Hasta La Gadget!

We came across this great visualisation of Japan’s music scene, laid out as the Tokyo Subway map. Complete with all the notable names across the years from the Japanese music scene, the map plots artists as the stations and the different lines as the different genre’s of music. Click on the image below to explore in more detail.

This is a pretty cool visual for the J-Pop aficionado, and shows that there is a little more to the Japanese music scene than cute girl bands and manufactured pop. It also reminds us of the amazing Web Trend map produced by iA, which plots the Internet’s leading names and domains onto the Tokyo Metro map.

Tip of the hat to @Durf for the discovery tweet.

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Facebook

Already this series has been examining the growth of Facebook in Japan, the issues it faces and its efforts to combat its initial stagnation.

There’s no getting around the social networking site’s global success. Nielsen figures for May indicate that its usership increased 18% and it will likely secure a 17.7% share of the U.S. online advertising market for 2011, overtaking Yahoo’s 13.1%.

Internet surveys by Mobile Marketing Data Labo. and Metaphase have revealed fairly clear local trends. In particular, users in their twenties and thirties are rapidly increasing, and businesses are starting to see returns on the “like” functions on their official Facebook pages.

MMD’s April survey of 152 — admittedly, not a vast number — SNS users found that Twitter had by far the most success with consumers following corporate accounts (55.9%). Facebook came second with 35.5%. Meanwhile, separate year-long tracking of Twitter and Facebook among 1,300 social media users revealed large gains in Twitter usage for users in their twenties and thirties, but a slight dip among teenagers. More decisively, Facebook saw zero movement among teenagers in the same period but massive jumps of 30% and 40% for users in their twenties and thirties respectively.

The Metaphase June survey of 300 users found that over 60% of users who log in to Facebook at least 3 times a month were clicking “like” on official corporate Facebook pages, and thus sharing brand content with their friends. Over a third of these users recognized that Facebook offered unique information and content on these pages and over 30% of users who “liked” a company’s page also actually purchased their services.

The suggestion is that the young digital native generation is still preoccupied with localized sites, but slightly more mature users are perhaps starting to turn away from the typical Japanese need for anonymity on SNS. In particular, no doubt upwardly mobile and entrepreneurial types see great benefits to Facebook and to utilization of the media as a promotional tool, as opposed to merely for viewing blogs about cats and meals. (Roughly 98.7% of all Japanese online content revolves around those two themes. Probably.)

Of course, anonymity has been one of the key differences between Facebook and mixi, but, perhaps aware that Facebook is at last making some inroads here, mixi has just recently introduced display changes so that your friends’ full names are visible. This is not necessarily a sign that mixi is abandoning its protection of user privacy, as previously it has flirted with this kind of change, only to back down following member hostility.

Bijin Tokei Goes National

Bijin-Tokei, the website clock service that features ordinary beautiful girls (”bijn”) on the street holding up boards with the time, has been a favorite of this blog for some time, and is no stranger to product collaborations, numerous spin-offs and imitators, and even updates on the state of Tokyo’s power supply.

In late June the site re-launched, now offering you simultaneously perusal of the ladies from different regions and, temptingly, even a voting function now. The girls with the most votes graduate to SUPER bijin-tokei, which offers a kind of crowd-sourced Japanese version of the “Beauty Map” study by the dubious British eugenicist Francis Galton.

3D game apps on Gree

Remember all the hype last year about 3D TVs that did not require glasses? The trend is still plodding along and now appears to be spreading to mobile gaming. Gree has started offering smartphone 3D apps using Unity, an American game development tool. Among the first titles there is CosmoLightning for iOS and Billiards by Gree for the Android.

CosmoLightning features a light ball that can be slid around the screen by your fingers, whereas Billiards by Gree is of course a version of billiards, but with 3D visuals and sound. Both games are free for registered Gree users. Neither sounds particularly exciting to this blogger but often the simplest of games win the most hearts.

This is the latest in a series of blogs based on newsletters provided by our local research partner, INterRIDE Inc.

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Omron, a Japan-based global company that focuses on developing MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) products for customer solutions, has attempted to address Japan’s recent energy concerns with three particularly interesting innovations that were on display at MEMS 2011. The lineup included a full office energy management solution featuring: the “Indoor Environment Monitor,” new facial recognition security system, and an automated air-conditioning adjustment system.

The Indoor Environment Monitor utilizes MEMS technology to create a comfortable (and safe) working environment. The monitor aggregates information such as the room’s temperature, relative humidity, air velocity/airflow, and occupant’s active metabolic rate to calculate an effective body temperature. The system then determines the severeness of heat illness in levels in ascending order from “Need for Care, “Caution,” “Heightened Alert,” to “Danger.” What’s interesting about this monitor is that it wirelessly transmits this information to a smartphone app or PC, which can be used remotely to monitor a grandparent or young child left by themselves at home. Innovation such as this that allow remote care via sensors is a particularly useful advancement.

With the recent increase in software security threats causing a slight panic among the general public, and growing concerns of unsafe and unprotected passwords, Omron also introduced an “intelligent” security system that takes into account “setsuden” (energy saving) as well. In the form of a webcam, this system adds the concept of using thermal detection on top of facial recognition, and combines these two security measures to solve two challenges: unauthorized access to users’ computers and energy saving.

The process is fairly simple in the sense that the thermal camera detects faces of registered users and only allows access if body temperature is detected. Holding up a picture of a registered user would not grant access to the computer. Not only does this make logging in easier and convenient, with regards to “setsuden,” it saves energy by going into sleep mode the second the user leaves their computer (laptop). This reduction may seem trivial when compared to the rest of energy saving products that we have introduced in previous articles, but the Japanese have a popular saying: “even ashes can pile up to form a mountain.” What is most fascinating about this new system is that the whole process is instant and takes less than a second to turn itself on and off.

Omron’s third product involves using SSMs (Smart Sensing Module) to significantly reduce air conditioning power by using adaptation features while maintaining production standards. Using the same technology from the two innovations above, the SSMs are placed in strategic places, acting as a human detection sensor, air flow, and temperature/humidity sensor. The SSMs then transmit their calculations to the air conditioner, which adjusts accordingly the amount and temperature of the air flow it releases. Omron’s Semiconductor factory, which monitors clean room conditions in real time, has been testing the effectiveness of their new technology and so far, have successfully achieved a power consumption reduction of 25%.

New products that use cutting-edge technology never fail to impress us, and Omron has certainly done a fine job of appealing to society’s latest concerns like the aging community and “setsuden”. Energy saving measures have been rolled out across all industries as a result of the disasters in Japan, and innovations in technology aimed at reducing energy consumption due to blackout threats have become a noticeable selling point in consumer appliances.

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KDDI R&D laboratories has successfully created one of the first integrations of mobile gaming and neural science. Introduced at today’s International Modern Hospital Show , this app’s ability to measure the amount of concentration and meditation occurring in the brain while the users perform simple tasks or are heavily indulged in their video game, truly grasped our attention.

The user first wears a headband-like headset embedded with tiny sensor chips that detect neural activity in the human brain. A paperclip-like device is then attached to the ear, which acts as a stabilizer to ensure that everything is “balanced” and also as a pulse detector. The app is downloadable for smart phones, and in this case, the Android was our first test device. Three different games were introduced to us and for each, the amount of neural activity going on in the brain was measured. As can be seen below, the games are fairly simple, but require a fair amount of attention. After 30 seconds of play, the app displayed a chart graphing both concentration (focused-state) and meditation (relaxed-state) levels. A diagram also appeared, representing the different areas of the brain that was most used during that span.

The device can be used in other situations as well. Users can focus for around 30 seconds on something that they are passionate about or evokes a particular emotion. The app then displays a graph of the user’s brain activity relating to the amount of focused attention during that period for analysis.

Although still a concept and not on shelves yet, KDDI’s new technology can be seen as a stepping stone towards more interactive neural technology made available for the general public. We can see this type of neuro-wear being implemented not only in people’s daily lives, but in advertising and marketing as well. It would be a great advancement to see this technology being used to detect what sort of ads prove to be the most effective by measuring the amount of generated interest by the consumers.

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Mosquito bites are perhaps the one thing that are worse than the heat in Japan during the summer. Not only do they itch the entire day, these pesky little blood-suckers annoy the general population with their loud buzzing and constant flying in circles. Sea’s Garden, a smart phone gaming and utility app maker, offers a solution to the terror that mosquitoes bring to man, without harming the environment.

The Mosquito Buster is an Android app (soon to be released for the iPhone as well) that acts as a mosquito coil, but instead of burning off insect killing smoke, it releases a high-frequency sound from your smart phone speakers which these insects detest.

The app is extremely simple to operate: users choose between 3 modes, each with corresponding frequencies. The first is obviously to avoid mosquitos, and the second, rodents. The third was what caught our attention and seemed particularly amusing. The third mode is titled “Avoid Children”, as it releases a frequency only detectable to children, as adult ears cannot hear the high pitched sound. It would be useful for parents who need a little bit of peace and quiet from their screaming, energetic toddlers. It’s nice to see useful utility apps like these that offer clever ways of solving consumer problems in an eco-friendly manner. Looks like I’m going to finally get a good nights sleep tonight without having to worry about pesky insects (or children for that matter) that bring a world of itchiness to my feet .

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