RFID in Japan

I think this was reporeted on CNN in March (I can't find the page anymore..).

China will tag all of its 163 captive pandas in an effort to better monitor the population and prevent inbreeding, Xinhua news agency has announced. According to an unnamed State Forestry Administration official: "Information about pedigree, age and other basic data will be permanently incorporated into the giant pandas by ways of molecular labeling or hypodermic implantation of sensing chips."

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Lester Haines(2005) Chinese to tag pandas. The Register, June 24, 2005. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/24/china_tags_pandas1/> (June 29, 2005)

Apparently, the Japanese government wants to eliminate anonymity from the Internet. This was on Yahoo News Japan (not The Onion).

Here, I tried to just translate the original news rather than talking about what I thought:

Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications announced on June 27 that they will start projects for eliminating anonymity on the Internet and facilitate Internet uses with real names. They believe this can improve the Internet, which currently "is a rich source of bad information including suicide-themed sites". In perticular, they will collaborate with another ministry to promote blogs and social networking sites, which they think involves less anonymity than other parts of the Internet, at elementary and middle schools.

The number of internet users in the country is increasing. However, because of anonymity, the number of suicide-themed sites has increased and "how to make a bomb" kinds of websites emerged. There's lots of bad information that leads to crimes. The ministry decided that, in order to remove such negative aspects and make the internet good for advancing the economic society, internet uses with real names should be promoted and reliability be increased.

Finally, my comment: are you ******* *****? (sayin' it loud with my real name)

via Kyodo Tsushin (Yahoo News Japan), June 27, in Japanese

T-Engine Forum, which is a sisiter organization of Ubiquitous ID Center, "is an initiative of five leading Japanese chipmakers and 17 other Japanese tech firms. In 2002, they formed the T-Engine Forum, the consortium that developed the specifications for T-Kernel and T-Engine¡Çs development boards."

IEEE Pervasive Computing has an in-depth article on this organization. It also reports on Ubiquitous ID Center's activities.

Related: Helping visually-impaired people using RFID
YRP Ubiquitous Networking Labs Unveils Small Active RFID Tags
YRP Uniquitous Networking Laboratory Gets Ready for a major project

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Shani Murray (2005) T-Engine: Japan¡Çs Ubiquitous Computing Architecture Is Ready for Prime Time. IEEE Pervasive Computing, May-June 2005. <http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/mags/pc/2005/02/b2004.pdf> (June 28, 2005)

Obayashi Corp. developed a system for diagnosing drain pipes by running off water that contains ball-shaped RFID tags. The system can be used to check problems with pipe connections etc.

Checking drain pipes in a large residential building takes about a full day -- the company says, with this system, it may take only a few hours.

via Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun, June 20, 2005, in Japanese

Sony is joining EPCglobal's Board of Governors. It will be the first home applience company in the Board.

via Nikkei IT Pro, June 24, 2005, in Japanese

An RFID-based system for helping visually-impaired people is being tested at Aichi Expo in Nagoya, Japan. This is another experiment by the goverment and YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory. There is a movie clip with the interview of a visually-impared person who used the system. His comments are rather critical and suggest the need of other auditory information besides RFID-triggered voice messages.

Related:
Yuki-Navi Aomori Project
YRP Uniquitous Networking Laboratory Gets Ready for a major project
30,000 tags in Kobe by the end of March
Embedding RFID tags in Kobe

via Aichi Expo Citizen's Broadcast Station, June 10, 2005.

So, how is the Korean ColorCode being introduced in Japan? ColorZip (the company who owns the technology of ColorCode) announced recently that they are collaborating with two Japanese TV broadcasting stations (TBS and Fuji TV) to develop a system for integrating TV programs and wireless websites. The system that broadcasts ColorCode will likely be put into real use this summer. Consumers can easily access wireless websites related to TV programs by simply taking a picture of a broadcasted ColorCode. For example, such websites may allow consumers to participate in voting, download sample music clips, buy products, or apply for free gifts.

It sounds like ColorCodes can be read from a distance more easily thatn other 2D codes.

via RBB Today, June 17, 2005, in Japanese < QR Code BLog
Also: Nikkei Net

The three countries plan to start a pilot test this summer. The plan is to embed RFID tags in commercial products exchanged across the three countries and then provide a consumer service that allows for retrieval of historical information about products. One of the goals of this pilot test is for the three countries to take the leadership in international standardization of RFID technology. It seems like this will be an activity independent from EPCglobal.

via Nikkei Shimbun, June 19, 2005, in Japanese