Last Friday, Mobile content forum (MCF)[J], a consortium of many Japanese mobile device developers and mobile app developers, announced this year’s award[J] winning projects, which were chosen from brand-new innovative projects that were released in the last twelve months.
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Excellent Award (Mobile Content Category)
Won by Weathernews, the world’s largest private meteorological company headquartered in one of Tokyo’s neighboring prefectures, with the project to share participating users’ reports of localized torrential downpours and to forecast its next move for them not as to be caught in possible heavy showers. The company is now inviting 1,000 participants who can put weather cameras on the balconies at their homes, which transmits live sky images to the company every minute from every corner around the country via broadband Internet.
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Best Award (Mobile Content Category)
Won by MTI, a Tokyo-based tech venture running several popular mobile sites, with the project of a mobile e-mail service to let female adults know their next menstrual periods and ovulation periods[J], which makes it easier for them to schedule upcoming leisure plans.
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Best Award (Mobile Content Category)
Won by Shiseido with the project of Majolica Mirror, a promotion site of the company’s brand new cosmetic lineup “Majolica Majorca[J]” for young women. By e-mailing your portrait to the service, it allows you to receive a picture of your face made up in a new style that you may have never experienced.
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Best Award (Mobile Content Category)
Won by Sammy Networks, a pachinko machine manufacturer and a sister company of well-known game publisher Sega[J], with a mobile site[J] which aims to teach elementary school students and junior high school students how to protect themselves from Internet fraud and to confront cyber bullying.
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Excellent Award (Mobile Content Category)
Won by Honda with a game website for promoting the company’s hybrid car named Insight. I wrote a story about this here on Asiajin.
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Best Award (Mobile Platform Category)
Won by NTT DoComo with its i-Concier[J] menu, which shows you an avatar to serve you on the cellphone screen, and it tells you useful information in accordance with your current location and the parameters representing your lifestyle. Your cellphone will automatically collect realtime transit traffic report before your commute, and it will also get a discount coupon for your favourite supermarket before your shopping.
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Best Award (Mobile Platform Category)
Comel[J], Softbank‘s subsidiary in digital signage advertising business, set up more than 500 electronic billboard screens at shopping complexes, train stations and many places citywide in Fukuoka, a city on Kyushu island. By combining face recognition technology with a camera equipped on the top of each screen, it can count the number of people who views ads on the screen, with the attributes of their gender and generation.
Furthermore, in cooperation with local police authority[J], signage devices tell passers-by updates on criminal incidents that has happened nearby for the future prevention.
(To be continued to the next post for the rest of award-winning projects.)
Masaru IKEDA