Hasta La Gadget!

You can tell a lot about a lady from the contents of her handbag, or so Japanese mobile provider NTT DoCoMo think. They have teamed up with fashion and lifestyle magazine “Tokyo Graffiti” for a new campaign, “Handbag Interview“, emptying out the private contents of girls handbags for all to see and judge.

Visitors to the campaigns website can view the contents of 57 girls from various backgrounds laid out on the screen before them along with the smartphone they use. Items in the bag also have little speech bubbles describing why this particular item is something they never go without. The campaign lets you glimpse into the personalities of the girls on display and in doing so are introduced to the different smartphones as extensions of their lifestyles and fashion. At the bottom of the screen you can click on each girl and find out more about them. Featuring some pretty interesting information on their use of their smartphone and how their fashion and lifestyle ties into their phone choice.

There is a nice play on the Facebook like button where other girls can award hearts for the “Kawaii” (Cute) level of how they view the bag and it’s contents. The interactive videos are split up with different nuggets of information on smartphone usage amongst females.

It is actually a fairly substantial source of information on this particular demographic and the campaign presents this in a very well thought-out way. If you don’t want to sit through all 51 girls you can also use the search page, filtering your search based on age, occupation or smartphone. The group of girls to choose from is pretty diverse, featuring subjects with professions from a professional cocktail maker to a maid cafe waitress, doctors to lawyers and everything in-between.

We have recently been involved in a in depth international smartphone project of our own at CScout Japan, and it has been particularly interesting exploring how different personalities effect not only the design of what certain users look for but also how they use their smartphones in different international markets. Looking at the difference between Japanese preferences and tendencies to other global markets there is certainly a contrast, particularly amongst the female market. In Japan where accessorizing is popular the smartphone is an extension of the user’s image more so than their international counterparts. Likewise we discovered in the research how the Japanese market is much more open to color than the western markets who showed more preference to texture.

For more information about the smartphone market in Japan check out our ongoing roundup posts here or contact CScout Japan about our research.

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Open source projects follow a pretty standard pattern in my experience. If the project becomes popular, it grows at a breakneck pace. New features, bug fixes, and more are suggested and submitted daily. Eventually, you have to say no to a couple of things. Once enough things are said no to, those who come up […]

This article was written on April 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

Each year, communicating through text messages continues to grow and has now turned into an extremely popular communication medium. Millions upon millions of text messages are sent every single month and carriers only anticipate that the number of messages sent by their subscribers will continue to grow. Amazon knows this and obviously sees a tremendous value in it because they have just launched a new service called Amazon TextBuyIt.

TextBuyIt is a brand new service that will give shoppers the opportunity to find and purchase products sold on Amazon via a text message on their mobile phones. Here’s how it works. Say a customer is looking to buy an MP3 player. They would text the name of the product, a description, a UPC if they have it, or an ISBN number to Amazon. If Amazon carries it, they will return matching results via text to the customer, two at a time. If one of the two options is something they want to buy, they text back either a 1 or a 2, or ask for more results by texting M. If the customer made a purchase, they will enter in their email address that’s associated with their Amazon account and a shipping code, and then they’ll receive an automated call that will guide them through the checkout process.

It’s a very simple process and once everything is done and a purchase has been made, shoppers get a confirmation email and a text message.  Given the number of people who obsessively text message, this could be dangerous, especially for shopaholics because the purchasing process can be done in a matter of a few minutes.  For those who really get into it and use TextBuyIt as a regular shopping method, there are other commands that they could use. For example, you could text 2D after you’ve seen matching products and you’d get more details about the 2nd item that you saw.

Of course there’s good and bad to a service like this. The first good thing that came to mind was that this could be an awesome way to comparison shop. If you’re at the store and you see something you’d like to buy, you can use TextBuyIt to see if Amazon has it cheaper and save yourself some money. You’re not required to buy anything after texting a search, which is nice. The bad is that any item that is a “Deal of the Day” or a “Gold Box Discount” will not be discounted if bought through text messaging.

I never thought we’d see the day where you’d shop via a text message, but the day is here and other retailers are likely to follow if Amazon is successful with this new method.

Source: AP

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Try doing this with a desktop computer. Photo Veronica Belmont/Flickr

As if any Gadget Lab readers needed to be told, the mobile Internet is taking off. What might be surprising is that almost all tablet Internet traffic comes from the iPad. “In August 2011, iPads delivered 97.2 percent of all tablet traffic in the U.S.” says a new Comscore report. What’s more, the iPad is even beating its older brother the iPhone, managing 46.8 percent of iOS Internet use vs. the iPhone’s 42.6 percent.

According to the report, U.S mobile Internet use is still small compared to computer-based Internet use at just 6.8 percent, but it’s growing fast. More interesting is what the tablets (read: iPads) are being used for. Half of all tablet owners have made a purchase from their device (likely via the App Store), and more than half read the news regularly on their tablets.

Further, while iOS accounts for 43.1 percent of market share (by installed base, vs Android’s 34.1 percent), it accounts for a disproportionate 58.5% of traffic (Android 31.9 percent). This figure counts page views, so if you were to add in all the other non-browser Internet use, the number would surely jump a lot higher. Anyone used to a 3G connection for an iPad who suddenly has it cut will realize just how many apps rely on a data connection.

It may take a while, but computer Internet is going the way of the landline phone. We may still have internet-connected Wi-Fi networks in our homes to feed set-top boxes and stream things from here to there, but soon enough going to a special room and firing up a big machine to check Wikipedia is going to seem as clumsy and old-fashioned as punching a number into a landline phone.

Smartphones and Tablets Drive Nearly 7 Percent of Total U.S. Digital Traffic [ComScore via Twitter]

See Also:

• AT&T Adds iPhone Tethering, Kills Unlimited Data for iPad …
• Eight Great Tips for Traveling with the iPad

Kind of like eating a peanut butter sandwich with no jelly, the most obvious app missing from the iPad has been Facebook — until today. The New York Times reports that the site has finally confirmed the app’s availability just in time for eager social networkers to like, subscribe and stalk from their slates. According to software engineer Leon Dubinsky, the app will highlight the multitouch awesomeness of the iPad, something that’s unavailable from the website alone even from a touchscreen device. The folks at FB also added that some of the newly released features will be integrated into the iPhone app as well, making it a win / win for iOS fanatics. Consider it liked. Check out the brief PR after the break.

Continue reading The iPad gets a Facebook app, finally

Filed under: Tablet PCs

The iPad gets a Facebook app, finally originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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