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The beverage or snacks in vending machines seldom attracted your attention? Never mind, as they have now managed to draw the crowds to move closer and closer, by offering WiFi without any charge. Unveiled by Japanese company Asahi, the machine sends out internet waves that cover about 164 feet around it, allowing people to use it continuously even though there’s a 30-minute limit on each session. Asahi is planning on rolling out 1,000 of these in 2012.

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New method is put forward here to keep your cars away from theft, and it’s the Car Seat Identification technology developed by Japanese researchers.

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No more a long waiting time in cafes, as a vending machine can actually offer us a cup of coffee with a patterned foamy top too while costing less time and less money. This special vending machine appeared at the Yojiya Cafe in Haneda Airport, Japan, which uses drips of coffee poured carefully through milk to form a face on the top of your hot beverage. Currently the machine only offers coffee with the face of a woman floating on the top, and possibly in future the machine would come with other options like a hello kitty.

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I love vending machines, because I could always easily find my favorite cola there. But things are different now, as the Transparent Touchscreen Vending Machine developed by Sanden, in cooperation with Okaya Electronics and Intel offers me another reason to appreciate the machines: you love it simply because the vending machine is fabulous! It comes with a 65-inch full HD vertical screen on front, displaying animated graphics, clock time and other information from time to time. As people walk by, it would display customized menus based on facial recognition technology.

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Toshiba’s latest development is a portable video camera that provides real-time visualizations of radiation hotspots. It is built with a radiation sensor and a signal processing device, indicating the amount of radiation in different colors: red for high amounts of radiation and yellow, green, blue for lower levels. The device is not only functional, but also saves large quantity of time usually spent on radiation detection, thus claimed to be quite ideal for detection work. The company will have a field test of the camera in collaboration with Fukushima City within this month and plan to promote its use to the central bureaucracy and local governments in Japan in early 2012.

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Speed up, speed up, when using these Japanese Bullet Train Chopsticks to enjoy your lunch, you may feel that the food is “flying” into your mouth with a higher speed… Wow, so cool! But in fact these chopsticks are common ones as others, although they feature a unique shape of bullet trains, they’ll never threaten your life as real trains do.

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The treatment for cancer may soon find a more effective alternative, as scientists from Japan and America have collaborated with a new reagent that makes cancer cells glow and thus visible to human’s naked eyes.

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On the Tokyo Motor Show Toyota has unveiled its Fun-Vii concept, a futuristic vehicle that allows the drivers to change the exterior design “with the same ease as downloading an application”. But that’s not all, because the Fun-Vii also features magical exterior display technology that lets drivers to display information on any places inside the car. To make the Fun-Vii more functional and attractive, the car can even be customized, with many themes and an augmented reality function taking place of the traditional navigation system.

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Though many of my friends love cup noodles, they seldom know that the first cup noodle was launched by Nissin Food in 1971. Now forty years have passed, the Nissin has collaborated with Japan’s Vstone (JP) robotics to make some Cup Noodle Robot Timers in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of cup noodles. There will be totally 10,000 timers sold to the public under some sort of a lottery system.

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What will the futuristic architecture look like? Japan-based Kisho Kurokawa’s “Nakagin Capsule Tower Building” may offer us some inspireations. Put forward in 1972, the tower building was constructed of 140 individual pods that could be changed and moved freely, thus to create a modular building with full functions. In the designer’s assumption, the 140 pods should get replaced about every 25 years so that the whole building could have a 200 year life span.  To let many more people get in a close touch with the “Nakagin Capsule Tower Building”, Kurokawa recently showcased one pod at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, in which the visitors would find a full-furnished house for temporary living.

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Can balloons be used as an input device? Even though currently they cannot serve as functionally as keyboards or touchscreens, the system invented by a research group from Osaka University indicates that a balloon is really able to input and send your messages. With a pressure sensor and a microphone built inside the balloon, it can detect the distinctive sounds of stroking, striking the balloon or feel the change the pressure when it is squeezes, so as to recognize your actions.

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I’m another Alice now, experiencing everything that she has ever met in Wonderland with this whimsical climbing wall. Designed by Nendo for Illoiha fitness club in Tokyo’s fashion district, the climbing wall is built with mirrors, picture frames and other elements drawn from the “Alice in Wonderland”, making it not only full of odd unreal color but also quite intriguing to the users.

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Japanese-based TOTO is possibly the first toilet manufacturer that keeps their product on the move. Its main aim is to promote TOTO’s environmental efforts, by converting human waste into bio-gas fuel. Another good thing about this Toilet Motorcycle is, the TOTO toilet can play music or even communicate with the users. Though the idea is quite amazing, it is bit of crazy to take a toilet everywhere…

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Almost all things change to create their own beauty, and so does the waterfall. In Osaka City Station, there’s a unique waterfall designed by Koei Industry that performs various patterns as the water falls down. The system is based on a printer that emits illuminated water droplets, which are controlled with a computer. To learn more about the fantastic beauty, let’s check out the video below. [Read the rest of this entry...]

On the Good Design Expo in Tokyo, Japan-based Docomo company built a giant screen to introduce their latest Palette UI interface, something that would improve the navigation between each app on your cellphones by assorting your softwares. Still, the Palette UI is really fantastic, because it would attract butterflies, numbers, and other elements into a cellphone and changes then into colorful stripes. To understand how great the Palette UI is, please check out the video below for more information. [Read the rest of this entry...]