Japan’s Smile Scanners a Classic Misuse of Technology

As pointed out on the Freakonomics Blog:

Japan’s Keihin Express Railway Co. has set up “smile scanners” at 15 of its stations, where railway employees have their smiles assessed by software in the hopes of perfecting a customer-friendly look.       LINK

This is such a classic misuse of technology by a corporation.  The goal of the company is to provide more positive and friendly customer service but their technique of using a “smile scanner” is going to have the opposite effect.  Nobody likes to be forced into happiness and the employees will end up resenting the scanners, their bosses for making them use the scanners and the customers for expecting them to smile.

Instead, a smart company would try to figure out how to make their employees genuinely happy so that they smile because they want to smile.  This would create endless positive outcomes for the company, the employees and the customers.

Sometimes technology can look like it provides a quick fix when, in fact, it is just an illusion.

Those Crazy Cutting Edge Japanese Kids and Their…Rubber Stamps?

Lots of blogs have been posting the video below of a young Japanese girl going absolutely insane when she meets Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliff on the set of the last film.

What I thought was most fascinating about the video was a tiny detail: at around the 4:00 mark, the girl gives Daniel a present that turns out to be a rubber stamp embossed with the Japanese character for her name.

Considering the Japanese love for all things techie, it was surprising to me to see that this decidedly old-world object would be the special gift to an apparent idol.

I also think it is one of many signs that points to a wonderful duality in many of today’s youth – a desire for the ephemeral joys of text messaging and for the more permanent marks that they can leave on the world and on each other.

Live TV Coming to iPhones?

According to  The Business Insider, software makers PacketVideo are planning to release an iPhone app that will enable users to watch live TV on their phone.

The ability to watch live TV on mobile phones has been a reality in both Japan and South Korea for some time and seems to have been very popular among users.

For the networks it is hard to see how this would be anything but beneficial.  More eyeballs forced to watch the commercials that are still a part of the live TV experience.  Of course, this is not good news for cable operators, especially if PacketVideo somehow is able to offer something other than what is already freely available via over-the-air broadcasts.

The iPhone also lacks a TV-tuner so the signal has to be coming via WiFi so who knows.  It is beyond my technical understanding.

The bigger question is whether or not anyone wants to watch live TV on their phones.  The only real applications I can think of are news and sports.  News might be a possibilty, but I would hate to be PacketVideo trying to wrangle broadcasting licenses from the major sporting leagues.

South Korea Leads the Way to DVD Death

Little piece in the NYT is pretty much the clearest example of the canary in the coal mines for DVDs.

Warner Brothers is changing the way they do business in South Korea.

“It will now start renting moves over the Internet two weeks before they are released on DVDs, making South Korea the first market in the world where movies will appear online before they hit the store shelves.”

Since technology rarely moves backward, it would be tough to make an argument that the same thing won’t be happening here in the States sooner than later.

I wonder what the DRM situation is in S. Korea…

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Japan to Stop the Pirates….Yeah, Right.

There is a story over on TorrentFreak about the attempt to stop P2P exchange of copyrighted materials.

“Following a huge increase in complaints from the music, movie and software industries, the four major Japanese ISP organizations have agreed that they will work with copyright holders to track down copyright infringing file-sharers and disconnect them from the internet.”

While I think there are lots of issues to be worked out around copyright and P2P, it just doesn’t seem like this sort of approach is going to have the sort of results they seem to be hoping for.  We could eventually look back on what is now brewing as the digitial equivalent of the war on drugs.  And we all know how well that’s been working out.