3WAVES BLOG

Friday January 1st, 2010 | Posted in Mobile Phones | 2 Comments

Sekai Camera (from the company Tonchidot) is the very latest Japanese iPhone application that ensures people will spend even more time gazing listlessly into their mobile screens.  Sekai, meaning ‘world’ in Japanese, hopes to revolutionize the way people shop at street level.  How does it work?  Consumers use the video camera on their iPhone to scan around ‘tagged’ items on the screen.  A walk down the street or a drive down the road will reveal everything from the locations of the closest convenience stores to the best local steakhouse.  Users can even download reviews of local shops and restaurants as well. 

Talking to a couple shop owners in my neighborhood, Sekai Camera can be a helpful tool to put them on the virtual map and compete with bigger chain stores.  But the downside is that one bad review can be damaging for a small, local shop selling consumer goods in central Tokyo.  In the above video, you can see just how extensive and detailed the tags can be on a dizzying night drive through Tokyo.

Friday January 1st, 2010 | Posted in Mobile Phones | No Comments

Softbank, the smallest of the big three mobile carriers in Japan, has seen its profits double over the last year while the other two, AU and Docomo have been on the decline.  Softbank attributes its good fortune to several factors: it has been forward-looking enough to be the only carrier in Japan to offer the i-Phone, its cheap pricing plans have undercut the competition, it has been quicker on the draw with newer phone models and lastly, it has been ultra-successful in its use of megastars like Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz to promote the brand on TV commercial slots.  (The above photo shows Hillary Duff on a subway billboard promoting Softbank’s youth-targeted Disney Mobile).  In addition Softbank has bought the exclusive rights to several Apple/iPhone applications and has profited immensely from its Yahoo!-based mobile web search engine which is offered on all of its phones.

Friday January 1st, 2010 | Posted in Fashion, Mobile Phones | 2 Comments

The green wave continues to roll across the world and there has never been a cooler time to be environmentally friendly. I guess it is no surprise then that many brands are tapping into the eco-friendly trend and incorporating it into many of their designs – from eco-friendly fashion to eco-friendly mobile phones. Just recently Olympus and Sharp released a pair of wood-encased mobile phones made from trees cut from ecologically sustainable forests. The name of the mobile phone is “Touch Wood” and is part of the “More Trees” campaign established by prominent musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, an organisation which seeks to plant more trees in Japan.

Another trend ostensibly inspired by environmental sustainability is the Mori Girl (Forest Girl) fashion. ‘Mori girl’ is a buzzword taken from the name of a community within the Japanese social networking site Mixi, a community which takes its inspiration for fashion from the concept of life in the forest. They are a rapidly growing community which prides itself on a whole-hearted rejection of fashion trends dictated by the mass media and look for originality and individuality within their own fashion selections. They charaterize their fashion as being sweet and simple and most importantly original, driven by their very own individual tastes.

Some other environmentally-friendly inspired products recently launched:

- the wooden USB stick
- the wooden key board

One wonders what could possibly be next in this series of wooden products – the wooden fridge maybe?