On the leaflets folded in the Newspaper

It's often said that subscribers of Japanese daily newspaper don't read its articles in detail but take a close look at folded leaflets which are delivered every morning with newspaper itself. These leaflets are referenced for making cheaper shopping plans. Taking the example where I live, more than 10 folded leaflets are delivered usually. Most of them are advertisements of local shop's bargain or grand opening sale. Though I haven't done exact measurement, these leaflets' advertisers' shops seem to be located within less than two hours driving distance. Perhaps, many local shop managers might suppose that residences of their target customers exist within such distance.
From advertisers' viewpoint, most part of the leaflets are not so effective for the customers who don't drive so often and use only nearby supermarket within walking distance. It's natural that they might also hope that ,if possible, shop advertisement could be delivered to the every drivers who drive and pass near their shops. But such advertising methods have never existed so far.

The combination of proper size Tablet-PC, data communication network, car navigation soft and Google map seems to become an embryonic test stage toward realizing such method.

The ultimate goal may be that.
1. At first, the owner of local shop-A register as a member of G-Shopwindows. G-Shopwindow means Geotagged-Shopwindows.
2. G-Shopwindows have another Google-maps synchronizing with original Google Maps.
3. A staff of a local shop-A make original illustration and voice announce by using the UI of G-Shopwindows and designate the target grid-POSTs on the map of G-Shopwindows.
4. G-Shopwindows send the assigned directory names of the shop-A to the original Google Maps' grid Post.
5. The car navigation software on the Tablet-PC call the Google maps, accesses the nearest grid-POST and transfer the deposited address and directory names to the Tablet-PC.
6. Internet Browser window is opened automatically and access to the designated directory. The graphic & announcement are broadcast inside the cars passing near target grid-POST.

Forefeeling the pradigmatic change in the drive-through system

Below is a cutout from Google search-results display.











As for Japanese sites, only 5 search-results exist now.
But, I guess this segment will bustle up in future.
Technically, the collaboration between each third party's car-navigation soft and Bing (or Google) Maps might be the key point.
Socially, the drive-through system will have to face a drastic change.

Word group theory (3) . The existence of unnamed things and their illustrations.

The other day, the sales termination of the cassette type walkman which has been produced since 1979 was announced. If I have to take up one remembrance about cassette type walkman, troubles around the tape tangling come up first. And its memory comes with the scene of putting a pencil into the hole of cassette and rotating the cassette around the pencil to reel the extracted tape line.

When I reminisced about such a reeling action this time, I noticed that the action would soon be forgotten by our history soon or later with the extinction of audio cassette tapes. To confirm today's situation, I did Google-search about it in Japanese and noticed that the action seems to have never been named at least in Japanese. If unnamed, the future generation can't know it's existence. We should not expect the future people to input words in a row like 'cassette tape, pencil, rotate, reel' as I put into search dialog box in Japanese.

After thinking about this matter, I generalized it as follows and it led me to a conclusion that a simple illustration would help search engine to improve usability for searching unnamed things.

Conclusion 1. Search-target objects can be classified into two states. A)Named things. B) Unnamed things.

Conclusion 2. For unnamed objects, the search engine had better give an engine-internal name provisionally to each unnamed object. However, their internal names should not appear on customer's search screen.

Conclusion 3. If the combination of 'cassette tape, pencil, rotate' is input by any customer, an illustration depicting a cassette tape rotating around pencil should appear on the search screen with the message 'Do you want to know about this action?"
















Simple illustration might help us to find unnamed things smoothly.

A possibility of a combination-locked storage pocket embedded under car surface.

When I need to have my car repaired, I usually drive to an auto-repair shop, leave my car and ask the staffs if they can deliver my car to my parking space after fixation. In many cases, the detail shop agrees to my request and a delivery staff drives my car and park it in my parking lot on the ending day of fixation. On handing over of car key, I usually ask the staff in charge of delivery to throw it into my mailbox on the front door. But such an exchange may be possible under the condition that the distance between the parking space and my front door is not so far. If my parking space were distant from my front door, I would feel sorry for the detail shop's staff for spending important time on moving from parking space to the door.

In general, parking lots tend to be located remote from the car owner's residence especially in urban area, I guess. Considering such situation, I think the combination-locked storage pocket embedded under car surface is required. The store staff can leave the keys, envelope containing receipt or small change, if the car owner give him a unique key number in advance by phone.

As for me, I will use it for keeping a spare key when I have to carry too much luggage and have no confidence in not missing my key while walking around after getting out of my car.

A youtube video on Hiketa dolls' festival

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzfeSqTlfS4&NR=1

I'm sorry for taking up an unseasonal topic, but this youtube video introducing Hiketa dolls' festival is beautiful. The background music matches the photo images well. As I have not been to Hiketa dolls' festival yet, I can't explain the concrete situation around this festival well. If you have a chance to visit Japan in early March, please check out local town's dolls' festivals in the neighborhood.

Digital camera, PDF & IPAD through a viewfinder

I'm not an Ipad user at present. And I don't know whether or not I will purchase it in future. One of the reasons I hesitate to buy Ipad is related with the absence of its inserted camera. Why was the camera insertion shelved? Some blogs predict future insertion that is now being planned for next generation IPAD. But my guess on the point is that they noticed the new possible segment of product having an ability to stimulate new demands in the digital camera related fields. Under this A4-nized era, large parts of photographs are taken to be copied & pasted into A4-size PDF documents, blogs and journals. So far, action of taking photos have been isolated with the editorial procedure. But with tablet-sized & Ipad-like camera, news reporters can press the shatter button while checking the accordance of the inserted photo with the one-page layout impression.

(The photographs in the Figure below are cut & pasted from the advertisement in Apple and Nikon homepage.)

On a piano performance

One of the reasons why I am attracted by piano performance is that there exist a moment when the left hand part’s notes and right hand part’s notes are weaving and entangled. In my theory, the relation between lower and upper part can be stated by a parameter, which can be expressed as ‘mutual distance’ or ‘independency’. It’s different from the completeness of chordal resonance. Sadly, I don't have an ability to describe what kind of unit this parameter is expressed by, but it’s certain that the state of two melodies’ mutual distance sometimes send a signal to our ears dramatically.

Though each part is played independently, the ‘mutual distance’ between them can be varied from ‘distant’ to ‘entangled’. A chorus of a piece, I think, had better be played in an entangled state. However, in many cases and at least for me, two parts seem to be played mutually distant, from a beginning to an end.

Luckily, we can enjoy an entangled state a little in this performance found on Youtube, on which two parts are weaving as shown in figure above.

http://www.youtube.com/user/moropantus?blend=2&ob=1#p/u/11/AkOWqhsvH-Q

A present for Si’s 100th birthday

Making chronological table sometimes help us find a different viewpoint of things already known. This time, I picked up Si and challenged to make its chronological table. I don’t know whether 100^th anniversary was celebrated or not in 1928 for Berzelius’ Si isolation. Perhaps not celebrated so much. I guess that the importance of Si was not recognized in those days except for certain people.

However, if we look back based on the figure above, it is clear that the discovery of Schrodinger equation, the foundation of quantum mechanics and band theory that followed, which opened the door to the semiconductor age, was a great present for Si’s 100^th birthday. Without quantum mechanics, Si would have continued to be the Si under 100 years old, which seemed to have no possibility of changing the whole lifestyle of us.

On NW-A845 (3) Operability

To be honest, I feel that the operability of old type Ipod is better than that of NW-A845. Pinpointing my thumb on the right position of the concentric circle on NW-A845 usually doesn't go smoothly. In particular, when operating in one hand, recognizing which part of the concentric circle my thumb is touching isn't so easy without seeing it, while Ipod’s slightly convexed circular dial is easy to identify intuitively only from tangible information.

In addition, the silver concentric circular dial allocation is too low-positioned to operate with thumb in a situation of gripping whole body. Little finger operation would be required if we anticipated Ipod-like operation.

As for Ipod, an idea of the combination of that slightly convexed, relatively big, nearly center positioned and circular dial opened the door to today’s Ipad fever.

However, in today’s situation, I think Sony doesn’t have to introduce the same method as old type Ipod into NW-A845. The next step required for NW-A845 is, in my opinion, ‘a slot-machine-like' menu operation on touch panel working in present screen size. Above figure shows an image of the screen.

As a matter of fact, in handycam series, Sony has been presenting drum-like configuration menu as shown in figure below.

Searching for unique PC related products. (2) Chair

In the realm of scientific measurement, handling multiple equipments is required other than PC operation. An operator has to change the target instrument from time to time. In such situation, assigning procedures for an optimal placement of various machines might be unavoidable by fixing instruments with multilevel rack. However, once some equipment is placed at high position in the rack, its operation may be tough for hands, which have to be kept raising. Therefore, something good has been needed.

http://www.komura.co.jp/products/odekake/index.html

By diverting above product which was originally developed for disabled persons, at least 6 instruments (above left, above center, above right, below left, below center, below right) might be able to be run by one operator.

The up-and-down stroke is 580mm and rotation angle is –90 to +90 deg. As its original purpose is for nursing-care, the up-and-down speed mightn't be enough for industrial use.

Searching for unique PC related products. (1) Outdoor-related goods

Outdoor season has already begun and a rainy season is getting near. During the rainy season, the procedure of data handling in the outdoor field can’t do away with the Note-PC operation inside an automobile. For such kind of purpose, I checked the internet and found three unique products that would help PC users to operate the Note PC in a car.

1) EEA-HBA-66: In-car attachment table for Note PC.

http://www.esupply.co.jp/syohin.asp?sku=eea-hba-66 EEA-HBA-66EEA-HBA-66

2) EEA-LD05: Foldaway table made of aluminum.

http://www.esupply.co.jp/tokusetu/EEA-LD05.asp?sku=EEA-LD05&bun_id1=0

3) EEA-LD09: Foldaway table with Note-PC cooler.

http://www.esupply.co.jp/tokusetu/EEA-LD09.asp?sku=EEA-LD09&bun_id1=1084

On the new model of Sony vaio type P.

Over the last year, I would frequently get access to the web page of previous model of Vaio type P (VGN-P70/80) and touch it in a PC shop many times. Certainly, the previous model was very attractive. Though I did not buy it, I frequently checked the trend of cut in price.

The other day, a new model of Vaio type P (VPCP119KJ) was announced. When I see it’s design first, I was reminded of the design of NEC MC/R320 and MC/R330. The designs of MC/R320 and 330 had given the appearance of ’cheaply-made’ plastic lunch-box, which had been far from high-quality image. Nevertheless, they are strangely attractive even today. Why? Perhaps, plastic lunch-box image is a typical symbol of day-to-dayness and casualness.

In spite of the fate that a commoditized product has to face the day-to-dayness and casualness, most of PC designs haven’t been able to exclude the high-quality image completely. Even Ipad, which strongly features the casualness still contains certain high-quality image. In the context of Japanese culture, Ipad’s design mightn’t able to give an impression of 100%-natural casualness, I guess. Therefore, in this Ipad-fever situation, Sony’s decision on adopting this design seems to get a point to some extent.

Of course, another interpretation on this design may be possiple, which means that Sony implies the fate of MC/R330 in the new model of Vaio type P.

Though I don’t own neither Blueray HDD recorder nor Vaio type P, I think that one-point improvement on moving image file’s transfer will make these products more attractive. The cycle paths of moving image file’s transfer shown in Fig above are immediately required to be completely two-way possible, smoother and more convenient. The path from Blueray HDD recorder to Net-walkman already seems to be perfect.

Robustness of the entrance gate into Customize mode

When I input bare text, I usually use Hidemaru text editor. Hidemaru's operability is so simple that there has not been any trouble around its usability so far, but a strange behavior of the application was observed the other day. At that time, after starting up Hidemaru text editor, I noticed that menu bar style was different from the usual familiar one. I had not conducted any customization operation related to Hidemaru before then. In fact, I've never felt the necessity of customizing Hidemaru, of which the basic mode contains enough functions at least for me. I tried to reverse-customize back to usual state but in vain. To be honest, even the discrimination between two possibilities, Windows' side setting matter or Hidemaru's side setting matter was not clear. Perhaps, other application's setting changes might have caused the Windows' side setting change and it eventually affected the Hidemaru's side setting, I guessed.

After spending some time for various operations, however, when I decided to uninstall and reinstall from the clean start, the state of the menu bar style returned to the usual familiar one without any specific manipulation. After all, the reason of the appearance and disappearance of unfamiliar menu bar remained unclear.

After summing up this small trouble, I concluded that at least four points should be remarked, which I hope would contribute to the theoretical generalization approach in the field of software operability.

1. The pathway into Customize mode should be assembled into one unified gate. If customization entrances are dispersed on various tail ends on menu trees, the process of finding right pathway brings an irritating time to us. Of course, major softwares have already concentrated customization switches onto the 'Tool-Option-' menu-trees. But some customization switches don't exist there and were dispersed on various places.

2. Windows' applications software had better include the menu items about the status change caused by Windows' side setting change and display the description on it even though the setting change can't be attained by commands contained in the application.

3. The entrance gate to customize mode should be independent of menu-bar's optional style change. The entrance gate should not disappear under any user-interface state. Furthermore, this matter should be discussed with the problem of returning path from full-screen mode. In case key-input to return from full-screen mode is complicated and forgettable, I tend to reset PC before finding documents describing the returning procedure from full-screen mode.

4. Unintentional shifting into Customize mode should not be allowed. It may not be such a serious problem that users in need of customization have to pass through the pathway with confirmation process presented by the application. In the end, this means that basic mode should be designed following the statistical evaluation derived from research on average users, as the least requirements for customization may occur.

2D-nization of text character code: How we can insert virtual spaces or delimiters between not-separated Japanese phrases

After writing previous entry, my concern about word separation problem converged and focused into an image (Fig). This image is merely one of various possibilities. At any rate, I think information about word separation may have to be added to the files.

Word group theory (2). Front-end processor's paradigmatic change.

When writing in Japanese, I usually use ATOK front-end processor. As ATOK's usability is excellent for me, I still can't step out for using Google's Japanese front-end processor. Nevertheless, I usually feel that Japanese front-end processors are now facing a time for paradigmatic change.

When I write a Japanese phrase '検索する' by using ATOK, a set of the Kanji & Hiragana character codes corresponding to '検’索’す’る' are finally recorded on the document file. But the alphabetical keyboard-typing process of characters 'kennsakusuru' is not included in the file. It means that only the result of conversion, Kanji code (or Hiragana or Katakana code) translated from alphabetical characters has been the important information so far.

Conversely, in search engine's era, conversion process & its embedding into document files will become more important due to the fact that Japanese (Chinese) sentences are not separated by spaces between words.

Every word in English is separated by spaces. The power of Google-search, I guess, seems to be strongly supported by the existence of spaces between words, the structure of English language itself. Meanwhile, when analyzing Chinese language (or Japanese) sentences, computer algorithms have to tackle with the word-separation problem at first.

Let me take an example from a Chinese web.

A sentence '那麼胡錦濤你面臨了利用百度訴江案這件詭異的事情' was found on a Chinese web page.

As I can't understand Chinese language at all, I'm not able to separate above sentence into words correctly except for the well-known word '胡錦濤 (Hu Jintao)' and '百度(Baidu)'. A few other words like '利用' and '事情' seem to have the same meaning as those of Japanese, but this guessing is not conclusive level. Owing to these words, I can at least guess the meaning of the sentence roughly. 'Hu Jintao said something about peculiar situation related to using Baidu search engine.' If the spaces are deleted, this sentence become 'HuJintaosaidsomethingaboutpeculiarsituationrelatedtousingBaidusearchengine.' This expression contains the words like 'Ted' 'sing' 'use' 'arch'.

If Chinese language front-end processor can embed the alphabetical keyboard-typing processes of 'Hu Jintao', 'Baidu' and other words in the document file, it may help search engines to decide correct word separation.

Of course, corpus-based dictionary of Chinese language may be the basic approach to solve this problem in the Baidu era. But on another front, front-end processor's paradigmatic change also may become important in the Google-era.

Though Google has decided to leave China, the possibility of producing a new kind of Chinese language front-end processor based on a quite different approach still remains.

How we can define common & simple index to classify A4 document layout.

In the A4-nizing era, the key to efficient document management exists in how we can make it possible to define common & simple index, which can classify A4 document layout effectively. There may be various possibilities. But the first & common step might start with the definition of variable number group corresponding to the rectangle position & shape in the A4 sheet. (Fig)

The word processing software will have to contain a layout-similarity evaluation algorithm. To find the most similar layout document from the web, in my opinion, its index-code should be contained in the filename. It means that when you save the document file you’ve created, the word processing software automatically assign a calculated variable. If I save as ‘application form-A.doc’, the word processing software automatically saves it as ‘application form-A-F6B7AEF.doc’ .

The hexadecimal value 'F6B7AEF' contain the layout index information. And we only put 'F6B7AEF' into search engines dialog box. We can get the most similar layout document from web.

The Uko ferry abolition: Even Shinkansen can't ～

The news about the abolition of Uko ferry, the connection between Takamatsu and Tamano, is very shocking. (*As of 5th March, partial continuation after 26th March is announced.)

Major newspapers introduce an opinion that the confusion of national policy has caused this time abolition. But it seems to me that multiple factors have affected. Therefore, this case is difficult to solve and it also suggests the fate of the transportation system in Japan.

What kind of factors affect in this matter?

In my opinion, below factors seem to affect.

1) The advancement in means of communication:

The necessity of direct meeting itself is shrinking due to the appearance of Internet and cellar phone.

2) The advancement in energy-efficient automobile:

Hybrid cars and kei cars have enabled us to move with less gasoline consumption.

3) The actualization of well-developed traffic information systems and flexible trip planning.

4) Falling population due to the decrease in the number of children.

5) As ever-increasing economy ends, incomes have been decreasing.

6) The improvement in the comfort of the highway shuttle bus trip.

If complete deregulations of highway-related matter were done under these conditions, perhaps, the highway shuttle bus would finally achieve super-low price.

The ferry abolition of this time seems to be the inevasible consequence caused by above factors.

This logic is entirely applicable to the Shinkansen case too.

If complete deregulation and innovation around highway shuttle bus were done, Shinkansen would be the train only for big company's business trip. Ordinary people will manage to make a shuttle bus trip, which would be much cheaper than today.

Even Shinkansen wouldn't be able to keep today's popularity.

How can we place an IPAD on a messy desk?

This Elecom's PC-desk (Photo) has mini drawers embedded underneath the desk top panel. Starting next month, I guess, such desks with partially transparent area & embedded drawer will become required. Mightn’t it be so bad, on this occasion, to reinvent i-Desk and add it to the option list of IPAD? In the far future, IPAD itself might become one component of i-Desk. Sooner or later, integration of PC and desk would be an interesting issue. In the far far future, i-Desk might become one component of i-Room.

A foldaway wood desk sold by Craft Voice (co) also is equipped with embedded mini drawers. As this desk is made of wood, its processing may be relatively easy and possible within the range of DIY. With thick acrylic panel, plug terminal and AC cord, an attractive and convenient desk would be produced. For Japanese, the integration of wood design and iron-covered PC body seems to become an important theme.

On NW-A845: (2) Using NW-A845 as an external storage device of Willcom-03.

By connecting NW-A845 to Willcom-03 with USB cable, various types of files on NW-A845 can be accessible from 03. After connecting them, file-explorer of 03 on WM6.1 displays NW-A-series-defined and user-created directories. I had created a DOCUMENT directory in NW-A845 and put PDF, XLS and doc files into it. Every format was possible to read with the Adobe Reader LE or Office Mobile of 03. Music files I had put in the NW-A-series-defined directory (by normal method described in manual) can be heard with 03’s internal speaker.

On NW-a845: (1) Back to a Drag and Drop

Recently, I noticed that the location of my itunes' itunes Music folder had changed into a different HDD automatically. I had allocated its location on a specific HDD, which had relatively large free space. The reason of automatic location change is not clear.

To be more precise,

"G:\IPOD\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" has changed to

"C:\Documents and Settings\ ZJFZMQ7S \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊"

1) I had once experienced the procedure of combining "G:\IPOD\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" with "C:\Documents and Settings\ ZJFZMQ7S \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" into one directory by using an iTunes’ command. But this time I felt cumbersome. Finally, I left the "G:\IPOD\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" directory as a debris. The accumulations of such a decision may be one of the reasons why lots of MP3 debrises are dispersed.

2) To reinstall damaged MS-windows, new folders are usually created on other HDD to pull-off some data. In such situations, iTunes-related matter tends to be buck burners. Consequently, the itunes data which is pulled off into "d:\Backupdata-of-C-drive\Documents and Settings\ ZJFZMQ7S \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\＊＊＊" directory remain untouched even after recovery. Furthermore, I sometimes exchange internal hard drive to keep enough storage capacity. If the drive, which contains the "d:\Backupdata-of-C-drive\", is removed from the desktop PC, the existence of back-up-data tends to be completely forgotten.

3) In addition to above reasons, the possibilities of multiple user accounts exist.

"C:\Documents and Settings\ ZJFZMQ7S \

"C:\Documents and Settings\ ZMQ6S \

Due to the combinations of above 1), 2) and 3) factors, my mp3 files have been dispersed over different folders on different HDDs so far. At present, I can’t find many MP3 files, which certainly I had imported from various sources.

Therefore, attractiveness of Drag and Drop MP3 file management with SONY NW-a845 were becoming stronger.