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