Softbank in cash spending spree paying Cameron Diaz $138 a second

Forgive me for such a speculative headline, but the story reported by Financial Times (FT) yesterday about Softbank’s spending habits made me wonder if the company went too far or just set a new standard. Cameron Diaz reportedly received $3 million for six hours’ work starring in an advertisement for Softbank. If you make the calculation it will translate into $138 a second. The newspaper goes further, stating it is not an exclusive occurrence of such cash burning for Softbank – the telecoms and internet conglomerate is spending at a rate of about $60 a second for more than a decade. The newspaper also refers to some analysts’ concerns about Softbank’s “propensity to burn through cash and its penchant for re-jigging accounting and other methodologies.” Meanwhile, Softbank is Tokyo’s most active stock, with tens of millions of shares trading a day, and one of the volatile, according to FT. Of the 14 analysts covering the stock, just one has a buy recommendation, according to Bloomberg.

Bookmark service sends only text content of webpage to your mobile

Sidefeed released an email-based free bookmark service (http://toread.cc/mindex.php) optimized for mobile users. It converts web page into text-only content, and sends it to a cellphone. It has both Japanese (dubbed as "Ato-de yomo') and English ("tomobi") versions. For example, when a user wants to bookmark the web page he is currently on for later reading or he just wants to save some information from a web page like driving directions or business telephone number he can easily send it to his mobile email. This service reminds me of Google Toolbar's "Send To" button that allows you to share an excerpt from the page by simply selecting the section of the page and sending it to Gmail account, Blogger or SMS.

ScanR goes to Japan targeting cameraphone users

In an unusual move, the US-based company is going to bring its mobile technology to Japan. A start-up called ScanR provides business users with a capability to capture an image of a document, business card or message on a whiteboard with their cameraphone or digital camera and send it to their email via the ScanR’s servers that do the job of converting the image data into pdf or vCard formats. ScanR relies on a proprietary image processing and data refinement technology that is designed to work with any mobile phone platform. During the image to text recognition process, ScanR identifies keywords from the file and assigns them as tags that make the file searchable through ScanR, Google desktop or Vista desktop search. It’s also possible to send the captured images to fax machine or email as well. ScanR plans to go with a commercial rollout of its membership-based service in 2Q07, allowing up to 5 uses per month at no fee and charging around JPY300-700 for unlimited usage.

The choice of Japan for their first commercial rollout can be explained by the fact that the Japanese cameraphone market is predominantly penetrated with megapixel cameras, while the U.S. is still in the transition from VGA to megapixel camera capacity.

Source: K-tai Watch

Mobile search engine uses lyrics to find songs and artists

Developed by Axel Mark Labs, Uta-ken mobile search engine is capable of searching for artists and song titles by using fragments of song lyrics. Cellphone users can access and use Uta-ken freely on mobile web (http://utaken.ax-m.jp/). While the search is available free of charge, Axel Mark came up with a genuine way to monetize its know-how. The idea is to link the search results with its Best Hit J-Pop music portal, allowing users to download music onto handsets. At present, Uta-ken contains around 3,000 searchable titles and Axel Mark plans to expand its song database gradually.

State of the art: Fujitsu waterproof F703i handset

Engineers at Fujitsu worked three years to advance the water resistant technology in cellphones. The idea of waterproof handset is not new to Japanese market as Sony Ericsson was first to offer the SO902iWP handset to DoCoMo users last year while Casio shipped the G'zOne TYPE-R for KDDI au. However, while the predecessors of the F703i were rugged devices designed for the use in rogue conditions, Fujitsu made a waterproof handset that looks like a regular cellphone. The main target of the F703i is women who might use the phone in places where the water can easily get inside the phone and damage it. The F703i is graded to be IPX7 compatible (capable of being underwater for 30 minutes at 1 meter depth), which makes the phone suited for use in bath, shower or kitchen.

Besides the water resistant feature, the F703i spots quite a fancy look and employs a so called floating illumination with three LEDs placed across the front panel. Application-wise, the F703i has a built-in MP3 player compatible with Napster to Go music streaming service and FeliCa-based mobile-wallet. DoCoMo sells the F703i at JPY16,400 ($135).

Phone Specs:
Model	Fujitsu F703i
Carrier	NTT DoCoMo
Form factor	clamshell
Color variations	snow white, blossom pink, lamp black
Weight	109 g
Dimensions	48X100X18mm
Main display	Type: LCD (color TFT); Colors: 262,144; Size: QVGA 2.2inches (240X320)
Battery life	145min (talk); 80min (video call); 300-420 hours (standby)
Battery type	unknown
Platform / OS:	Symbian
Memory	unknown
Memory card slot	microSD
GPS / Location	No
Bluetooth	No
Infrared	Yes
USB	Yes
Wi-Fi	No
Camera	1.3MP (main); VGA (internal)
Video calling	Yes
One-seg TV	No
Music player	WMA/AAC compatible
WAP / Web browser	unknown
Push-To-Talk	No
Mobile Wallet	i-mode FeliCa
Barcode	JAN, QR, NW7, CODE39
Biometric authentication	unknown

Study: mobile social networking usage in Japan

Rakuten Research and Mitsubishi Research Institute have jointly published the results of the online-based based survey (2,400 respondents) examining the usage of mobile services by Japanese phone users. Conducted in late December 2006, the survey mainly focuses on the phenomenon of social networking services (SNS). It found the following:

• The awareness of social networking is 69.8%, understanding - 40.6% and participation rate - 19.6% of respondents.
• The SNS participation rate is the highest among young people in their 20’s and gradually decreases with older generations.
• 48.5% of respondents are aware of mobile SNS, while 21.3% understand the true meaning of it and only 5.5% participate in mobile social networking.
• In contrast with SNS, the mobile SNS participation rate is the highest among young people in their 10’s.
• 78.6% of respondents are members of mixi Mobile social network, followed by Mobage-town (12.8%), EZ Gree (7.7%), and Gocco (3.4%).
• 78.6% of respondents rely on PC-based SNS as their main destination, while see the mobile version of the same SNS as a complimentary tool. Only 6.0% rely solely on mobile SNS.
• Interestingly, when asked why respondents don’t want to use mobile SNS, the seemingly obvious response about cellphone’s tricky operation came only third (33.0%) after not so obvious response of having no time (41.3%) and expected high mobile data fees (39.8%).

Source: Rakuten Research