Weaving Web Dreams

Human Factors Design - How People Visualize Spacially

It's been proven over and over again that people construct different reality maps in their brains. They process information in different ways, and build their own internal representations of the 'real world.' No where is this more evident than in the way we handle directions. Ask one person how to get to the local store, and they will give you directions based on streets, signals, and left or right turns. As another person and they will give you directions based on landmarks - go down to the corner with the big tree, turn right, then left at the green house.

Now designers are finally able to take these 'human' differences into consideration, and come up with products that fit human needs like a glove. Of course, companies that choose not to take human nature into consideration will be rapidly left by the wayside wondering why no one really appreciates their beautiful designs.

Friday, September 26, 2003 at 05:44 JST TOKYO
Mitsubishi Electric Corp said Thursday it has developed an Internet-based navigation system for cell phones that will guide people to destinations by giving directions together with pictures of landmarks along the way.

Users of the system will be able to check their positions by comparing their surroundings with pictures on their mobile phone screens, Mitsubishi said. The system could also be used to get directions to tourist spots, real estate and construction sites. (Kyodo News)

Japan Today- Mitsubishi develops pictorial navigation for cell phones

Human Factors Design - "Primitive need upends high-tech trains"

You can spend years getting approvals and funding; man-years/decades of design time; and a billion+ dollars on design, manufacturing, and roll out, only to be defeated and publically embarrassed by the most basic human factor.

LONDON, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Britain's new high-tech trains are being slowed to a stop when people in the washrooms for the disabled try to flush the toilet, a report said Friday.

Primitive need upends high-tech trains - The Washington Times: United Press International

Take the Ubiquitous Community ``Forward to the Next Stage!''

Buzzwords, buzzwords, buzzwords... They're bad enough in English, but when they get picked up in Japan they become like an unstoppable buzzword virus.

"The key phrase 'Digital Everywhere' has been adopted for CEATEC JAPAN 2003 reflecting the rapid changes taking place in the IT and electronics markets worldwide. Highly visible advances are being made in the field of digital network communications and the rapidly expanding use of broadband communication technologies. The so-called ubiquitous network society, in which 'anyone, anywhere, anytime' can communicate and access information over networks, is rapidly taking shape."

CEATEC JAPAN 2003 to Take the Ubiquitous Community ``Forward to the Next Stage!''

Camera system tracks fast objects

Toshiba announced that they developed a new camera system to track things moving fast. Technically the system may be excellent, but the logic behind their press release is hard to fathom.

"... developed an active camera system that can detect and track fast-moving objects in ambient lighting conditions, such as those in home and office environments."

Okay, the lighting in my home and office is fairly low, so this might be useful. But what 'fast moving objects?' Our dogs do run around sometimes, but I wouldn't call them fast.

"... expects the new system to be applied in areas such as robots and intelligent video cameras for both industrial and home use, including tracking balls in sporting contests."

So, the next time my home robot decides to invite his friends over and play soccer in my living room I can use this system.

"...made it possible for the machine to follow an object moving at a speed of 100 kph some 15 meters away from the camera"

I don't know about your living room, but mine doesn't come close to being 15 meters, or even half that. And 100 kph in my office?

The Japan Times Online

World PC Expo 2003 - Makuhari, Japan

On Saturday I had the opportunity to visit the World PC Expo at the Makuhari Messe convention center just outside of Tokyo. I was really surprised at the turnout. Even though it was a Saturday and extremely rainy due to the approach of a typhoon, all the aisles were packed. At a few of the more popular exhibits it was impossible to get up close enough to the displays to take good photos.

It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's ....

Not too many years ago, before the digital revolution hit, a photo camera was a photo camera, a video camera was a video camera, a music cassette player was a music cassette player. Now we're seeing the consumer product designers break through old barriers and release products that are driven by the consumer's desires rather than the old technology limitations.

One striking example is the new 'D-Snap' line from Panasonic. In one amazingly slim (shirt pocket-able) package it combines

• digital camera
• movie recorder (15 frames/sec)
• voice recorder
• music player

The digital camera is 2 mega-pixel with a flash and a rotating lens so you can take photos of yourself together with a friend. It's only 9.9 mm thick (or actually 'thin' to be more accurate) and weighs in at 74 grams fully loaded. The product designers did a great job on this one. It comes in seven different colors - all of them odd pastel hues like a green that's close to pea soup and a brown that reminds me of wet adobe. It's scheduled to hit the stores here in Japan on October 10th with 'open' pricing. They expect to sell 50,000/month.

The only problem is "what do we call it?" A digital camera? A music player? A voice recorder? A ....?

Globalization, Internationalization, Translation Salary Survey

Globalization is a hot topic, and if you follow the press you would think that companies believe that they have to pull out all the stops to be competitive world wide. It would logically follow that GILT (Globalization, Internationalization, Localization, and Translation) workers would be in high demand, have relatively high compensation and corresponding status. But is that really the case?

The latest GILT salary survey was recently released. The summary results are surprising, at least to me.

• Chart shows the average salary for globalization, localization, and translation employees in four major geographies
  
• The salary differential between geographies is huge. Keep in mind that the employees are multilingual and capable, for the most part, of doing the same job any where in the world
  
• While North America pays the most, the North American employees are most likely to feel that they are underpaid relative to their counterparts.
  
• Chinese employees earn the least, but still command a wage that is high for their economy
  
• Is it any wonder that this type of work is migrating to the most cost effective global work locations?
  
• Where is Japan in this picture?

LISA Newsletter XII/3.4, LISA Releases Salary Survey

Good Bye Translation Dictionaries!

Warning: This will probably only be of interest to people that have to deal with foreign languages on a regular basis. People that only communicate exclusively in English would probably have a difficult time understanding why the Japanese language and dictionary structure is so challenging. They would have even more difficulty understanding why a stand alone Japanese electronic dictionary costs almost as much as it's PDA cousin.

Over the past twenty years I've purchased half a dozen English/Japanese/English dictionaries in book form. Of course when the same dictionaries came out in stand alone electronic format, I had to have one. Overtime I tried several of them with varying satisfaction and frustration levels. My Japanese friends would recommend one, and I would try it, only to find that what really worked well for them was a huge handicap to me. The major issues I found with all of them were:

• Standalone: All of them required you to manually enter the word you wanted to look up. There was no easy way to get the word from a page in a book, newspaper article, or even off my computer screen. Then, once I found the translation, the only thing I could do was stare at it on the dictionary screen. There was no way to get it out of it's little word coffin.
• Kanji knowledge: If you knew the kanji and it's hiragana, then you could type it in. If you didn't already know it, then you had to resort to either a 'radical' lookup (kind of like piecing together Lego blocks) or do a trial and error stroke count. Of course one of my frustrations was "If I already knew the kanji, then I wouldn't need to look it up...."
• If I finally managed to input the word and look it up, there was still no clue about how to actually pronounce it.

When I was working on a document in my Japanese PC I could get around most, but not all, of those issues. But what about the times when I don't have my PC with me, or when I just want to quickly look up a word without booting my PC?

I had known for quite a while that my Clie had an English/Japanese/English dictionary app. I had installed it, and used it a couple of times, but I really didn't realize it's usefullness until I was trying to show my Japanese tutor a writeup on the history of the Oxford English Dictionary. I had the text file on my Clie, and we were discussing it over coffee one evening at the local Starbucks. She had a question about the word "philological", so I happened to look it up in the Clie dictionary. Suddenly that mental lightbulb went on in my brain and I realized the solution to most of my electronic dictionary issues had been hidden in my Clie all along.

Here are some screenshots to illustrate what is possible;

Hightlight the word you want to look up. In this screenshot the highlighted word is shown in yellow. Copy the word into the clipboard.

>p>
Call up the translation dictionary app. and paste the word from the clipboard into the lookup section at the bottom of the screen. The Japanese translation is automatically retrieved.

Okay. So now I have a translation for the word. I still have a couple of problems.

• There are always multiple choices. How do I quickly determine which meaning is really the one I intended?

• How do I pronounce the kanji combinations I have never seen before?

It turns out that the Clie app makes both of these concerns disappear in a heartbeat:

Highlight the kanji you want to look up.

Switch from the English/Japanese dictionary to the Japanese/English dictionary by pulling down the menu in the upper right hand corner. The kanji you selected is automatically displayed along with the hiragana or katakana, and the English translation. Notice that the input at the bottom of the screen is also updated with the kanji allowing you to quickly modify your selection.

There's also a handy 'back' button just to the bottom right of the input area allowing you to retrace your steps.
Will this be the end of all the electronic translation dictionary sales? Probably not. They have a huge following here in Japan and will continue to find a strong market for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, I'm overjoyed with my knew found solution. Personally, I will never buy another standalone dictionary.

Pervasive Cell Phones

My wife and I went to see "Zatoichi" - the new, award winning, Beat Takeshi film. About five minutes before the lights dimmed, I looked around the theater and noticed a lot people had their cell phones out checking messages, writing short mails, and playing video games. I managed to catch the obvious ones in the photo below. There were quite a few more that don't show up in this photo. The theater filled up quickly and was close to being sold out. Thankfully everyone was thoughtful and turned off their cell phones once the movie started.

By the way, the movie was GREAT! Kind of a cross between the old Kurosawa samurai movies and "Pulp Fiction" with a dash of tap dancing thrown in. It sounds strange, but everything blends well, a film equivalent of fusion cusine. I highly recommend it when it comes to your local neighborhood cinemaplex.

e-Book Wars in Japan

It appears that the first shots have been fired in the Japanese e-Book Wars. While most of the press attention in the US is focused on music downloads - both legal and illegal, there's another battle being joined here in Japan that may have just as much impact in the long run. The Japanese are avid readers and devour books and magazines by the carload. Drop by any Japanese Seven-Eleven at almost any time of the day or night, and you will see people standing in front of the magazine rack, sometimes two or three deep. The local book stores have enjoyed the same public devotion to reading. And of course Japanese manga are famous world-wide. Now, suddenly, people are downloading their books and manga over the internet. Some of the material is even cell phone friendly, so they can read it on their cell phone display during the long daily commute. The Japanese publishing industry, just like the music industry before it, tried to downplay or ignore the trend for quite a while. Now the Japanese eBook market is starting to soar, and they can't continue pretend it isn't there.

One of the solutions - put together an alliance of the major publishers, distributors, and the eBook readers. Form a solid front, and try to keep the customer captive to traditional distribution sources. The 'party line' is that customers will be willing to bring their memory media into bookstores to download their purchase. It's a comforting story, if you happen to own a chain of bookstores. Time will tell if it's a practical approach, or if Japanese consumers like their Western counterparts insist on the convience of internet downloads and instant gratification. Of course, the eBook display device makers end up winning both ways. The major players are companies like Toshiba and Matsushita who make not only the eBook readers, but also all of the alternative devices like PCs and cell phones. They can have their cake, and eat it too.

Japan eBook Market Soars

"The Japanese market for eBooks soared to 1 billion yen in 2002..."
"The market is expanding at an annual rate of 40 percent to 60 percent..."
"Downloaded by users to their personal computers or mobile phones,... "
"Online vendors release some 1,000 new titles onto the market monthly...."
"...another poll of 6,000 Internet users found that 9 percent have read eBooks...."
"The poll also found an additional 63 percent want to read them...."
Japan eBook Market Soars

Japan eBook Consortium Formed

"Nineteen electronics companies, publishing houses and other firms announced Wednesday they will set up a consortium Oct. 1 to promote the use of eBooks and the devices that display them." "Would-be purchasers of eBooks could bring to bookstores their secure digital memory cards, onto which the content of eBooks could be downloaded from a terminal," a Matsushita official said. "They could then transfer the contents from the cards to their own terminal at home." "Cartoonist Machiko Satonaka, who was appointed as an adviser to the consortium, told the news conference that use of the computerized terminals "would enable people to read masterpieces which went unnoticed when they were first published."
Consortium to push eBook business