The Japanese government (Soum-sho) is planning to spend 1.2B Japanese Yen (about $10 million usd) to build “a system for watching kids” using mobile phones, GPS, RFID tags, etc. The ministry seems to be looking at systems that monitor kids’ whereabouts using GPS-enabled mobile phones, RFID tags carried by kids, and RFID readers and communication devices installed at school gates and electric polls.
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…
Last 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!
HP Japan and BEA Japan have proposed a new architecture for building business RFID applications, dubbed RFID 2.0. According to their definition edge systems that locally and independently use RFID for data input/output at distribution centers, etc. are RFID 1.0 while systems that allow for a company to integrate the data with existing business applications (and share the data with other companies) should be considered as “RFID 2.0.”
Five Japanese companies including Fujitsu and NEC developed a systematic method to facilitate information sharing using varieties of barcodes and RFID tags. They have agreed on a method to create conversion tables that allow a company to translate the serial numbers used by other companies into the company format. This systematic method may facilitate information sharing across different companies, which would be useful for building traceability or retail systems.
Hitachi Ltd., Japan’s largest electronics conglomerate, said on Wednesday it plans to launch full-scale wireless tag operations, targeting a 16 percent share of the $3.5 billion domestic market in the next four years. Hitachi, which first developed an IC tag in 2001, has forecast 9.7 trillion yen in consolidated sales in the year to March 2007.
