Gadgets in Japan - Cool Japanese gadgets

Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, SD960 are coming soon

I am a big fan of Canon cameras. I owned my ELPH for over four years and still love the camera. It is small, and works very well, even though it is only 4.0 mega pixels. So when I heard that Canon is coming out with a new, very powerful PowerShot SD780 IS and the SD960, I was over joyed. It is about time for me to buy a new camera not because my camera sucks, it is because I want to have new features that I do not have.

Both of these cameras have the following features:

- 12-megapixel
- HD movie mode (720p)
- HDMI port
- DIGIC IV image processor
- 3x optical zoom on the SD780
- 4x optical zoom on the SD960
- Multi color cases

With all these features, why wouldn't I want to purchase a new camera like this. This camera is out now in Japan and is supposed to be coming out in April in North America. So, if you cannot make it all the way out to Japan, there is still hope to get this amazing camera. Thank you Canon for bringing us the best quality cameras on the market today.

Mobile World Congress

Well its a slow week here in Japan with everyone at the Moble World Congress in Barcelona this week. Everyone that is in the mobile business is there showing off their new mobile gadgets and toys. Seems that Japanese companies are up against a huge battle of new technology in the mobile market from around the world.

To bad that this is not in Tokyo, but it make sense since Europe is the middle of where all these companies are coming from. So, buy the looks of things, the new Sony Ericsson is a hot topic this year, as I reported in a previous posting. That is the one that I am looking out for soon as I am able to purchase it here in Japan. Of course, since I live here, I will get it before the rest of the world does. It is great to live in the most technologically advanced country in the world.


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Toyota Shows Off Hydrogen-Powered SUV

If you decide to take a trip to Odaiba, in Tokyo, you can see one of the worlds first "green automobile". This SUV is a hydrogen powered, which means that it produces 0 emissions. The car consists of  four separate storage tanks in order to keep the hydrogen compressed to 10,000psi. After the gas is compressed, it leaves the tanks it passes through regulators that will reduce the gas to something that the PEM fual cell can process. Here is a picture of what you will see if you decide to go to the Tokyo Showroom in Odaiba:

From my understanding, this SUV will travel 175 Km on it current take before needing to refuel. This is an amazing. This is a great feat for someone like myself that is 100% echo friendly. I cannot wait for these automobiles become common place on the streets.

Hello Kitty Casio Digicam?

Are you or your girlfriend a big Hello Kitty fan? Do you like your camera to look kinda on the gay side, and girly? Well look no further my friend, cause Casio just came out with a Hello Kitty camera that is too cute for it's own good. I would not feel like a real man using this camera although the camera itself is very nice. The camera has the following features aside from the really pink look:

- 9 megapixel sensor
- 2.6-inch rear LCD monitor
- 41.2MB of internal storage space
- an SDHC card slot
- 3x optical zoom lens
- video recording mode

As you can tell by the picture below, that this is not really good for men, as it is for women. So if you are looking for a girly present for your girlfriend or wife, then this might just do the trick. As far as I know, you can only purchase this in Japan for around ¥47,250.

New Sony Ericsson W995 Coming Soon

Sony has basically announced that their new Sony Ericsson W995 will be coming out before the end of this year. The phone will have the following features:

- a multimedia-centric slider
- 8.1 megapixel camera
- A-GPS, Google Maps
- WiFi, DLNA certification
- 118MB of built-in memory
- an 8GB M2 card
- 2.6-inch QVGA scratch-resistant display

Just look at the screen shots of this baby. Looks amazing and better then the iPhone as far as I am concerned.

There is not much information about these phones yet in great detail, but as soon as I can buy one here in Japan, I will sell my iPhone and pick up one of these bad boys. All my remote internet and GPS problems will be over. No more getting lost on the way to work on my bike.

Japanese Bicycles

Today I finally decided to bite the bullet and bought myself a nice new bike to ride around the city with. Let me tell you , that riding a bike here in Tokyo is not the easiest thing in the world  to do. I got lost so many times it was not even funny. I even showed up to work two hours too late. Oh well that is life here in Tokyo. I even got pulled over by the police two times while riding the bike safely. They claim that they just wanted to make sure that the bike was not stolen, but I doubt that they really wanted to do that. I think they were basically bored and figure it would be fun to bother a poor gaijin. Good thing that I paid to register it with the police the moment I bought it.

So if you live here, or even here on vacation, make sure you get your bike registered with the police if you plan on travelling around by bike. I must admit, it can be a little scary at times but all in all it was a lot of fun. Here is a nice picture of a hot Japanese girl riding her bike around:

Looking for a new Laptop? Check out the new Toshiba Tecra A10, M10

If you live in Japan, you will see the new Toshiba Tecra A10, M10 adverts all over the train stations and on the train themselves. They look like fairly nice laptops. Here are the specs of these laptops:

- 4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processors
- 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, 160GB HDD
- built-in webcam, WiFi, Bluetooth
- Toshiba's EasyGuard technology
- 3 hour Li-on battery after charge

These sexy laptops have a nice keyboard as you can see in the picture. I hate small space bars on the current laptops that are out in the market. Unfortunately it will be shipped with Windows Visa Business Edition but it can be downgraded to Windows XP Professional with media that it will be shipped with. Personally I want Fedora 10 shipped with it but Linux is not that far up in the market yet. It will be in a few years, mark my words on that.

Linux and iPhone? Is it love or not?

Now I know what most of you are thinking, you are thinking that you love this little gadget. You might be even thinking that you need one if you do not already have it. Well, I just went down to my local SoftBank here in Tokyo today and grabbed one of these so called "bad boys". Well, I knew it would be a challenge to get this connect to my operation system, which is Fedora 10 Linux. Most of us that are IT geeks love a good challenge when it comes to doing something that a company would rather you not do, like connect to the iPhone without using their poorly designed software. I cannot stand iTunes and the fact that they want to force you to use it on what computer only. How stupid is that? Anyway, trying to get up and running on Linux is really good times, not!

I spent well over five hours today trying to get it to connect to my laptop without having to "jail-break" it, which is illegal. Connecting it to Linux is not as long as you do not hack it, which will void the warrenty. This is something I am unwilling to do. There are a few different ways to do so, legally but none of them are easy. So, my review is, so far I am unimpressed with the way that Apple must controll the system so much that it will only work with Microsoft or Apple products. What about opensource? Well the Mac OSX is based on a free distro of FreeBSD. So if it wasn't for the opensource community, they would still be behind the times. So for now, the iPhone can go back into its nice and sexy box it came from until I have the time and effort to finally get it running legally in Fedora 10.

Panasonic Auto-eco Light-control Twin Pa

How would you like to be able to save power based on the luminance of the room in your house by just by turning on the light switch? Well the good people at Panasonic Corp will be releasing a home-use fluorescent lamp that will just do that for you on March 01, 2009. Those of us that are eco-friendly will want to have this lamp as soon as possible to reduce the use of electricity that we currently consume. Here is a picture with a very pretty model with this fantastic light:

I do not know what is better though, the lamp itself or the hot Japanese girl in the photo. She would brighten up my room, that is forsure. The brightness levels can be set at "100%," "70%" or "50%" by users, which makes it easier to reduce energy used during the day that many households still need a light.

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Robotic Will Be Taking Human Jobs In The Near Future

Shimizu Corp and Yasukawa Electric Corp are creating smart robotic buildings here in Japan. Their goal is to have robots that will replace jobs that human's currently like receptionists, guides, delivery personnel, cleaners, guards, etc. These robotics will automate tasks that we human's can do but do not want too. I personally have no issue with this, since my job is IT related, but for those that depend on jobs like the ones mentioned above, it will be come increasingly harder to find work if a robot can be programmed to do so. Matrix anyone? Here is a small diagram that could look like the future:

Now is it just me or does this robot look extreamly like the old Nintendo robot that came out in the early 80's that used to play games with you? It will become an interesting world if these type of robots become common place. I have mixed feelings about talking to a robot about how to go somewhere of if I need something done correctly.

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