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Not just WiFi, but MiFi

Posted by Jeffrey on May 8, 2009

Here’s an interesting item: have you ever wanted to take your WiFi with you?  I’m new device that runs on the cellular Data Network allows you to surf at broadband speeds and share your connection with up to five other people.  Now it’s not as fast as a cable modem but it does provide an interesting alternative to traditional broadband connections.
Where it becomes interesting is when you have an existing cellular data plan and are able to add this device to that plan.  You can use the device in your home and if your coverage area isn’t too big you can send share it with your entire family.  If you don’t surf a lot, and you’re going to use both a wired connection and this, it might allow you to actually get rid of your current wired connection [and WiFi modem] to save yourself about $50.00 per month.  The device itself costs $99.00 in signing up to a new plan after rebate.
Now it remains to be seen whether the providers of the service will allow you to add to this device to an existing plan.  And the range of the device is only about 30 feet. Oh, did I mention that are runs on batteries?  So it may not be the solution for every one but if you have a small home and travel a lot this might be a great alternative to allow you to surf through out the coverage area and save a bit of money in the meantime.

New iPhone coming out – enough for me to switch?

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 9, 2009

Well, the rumours abound that a new product is due from Apple that will once again tempt current iPhone users to switch to the new device. Is it enough for me to break my contract to get one of these hot little units into my hands?

Let me just say that so far this device has exceeded my expectations on a number of fronts. I call it my mobile window into the world and for the first time since I can recall (basically since I started using a “mobile phone” back in 1987) I don’t feel cut off from the digital world when I am out and about.
The app store has given users the ability to personalize the device in a way that is far more useful than ringtones and screensavers, which were pretty much the limit of customization a few years ago.
So overall I think this is far and away the best handset I’ve ever owned.

That being said, there are a few things that I could imagine are on the radar to be fixed. Number one is that for me, the battery life is terrible. I was at the Mesh conference the past few days and with using Twitter and other apps, the battery was dead at around 2PM. And I didn’t even make any calls!

The other item that stands out may be a bit easier to take care of; namely that the IMAP mail application often cant connect and mail sits in the outbox seemingly for hours which is extremely frustrating. Again this might just be an issue which can be covered in the upcoming 3.0 update, due out this summer.
So the answer to that question is that unless the battery life improves by at least 2x I won’t be switching to a new device.

Bill Buxton – Design Culture and Apple’s success

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 15, 2008

I’ve always thought that Bill Buxton had a good view on what was essential in design and technology. Even way back when I saw him in 1996 or 1997 when he was at Alias Wavefront he caused me to think about how Design impacts how we interact with products on a daily basis.

Now having done innovation from the inside of a large corporation, I can’t agree with his view more. It sounds like he could be talking about my (or I bet 90%) of the organizations out there when he recalls stories from his experience. His view is that many companies still need to be convinced of the value of design and how design affects (and requires) co-ordination with all parts of the organization.

But this is not design (or “Design”) that is the equivalent to window dressing or chrome or garish menus, but really a holistic approach to approaching problems. One of the questions he answered at the conclusion of his talk revolved around how he would characterize design. In addition the aforementioned “way of thinking” he very emphatically stated that it was not traditional problem solving, but a way to facilitate a conversation. In fact he mentioned that design is probably the “most negative” profession out there as it required a continual progression from a blank sheet of paper (millions of possibilities) to exactly one, with all the rest being thrown out!

But seems to be redeeming about this process is the conversation and improvement it causes as the ideas are thrown out; each idea informs the next to make it even better than it could have been on its own. This however, requires that design is supported at the proper level in the corporation, which he noted was part of the success of Apple and part of the continuing lack of progress in the 90% of other organizations currently producing products.

During the early days of Industrial Design, designers such as Walter Teague, Harley Earl and Henry Dreyfuss brought something unique to large organizations; how to differentiate their products based on context. They also had a distinct advantage in the early days as they reported in to very high levels in the company, usually the President or CEO (partially because they were “expensive”) but also because they could bring something distinctive to products which were becoming quite similar in customer’s eyes.

Today most design firms report into levels below senior management (in large organizations) and at this point are “positioned to fail.” He went on to ask the audience several hard questions:

• Is Design an Executive level position at your company?
• If not how can you claim it’s important?
• If it isn’t what message are you delivering to your employees?

The key message was that firms have to stop paying lip service to the value of design and actually incorporate it into the strategic decisions of the company.

This lead to a quote from one of Buxton’s mentors, Alan Kay:

“It takes almost as much creativity to understand a good ida as it is to have it in the first place.”

Upon which Buxton added his corollary:

“It takes even more creativity to make an idea real as it is to have on in the first place,”

which I can wholly agree with given my experience in product development!

So where it really gets interesting is his assertion that you need a design culture, not just products to be successful in a chosen industry and he (of course) gives Apple as an example.

In 1993 when Apple’s stock price was declining, future head designer Jonathan Ives started at the company. Through the next two CEOs the stock price declined further (likely through no fault of Ives) until the Apple board brought Steve Jobs back to the company and the rest, as they say is history, with the introduction of the iMac and later the iconic iPod.

So what did Jobs change? Buxton just mentions that Jobs became the Chief Design Officer and promoted the value of design throughout the company. And the remarkable thing to keep in mind is that he did it with largely the same staff that was around during the previous leaders’ tenure. He really just gave the existing staff the tools they needed and the right support to be able to execute on those good ideas.

You may ask what about the Apple G4 cube and hockey puck mouse? Well design is not always about a straight path to success and those “failures” positioned the company to really hit the ball out of the park on their next endeavors. Which meant that the conversation (and risk tolerance for failure) had to exist in the company or they wouldn’t be able to come back and build successful, game-changing products after previous ones failed to catch on in the market.  And it also suggests that corporate culture can change to support design if it is supported from the top and becomes a part of the organizations conversations to deliver contextual products customers crave.

Demo-Wrapup

Posted by Jeffrey on Feb 2, 2008

Well another Demo has come and gone with a whirlwind of information and opportunities. There are a few things which I found at this year’s session. 

It seems like collaboration is no longer a nice to have but a feature that is really becoming standard when it comes to online products. Notably, Cozimo, LiquidPlanner and some others are taking it to a new level as they are allowing simultaneous work across multiple locations which points to the new, geographically dispersed nature of projects these days. And LiquidTalk allows simultaneous translation across differerent groups all within an IM client.

Social media as a concept is also being rolled up into all products; so much so that Demo is going to stop having a separate grouping for these products. How’s that for validation of a concept?

Gadgets and devices are still around (even thought sometimes it feels like all the services are being delivered inside the browser). Livescribe‘s pen

Livescribe’s Pen.

brings your voice (or any audio) to the printed page. Even translation of words into other languages!

And for another audience alltogether (kids 4-8) Leapfrog‘s tag system (available Nationwide in June ’08) gives little ones the ability to interact with books with audio and music with their pen-like reader.

Green has to get bigger at Demo and the buzz around the pavilion was that having only two companies there representing the category was a real letdown. There have got to be more worthy companies out there (besides the great offering from Celsius and GreenPlug.) With the amount of monitors and cpu’s buzzing over the sessions, there is growing awareness of the impact of this sector.

Video is not just for broadcasters anymore and although we’ve know this for a while, there are a bunch of new tools out there (VisibleMeasures, TubeMogul) which help monetize and analyze online video for publishers, be they consumers or national brands.

And of course, the web is a Web 2.0 (sorry couldn’t resist) playground as everything is and can be, mashed up together. One service (Flypaper) even allows searching and viewing of flickr photos right from inside their application. Sprout brings the power of custom flash applications to a wider audience with their cool builder application which allows users to create cool flash apps right from inside their browser. No download needed.

But my concern as always with these new services is how they will sustain themselves over the long term to support their rapid advancement and integration of really fantastic functionality. I have heard that funding for “Ad-supported” services has tapered off over the past 6 months or so, and if that is the case, what other type of subscription, transaction or other models are out there?

For other views on this check out ZDnet and Rafe’s column.

Nintendo Wii – Looking for Innovation

Posted by Jeffrey on Dec 30, 2007

Nintendo has quite a reputation in the gaming industry as video games have been this company’s forte for a long time. Although in the period leading up to the launch of the Wii you wouldn’t know that this company was once a giant in the gaming business. They were suffering from a distinct lack of buzz as other competitors spent more to drive the core gaming experience.

Nintendo is currently in the lead in the $30B game business (and correspondingly still generating a huge amount of buzz). This rather recent development was not anticipated by the other players in the industry: Microsoft and Sony bet on a continuation of better graphics and more processing power to sway core gamers over to their platform.

What made the Wii innovative is their intention to move beyond core gamers to casual gamers, which makes up a far greater sized pie. But first a few stats:

• Nintendo has already sold 13MM of their devices so far (at the end of 2007) and expects to sell 35MM or more by 2012
• In its first month on the market in the US (it launched on November 19th, 2006) retail market watcher NPD said the Wii sold 476,000 units, compared to 197,000 PS3s (launched on November 17th, 2006). It even came close to the X-box 360 which sold 511,000 in the whole month!
• Amazon.com sold Nintendo Wii systems at approximately 17 per second when they were in stock

Here is a sales comparison:

As you can see it appears that the X-box sales have leveled off (have they gone to the Wii?) 

So what happened to the gaming market? As the leading edge moved to move the bar higher and higher on high-res graphics and detailed gameplay, the number of gamers that wanted a less intense (but still engaging) experience was growing. Whether for time reasons (no time to learn detailed combinations/ controllers) or intimidation (I don’t want to feel lame in front of highly accomplished players) the market was less visible (and vocal) than the core gamer community. And here is where it is really difficult to guess what was going to happen.

By listening to their core community, both Microsoft and Sony built some of the most advanced technology to deliver a superb gaming experience to their customers. Problem was that there was this growing (but less vocal) customer group playing Bejewelled and Tetris that felt disengaged from the core. This is where the Wii, with its intuitive gyroscopically controlled gameplay could succeed.

It really lowered the bar on console gaming, bringing casual games that did not require significant effort to understand (uhhh, bowling?) to a larger audience. (They also did a fantastic job at viral marketing. Because the Wii was new and different, it automatically attracted people that wanted to find out what made it tick). All of which drove Nintendo to increase production three times in 2007 . Still the devices are hard to get a hold of…

…Leading to the fact that we are in 2008 (almost 18 months after launch) and I still can’t get a copy of Guitar Hero for Wii!

Building a Web Business: Mark Evans talks to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster.

Posted by Jeffrey on Jun 6, 2007

Part of Mesh07

One of the earliest businesses on the web Craigslist actually started as an email list in 1995 when Craig Newmark decided to send cool tech event listings to people he knew. Then as people started adding to the list he had an idea: what if these people could post all the new additions on a website? Well, in 1996 Craig did just that added a web interface and it has pretty much stayed unchanged for the past 12 years. Some of the reasons for its success, according to CEO Jim Buckmaster are that it has stayed true to its original roots and is useful “across all human needs.”

The approach that the site takes with respect to the user interface, translates right down to how the business operates. They are able to serve over 7 Billion PageViews per month with a small team. They have 24 employees and all work out of same dilapidated Victorian house in downtown San Francisco Of those 24 employees 2/3 are technology and the rest are in customer service. The site runs on open source software and is all about getting out of the way of the users.

They serve about 20 Million unique users per month using Linux, Perl, Apache, and compress pages 10 to 1. They endeavour to maximize Pageviews / kilowatt hour both from a business and green perspective; they are down to 175k pageviews/ kwh. Jim commented that they serve 7 billion pageviews on only 200 servers where Google is reported to be north of 1 million servers!

Given that basically none of their resources are devoted to marketing, how do they market if it is not a strategic imperative? They follow the lead of the users and try to make site as useful as possible and they believe that word of mouth traffic will flow from a good user experience.

One of the most important ways that Craigslist maintains its leadership in the online classifieds space is that in terms of product development the only things they work on are things that the users are asking for. In fact, in response to a question about whether the company is interested in the transaction market, Jim responded that virtually all exchanges on Craigslist are local and face to face, so there is no need for a payment engine. In contrast eBay has 90% of their transactions taking place at a distance and their requirements early on necessitated a transaction/payment engine.

One recent study estimated that if the site ran banners and other advertisements, it could be driving $1 billion in annual revenue. So the question arose about why they were not implementing this strategy? Jim noted that they were making enough money for all their needs, and focussing on the revenue would necessitate taking their eyes off of what the users want. He commented that the endless game of trying to make more money is not really fun and not taking external money allows them more freedom to do what they want to do.

Why is the company not focused on revenue? He responded that when you have no constraints and no psychological need for money, more money is not really necessary. The public companies are always measured by revenue growth so they are free to run company in a fun and meaningful way. They have no outside influences to push them in other directions which gives them more latitude to run the business as they see fit.

At this point, 90% of classified revenue is still in print but the costs online are lower, so the migration to online is continuing. Some newspaper commentators have stated that Craigslist represents all that’s wrong with newspaper industry. It may be part of a class of businesses that are changing traditional businesses but the newspaper industry is still 2x as profitable as average industry in the United States.

The site started charging for jobs in 1998 in San Francisco. Craig asked the users how to raise revenue and they said to charge for postings. What happened is that the quality of jobs were higher as paid listings were instituted as it took out “job spam.” Some might say that fees were the ‘lazy mans’ tool to take out substandard listings, in contrast to putting a coder in to work on the problem. Now they charge for job ads in 7 cites and brokers in NYC pay for apt listings. Their expansion plans call for more cities, more categories and more languages.

Digital Blinders – Are We an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep?

Posted by Jeffrey on May 30, 2007

Rob Hyndman talks with Nora Young, Mark Schneider and Mark Federman at Mesh07.

I often find myself flipping back and forth between my real work and a bunch of webpages to get my information hit, and realize that I seem to have a shorter attention span these days. When I mention this to others I get a lot of comments that blame the internet. “Of course it’s the internet.” But really, have we lost the ability to go deep in conversations because of our constant need for information bites? Has the internet in particular hastened the decline of our ability to think about complex issues?

With the advent of television, early commentaries bemoaned even back then, there was a tendency to a shorter attention span. But perhaps more problematic are the negative aspects that surface during online conversations and comments that lead people to think of the internet a huge amplifier for some less desirable parts of the human psyche.

But didn’t the printing press change things back in the 15th century? Now we are all literate, but back then it turned things upside down for those citizens. Bloggers of the time were called ‘pamphleteers’, they were subversives back then. Effects people predict are linearly extrapolated from what we at the time know. So it is difficult to see what some of the effects will be from the current explosion based on our current knowledge, so in my view it is important to try things, and see if they work by asking users.

Bill Joy wrote a article called “Why the future doesn’t need us anymore.” Is there a way that we can step back and evaluate what is happening in this new medium? This would be a nice luxury, but we are part of history and hard to stop the clock.

There is a place for long-form perspective journalism, but we are changing what it means to construct an argument. What we think of as an argument is more open ended and more multi-perspective. Life becomes more like a Venn diagram. We need to take multiple contexts and put them together. The concept that there is more than one right answer needs to stem from a multi-dimensional way to understand the world.

But this often is not really viable or evident (see flame wars).

Where is the value in NowPublic? If something newsworthy happens because of ubiquitous proximity, there is a chance one of the members can record it. “This matters to me and there is value in sharing it with others.”

TV in its early days was bringing reality into the living rooms (eg the Vietnam war). It has become a hypnotic medium; you sit down and zone out. People’s engagement with the Net is similar to TV; it initially felt the same way. But as a new generation comes about, it creates an effect that TV never could when editors and cameras that faced in one direction only. The internet can bring together all these bits of information and allows user to create a picture. Every little bit of info by itself is not significant but together provides a more complete transparency into issues and concepts.

Does meaning evolve over time? We used to have a newspaper or story, but now we understand that media is emergent, and we will come to understand that nothing is ever completely finished.

We don’t consume media, (this was an old concept), we produce media (we contribute to YouTube or contribute to a blog).

“Information doesn’t want to be free- it wants to be valuable.”

There is a great divide between those socialized with TV and the idea of separate channels and those that have less division (see the TV show Heroes and the combination of the show and the website and the graphical novel to have more engagement with the story and concept.)

Michael Arrington discusses TechCrunch and Start-ups at Mesh2007

Posted by Jeffrey on May 30, 2007

Techcrunch was started in 2005 because Arrington was interested in the internet and particularly start-ups. At the time, there were a few sites like technorati and bloglines but not many others. It was started because there was no single blog that covered new start-ups. At the beginning it wasn’t thought of as a business, but just something to do for fun.

He realized the site was taking off about the time he was getting more reads to stories than 4-500 per day he was reading using Bloglines. It was a full 6 months after that before ads ran on the site.

From an overseas perspective, TechCrunch France is largest blog in France and TechCrunch Japan is a sizable blog in that market. It wasn’t too hard to find foreign correspondence. Most get in contact online and express an interest in reporting on start-ups for TechCrunch. In fact the reporter who covers France is a guy living in TelAviv.

Each story is primarily a discussion and although Arrington gets the first say, he feels the best comments are in the feedback and that is something he can also participate in.

Arguably the impulse to be first to post a story is a fundamental journalistic imperative. The advantage to being first is that you don’t have to be intelligent, insightful or witty. That responsibility is for the later writers as you must contribute to the conversation.

In fact, he often prefaces the post title with the term “breaking” and only fills in the first sentence and fills in the rest of the post later. Does traditional publishing have a problem with this? Perhaps and he freely acknowledges that there are some problems in New Media reporting, but they correct themselves as more people contribute to the conversation.

The SF Chronicle has been on death row for years cutting staff etc in relation to the evolution of ‘New Media’ but do you want to hear only their viewpoint on newspapers vs. the new technology? What about others viewpoints and this is where bloggers really add value; broadening the conversation rather than restricting it to a few journalists’ viewpoints.

A simple response to this is to blame online news aggregators, but is it really Google’s fault? It is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Google is doing for news, and failure to evolve in the traditional media space. Google news has no assets and it is generating no revenue off of these stories. It is however sending traffic back to other sites. The content is actually the start of the conversation and to seed these conversations TechCrunch does is give away content as RSS feed because it establishes very loyal users who feel passionate about the stories they read.

In fact, blogs are eating traditional media’s lunch. The traditional argument is that blogs are fast and not very good at reporting, but readers don’t just return to sites with crappy content. There is the same imperative to do quality reporting to get return visitors and build credibility.

Perhaps one of the things that traditional papers can do is to allow all its writers to start their own blogs. Arrington commented that the best journalist can make more money on their own by starting to write on the side and building their own brand.

Given what happened to Engadget around their reporting of the hoax around Apple’s delay of the iPhone, would TechCrunch have reported this story? They would have reported it as the email appeared to come from Apple’s own email service and seemed credible. He would have posted it as fast as he could, based on the logic above. The credibility of Engadget suffered but perhaps shouldn’t have. Apple’s PR should have responded to him and denied the story. Does someone writing too fast have consequences? Yes, but having many more bloggers writing and contributing is more beneficial.

What would Arrington do if he was running traditional newspaper? Maybe stop printing a paper version, and make all stories available free online. These newspapers’ archives must be available free and able to be searched by consumers. NYT doesn’t get the traffic because they don’t make their stuff available to crawlers.

In the Social networking space Arrington believes that the next generation is Virtual reality… like WoW. Once the hardware catches up to what we think we should do, it will be the equivalent of SecondLife versus.

As far as traditional web-based social networking, Facebook looks like it is here to stay, because they understand Web2.0 principles like sharing, openness. MySpace probably will survive but they are doing something wrong; they don’t understand really understand the principles and are trying to close access to applications and the eco-system.

BlackBerry addict? – Hotel offers detox

Posted by Jeffrey on Jun 9, 2006

CHICAGO (Reuters) – BlackBerry addicts have a crack at freedom when they check into one Chicago hotel: the manager will put the communications devices and others like them under lock and key for guests who want a break.
Rick Ueno, general manager of the Sheraton Chicago Hotel, said the program which began on Wednesday grew out of his own personal BlackBerry addiction. His one-step recovery was switching to a regular cell phone.
“I was really addicted to my BlackBerry. I had an obsession with e-mail,” he told Reuters. “Morning and night. There came a time when I didn’t think it was healthy … I quit cold turkey.”
He believes guests might want to try the same thing for a day or two anyway, so they can concentrate on meetings, business and socializing while at the hotel.
Ueno said he would take personal charge of any BlackBerrys or related devices guests want to surrender and place them in his office locked up until their return is requested. There is no charge.
“I run a hotel with over 900 employees and thousands of guests. I think I’m more effective. I feel better. I sleep better. My family likes it,” he said of his post-BlackBerry life.
The popular hand-held devices, sometimes called “CrackBerries” because users become so reliant on them, are made by Canadian-based Research In Motion Ltd..

Tamagotchis seek second wave of virtual pet owners

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 21, 2006

TOKYO (Reuters) – With straps loaded with tamagotchis around their necks, siblings Takumi and Ayaka Mochizuki traveled an hour to a Tokyo store so their virtual pets could interact with a giant tamagotchi that was on tour.
“I love feeding my tamagotchi,” said Takumi, 5, looking disappointed because he didn’t have enough virtual money to buy anything for his “3-year-old” pet at the royal market, which is accessible only via the giant tamagotchi.
“I really messed up,” he said.
Ten years after the small egg-shaped devices first became a global fad, the digital pets have found homes again with a new generation of young children, who peer into the tiny screens several times a day to feed them, play with them and clean them.
Unlike the original, which suddenly disappeared after a brief run, Japanese toymaker Bandai Co., a unit of Namco Bandai Holdings Inc., is hoping a richer world of characters and cautious marketing will give it the staying power that its creators had always envisioned.
“We’ve always wanted to try to revive the tamagotchi because the craze ended so fast,” said Takeiuchi Hongo, Bandai’s 51-year-old chief tamagotchi officer, admitting that the company was caught off guard when the toy became a sudden phenomenon in the 1990s, particularly among high school girls and young women.
The latest versions in Japan, launched in 2004 and priced at about $25, come with communications capabilities so tamagotchis can meet each other and play games through an infrared sensor.
The pets can grow into adults that hold down jobs and even get married to someone else’s tamagotchi. Once the couple has babies — always twins so each owner gets a baby — the parents disappear to Planet Tamagotchi, which the children can visit via a personal computer.
A badly brought up tamagotchi pet could turn into a snake or a thief, but a diligent owner can raise up to 999 generations.
The company’s toy unit expects operating profit in the last business year to March to jump 25.8 percent to about $136 million from a year earlier on a 7.4 percent increase in sales to about $1.5 billion, helped by the popularity of the tamagotchi.
Two years after its debut, the second tamagotchi series topped sales of 20 million units worldwide this month.
Although that is half the original tamagotchi’s sales of 40 million units, Hongo considers the current business to be more stable and consistent.
Hongo readily admits that Bandai was ill-prepared to handle the explosive demand when the traditional Japanese company of fewer than 1,000 employees launched the tamagotchi in 1996, based on an idea by an executive with an insatiable love for pets.
The toy meant for young children was sought after so much that employees were banned from carrying bags with a Bandai logo for fear of theft.
What started as a simple idea for a portable virtual pet turned into a cultural icon of the digital age as countries like China and the Philippines condemned the toy as anti-social and schools around the world banned them.
Bandai couldn’t make enough tamagotchis to meet demand, and by the time they had the capacity to do so, the boom was over.

After a roller-coaster ride, the company ended up with excessive inventory and took a special loss in the business year ended March 1999 as it was forced to restructure.
“We know we can’t make the same mistake twice,” said Hongo, who now has two small children of his own. “We had no strategy back then.”
To demonstrate its resolve and its intention to make tamagotchi a permanent fixture, Bandai named Hongo chief tamagotchi officer in 2004 and conducted extensive market research before relaunch.
The company has avoided splashy advertising, choosing instead to work with publishers on children’s magazine articles featuring tamagotchi. It also carefully paced out launches of new versions and related products as it created a world around the characters.
Bandai’s tamagotchi game for Nintendo Co. Ltd.’s DS portable game machine was the first game created by a company other than Nintendo to sell a million copies in Japan, and sales of a U.S. version showed a solid start.
Bandai also offers a tamagotchi mobile phone game and has plans to begin selling a co-branded tamagotchi phone aimed at children with wireless phone company Willcom Inc., a joint venture between U.S. firm Carlyle Group and Japan’s Kyocera Corp.
According to Yano Research Institute, the electronic toys and girls’ toys segments in Japan are expected to grow slightly in the business year ended March, due almost entirely to tamagotchi-related sales, even though the overall industry is expected to decline a bit to about $8 billion.
“The girls’ toys category is traditionally a tough market because girls have so many interests beyond toys, but the market is being lifted again by innovative products in large part due to the influence of the tamagotchi,” said Rumiko Onuki, a children’s market analyst at Yano Research Institute.

Movie-Goers Getting Smells to Match Scenes

Posted by Jeffrey on Apr 13, 2006

TOKYO – A theater audience in Japan will be sniffing their noses — literally — at a new Hollywood adventure film when it opens here later this month.
A new service from a major telecommunications company, NTT Communications Corp., will synchronize seven different smells to parts of “The New World,” starring Colin Farrell.
A floral scent accompanies a love scene, while a mix of peppermint and rosemary is emitted during a tear-jerking scene. Joy is a citrus mix of orange and grapefruit, while anger is enhanced by a herb-like concoction with a hint of eucalyptus and tea tree. The smells waft from special machines under the seats in the back rows of two movie theaters, which create different fragrances by controlling the mix of oils stored in the machines, company spokeswoman Akiko Suzaki said Wednesday.
In “The New World,” which opened in the United States in December, Farrell plays American colonial leader John Smith, who is said to have been saved from execution by North American Indian princess Pocahontas.
Theaters will be able to download from the Internet different scent sequences for other films, Suzaki said.
The company began a similar service for homes in Japan last year. Owners of the $620 home version can download different programs to emit smells to accompany a horoscope reading or work as aromatherapy.
Owners must keep refilling the machine with fragrant liquids. NTT Communications would not disclose how many machines it has sold.
U.S. startups have developed similar technologies before, although at least one company had to shut down during the dot-com bust.

Theaters may ask to jam cell phones

Posted by Jeffrey on Mar 20, 2006

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Movie theater owners faced with falling attendance are considering asking federal authorities for permission to jam cell phone reception in an attempt to stop annoying conversations during films, the head of the industry’s trade group said on Tuesday.
Industry leaders at the ShoWest conference for theater owners want to find ways to win back crowds.
“I don’t know what’s going on with consumers that they have to talk on phones in the middle of theaters,” John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, told the ShoWest conference in Las Vegas.
Theaters are trying a number of ways to silence cell phones, from sweeps by ushers to funny fake movie trailers urging viewers to shut off phones.
Fithian said owners were considering other steps if that does not work.
“We will actually petition the Federal Communications (Commission) to remove the block” on jamming cell phones, he said.
That may be difficult, since federal law and FCC rules prohibit the use of cell phone jammers.
The industry is broadly trying to increase interest in the movies.
Motion Picture Association of America Chief Executive Dan Glickman told ShoWest that the industry is researching why and when people go to the movies and might consider an advertising campaign to encourage people to go out to the movies, just as the milk industry has succeeded with its Got Milk? campaign.

And a little-bitty thimble of popcorn, please

Posted by Jeffrey on Mar 2, 2006

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Budding Canadian film makers looking for a big break may want to think small — about 2 inches by 2 inches to be exact — organizers of Canada’s first mobile film festival said Wednesday.
Mobifest producers are looking for bite-sized films that are up to 60 seconds long and produced for viewing on cellphones and other handheld devices.
“The big picture is that there’s a billion (mobile) phones worldwide and an increasing percentage of them are playing back video,” said Duncan Kennedy, president of Nownow Corp., which is producing the contest. “It’s a new distribution channel for independent film making.”
Similar festivals, for what is dubbed “short attention span theater,” have been launched in Portugal and Asia. Industry executives recently gathered at the Sundance Film Festival to predict the future of the small screen.
Mobifest already has a few entries, including one from U.S. animator Mike Browne, whose “Brokeback Chicken” spoofs Ang Lee’s Oscar favorite “Brokeback Mountain.”
“We see a lot of these submissions being funny,” said Kennedy. “We hope people are going to share these laughs together, and why wouldn’t you want to have a joke in your pocket?”
So-called “pocket films” ideally have limited dialogue, because they are played on phones and often compete with background noise, and have lots of close shots and large text and titles, added Kennedy. His year-old, Toronto-based company produces and distributes made-for-mobile movies under sponsorship and carrier deals.
Sponsored by Palm Canada, Mobifest will accept international submissions through April 30, with winners announced May 17.
Finalists will be picked by online voters, who can view films at www.mobifest.ca. Judges will then determine winners for best Canadian mobile film, best of festival, and best film shot and edited exclusively on a Palm Treo smartphone.
Award-winning films will premiere on Movieola, The Short Film Channel, and screen on Air Canada flights this summer. The festival winner also gets a mobile movie production package worth about C$1,500 ($1,327).

Stanford team clinches top spot in robot desert race

Posted by Jeffrey on Oct 12, 2005

PRIMM, Nevada (Reuters) – A Stanford University team won a $2 million prize on Sunday for sending a modified Volkswagen across 132 miles of rugged desert, guided only by sensors and computers in a race the Pentagon hopes will lead to a technological breakthrough in warfare.
Twenty-three driverless vehicles were sent into the Mojave Desert on Saturday in a race sponsored by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA.
After extending the race a day to allow a slow-moving robotic vehicle to finish, the Stanford University vehicle, known as Stanley, was declared the winner of the Grand Challenge with the quickest race time of six hours and 54 minutes.
Sebastian Thrun, leader of the Stanford team, said the victory was a win for the automobile’s future, predicting that all cars would one day be able to drive themselves.
DARPA sponsored the race to spur development of driverless vehicles that one day could carry water, fuel and other supplies for the U.S. military in war zones.
In last year’s inaugural race, called the Grand Challenge, every machine failed within sight of the starting line. The Pentagon decided to double the prize and hold the event again this year.
Organizers designed a more difficult course this year and an assortment of modified Humvees, sports utility vehicles, pickup trucks and dune buggies were sent into the mountains and valleys in the Mojave to navigate man-made obstacles, tunnels and a dry lake bed.
“These vehicles just haven’t achieved world records, they’ve made history,” said DARPA director Tony Tether.
One broke down at the starting line and 17 others stopped moving at various points on the course.
Four made it back to the finish line to complete the race and one, a huge six-wheeled truck called TerraMax, was stopped overnight so it could make it to the finish line.
Coming in just after Stanley were a pair of modified Humvees built by a Carnegie Mellon University team. A modified sports utility vehicle called GrayBot also finished just after sunset on Saturday.
The rugged, twisting course, about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas on the Nevada-California border, was chosen because of its similarity to terrain where the U.S. military is currently most active.
Using global positioning satellites and inertial navigation, the vehicles were programmed to follow a pre-defined course disclosed only hours before the race. Radar, lasers and cameras mounted on the vehicles guided onboard computers that steered the vehicles around obstacles.

Battle robots could join dogs on S. Korea border

Posted by Jeffrey on Sep 26, 2005

SEOUL (Reuters) – Armed, six-legged robots may one day work alongside man’s best friend on the southern side of the Korean DMZ.
South Korea will spend 33.4 billion won over the next five years to develop the robots for the heavily fortified demilitarised zone that divides the peninsula, the Communications Ministry said in a statement Friday.
South Korea envisages the robots performing roles on the battlefield now done by dogs, such as sniffing for explosives and catching intruders, the ministry said.
The robots will stand knee-high to the average adult, mounted on wheels for road missions or on as many as eight legs to get them over uneven terrain, it said. Equipped with firearms, they will be able to carry out combat missions via remote control.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry announced plans this month to reduce the number of its troops in uniform by about 25 percent over 15 years and develop more high-tech weapons systems.
North Korea maintains most of its 1.2-million-strong army near its border with the South. The two Koreas are technically still at war because the 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice and not a peace treaty.

Mitsubishi banking on robot companion’s charm

Posted by Jeffrey on Sep 15, 2005

TOKYO (Reuters) – She may be a bit odd looking, what with a bright yellow face, silver arms and a positioning sensor on her head, but this tiny gal’s got charm — even if it is chip-induced.
Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, say their new Internet-linked robot “Wakamaru,” unveiled on Thursday, has a friendly personality that could make her a much-loved member of the family.
“We have tried to create a robot you can have a relationship with, just like a human,” said technical team leader Ken Onishi, who said that while none of her individual features are revolutionary, putting them together in one cute package was a mammoth task.
Able to recognize up to 10 people and call them by name, the 40 inch tall Wakamaru will approach and greet family members in a gentle, feminine voice when they arrive home and offer to pass on telephone messages or read out any e-mails that may have arrived.
In the morning, she’ll glide to your bedside to wake you up with the news headlines and weather forecast, remind you of your appointments for the day and may even invite you to join her in some light exercise.
And if security at home is a worry, give her a call on your mobile phone when you’re out and check the situation through a camera mounted on her forehead.
But this kind of companionship doesn’t come cheap.
A limited edition of 100 robots goes on sale in Tokyo on Friday, at a cost of 1.575 million yen ($14,260), with a monthly maintenance charge of around 10,000 yen.

New Manicure Machine Sold in Singapore

Posted by Jeffrey on Sep 14, 2005

SINGAPORE – Want more than just glossy paint on your nails? A new machine with a camera can paint a photographed image, whether a loved one or a pet, on your nails for just 2 Singapore dollars (US$1) each.
A group of Singaporean entrepreneurs on Wednesday launched E-Manicure, a machine with a camera that paints full-color images on nails in just 30 seconds. They say the resolution is good, and they can add glitter and sparkles to jazz up the image.
Surendren Apparoo, spokesman for E-manicure Pte. Ltd., acknowledged that similar machines already exist in other countries, including Japan and the United States. But he said they are mostly gimmicks, and that E-Manicure seeks to develop a regional franchise.
He said the company’s machine was smaller and lighter than others on the market — it’s about one foot wide and 2.5 feet tall — and each costs up to 6,000 Singapore dollars (US$3,570) to produce.
Several Singaporean businessmen came up with the idea after waiting a long time for their wives to finish manicures while on a trip to Thailand.

Hooligans kept at home by voice verification

Posted by Jeffrey on Sep 8, 2005

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch hooligans will be kept in check by voice verification software which will ensure they are at home rather than supporting their favorite team.
The Dutch ministry of Justice wants to guarantee that fans do not break stadium bans imposed for bad behavior.
A computer with voice verification software, developed by the Israeli firm Dmatec, will call banned fans on their home phones when the match is about to kick off.
The fans have to say sentences which have been agreed in advance and the computer is able to tell if the call has been put through to a mobile phone, the ministry says.
The trial will start soon in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Arnhem for fans of the Ajax, Feyenoord and Vitesse clubs.