Let's Talk about .. AOS Smartphone SMS Solution Services

I joined the AOS Smartphone SMS Solution Services event on September 27, 2011. This event is introduced to me by my professor, Prof. Junichi Iijima. It is the event hosted AOS Technologies.

This AOSMobile.com is powered by 3Cinteractive, a company from USA.



Vic Shroff, a director of Sales Department of 3Cinteractive gave a speech talking about his company.



Demonstration.

In this event, the audiences joined the demonstration of this services. First, we typed the code and sent it via SMS to the received mobile phones number. It is free, no matter which carrier you are using. Then, we followed the step they showed. We can type the keyword to get the information to know. It can be adapted into business by showing the special promotion or catalog in the SMS form. The customer can reply according to the menu option the previous SMS said.



I think this business model is great. Sometimes SMS channel is forgotten by many people because e-mail is popular nowadays, but the good points of SMS service are still strong until now such as sending speed (less than 1 minute), no need for mail application, free in some countries' promotion, etc.

Let's Talk about .. Daigo Fukuryu-Maru

On June 10th, 2011, I have a school trip in the course of Comparative Studies on the historical development of sciences under the supervision of Prof. Masanori Kaji and Dr. Yakup Bektas.

Our class went to Shin-kiba Station (新木場駅) to visit Daigo Fukuryu-maru Exhibition Hall.

It is an exhibition hall of Daigo Fukuryu-maru (第五福竜丸) or "Lucky Dragon V".

Daigo Fukuryu-

maru is a ship with 35 km height and 250 km width.

It was 160km far from center of atomic testin

g.On March 1st, 1954, at 6.45 a.m., ship crews saw it like the second Sun from the west side.

They already knew about this test, so they though it was safe.
However, there was no official announcement about the schedule.
7-8 minutes later after they heard the sound, they pulled out the instruments and tried to go away. After 2 hours there was rain, actually it was not they rain but ashes.

It took 4-5 hours to get out from there due to the large size of the instrument. They did not know about t

he situation at all.Their bodies received the radioactive. Even though they washed their bodies by sea water, in the evening, they got ill.
After they came back, they got more symptoms.

The crews got the same level as the Hiroshima-2-km-surrounding-area-of-atomic-bomb victims.
It was helpful that the washed themselves immediately, but the ship was also radioactived and they had to inside the ship for 2 weeks.

When they arrived, they got experiment in the hospital.
There were 28 crews.

The real ashes is shown in the hall.

The tunas were sold out in the market. The next one of the newspaper reported on the incident. It was first report in Japan about it. Then people in other parts of Japan threw out the tuna even in Tsukiji market in Tokyo.

The government checked the tuna at that moment.
The price of tuna and fish went down.
After 2 months people detected radioactive in the rain.
It was not only march 1st testing but also other experiment. The fifth effected japan because of the wind.

There were 856 ship fishing the tuna, 485.75 tons, got radioactive tuna.
Blood production function and Leukemia.

US paid 2 million US Dollar and Japan stopped making any further processes.
The 70% of paid was sent to fishing industry. But, in fact, they suffered three times more than that amount.

20,000 nuclear weapons are still around the world.

Marshall island and people who conducted the experiments also effected.
And because of that, the level of radioactive increased.

Memorial of Maguro (Tuna)

Koboyama last word
"Please make sure I will be the last person who affected by atomic bomb."

Engine inside the ship

Nuclear Explosion Test Affected the World

Messages from children

Thank you very much for the Official guide of the hall, Prof. Masanori Kaji, Dr.Yakup Bektas, and everyone in the class.

Ref.
[1] Tokyo Metropolitan Government, No.5 Fukuryu-maru Exhibition Hall.

Let's Talk about .. Current Currency Situation

Today, Saturday February 19, 2011, I participated the seminar of "Current Currency Situation" organized by the Royal Thai Embassy's Office of Educational Affairs, Tokyo, Japan.

The speaker was Mr.Kittipong Apibalsri, Minister-Counsellor (Economic and Financial), the Royal Thai Embassy, Tokyo.

Mr.Kittipong Apibalsri,

Minister-Counsellor (Economic and Financial)

The following is my summarize from the seminar.

What is money?

It is the medium to exchange the thing. The ratio is around 70% In Thailand, BOT backs up at 100%. The is only one country that can produce money without any backup is USA ( in god we trust)  How can we calculate the value of cross currency? 1.1. Country's status, government's budget (balance:income=outcome) 1.2. Country's status in term of consumer and seller (demand & demand) (We can predict both of the previous factors.) 2. Value of money not in the status of the medium. Someone makes benefit from money exchanging. Benefit comes from margin. 

There are 2 case studies about this issue, 1992 England, and 1997 Asian countries. 

England joined the EU commitment to fix with Deutsche Mark ( On that day, the economy reduced, investors sold short (borrow currency, and return with interest when currency is cheaper) At that time, government tried to increase the interest rate, until England announced to defense their currency. Black Wednesday (the day the Bank of England was broken), two times of increasing their currency value. And England escaped from Euro. George Soros, the man who broke the bank of England, said it's not good to defense since the investor pays the currency by loan from, we cannot do leverage since it's not the exact money amount.

 In Asia, the bubble property made people want to invest in Asian. It's from the fixed rate policy. All of this type of investment is easy to escape from the race, so it's not good to do like that. it's the investment that connotation produce the income. 

And 10 years later, There was a repeating situation, 2007, it's a domino, Subprime Crisis. USA was criticized a lot about it. At that time, the value of US house was too flexible. American people likes to make Mortgage Loan on the real-estate properties. They sold the loan stock from other bank, and also sold the loan stock of the group of loan stocks. It means the amount of properties increases without any real property.

 This is the subprime crisis since everyone realized that there is nothing, so everyone tried to sell as fast as possible. Then US made a subprime market, Credit Insurance Guarantee. Loan stock is B grade, but if they let the credit commercial bank guarantee your loan stock, so the credit will depends on the credit level of the commercial bank. So someone think about making the group of the guaranteed property and be a new property, so there was a case of branesterm.   Case of Lehman Brothers, at the time Lehman Brothers was filling for bankruptcy, each bank had to  announce how much the portion of Lehman they had. It did not effect much to Thailand.  Next crisis, Greece debt crisis. The government hired the company to modify the country's account. Greece entered Greece at 110 million EURO. EU is going to be the guarantee of country-level customer.

 For the current situation, all countries have not much different situation of economy. Even China, people is still concern in case that it's possible that government will establish a new monetary policy.  QE2 (Quantitative Easing) policy of US Federal made dollar became weak. Investors moved from USA to Asia. 

NOTE: Because the size of US market is very large, so for example, if they moved 100% to Asia, it means a lot to invest only 2%. 

Each country has different method to prevent the flow of that investment.

- Singapore controls the rate of interest. - Philippines controls the derivative of banks. - Brazil controls by collect the VAT of incoming currency, consider the money as product. First country to use this economy's theory.

Situation of Japanese Yen 

Japan have 240 appreciation of Yen. Budget of government, 52% from loan, 48% from tax. And a lot is to ODA loan for developing countries, and pension payment. Last year Japan intervened the currency to warn the investor who wants to earn the margin of currency trading. 

Nowadays, Japan has a lot of public debt. so in the future when USA can recover, it's possible that Japan's Yen rate will going back to around 100 Yen/1 USD.  The problem for the investor is even though you trade until you get the benefit, but when you return back to the original currency, the exchange rate may be decreases.  For Asia now the problem may occur if we cannot manage it,the investor will escape out of Asia and at that time the currency will be swing. 

Government said that we can make a currency stable by increasing the saving inside the country. Like in Japan 95% is domestic debt. Japanese saves money at bank, and the banks buy gov bond.. That's why Yen is not swinging. It's the pro from the saving habit of Japanese people. 

The currency problem can be protected. But the problem occurred because of the way government control the money.  For Japan, IMF recommended that Japan should increase Consumption tax to be 20%, but it's impossible since the politician cannot show the advertisement to increase consumption tax. It seems high but comparing to the developed countries, Japan Tax system is si liar to the developing countries. 

Prof. Eisuke Sakakibara, Waseda university, named Mr.Yen, said that the situation of Japan's economy is not good, but better than other countries.

Let's Talk about .. TRONSHOW2011

On December 15, 2010, I found the information posted by Kieng, my friend from the University of Tokyo, about TRONSHOW2011, so I went to listen to the international session.

The 27th TRON Project Symposium (TRONSHOW2011) is during December 15-17, 2010 at Tokyo Midtown, Japan. It is organized by T-Engine Forum.

Method of Identify Location

The Light Flexible Speaker (TLF-SP)

Tokyo Ubiquitous Technology Project

The session I participated was "Globalizing Ubiquitous Computing"

Prof. Ken Sakamura, a coordinator

First is the talk of "Globalizing Ubiquitous Computing"

Globalizing Ubiquitous Computing 

Dr. Gerald Santucci

By Dr.Gerald Santucci, head of unit "Networked Enterprise & RFID", European Commission 

He talked about nowadays, there are many Internet of Things such as Smart Building, Smart Energy, Smart Health, Smart Cities, Smart Transport, and Smart Living. PM of China said also last year that "Internet of Things is the wisdom of the earth". There are 3 underlying trends: Scale, Mobility, Heterogeneity & Complexity. There is a research said that everyone use 5,000 things.  Future Internet challenges consist of more storage, more addresses, more transport capacity , making tech ology compatible, Internet for all, better search tool, from data to knowledge.  

A definition of the Intetnet of Things by Dr. Gerald Santucci

The Internet of Things (IoT) as an Integral Part of the future Internet A dynamic global network infrastructure with self-configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual "things" have identities, physical attributes, and virtual things.

EU IoT Project 

Cluster Activities Organized activity chains in the area of: Architecture approaches, models, naming, search, discover; Government issues, Privacy and security; Links to nation, etc.

IoT EU Policy Framework Europe's action plan
- Privacy and data protection; 'right to the silence of the chips' 1991 Internet was invented, started using in 1993, but well-known in 1995.
- Standardization, there should no barrier to train people.
- Research
- Waste management, when all technological devices go to the end of usage period.
- International dialogue
- Innovation
- Government
- Trust, security, and acceptance  

Internet of Things Governance

Action 1: Define a set of principles for IoT governance
Design an "architecture" with a sufficient level of decentralised management to address key challenges: avoidance of a single point-of-failure, service tranferability, interoperability ofn every level, security, scalability, technology-neutrality...

Action 2:
- Continuous monitoring of privacy and personal data protection
- Communication on trust and privacy in the ubiquitous society

Action 3: The "right to the silence of the chips": individuals should be able to disconnect from their networked environment at any time.

Action 4: The Commission will follow ENISA work on the identification of emerging risks and provide a policy framework to develop IoT.

Action 5: The Commission will follow the development of IoT infrastructures becoming a vital resource to economy and society.

Action 6:
- Launch or extend currently standards Mandates to include issues related to IoT
- Ensure IoT standards are developed in an open, transparent and consensual manner

Action 7: Finance research projects through FP7 projects.

Action 8: Contribute to the respective Public-Private Partnerships:
- Green cars
- Energy-efficient buildings
- Factories of the Future
- Future Internet

Action 9: Innovation and pilot projects: promoting the deployment of IoT applications by launching pilot projects though ICT-PSP.

Action 10: The Commission will inform Europe Institutions and relevant stakeholders about IoT developments.

Action 11: International dialogue to promote the lines of action laid down in the Communication

Action 12: To assess the difficulties of recycling tags and the benefits and nuisances that the presence of tags can have on the recycling of objects.

Action 13: Monitoring the introduction of IoT related technologies to allow the assessment of their impact as well as the effectiveness of the related Community policies

Action 14: The Commission will assess the evolution of IoT

Internet of Things Architecture 

Alessandro Blassi

By Mr.Alessandro Blassi, Technical Coordinator of the FP7 IP Project "Internet of Things Architecture", Hitachi Europe Ltd. 

Only a few people imagined in last ten years ago that today we have smart phone that can send e-mail like today. There are many Internet involved things around us such as Smart house, business productive, safe health monitoring, logistics. IoT-A will be laying the foundation for such a future.  

For Current status, it's Fragmented architecture, no coherent unifying concepts, solution exist for only application silos. No coherent approaches to implement the IoT.  Many island solutions do exist (RFID, sensor, etc.)  

The objectives of IoT-A
- Removing the barriers of deployment and widescale acceptance of IoT
- Demonstrating the usability of IoT-A

Means of implementation
- Providing a protocol suite based on open protocols centred around a narrow waste
- Defining a novel resolution infrastructure
- Building novel device platform components
- Implementing real-life use cases

Spiral Development of IoT-A

Spiral Development by Alessandro Blassi

IoT-A will work with T-Engine. 

If you want to get involve and contribute to IoT-A, the IoT-A need you, you can become a IoT-A stakeholder by going the website http://www.IoT-a.eu/stakeholder  

Key Driver for ubiquitous network 

By Prof.Dr.Ryo Imura, Executive Officer, Hitachi Information Systems, Ltd. and Professor of the University of Tokyo. 

Prof. Ryo Imura, Dr. Gerald Santucci, and Alessandro Blassi

By  Essential point is how smart and how beneficial to our daily life.  The technology, especially IoT is already embedded in our daily life. We need to win the technology by using our creativity. After that it's the discussion between him and Dr.Gerald and Alessandro.

After that there's a continuing talk about China's case.

Ref.

[1] Summarized from Santucci, G., Blassi, A., and Imura, R., the international session "Globalizing Ubiquitous Computing" , the 27th TRON Project Symposium, Tokyo, Japan, Dec 15, 2010.

Let's Talk about .. Gerontechnology

On December 9th, 2010, I went to the AIST Gerontechnology Forum 2010 / International Society for Gerontechnology Japan Chapter, organized by Affective Laboratory of TokyoTech at AIST Tokyo Waterfront conference room (11th floor), Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan. I joined the workshop of Designing for Older Adults: Human Factor Approaches by Prof.Dr. Wendy A. Rogers and Prof.Dr. Arthur D. Fisk from Human Factors & Aging Laboratory, School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.

Assoc.Prof. Hiroyuki Umemuro opened the workshop

Prof. Wendy A. Rogers

Prof. Arthur Dan Fisk

Aging Demographic
From the research, 65-year-old Japanese men is expected to live more 23 years in the future and longer for women. Around 68.8 % of Japanese is going to continue working when they are older.

In US, 65+ are living alone for 15% men and 30% women. Over 50% of them is hypertension, and other deceases. It means they need to use the medical activities. There is an increase rate of computer use for 65+ from 20 to 40% 2010 comparing with 2000. The frequent process 65+ people do is open a file, save a file, and use a printer. About Internet usage, it's quite similar with the computer usage (10 to 40%). For Japan, it is also increases.

Older adults' capabilities and limitations

Process of aging
Primary aging
- Normal, disease free development during adulthood (inevitable)
Secondary aging
- Developmental changes related to disease, lifestyle, environmental factor
- Tertiary aging
- Rapid loss in organs

Movement control limitations
- Response time slows and more variable

Percentage of people in each age that require visual correction, Cataracts, Glaucoma or other Visual Impairments

The need of visual correction increases when people grow older, the maximum is around 60 plus. The speech intelligibility is also going down when people grow older.

Cognitive aging
Decline in
- Working memory
- attention limits
- Multiple tasking
Some remain intact
- Verbal ability
- General knowledge
- Schemas and scripts
- Previous experience
- Metacognition

Design guidelines

The general way of guideline is to view an older as adult's system as "a noisy information channel". We need to boost the signal strength, like increase the size of visual objects (font size, icon size). And decrease the noise, like isolate messages from other message channels, and maintaining the consistent positioning of target items.

Good design for text
- Black on white 28 point is better than gray and smaller font

Design input device
- Match it with the task demands
- Direct: for pure pointing and clicking tasks
- Indirect: experienced users, combined input tasks,large movements, precision
- Speech recognition: restrictions in manual dexterity; low ambient noise level
- Keyboard input

- Use large keys with clear markings and inter-key spacing

- Provide tactile and auditory feedback with keypads

Remote example

Comparison of good and bad design of remote control

The bad design showed that its buttons are too close together and it's black on gray color.

Design output device
- High contrast between characters and background
- Text size 0.6 degrees of visual angle or greater on display
- Shield visual output screens from glare
- Provide an adaptive, adjustable display (with instruction)
- Important warning message

Interface design
- Minimize clutter
- Visual: too many display items in any one location

- Auditory: too many sounds to make sense out of such as warning tones

- Cognitive: too many things to keep in memory

- Movement related: too many or too small response items

- Ensure that characters and targets are conspicuous and accessible

- Font size less than 12 should be avoided

- Icons should be large enough to select easily

- Auditory information should be presented at the proper pitch, frequency, and rate

Interface design-Navigation
- Screen scrolling should be minimized ( especially horizontal scrolling)
- Provide the site map
- Provide search history
- Indicate clearly where the user currently is
- Provide the navigation assistance for linking

Interface design - information organization
- Frequent and important actions should be easily visible and accessible

- Optimize information organization within natural or consistent groupings

- Develop the menu structure to match medium

One of the good examples is the web site that we can search by both letter and category.

Example of bad design of web page

Example of better design of web page

You can see the tips at Making Your Website Senior Friendly (National Institute on Aging and the National Library of Medicine).

Anyway, the Golden rule is a user testing.

Involving older adults
Methods in the human factor & aging lab
- Questionnaires
- Structured Interviews
- Diary Studies
- Observation

- Experiments

- Field Trials

General consideration
Selecting a representative sample
- depends on research question
Aging in place issues
Technology use problem (user testing)
Benefit of computer system in home

Structuring testing environment
- Minimize distractions and ambient noise
- Ensure adequate lighting
- Adjust screens to accommodate size differences and eyeglasses
- Comfortable chairs
Actually, it is important for everyone, but especially for older adults.

Format of materials
- High contrast text of background
- 6th grade reading level
- Minimize jargon
- > 14 point San serif font
- Avoid fancy font, even it looks fun

Framing your questions
- Distance yourself from developer
- Use reminder
- Provide scenario to elicit opinion
- Video or demonstration of technology
- Goals

Pacing of events & Timing of sessions
- Recognize that environment may be foreign to older adults
- Allow time to get acclimated
- Sequence task easy to difficult
- Provide basic instructions
- Assume 1.5 times needed by younger
- Allow time to break

Pilot test everything
- clarity of instruction
- working of materials
- timing of tasks and overall session
- explain pilot testing to participants open and honest

Technology Acceptance
Attitudes
- Identify barriers to adoption
- Instrusiveness, privacy, security concerns
- Conditional adoption

Older adult does not use tech as much as younger adult. They concern about tech description, and others.

Introduction new technology to older adults
- Recognize their unique preferences, capabilities, limitation, and experiences
- Provide written, well-designed instructional material
- Ensure that perceptions are accurate reflections of the complexity and ease of use of the technology
- Do not assume users will understand why technology might be useful to them, make benefits explicit

I like the sentence that they mention during the discussion period, "We should not think about what technology can do, but we should think about what the technology should do."

For more information, you can visit their website at http://psychology.gatech.edu/hfa

Ref.

[1] Summarized from Workshop: Designing for Older Adults: Human Factor Approaches by Prof.Dr. Wendy A. Rogers and Prof.Dr. Arthur D. Fisk, AIST Gerontechnology Forum 2010, December 9, 2010.

Let's Talk about .. STeLA Leadership Forum 2010

I was one of the speakers in STeLA Leadership Forum 2010 Debriefing Session.
I explained about my experience of being Japan delegate to participate the MIT-Japan's STeLA Leadership Forum 2010 at Beijing, China.
This presentation was on October 9th, 2010 at the University of Tokyo, Japan.




Hello! Now international organization "STeLA" is recruiting the new
staff members for next year! (Deadline 29th 23:59. Oct)
Here is the brief introduction of STeLA. It contains;
・What is STeLA?
・What do the staff members do?
・How was the last year's activity?
We are looking forward to seeing you in the selection process!

********
**** STeLA (Science and Technology Leadership Association)
** Web Site: http://web.mit.edu/stela-mit/
* e-Mail: stela.japan(at)gmail.com　e-Mail(recruit)
stela.japan.staffrecruit.2011(at)gmail.com

*STeLA*
The purpose of STeLA is to develop future leaders from across the globe
to act on real global issues in science and technology fields.
As of now, STeLA has four branches.
+STeLA-USA: consists of students in MIT, Harvard...
+STeLA-China: consists of students in Peking Univ, Tsinghua Univ...
+STeLA-Japan: consists of students in Tokyo Univ, Tokyo Tech...
+STeLA-France: consists of students in ENSTA, Ecole Polytechnique...

*Activity of STeLA*
Main activity of STeLA is to organize STeLA Leadership Forum.
Objective: To cultivate global leadership skills of students in the
science and technology related students.
Term: About one week.
Participants: Each STeLA branch recruit.
So far, we have held the forum 4 times in Tokyo, Boston, and Beijing.
Next year, the forum is planned to be held in Stanford.

*Call for Staff*
We will recruit new staff members in order to hold STeLA Leadership
Forum 2011.
Staff works consist of...
- Fundraising and accounting,
- Forum Program(Leadership Education, Thematic Session, Group Project),
- Developing web page,
- Forum program making
- ...
This year we are especially seeking those who have experience in and
knowledge of public relations and fundraising.
Of course, you are still encouraged to apply even if you do not have
these specific experiences.

The staff meeting among branches is held using online conference system,
and the official language during the meeting is English.
So you don't need to be afraid of our activity even though you are not
confident in speaking Japanese!

Our selection process consists of documentary elimination and interview.
The deadline of application is 23:59, 29th Oct (Fri).

You can check our web page for more details, and we will hold debriefing
session for last forum on 9th Oct (Sat)
in Hongo Campus of Univ. of Tokyo.

*STeLA Leadership Forum 2010*
We organized following programs in STeLA Leadership Forum 2010.
+Collaborating with MIT Leadership Center
( http://sloanleadership.mit.edu/ ),
we held leadership lecture, role playing game, discussion...
+Keynote speech:
Mr. Yasuji Watanabe (JST),
Prof. Xue Lan (Tsinghua University),
Dr. Yalei Hao (Petro China),
+Focusing "Technology transfer" as a global issue relating to science
and technology, we held lecture, role playing game, discussion.
+Finding social issues in Beijing city and proposing innovative solution
using solar energy.
Participants built solar energy generator and device which could work by
the energy.
The devices and solutions were presented to public.

If you have any questions, please check our web page or contact us.
We are looking forward to your application!!

Contact;
Web page: http://web.mit.edu/stela-mit/index.html
e-mail(recruit): stela.japan.staffrecruit.2011@gmail.com