Organizing business cards is one of the common dilemmas of business persons. You can hire a third-party processor to outsource card scanning and ask them to generate a contact list for your phone. Now we have an alternative approach to remove the routine task.
Social Groupware[J], a subsidiary of web community consultancy GaiaX[J], has released Lister[J], the iPhone app that automatically collects contact information from signatures of the e-mails you’ve received and adds them to your contact list. By setting your e-mail account and password on the app, the Lister server fetches e-mails using the IMAP protocol, detects e-mail signatures in them and generates (or updates) a contact list for you. You are allowed to retrive a contact from your list on the server in order to e-mail or call someone with the iPhone.
Lister launched last October, but it was forced to interrupt the operation because of heavy load of the signature detecting server. They improved the performance of signature detecting and resumed the service this week. The server has a function to learn which every part of the e-mail body is name, postal address, e-mail address and phone number to avoid future misreading and improve the performance to detect.
The company plans to introduce an Android App for the service in the near future.
Starting with a keynote speech by Dr. Fujio Maruyama(@maruyama097), the chairman of the group and visiting professor at Waseda University, a number of the great names from Android-related industries presented what they are working on and foresaw the next step. The group announced more than 3,500 persons had signed up for attending, and more than 2,500 persons had actually attended.
Dr. Maruyama pointed out the recent rapid growth of Android handsets in use because Japan is currently ranked in the 2nd place in the number of uploading apps, and in the 5th place in the number of downloading apps.
At the venue for “Bazaar”, Android developers had opportunities to exhibit their Android products and services. Let’s see some of them.
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RIC Android
RIC Android[J] welcomed all visitors coming to the exhibition venue. The robot is working with a built-in battery and fully controlled by an Android terminal which is located within the mouth.
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Koto Free (named after “Kotoba (language)” free, intended for making the environment of language-barrier free)
Koto Free[J] is an app for making a map multi-lingual and intended to be adopted for the “Visit Japan” campaign being run by Japan Tourism Agency. It allows you to add description on maps or images, translate them and show them to foreign tourists in their languages.
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Social Audiobook
Para.tv[J], a Tokyo-based developer of the video distribution platform for cellphone, introduced a story teller app called Social Audiobook. By storing the elements of your voice in advance, the app can have your friends or children hear fairy tales as if you were telling.
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Dorokuri
Tokyo-based software developer Tao Software[J] introduced Dorokuri, a template-based Android app development environment requiring no programming skills. You can try it here.
Japan’s leading consumer electronics manufacturer Pioneer is currently developing a cyclocomputer running on Android. Cyclocomputers are attached to bicycles to calculate their speed and distance traveled. Because it has GPS, the company think navigation will be a key feature. They are expecting to add applications that include navigation technology.
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Domo
Tonchidot, well-known for its multiple-award winning AR (augmented reality) app Sekai Camera, unveiled they are currently developing a new service called Domo that helps you meet someone of the same interest at real events or places. The company calls such an environment a “Transparent Society”. Domo is a Japanese casual greeting word for “nice to see you” or “thanks”.
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Machipittan
Machipittan is an Android app that makes more fun when you wait someone at a meeting point. Developed by Tokyo-based web system developer Analog Twelve[J]. Last year it won the Android Application Award (“A3″ for short) which is annually presented by Japan’s leading IT publisher Nikkei BP. By entering e-mail addresses of you and someone you’ve appointed, the realtime locations of both are plotted on a map, and it also helps you find a good meeting point in conjunction with restaurant guides provided by the third party information providers.
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Such a large number of attendees to the conference meant Japan’s android community has been heating up. I look forward to the next conference which will be happening in June for experiencing much bigger things.
The blog started on August 5th, 2005. The blogger Ryuichi Ikeda has been taking a coca cola vending machine about 20 days every month, which seems his working day. Now the number of photos (and the blog posts) are about 1,300, in over 5 years.
On recent entries, you see the photos of the same date in past years. He records all canned and bottled beverages name, quantity and price after photo.
Most of the posts are titled “Henka Nashi”(nothing changed). When any changes happen, he writes how the placement and the sold drink are modified on the day.
Sometimes the blog readers will mail him on unrecorded changes he had overlooked. He also records which cans are changed from hot to cold, cold to hot as seasons change.
The biggest change on this unchanged blog was on 2009-08-07 to 2009-08-08. The original machine,
was replaced with the new one,
According to Ikeda, The new machine supports Edy, one of the most popular e-money available on IC card and cellphone.
On the profile, he states that his least favorite byword is “Endurance makes you stronger”. The favorite vendor machine is “if I have it, I must be a freak”.
He began this blog because “I dislike troublesome tasks and wanted to find easy contents you can update within 5 minutes. I feel angry when there are changes on the vendor machine as it makes me write more”. He also confessed on the 3rd anniversary of the blog that he got this idea on the first death anniversary of his younger sister, who loved foolish and nonsense things.
