This is English version of Japanese blog media "vsmedia". About Japanese Social Games & Apps, Augmented reality, Virtual Worlds, Avatar, Virtual Goods, Social Media, Fab Culture...etc...
Popular Japanese restaurants have free toothpicks on their tabletops as a service, and anyone can take them. However, you may feel uneasy about them in terms of hygiene. Therefore, DAITOKU, who normally develop industrial LED light and security cameras, has applied those technologies to toothpick dispensers.
Tsumayoji-Kenjo, which they have developed, has a sensor and just by holding your hand over it, one toothpick comes out automatically(Sensor detection distance is about 10cm).
In addition, it has an ultraviolet light in the inner toothpick storage part, and always sterilizes and maintains hygiene.
The set has its own toothpicks for refilling, but of course you can also put commercially available toothpicks into it. They developed this for use by restaurants, but the price is 3,780 yen (tax included), so ordinary people can buy it, too. The size is 106mm x 77mm x 92mm and works with four AAA batteries.
Instax is the brand of instant still cameras and instant films marketed by Fujifilm. Digital backlash or something, this is still popular among young people. Fujifilm has released a hybrid instant camera "instax mini LiPlay" compatible with card-sized films, as a new lineup.
It is the smallest and lightest in the series, and it has a direct print function that can print the images stored on the smartphone on film. However, the most distinctive feature is "capture sounds". When you take photos, you can print out messages or other sounds as QR codes with the photos. When listen to the sounds, you can play it by scanning its QR code with a QR code reader of your smartphone. You can record up to 10 seconds.
They have proposed the idea of taking photos of the sea and taking the sound of the waves together. It is perfect for recording summer memories.
It also has features like a camera app, such as checking the images before printing photos, adding filters and design frames.
The size is 82.5mm × 122.9mm × 36.7mm, the weighs about 255g, has a built-in type lithium ion battery, and can print about 100 photos with about 2-3 hours of charge time. There are three color variations, Stone white, elegant black and brushed gold, and the price is an open price. In addition, you need to download the free mobile app instax mini LiPlay to use the Sounds feature and the Direct Print feature.
As summer approaches, many beer gardens will open throughout Japan and the party season will come. However, if you take alcohol too much, of course, it will hurt your health. Therefore, product design and development company STUFF and Toshiba-Memory have developed a learning type IoT alcohol gadget TISPY2 with open innovation.
This is a combination of an alcohol sensor and an SD memory card to measure the alcohol concentration in your breath when drinking and advise you on how to drink alcohol. It also records your drinking data and works with your smartphone via Toshiba-Memory's WiFi-equipped SD memory card FlashAir, allowing you to check your drinking data yourself from a web apprication. The more you use this, the more this learn about you from your drinking data, and give you personalized advice: "You're drinking fast today" "Would you like to drink water soon?" This also has a guest mode, which measures the concentration of alcohol contained in the guest user's exhalation on the spot and displays general advice(It can't be used personalized to the guest).
It supports Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, and you can link it with your smartphone to change the language setting. The power supply is two AAA batteries and also supports rechargeable batteries. The body color is black, and the color variations of the part that measures exhalation are pink gold and silver. The size is 70x70x18mm, the weight is about 100g, and the communication is IEEE802.11b/g/n (Wi-Fi). They have raised development funds with makuake, a crowd-funding platform, and have already raised about three times the target amount. You can reserve this from 13,500yen(tax included). The shipping is scheduled for August.
Project page is here.
A hearing aid is a gadget that supports the hearing of the ear. However, Starkey's smart hearing aid Livio AI offers more features than traditional hearing aids.
It has AI-controlled hearing aids and works to reduce the noise if your surroundings are loud. It also has a health tracking function that measures your body and brain health in your daily life. Because the deafness is one of the cognitive functions, it works closely with the brain. In addition, it has a fall detection notification function, so it can be used as a watching gadget for elderly families. If you are interested in international exchange, the real-time voice translation function that support 27 languages this will help. The price is very expensive at 630,000 yen(The hearing aid itself is tax exempt). However, it also has many features like headphones, such as wireless streaming of phones, music and media, etc., and is very versatile.
The target users are mild to severe deaf people, and the warranty period is 3 years.
The reaction to sharing photos on social networking services is now reviving physical photobooks in Japan, and there are many photobook production services linked with mobile photo applications. But we're selfish, so we feel troublesome to select photos and photobook layout design. So cheetahs, a group company of leading photo supplies company Kitamura, has released a new mobile application sarah.AI, which AI does.
They originally offered the photobook service sarah, and they added an AI to it to automate photobook production. The main functions of this are the best shot function, the automatic grouping function, and the collection function. The best shot function performs layout adjustment by face recognition and quality determination to remove blurring and duplication by scoring. The automatic grouping function groups photos from date and location information and automatically generates a title for each story and event(Of course, you can also give yourself titles). And, with the collection function, you can edit photobooks without having to select photos individually. All they can be done with the application only, but you don't need external communication, so you can protect your privacy. In addition, it has automatic layout function and various designed covers, so you can make a 140 x 140mm 24-page photobook simply by selecting them. You can make one photobook free each month, but you can add pages by paying 25yen for every two pages(Up to 96 pages).
They have only released an Android version, but an iOS version will also be released in June.
