In 1976, Sony CDI developed a kind of business game called the Management Game. The game simulates running a business, with each participant as a manager. Participants can compare their performance, by producing a financial report for their business. Many companies have introduced the Management Game to help staff learn about management.
Shigeto Takahashi is a leading expert in education and publicity regarding the Management Game. He’s the representative of BM Network, which holds …
If you’ve ever watched the movie Face/Off and desperately wanted to try the same thing—minus the implausible surgery and John Travolta—now’s your chance. Yahoo Japan has released Face Stealer, an endlessly amusing iPhone app that uses augmented reality to replace your face with someone else’s. And despite being free, it works surprisingly well. More »
This is a system for preventing password theft, by mixing several dummy cursors in with the real cursor.
The software keyboards used in online banking are effective against key loggers, but by taking screen captures or looking over your shoulder, people would be able to work out your password.
With this system, only the user knows which cursor is the real one, so there’s no concern about people stealing passwords just by being able to see the screen.
“At first sight, it looks as if …
“This is a lighting system, called Lighty. There’s a group of robotic lights on the ceiling, and their orientation and brightness can be controlled through this interface.”
“This feels just like Photoshop. To specify which places you want bright or dark, all you need to do is color in the corresponding areas.”
In this system, the interactive pen display is used to paint the room in light or darkness, with a camera placed in the ceiling returning the results in real …
For most of us adjusting a room’s lighting means either making it light or dark with the flip of a switch. But Japanese researchers have come up with a far more advanced approach that lets you literally paint where you want the light to be using an interactive stylus-driven interface. More »
If you’re particularly paranoid about someone peeping your computer’s password while working in a public place, Japanese researchers have come up with a clever solution to the problem. Instead of using your laptop’s keyboard, you use an on-screen pin pad to type your password. But the cursor movement is completely obfuscated by a swarm of other randomly moving cursors. More »
Another innovative application of technology reported by Don Kennedy and Ryo Osuga of DigInfo.TV.
Visual SyncAR, under development by NTT, uses digital watermarking technology to display companion content on a second screen, in sync with the content being viewed on the TV.
“For example, you can show a CG character dancing in sync with an artist like this. Or a CG character can jump into the picture, and things in the picture can jump out. In this way, the system enables new forms of …
Don Kennedy and Ryo Osuga of DigInfo.TV in Tokyo bring this video and story of Japanese technology applied to one of the most unlikely of places. How useful this will be for Japanese and worldwide homes remains to be seen, but so far, it is award-winning technology.
The story from DigInfo.TV:
This Smart Trash Can, developed by Minoru Kurata, an engineer at a Japanese auto maker, won an Excellence Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival.
“When you toss trash at it, a sensor detects the …
This omnidirectional camera, currently under development by Ricoh, takes a full 360° panoramic image in one shot.
“It has two fish-eye lenses, each of which covers 180 degrees. The camera combines the two pictures, and sends them via Wi-Fi to a tablet or smartphone for viewing. The idea is, the pictures you take arrive automatically.”
“When viewing it like a regular panoramic image, you can also see up and down. When you pull out from the image, it finally becomes a circle, …
“This is the Xperia Tablet Z SO-03E. It’s the world’s slimmest tablet, and Japan’s lightest, too. Until now, tablets have been heavy and thick, so they end up getting left at home. But this one’s light and slim enough to carry in a bag, without it feeling like a heavy load.”
“For this tablet, we’ve used what’s called the Omni Balance Design. This looks very sleek, because it eliminates all unnecessary features.”
“This tablet …
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