted by Dave Graveline. Dave and his crew pop over to Tokyo each year for the annual CEATEC consumer tech show, and he makes it his business to hook up with a slate of guests who can provide insidery gen on what’s happening in Japan…

Video Round-up: Ultra-cool Mobile Tech at Tokyo's CEATEC 2006

Video Round-up: Ultra-cool Mobile Tech at Tokyo’s CEATEC 2006Last week, Tokyo’s annual CEATEC show (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) was once again a showcase for some of the coolest mobile technology on Planet Earth. Today’s video round-up features audio QR, Fujitsu’s ‘UB Wall‘ – an ultra-high-tech, one-to-one customized video advertising display – and FP codes, and – not to be missed – NTT DoCoMo’s 3G mobile-based ‘Drunk Driver’ detector, apparently in high demand by bus companies and trucking firms.

Organizers said that the consumer electronics event drew 550,732 during the public days, 4-7 October, while WWJ ducked in out of the torrential rain during the press & industry day on 3 October, when the crowds weren’t quite as waku (wild).

WWJ thinks the FP codes (essentially, invisible barcodes) and audio QR technology stands a pretty good chance of fast adoption, given the masses of rabid advertising agencies out there trying to capitalize on the growing popularity of (a) camera phones that grab info via QR code and (b) digital broadcasting. An audio QR code is simply broadcast as metadata in a digital audio signal, such that the browser displays text, a clickable URL or other advertising message while you listen to a radio or tv program on a suitably enabled mobile phone. But for sheer outdoor-advertising-meets-mobile marketing genius, the UB Wall can’t be beat!

OKI Launches Face Sensing Engine 3.0

Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. announced the development of Face Sensing Engine (FSE) Ver3.0, a middleware for embedded systems. OKI adds a new function that can detect several faces from a data of a single photo and can verify specific faces, providing industry-leading processing performance. Photos taken by mobile phones are usually stored based on the date and time the particular photo was taken, which makes it difficult to sort them and search among them. With OKI’s FSE ver.3.0, photos are automatically stored according to who is in the photo, enabling easier access to the photo.