Hasta La Gadget!

Having lived and travelled around different parts of Asia we thought it would be good to give a round-up of how things operate in these very distinct markets. From Thai tuk-tuks to doily-adorned Japanese cabs, Asia has a wide variety of options for getting from A to B. This is Part 1!

1-Hong Kong

Image via flickr

Overview: Fast, convenient and cheap; it is easy to hail a taxi from almost anywhere and you wont have to stop at an ATM to pay for the rest of your fare. An affordable and quicker alternative to public transport especially for first time visitors!

Price: HK$20 ($US2.6) for the first 2 kilometers and then HK$1.50 (US$0.2) for every subsequent 200m.

Hong Kong’s red, green and blue taxis service different locations in the territory. Image via HK Transport Department.

Bonuses: Most Hong Kong cabbies are friendly, chatty and speak some English and very patient considering all the drunken, vomiting and rowdy people they have to deal with coming back from Lan Kwai Fong (the party district) in the early hours.

Pimped up HK Taxi Driver’s dashboard. Image via shanghaibutter.com

Warnings: It is illegal for a Hong Kong cab driver to refuse to take you somewhere unless they have a valid excuse. That said you can probably always find another cab quite soon.

Hong Kong Cabbie. Jus’ Chillin’ image via Geographically Yours

Average price of a taxi from Hong Kong Airport to Central (downtown): HK$300 (US$39) and takes just less than an hour.

2- Singapore

Image via onsingapore.com

Overview: Singapore is small, so if you don’t have much time just take a taxi!

Price: between SG$3-4 (US$2.4- 3.2) for the first kilometer depending on which type of taxi you take.

Bonuses: Since Singapore is small you are unlikely to ever rack up a crazy taxi fare unless you get the driver to ride around in circles all night.  Very talkative and opinionated drivers will ensure an enteraining ride; I recommend checking this out humorous and insightful blog by Singapore cabbie James Lim.

Singaporean Cabbie who returned $1m found in his taxi. Image via Jakarta Globe.

Warnings: If you are staying or visiting just outside the downtown/business district of Singapore then be aware that since cab drivers can get an extra three dollars picking someone up from inside the business district they are unlikely to stop for you. So you will have to walk the extra block to get a cab.

An average taxi journey from Changi Airport to downtown Singapore: ranges from SG$18.00-38.00 ($US14-30) and takes about 30 minutes.

3- Seoul

Seoul International Taxis (Image via Seoul.go.kr)

Overview: Getting around Seoul by taxi can be a cheaper and quicker option than by public transport and there are a variety of taxi types on offer including the deluxe taxis and International Taxis which speak English and Japanese.

Price: Seoul Regular taxi fares begin at ￦2,400 (US$2.15) for the first 2 kilometers and go up by ￦100 (US$0.9) every additional 144 meters.

Seoul Taxi. Image via Seoul Navi.

Bonuses: You can pay using t-money, credit card and cash, drivers are direct but friendly and you don’t have to speak Korean.

Image via Starsandstripes.com

Warnings: Hailing a taxi in Seoul at night can be difficult with some taxi drivers reluctant to take you to certain districts or on routes which are not economical enough for them. If you are a tourist or new to Seoul then Seoulistic provides some tips on avoiding getting ripped off by Seoul cabbies.

An average fare from Incheon International Airport to downtown Seoul:  ￦50,000 (US$45).

 4- Tokyo

Tokyo Taxi (Image via National Geographic)

Overview:  Taking a taxi in Tokyo is an expensive luxury but of course every now and again you will find yourself missing the last train, completely lost or just tired and fed up of walking around.

Price: fares start at JPY 710 (US$7.4) for the first 2.1 kilometers taxi and increase by ¥90 (US$0.9) for every extra 288m.

Tokyo Taxi Driver. Image via news.com.au.

Bonuses: All Tokyo taxi drivers wear suits with waist-coats, white gloves and decorate the taxi interiors with laced seat covers like an old lady’s living room. They also open the doors for you which in a way seems to justify the price, but…

Image via wired.com

Warnings: Most Tokyo taxi drivers are not from Tokyo so don’t know the city that well and often don’t know how to use their satellite navigators so even if you have a copy of the address written in Japanese you might end up having to give the driver directions!

If you are crazy enough to consider taking a taxi from Narita airport to Tokyo station: you will be set back around JPY 20,000 ($US 209).

Check out Taxis in Asia: Part two coming soon!

In Japan they love their beer with a healthy head of foam. Which explains why gadgets like the self-frothing beer mug, and now this ultrasonic frother even exist. More »

I think we’ve already established that Japan has an affinity for the unusual. One of the weirder items I’ve seen in a while has to be this processed beef product made up to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the popular Ultra Seven franchise.

This delicious looking meal includes some boil-in-bag “hashed beef”, packaged up in a special Ultra Seven box. It also includes a pair of Ultra Seven wrap-around “Ultra Eye” goggles, because all packaged meat and rice products should do that.

Apparently the dishes have been made by a restaurant run by Kohji Moritsugu, who was one of the stars of the original Ultra Seven series. Like that helps make any more sense out of this stuff.

A four-pack of this delicious dish will set you back ¥6,300 (~$65 USD). Now those are some expensive TV dinners.

[via Toy People and Japan Trends]

Sony may have unveiled a slew of new audio products back at CES 2013, but the company has been relatively quiet when it comes to launching ones that are compatible with Apple’s novel Lightning connector. That being said, it looks as if folks in the Land of the Rising Sun will soon be able to pair their current-gen iOS device with a dock from the PlayStation maker, thanks to the recently announced SRS-GC11IP. Pictured above, this little 0.8W speaker isn’t loaded with fancy features like Bluetooth 4.0 or WiFi, but it does offer convenient functions such as an alarm clock and AM / FM radio — these, of course, go along with the ability to also play tunes straight from a Lighting-ready iDevice or, with the proper RDP-NWC11 model, a new-era Walkman and many different smartphones. Whether we’ll ever see the as-yet-unpriced tubular peripheral hit other markets, well, that still remains to be seen, with Sony only going so far as to listing it as “coming soon” on its Japanese website.

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals, Sony

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Source: Sony Japan (1), (2)

One of Google’s April Fools’ Day pranks was the launch of Google Nose, a search engine that would supposedly push your olfactory senses into hyperdrive. While you won’t be able to smell stuff on your computer display yet, you might soon be able to on your television screen.

This is all thanks to researchers from Japan’s Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology[JP]. They’ve developed a ‘smelling screen’ that makes smells waft from certain areas on the screen where the object that you’re supposed to smelling is located. So how are the smells produced? The secret lies with the four fans installed on each corner of the screen. Odors from gel pellets are bed into the streams in each corner, and they are then blown by the fans across the surface of the display.

The screen was demonstrated at the IEEE Virtual Reality conference last month, where the researchers explained: “The smelling screen is a new olfactory display that can generate a localized odor distribution on a two-dimensional display screen. The generated odor distribution is as if an odor source had been placed on the screen, and leads the user to perceive the odor as emanating from a specific region of the screen.”

They also added: “The user can freely move his/her head to sniff at various locations on the screen, and can experience realistic changes in the odour intensity with respect to the sniffing location.”

It might take more time before they’ll be made commercially, but the future of television is here – and it smells.

[via Daily Mail via C|NET]