Tokyo Times

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Technology Stuff

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Karaoke king?

I must confess that karaoke is not my favourite way of spending an evening. And the few unfortunate souls who have found themselves sat alongside me in a karaoke booth can well understand my aversion to this popular pastime.

But perhaps help is at hand. Vodafone has released a mobile phone that allows you to download karaoke songs, and then project them on to a TV. Allowing woeful warblers like myself the chance to get a bit of private practice in before making another ill-advised public outing. And no need to worry about not having a microphone either, as the handset doubles up as a one.

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Plus, when you are belting out your favourite number, you can always check the lyrics on the phone’s Japanese-English dictionary. Whilst simultaneously taking pictures of your performance with the device’s 1.3-mexapixel camera.

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Rockin’ roses

Pictured below is Let’s Corp. president Masumi Gotoh. But don’t be fooled for one minute into thinking that Gotoh-san is a keen botanist, as what he’s actually demonstrating is his company’s Ka-on. A device that turns the petals and leaves of flowers into audio speakers.

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The name means flower sound, and the contraption consists of a donut-shaped magnet and coil that sits at the base of a vase and can be connected to a CD player, stereo, or TV. Then all you need to do is place some flowers in the vase, and the magnet and coil relay the sound vibrations up the stems and through the plant’s water tubes.

Ka-on vases and amplifiers come in various sizes and prices, the most expensive set retailing at 35,000 yen (175 pounds). Which it has to be said is a lot of money to have the sound of your favourite albums destroyed by playing them through a flower.

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X for Xbox

Microsoft’s first foray into console gaming might have been successful in other parts of the world, but in Japan the green and black machine has died a slow and agonizing death. Massive promotion and numerous price-cuts have done nothing to slow the consoles rapid fall.

Microsoft at least seem ready to accept defeat (for this generation of consoles anyway), and with very good reason too. It turns out the mighty PlayStation 2 has sold 48 units to every 1 Xbox. Now I’m no economist, but I’m guessing that’s not good for business.

Will the Xbox 2 fair any better? I guess that’s the question Xbox Japan must be asking. Lets be honest, it can’t do any worse. But personally I can’t se it doing that much better either. Time will tell…

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Hello Kitty Robot

To commemorate Hello Kitty’s 30th anniversary, developer Business Design Laboratory has produced a Kitty-chan robot.

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This latest addition to the Hello Kitty family will be available from November 1st, a date designed to coincide with the feline character’s birthday.

The toy is unfortunately unable to walk, but is expected to make up for this with its supposed ‘communication’ abilities. With an impressive stock of 20,000 memorized conversation patterns to choose from, you can expect the robotic cat to blurt out random words and phrases at the most inappropriate times imaginable. And to aid this communication ability further, the device is able to gesture by moving its head and arms.

For anyone hoping to get their hands on one of these technological tabbies, be prepared to do a bit of saving before its release. The retail price is expected to be somewhere around the 400,000 yen (2,000 pounds) mark.

Rumours that the machine whispers, “Buy more Kitty merchandise” and, “Kitty is your new god” whilst the owner is asleep, have been strenuously denied by the manufacturers.

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Sharp shooter

This little beauty goes on sale today.

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It’s the Vodafone V602SH from Sharp, and the cool looking gadget boasts the world’s first mobile embedded camera with an optical zoom function. And if that’s not enough for you, this feature is combined with a 2.02 megapixel autofocus CCD camera. Supposedly giving owners the ease-of-use associated with regular digital cameras. Needles to say, upskirt photo devotees have greeted this new model with considerable enthusiasm.

For users with more innocent desires, the V602SH also features Keitai Karaoke V-Kara, which allows customers to enjoy (if that’s the right word) a spot of karaoke by merely connecting the phone to the TV.

Oh, and apparently it’s capable of telephone calls too.

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Upskirt picture perverts

With a massive increase in the availability of cheap digital cameras, coupled with the huge number of camera equipped phones on the market, the danger of mischief is now never far away. Although to be fair, the mobile phone makers in Japan were quickly on to the pervert potential of the camera and phone combo, making each handset produce an inordinately loud noise every time a picture is taken.

But with Japan’s seemingly vast underground network of peepers (even University professors are at it), the battle against such deviants is always going to be an uphill struggle. Fairly recently however, the police managed to score a rare point against the dark forces of perversion.

Last week it was reported that during March, the police in Saitama Prefecture (just north of Tokyo) captured six members of a gang dedicated to voyeuristic pictures of women taken with concealed digital cameras. The group came together after meeting through an internet site dedicated to their unique brand of photography. And to make their operations more covert, they each adopted a nickname. One of the men rather optimistically calling himself ‘Beckham’.

But the gang’s downfall came when they were caught trying to ‘photograph’ a 20-year-old shop clerk. One member of the group engaged the unsuspecting woman in conversation, whilst the rest of the members approached her from behind (although presumably not all at once) and captured their desired image. A technique apparently well known amongst upskirt photography aficionados.

After the gang’s no doubt embarrassing arrest, one of the members said, “I wanted to get shots that my colleagues would praise.” Whilst another was quoted as saying, “Normally, a person takes upskirt photos on his own. But we did it in a group in a bid to improve our technique.”

What charges will be brought against these men remains to be seen, but in the future lets hope they don’t get their hands on one of these little wonders.

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Heaven knows what kind of trouble such men could get themselves into with a camera that small.