dottocomu

Is that the sound of a bubble inflating?

Suntory's promotional gift for its sports drink Dakara defies logic, and must be a candidate for the podium at this year's Bad Taste Awards (if there are such a thing). It's an 11cm-tall solid silver statue that replicates the pissing cherubs used in the TV ads for the drink, and adds the unnecessary decoration of three carats' worth of diamonds arrayed in a heart pattern on the chest. As you can see from the image, it is also clutching a silver can of drink.

Value is--wait for it--Y10 mn. That's close on US$95,000. And they're giving away three. All of which will have a lifespan of about ten seconds before being melted down and reborn as jewellery.

Photos of the actual thing can be seen at Suntory's website--and be warned, it's a lot worse than the artist's impression shown here.

[Via Asahi.com (Japanese)]

IP mobile phone service coming next year

There has been dead silence on the mobile-over-wireless-LAN component of Mitsubishi's IPTalk VoIP service for almost exactly a year (I mentioned it briefly in a post in October 2002), but it looks to be very much alive. The company has fully redesigned its handset (pictures at K-Tai Watch), and will be accepting applications for the service beginning in November this year, with the launch aimed for March 2004. Infrastructure will apparently be Fusion Communications' VoIP network, with a 3-minute call costing Y8 to a land line, Y59 to a cellphone, and Y24 to the USA. Calls to other subscribers are free.

The plan is in due course to allow roaming via public hotspots (JR train stations are installing these all over the place, for example), and to allow users to replace the phone's wireless LAN card with a PHS card to give a bit more scope for using it like a "real" cellular. These will not be available at the service startup, however.

Fingers crossed that the roaming will extend to hotspots overseas, though I wonder if the fact that numbers are currently assigned to IP phones by national governments would get in the way. Wouldn't it be great to have a universal, country-independent numbering system?

More KDDI phones

KDDI is having a busy day. One more 3G phone set for release in November is based on a concept model by designer Naoto Fukasawa (who has also worked for Muji), developed as part of the company's au design project.

The Infobar is small at 138 mm long/42 wide/11 deep, but finds room for a still/video camera with flash, and runs BREW applications. Nothing much to set it apart function-wise from the existing range, but it does at least look different. I think I'd go for the Building, personally.

Press release in Japanese with photos.

Update: replaced the photo with a better one from K-Tai Watch; click on link for the full-sized version.

Update [10/10]: Some more, better-quality photos at ZDNet Japan, including this very clear close-up.

New KDDI 3G phones

KDDI today announced its new 3G handset range. Standout features include a 2 megapixel autofocus camera in the Casio handset (all models have cameras of 1-1.3 megapixels), the ability to play back TV programs recorded onto a Memory Stick in the Sony Ericcson model, an FM radio tuner in the Sanyo handset, and direct output to TV for video playback in the Toshiba model. There also seem to be an enhanced range of video and photo editing functions in all the handsets. KDDI is also launching an improved GPS navigation service, EZ Navi Walk, which includes real-time scrolling and voice guidance, and a particularly smart "get me home" feature, allowing those who overindulge at end-of-year parties to simply hand their phone to the taxi driver.

KDDI press release in Japanese, with photos

Watch TV on your phone within the year?

Via Keitai Watch, J-Phone is to release a cellphone with a TV tuner that, according to a Sept. 19 Nikkei report, should be out within 2003. J-Phone has declined to confirm whether this is the case, or whether the phone is the commercial version of the NEC prototype that appeared in July (reported on dottocomu). The NEC phone is apparently a W-CDMA model, so this could be J-Phone's first attempt to kick start its as-yet dormant 3G service.

Keitai Watch article in Japanese

[Update] It turns out that there is a late 2002 survey by Hakuhodo, broadcaster TBS, and Matsushita Electric on consumer interest in being able to view terrestrial digital broadcasts on cellphones. The sample was rather small at 120 people between the ages of 20 and 39 living in the Shuto area, but the results show that 86.6% were either somewhat or very interested, and 81.7% were interested in using the interactive functions of digital TV.

This does seem on the one hand like a kneejerk reaction that reflects the populace's chronic TV addiction, but there are some interesting aspects. Most respondents said they would want to watch TV on their cellphone while waiting for or riding a bus or train, while on holiday, or in fast-food restaurants. All this fits with the idea of non-voice cellphone usage as an activity to kill small gaps of time between things. Furthermore, it would mean that cellphone TV usage peaks at times when conventional TV viewing is minimal (around 2% at lunchtime, apparently).

The other standout result from the survey was that the interactive service most respondents wanted to use would be maps to locations introduced in TV programs. The marketing possibilities of this look tremendous in that the viewer is already out and about and doesn't have to deal with the energy-sapping processes of making a note of the address or separating bum from sofa, and is therefore much more likely to head straight for the advertised address if they're interested. Given that Japanese TV already does a decent line in motivating the impressionable to go and queue outside whatever restaurants it is advertising--er, featuring--the results of transposing such tactics to mobile TV could be frightening. I can imagine entire crowds of people being directed by the TVs in their hands.

Watch More TV.

(cue ten-minute brawl over a pair of sunglasses)

(Keitai Watch summary of the survey in Japanese)

CBS News on Japanese cellphones

CBS News has a video segment on the uses and abuses of cellphones in Japan. It's little more than a digest of soundbites extracted from anything cellphone-related that the Japanese press has latched on to recently, sprinkled with some obligatory techno-awe, and is also delivered with a gravitas totally at odds with its light-as-a-feather content; still, worth a look, if only for the bland CG of a crashtest dummy-style man inserting a camera phone through a slit in the curtain of a purikura booth to take a shot up the skirt of a crashtest dummy highschool girl.

I presume CBS will not appreciate my deep-linking to the video clip, but just in case it has disappeared from the page linked to above, here it is.

Update: Association for the Study of Failure

There's a short article in the April 7 Times on the Association for the Study of Failure, previously introduced briefly in these pages:

"Japan tries to figure out where it went wrong

"FACING chronic deflation, a twelfth year of stagnation, surging corporate bankruptcies and nearly half a trillion dollars of bad debts, the Japanese Government has set up a think-tank to study the magnitude of the economic failure." [Remainder here; may require subscription]

The article goes on to note that the Ministry of Education has funded the institute to the tune of JPY1 billion, which would explain the 52nd-floor offices in Shinjuku's Opera City complex and the (apparently) extremely beautiful receptionists.

Gadget of coolness

DoCoMo is shortly to put on sale a PHS wristwatch phone. Unfortunately it lacks the true 70s sci-fi ability to speak into the thing while wearing it, but it makes up for that by doing a very nifty 80s unlock-and-transform into something approximating a phone handset at the touch of a couple of buttons. The photo below will give the general idea. You can use it to browse the web and send and receive email, and it will synchronise with Outlook, thankfully (text input looks likely to be painful using the thing itself).

One English site quotes the price at US$290, though DoCoMo officials so far appear to have refrained from naming a figure. It's "under JPY50,000" or "between JPY30,000-40,000", depending on what you read. The official sites are just creaking into life after a couple of days of being inaccessable (not sure if this is because of a deluge of gadget freak visitors or simple unpreparedness), and information is thus far scant. The release is planned sometime from April onwards, apparently.

The one shortcoming of the design is that the speaker and mike are on the inside of the strap, meaning that using it during the summer could be a bit unpleasant (especially with Japan's humidity) unless you habitually deodorise your wrists, or the device turns out to be made of some niff- and germ-resistant material.

The new generation of FOMA phones--finally, one that works

Finally, the FOMA phone that all the addicts have been waiting for has gone on sale--Panasonic's P2102V, which boasts videophone capabilities, much-enhanced battery life, and the ability to flip the screen toward you and shoot video with the camera side-on, much like a camcorder (see here for details). With an SD memory card installed, it's possible to store several hours of footage.

Compared to the frankly useless N2001 that I previously had (the battery would literally die in the afternoon if you actually used it at all), it's a dream, and stands up well in a comparison with any of the phones on the market. The one hurdle that remains is the video format--DoCoMo has gone for the MP4-based 3GP, which currently can't be played back on a PC except with a dedicated Phillips player, which can fortunately be downloaded for free. Apple, which is supplying the only encoding software available (content providers have apparently been supplied with a prerelease version of Final Cut Pro to create the clips currently available for downloading) will be including 3GP support in the next version of Quicktime, but there seems to be no way to convert the format into Windows Media or Real Player files that could be viewed by a wider audience. Would be interested to hear from anyone who knows a way to do this.

Association for the Study of Failure

The Association for the Study of Failure: Undoubtedly something worth studying, but their name makes it hard to take them seriously. It has that Monty Python ring to it...

Nasdaq Japan-->Hercules

The Osaka Stock Exchange has, for all sorts of reasons, chosen to rename the doomed Nasdaq Japan market "Nippon New Market--Hercules". The Greek mythological figure aside, one would have thought that the demise of Germany's Neuer Markt would have been enough to put them off calling it the "New Market".

One somehow feels it'll take more than 12 IPOs in 12 years to grant this Hercules eternal life, though.

Other suggestions apparently included "Poseidon" and "Fathers" (the latter presumably a play on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Market Of The High-growth and EmeRging Stocks).