Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Japan’s Osaka University never fails to fascinate us with his amazingly life-like robotic creations. However, his latest creation, the Telenoid R1 is very different. Designed as a way of remote communication, the Telenoid R1 aims to make you feel as though the other person on the line is right there with you. What better way to stay connected?
Much in the vein of Casper the ghost, the Telenoid R1 features a bald human-like head attached to a soft stumpy limbed body. The simplified design is intentional–partly to save costs for faster prototyping—so that the Telenoid can represent any individual on the other end of the line. And requiring people to use their imaginations will supposedly make the interaction more personal.
Ishiguro’s work has always been advancing new methods of remote communication, education, work, and elderly care. Research and commercial versions of the Telenoid R1 will be available later this year.
Believe it or not, Japan was not the first country in the world to come up with the gold vending machine, the first of which was released early this week. Not a machine made of gold, but a machine that allows you to trade money for gold in a vending machine environment. Ron Paul would be proud, as the USA beat Japan to the punch by a month, while Germany and Abu Dhabi beat Japan by almost a year! As reporter Yoree Koh says, “It’s enough to make you cry into your ramen.”
That’s alright though, says Space International Ltd., the group that was behind the idea of putting these machines out in Japan, who says, very similar to Ron Paul here in the states, that trading all your money in for solid gold is a great investment, especitally when “10,000 yen note becomes wastepaper,” or so says a statement released by the group. The first rate, if you’d like to know, set by these machines earlier in the week was 6,800 yen ($82.70) per gram. This machine can give you gold in the form of coins or bars, with the heaviest bar weighing in at over 7 grams.
I have the distinctive honor of presenting to you the very first post on SlashGear to feature a rickshaw. This rickshaw is both electronic and eco-friendly. This is the Meguru, a three-wheeled, three seat tiny vehicle that’s made to go what they call “maximum speed” and range of about 25 miles per hour. Of course that’s just with the out-of-the-box build, you can add batteries as you like for a longer ride.
Nobukuki Ogura, chief executive officer of Yodogawa Group, the group responsible for building the vehicle in cooperation with three other smaller western Japanese companies, had a bit to say about the vehicle. First he said that “this is a true environmentally friendly car,” then he said that “Instead of an air-conditioner, it comes with a pinwheel, and we are also thinking of adding a wind chime because it gives a refreshing sound to cool you down without the need of electricity.”
Brilliantly made, looks fantastic! A neato piece of this puzzle is that although a regular driver’s license is needed to drive, a car registration is not. This vehicle measures 8-ft 2-in long, 3-ft 11-in wide, and 5-ft 3-in tall. The body of the vehicle is coated in a beautiful red lacquer, the floor is made with recycled bamboo, and the retractable fans on the sides are made of washi paper.
The vehicle will costs around one million yen (approximately $12,044 according to the auto-converter in Google search.) The greatest fact about this whole vehicle? Ogura says it best: “We’ve used all-natural materials, so if you ever decide to get rid of the car, simply bury it in the ground.”
What happens when you put two of the world’s most technologically advanced wireless operators — Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and South Korea’s KT — in the same room with the largest operator in the world, China Mobile? We don’t know, but we’re going to find out… and something tells us it’s going to be awesome. DoCoMo broke the news this week that the three titans of industry have formed a “business collaboration” designed to “provide mobile customers with new experiences and greater convenience in the rapidly growing regional market of Northeast Asia.” They specifically say that they’ll be eying “international roaming, enterprise services, LTE and other network technologies, smartphones and common platforms” — and whenever we hear “partnership” and “roaming” in the same sentence, we can’t help but wonder whether it could be extremely good news for customers traveling among the carriers involved. Follow the break for the press release.
It’s been a long, tough, road, but customers of Sony Ericsson’s beleaguered X10 have some reason to celebrate this week as the Japanese version offered on NTT DoCoMo becomes the first to get an official multitouch software upgrade. Mind you, it’s not a full, perfect multitouch implementation: pinch-to-zoom is actually the only gesture supported, which means rotation (in Maps, for example) won’t work, and it’s also not guaranteed to work in all multitouch-capable third-party apps. Furthermore, Sony Ericsson isn’t yet talking about when the update will be available for other markets — and considering the phased Android 2.1 rollout, some markets could be in for a bit of a wait.
Disney has decided to debut a new smartphone in Japan, and given Steve Jobs’ presence on the company’s board of directors, we are surprised to find that the handset will run Android instead of iOS. The phone is essentially a Sharp Galapagos 003SH with a Disney-fied version of Froyo that comes with a Disney email address, exclusive content, and optional custom Disney-themed cases for users who wish to broadcast their allegiance to Mickey Mouse and company. The device is slated for release next month at an undisclosed price, but is only available to our friends in Japan. There’s no scheduled US release, so stateside fans will have to look elsewhere for their Disney fix.
One of the lesser known predictions of the Mayan calendar foretells that 2011 will be the year of NFC. The contactless communications stuff looks to be building all kinds of stream in the Western world, but don’t lose faith in your current smartphone if it doesn’t already have it. Japanese carrier Softbank has responded to complaints about the iPhone 4′s NFC deficit — the FeliCa payment system is pretty popular over in the land of sumo, sushi and sun-rising — by introducing a new “seal” for the back of Apple’s latest and greatest. It sticks on, covering almost the entire rear, but is apparently thin enough not to get in the way of using one of Apple’s own Bumpers alongside it. From our reading of the press release, the sticker doesn’t actually communicate with the iPhone, it’s just a dumb NFC card, but hey, other people don’t need to know that when you’re swiping payments with your phone, now do they? On sale in February at a price of ¥2,980 ($36).
So waaay back before 2008, Sony had control of a chip plant in Nagasaki, a semiconductor plant to be more precise, a plant which that year they sold to Toshiba Corp. Sony now plans to buy BACK that plant from Toshiba so that it might strengthen it’s complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor business. All of this has been reported by the Nikkei business daily newspaper.
This acquisition will cost around 50 billion yen ($597.2 million USD) and will double Sony’s image sensor output capacity. This will make Sony’s output equivalent to about 40,000 silicon wafers a month. Nikkei mentions that with this move, Sony both boosts their output and lowers their production costs, putting them right up in the speedy lanes with Samsung and US groups in teh CMOS sensor market.
Apple’s practicing its self-imposed rule of supplier polygamy this week and Japan’s Nikkei is telling us all about it. It started off on Monday, when we learned that Toshiba’s throwing down some cash to build a new smartphone display production plant, with Apple as the key investor and subsequent consumer, and today we’re hearing pretty much the same story, only with Sharp playing the role of Japanese producer to Apple’s hardware whims. A “large portion” of the $1.2 billion cost — identical to what Toshiba’s said to be spending — of expanding Sharp’s Kameyama factory is expected to be shouldered by Jobs’ cash-rich crew, a postulation also confirmed by Reuters, who’s managed to dig up a pair of sources agreeing with the Nikkei. Our Japanese team reports that Sharp has made its expansion plans official, but obviously there’s nary a peep about any Apple connection, while DigiTimes says Toshiba has outright denied any involvement with Cupertino. Guess we’ll just have to wait for the iPhone 7 teardowns to find out.
I always knew that some day I’d be able to use that title for a post. That day has come. There are now wine vending machines in Pennsylvania, where there’s no such thing as a legal independent wine and liquor store. For real! Pennsylvania is notorious for its strange liquor laws, this Wine Vending Machine move the latest in efforts to get liquor to regular residents safely. Certainly they’ll be delivering wine strangely, with a process that might end up leading to more spreading of germs via the mouth than it does tasty glasses of red or white.
Once you approach one of these gigantic machines, (consisting of three coolers and a kiosk,) you are greeted by a screen, a breathalyzer, and a scanner. Once you’re at the machine, you’ll find yourself at the other end of the camera whose other end is in Reading, Pennsylvania, where the Liquor Control Board is located. There a REAL LIVE employee checks your face, and once you’ve scanned your drivers license makes sure you’re you. Once you’ve passed that test, you’re free to breath into what I hope is a replaceable-tipped breathalyzer that’ll see if you’re halfway in the bag or not.
Once you’ve done all this, the door opens, and your particular brand of wine is yours for the taking. I like this idea, and prepose we expand it to all items. All items in vending machines, including pets!
