RFID in Japan: “Oribie Navi Land” is a GPS school bag for tracking kids. Japanese school bag manufacturer Kyowa and security systems and services company Secom are collaborating to release this product+service package this November. Secom’s GPS tracking device is called “KoKo Secom Communication Terminal” and attached to a side of a school bag to send realtime location information to […]
GPS School Bags Help Find Children
An iPod That Listens
The Register: A US firm specialising in metadata for music files is working with a voice recognition company to enable voice-controlled music devices for use where hand control is impractical. Gracenote is working with voice recognition specialist ScanSoft and early products will be aimed at Japan. Ross Blanchard, a Gracenote veep, said voice recognition would make devices easier to use: […]
Cool
They’re words often applied to new clothes or new cars – not phones. But that’s changing, and Motorola’s Razr V3 offers a good example. The ultraslim, lustrous metal cellphone, introduced in November, has created a cachet of cool so strong that it should rub off on the company’s entire portfolio of phones, observers say. A cool phone could make for […]
Partnering Apple
BusinessWeek Online: The lust of iPod owners for their lovable little digital-music players is well-documented. But another group may be even more smitten with Apple Computer these days: The makers of the 400-plus iPod accessories that have stormed to market, from $19 plastic cases to $350 speaker systems. Take Tim Hickman, general manager of the three-employee company Speck Products in […]
Marketing’s Reality TV
MarketingVOX: Creative outsourcing firm Aquent launched an online “reality show,” pitting five designers against one another to create campaigns in several specific fields. The work will be shown online and judged by the public, winnowing down the numbers to get to the one designer best able to tickle the fancies of the web visitors. The Studio Smackdown will run through […]
Clean Toothbrush, Thanks To Violight
DailyCandy: There’s something really, really gross in your bathroom. Something that harbors millions of micro-organisms and tons of bacteria. A seething hotbed of icky contaminants. It’s your toothbrush (ew!), and, we hate to tell you, but it really ought to be cleaner. It can be — with the help of Violight, a new toothbrush sanitizer designed by Philippe Starck. Using […]
Movie Location Tourism
Trends in Japan: A new breed of tourist is beginning to attract the attention of tour operators and of localities where movies have been filmed. The main objective of these visitors is not to see famous landmarks or to go shopping but to visit the settings of popular movies and TV series. They are eager to experience for themselves the […]
Need Help Loading My iPod
The New York Times: It sounds like a line from a spam e-mail: Work from home! Low risk! Flexible schedule! Earn hundreds of dollars each gig! But an emerging group of resourceful entrepreneurs says there is no catch. The rising popularity of Apple’s sleek iPod has created a new niche service: the professional iPod loader. There are housekeepers to tend […]
Soapshow
Trendwatching: Prefer soap shows over reality TV? Then check out this case of GRAVANITY par excellence from The Netherlands: Soapshow, a multimedia concoction that enables any needy individual to create his or her own soap series, for all the world to see. Users create their own soap by posting texts, voice, pictures, and video of their daily lives onto their […]
RFID Tagging Getting Big
BusinessWeek: ProfitLogic’s software is already at work in Gap and Target stores, and President Scott Friend sees many more retailers following suit. The transformative technology that entails tagging merchandise with radio frequency computer chips (RFID) is on the horizon. But ask anyone at the 2005 annual convention of the National Retail Foundation (NRF) and it’s clear that most of the […]