Hasta La Gadget!

Speed limits, highway patrol, other drivers, it can all be such a bummer — especially, if you’re sitting back in one of these. With a little crowdsourced aid, however, and a free Android app, you can still fulfill that need for excessive speed. Recently released on the Android market, Trapster’s v3.0 update refreshes the look of its checkpoint alerting mobile app and throws in some new features for good measure. In addition to the cleaner UI, there’s also a new homescreen widget that lets you vote on upcoming traps and terrain maps to complement the existing standard and satellite versions. But the real standout feature here is the inclusion of a real-time speedometer that should have the heavy-footed reaching for that brake more often. The new function alerts drivers with color-coded warnings should their speed demon ways get the best of the road’s limit. Alright, so the app may discourage your burnt rubber predilections, but that shouldn’t stop you from hitting the source link to download this ticket-avoiding application.

Trapster 3.0 helps you avoid speed traps, encourages safety first originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading NTT DoCoMo’s Fujitsu F-07C now available, marries Windows 7 and Symbian at last

NTT DoCoMo’s Fujitsu F-07C now available, marries Windows 7 and Symbian at last originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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We hope you’re ready for a heaping helping of Apple speculation, because Reuters is serving up a nice big slice of rumor pie today. According to the ever-present “source with knowledge of the matter,” Taiwanese chipmaker, TSMC is gearing up to supply Apple with its next generation mobile processors. According to the apparently credible anonymous source, TSMC has already begun trial manufacturing on the chips and “has got all the authorization and details ready.” As you may already know, Apple’s current supplier of its A5 CPU is Samsung, and relations between the two have been rocky (at least in court). This round of speculation also comes just one year after TSMC began construction on its new $9.3 billion foundry, and teamed up with ARM — the brains behind the A5. Of course all parties have declined to comment, which lands this report squarely in the grapevine for now, but we’ll keep you posted if it winds its way into reality.

Apple considering TSMC mobile chips? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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