Matches Literally Light up Faces

Japan is one place where you can expect all sorts of novelty stuff to crop up, from fancy shirts and footwear to quirky headpieces and accessories. They’ve even got matches that are almost too fancy to use, for crying out loud.

Kokeshi is the brand behind these awesome matches that have faces and other designs printed onto the match heads.

Kokeshi Matches

The match heads themselves are stylized in color aside from the quirkily-printed faces. The matches are wrapped up in decorative matchboxes that you’ll want to keep when all the matches are gone.

Kokeshi Matches1

From paw prints and chicks to mustachioed men, it seems like Kokeshi has thought of it all. You can check out more of their specially-designed matches in the gallery below.

Kokeshi Matches6 300x250
Kokeshi Matches5 300x250
Kokeshi Matches4 300x250
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Kokeshi Matches2 300x250
Kokeshi Matches1 300x250

Unfortunately, the matches are only available in Japan.

[via That Should Be Mine via Laughing Squid]

Yahoo’s IntoNow TV companion app for iOS adds screen grab, music recognition and chat features

Yahoo's IntoNow TV companion app for iPad and iPhone adds screen grab, music recognition and chat features

At CES 2012 we were promised that Yahoo would integrate IntoNow’s SoundPrint technology with its backend to pull up useful extra content about whatever TV program was being watched and now it’s delivered that and more. IntoNow 3.0 for iOS (no upgrade yet for the Android version) enhances the app’s TV companion experience in three key ways: TV / Music Sync, “CapIt” screengrabbing and finally Group Chat. The TV and music sync brings not only the associated info we’d heard about before, but also brings Shazam-style information about any music that might be playing. CapIt can pull screenshots from the cloud of any of the TV shows IntoNow’s backend is monitoring, which adds up to about 13 million frames a day, then pops them up ready for meme creation and sharing. Group Chat does exactly what it sounds like, and lets you talk to friends or set up circles of fans around particular shows.

We gave the app a try and found it worked as advertised, quickly identifying what was playing whether live or on DVR and popping up episode info, cast listings and Wikipedia links. The CapIt feature (shown above) pulls frames with surprising speed and ease, even on live broadcasts, and allows users to scroll backwards or refresh for new freezes to grab just the right one. It doesn’t monitor what you’re watching live, but punching the green TV icon in the upper left corner causes it to sync right away, which also creates an entry of what was being watched and when.

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Yahoo’s IntoNow TV companion app for iOS adds screen grab, music recognition and chat features originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 19:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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