Nounai-Maker is a joke-service smashed Japanese blogosphere in September, 2007 and still causing a boom among Japanese internet users.
What you need to do is simply enter your name to generate the image of “inside of your brain” (Nounai) ; having the same meaning as “inside of your mind”. The cartoon-style image is fulfilled by Chinese characters that represent what your brain is composed of; Love, Sex, Fun, Evil, etc. There is no scientific evidence for the result but it offered something that people can use for conversation in the bar. Becasuse the service was also accessable via the cell-phose. You can also enter English name to get the result even you may not undestand what Chinese characters say.
Below image is a result for ”Asaijin”. It is composed by Greeed, Sex, and Money 🙂 .
At the beginning, the service was recoginzed by bloggers but soon users expanded to more general people in Japan after it was introduced by couple TV programs. Within 4 months after the release of the service, it earned more than 500 million page views and this number is still growing even faster than before. This became a little social phenomeon and recently it is selected as a most notable web service by Web of the Year 2007 in Japan.
Now, there is even a follower service in English; brainscannr.com althought the result is not seem designed well as the original.
It is not certain who created this servcie. What we just know is it is developed by an enigeer or few engineers out of a corporate activity.
Hiroumi Mitani