For starters, this app is very cool, and definately has the “Wow – we’re living in the future!” factor. It far surpasses the AR apps released by Presselite (Bionic Eye Tokyo, Tokyo Metro) mainly due to the fact that it has a myriad of data sources – the primary ‘layar’ plugging into Google Local Search, thus enabling it to draw from a wealth of existing reviews / photos / location and contact details.

Other layars already available include Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia, Panoramio – plus many more localised layers (the Layars displayed will be local to the country that you have your iPhone set to in International settings, or you can manually set the location in the app’s own settings panel).

Here in Japan you’ll currently be offered find ATM guides, station guides, Hot Pepper, a hair salon search and more.

The user interface is a refreshing break from that adopted by Sekai Camera and the afore mentioned Presselite apps. The manner is which their airtags float around is ‘cool’, but not very practical. It’s far easier to navigate the 3D grid laid out before you in Layar.

This is of course an extremely young market, so expect to see rapid developments over the next few months. It’s great to have some more companies entering the arena with different approaches to UI etc, and it’ll be interesting to see if any one of them comes to dominate the market.

Ok, let’s see some screenshots.

The main menu: choose a layar

The primary layer is ‘Layar Local Search’ which utilises Google Local Search. Just enter your search term. As with Google, you can enter your search terms in Japanese or English. You also have the option to define the the spread of your search.

A search for ‘station’ (it brought up train stations, a gas station and a couple of other results, such as ‘Gohongi House’)

Map view (Google map inside the app – clicking the blue jump icon will take you to the iPhone’s native Google Map app)

Ok, let’s search for restaurants:

Restaurants: Map view

This is where it gets sexy: click on the small blue jump arrow bottom right, and you’re given 3 choices:

Click on ‘Call this spot’ and your phone will dial the restaurant number. Click on ‘More info’ and this is the kind of thing you’ll get:

Customer reviews, directions / contact details, photos, it’s all there.

Click on ‘take me there’ and the route will be plotted for you on the Google map.

Of course, much of this functionality is native to the iPhone’s Google Apps map – but the seamless integration with the AR makes it far more attractive.

Twitter

So what about the Twitter Layars? I tried two out, with similar results.

So here we have Tweeps Around in AR mode. The light blue blob indicates the current active tweet, and below you have the tweet itself with the avatar.

The cool thing is, is that as you turn around, the highlighted tweet changes – so you feel that you’re kind of scanning the air for tweets! At this point you are officially living on a Star Trek set.

You can switch to map view too of course – here we see that in Tweetmondo.

List view

Flickr

It soon picked up a couple of photos I took near the station the other day.

Flickr layer options

Flickr list view

>

Wikipedia

Summary

Layar is a fantastic AR app, and provides a nice cross-over between the closed database approach of Presselite and the user-generated content of Sekai Camera. I believe the layer approach is a winner, opening the door for massive expansion.

As with all AR apps, it falls down when it comes to accuracy. One nice feature however is that it tells you how accurate it is at any one time, so you know how much to trust it. Another thing I like, is that unlike Sekai Camera it is displayed in Portrait mode, making it easier to use as a one-handed navigation device when walking.

The recent debut of two such strong players is great news for AR development, and I expect that within a year we will no longer actually need to look at anything except our iPhones as we go about our daily lives.

There’s been much made of Tonchidot‘s Sekai Camera, one of the first Augmented Reality iPhone apps to allow users to add their own content to the virtual-world database powering it.

And rightly so. Whilst Augmented Reality has been around for a long time (starting out in the military), this is the first time that it’s been made available to consumers without requiring specialist hardware. All you need is Japan’s best selling mobile handset, the iPhone.

We recently tried Sekai Camera out on our 3GS, and were pretty impressed by what we saw.

The iPhone’s GPS is used to locate nearby airtags, with the built-in compass figuring out what to direction your facing to only display relevant tags. The tags constantly wobble around in mid-air as you move (3G users who don’t have the compass can manually scroll through north/south/east/west, but should upgrade to the 3GS for ease of use and overall sex appeal).

First off then, we powered up Sekai Camera opposite Shibuya Station. As you can see there’s a fair number of tags. The white ones seem to be pre-defined – these include banks, stations, building names etc. The coloured tags are text air tags that have been added by users themselves. They don’t tend to say anything very profound, and may remind you of your first few Twitter tweets, when you had to tell everyone that you were just having a cup of coffee / brushing your teeth.

Tap on an air tag, and it fills the screen. Wait a moment, and any text displayed on it will appear in another window along with the details of the user who uploaded it (not shown below).

If you’re anywhere crowded (like Shibuya) there can be far too many tags to see any in detail. To deal with this there’s a built-in spiralator: tap and hold your finger on a tag for a few seconds and they’ll all arrange themselves in a neat rotating spiral allowing you to read them one by one.

Adding your own airtags is easy. Once you’ve registered (username / password, done in-app) just choose your tag type from the menu on the right hand side: Text, photo, or sound.

Then, enter your text / take your photo / record your audio, click on ‘post’ – and it’s up. It should then show up on your screen (and that of anyone else using the app in the area) within a few seconds. Here is Paul‘s head floating in a pub in Shibuya.

The next thing to do is take a photo of the person you’ve just made an airtag of and get them to point at their own head. Believe me, it’s trickier than you’d thing as these tags tend to wobble quite a bit (thanks for your patience Jonny!)

In tag-rich areas there are some filters which may come in handy. Under ‘Filter’ you can choose a date range (anything from tags posted in the last 24 hours, to forever), and distance from your present location (50m – 300m).

You can also choose whether or not to show your own tags, other air tags, landmarks and shouts (a shout is an airtag that someone posts by clicking on ‘shout’ – this booms out through the virtual world and fills the screen of nearby users – as a shout might fill their ears).

There’s also a ‘pocket function’ – this stores all of your bookmarked tags, and will display them on a map.

Ok, that sounds like it coulld be fun – but is it actually useful?

Erm, in a word, no.

At least not yet – but expect that to change in the near future when the next update is released.

So why’s it not all that useful yet? Well, for a start, as mentioned above, it’s like the early days of Twitter when everyone was desperate to tell others that they were feeding the cat. There’s a lot of noise out there, and whilst the distance / time filters do help, they still don’t control whose tags you see and whose you don’t. Imagine a Twitter where you basically have to follow everyone near you.

Secondly, the limitations of the iPhone (notably the compass) mean that you don’t always get accurate accurate placing of air tags. This will of course improve with future hardware updates.

But having said that, this app is AMAZING! It’s such early days for this technology, and to have a smooth user experience at this stage is, in my book, quite staggering. We will undoubtedly see significant upgrades and additional filters / functionality added in the near future (this post will be updated with news on that in a few days).

In the meantime, I’m going to be busy filling Tokyo’s virtual AR world with quality photo tags of bowls of ramen and text tags saying “I’m her now”.

[iTunes, Free]

Using it is very simple. You can ignore all the Japanese.

Image 1

- Tap the big black button in the middle.
- Say the name of your starting station. Pause a moment. Say the name of your destination station.
- Add the word “まで” (ma-de = ‘to’).
- Press the button in the middle again.

The app will now connect and search for your route (this only takes a few seconds. Of course you must have a data connection).

Image 2
The results screen shows several results, one of which is bound to match yours. Not once has it failed to place my  route at the top of the list. As you can see, it’s in English and Japanese, so this is a great way to see how station names are written in Japanese too.

Image 3
Having selected your route, the detailed results page appears. Yes, it’s all in Japanese, but even if you don’t read Japanese you can see all the important info, including time taken, cost and the number of changes. The route is diplayed below.

Click on the car / map option (地図によるルート）to see the route on the apps built-in map (image 4).

You can then click on マップ (top right) to view the map in the iPhone’s native Google Maps app (image 5).

Like many of these kinds of navigation apps (such as the Tokyo Metro App), Koetan! does not provide you with real-time timetable information – it’ll just give you the route and time it’ll take, so if you need precise timings you’ll still need an app such as Ekitan (Japanese only).

Another limitation is the fact that it only covers Tokyo (no Saitama, no Chiba etc) – no doubt this limitation is one reason it’s so accurate in terms of voice recognition, as there’s not all that much for the software to choose from.

However, this app is a fantastic way to quickly get this basic info without having to type in the station names, which is often the thing that causes the most problems for non-Japanese speakers.

• Developer: Presselite
• Buy: [iTunes, 115 yen]

Part 1: the Basic App

This is a great navigation app for Tokyoites, with a decent resolution pinchable image of the Tokyo subway network and, unlike most timetable apps which require an internet connection to function, this one will work mid-tunnel too.

It includes a GPS-enabled station finder for those times when you haven’t a clue where you are, or you can just enter the name of an area of Tokyo and it’ll pick out your nearest stations for you. A recent update brought the ability to simply select your start and end point by tapping on the stations on the map.

The app has a range of interface languages to choose from – this is a welcome addition to the line-up of japan-based public transport apps available, most of which require at least some knowledge of Japanese (Ekitan remaining the cream of the crop at present).

Whilst lacking that certain iPhone sexiness, the metro map is easy to use, with relevant stations being highlighted following searches. There’s also a link through to Google Maps, allowing the user to move seamlessly from the train to above ground to continue their journey.

There’s certainly room for improvement though, something the developers themselves acknowledge with their mention on the iTunes product page of updates currently being worked on.

Improvements to the basic app that would be good to see in future updates

Currently, the list of train lines is static, and merely serves as a key to understanding which line is which on the main map. Ideally, tapping on a line name would bring up a scrollable linear map of all stations along it, complete with interchanges for other lines.

As noted above, with the app using a local database no network connection is needed to plan a route. However, this also serves to curtail it’s functionality, as even when you do have a network connection results are limited to showing where to change trains and how long the total journey will take – there are no real-time departure or arrival times so for that you will still need something like the above-mentioned Ekitan.

Additionally, searches net only one result when multiple journey options may be available.

Being designed for non-Japanese readers, the lack of additional Japanese script for station names is understandable – but deprives users of the fun of learning kanji whilst they travel.

Part 2: Augmented Reality

The release of a new version of Tokyo Metro with an augmented reality location engine got quite a bit of attention from the international iPhone community – but how does it stand up to actual use?

Well, it’s a mixed bag.

How to use it

First off, you need to install the AR databases. These are sold separately from the app itself – you will be prompted to buy them within the app itself when you go to Settings and turn on the available Points of Interest. At present these come in several database sets (each set costing about 115 yen to download) include American Style restaurants, Japanese Style restaurants, Cafes, donuts and ice cream outlets, convenience stores and other misc leisure places. It should be noted that the same databases are used for Presselite’s other Tokyo-centric AR app, Bionic Eye Tokyo, so if you already have them for that the app will automatically use them.

(N.b. if you receive an error message when trying to buy these AR databases, reinstall the latest version of the Tokyo Metro app).

Having bought and installed your AR databases, from the app’s main display tap on the Locate icon. It will default to showing you a standard list of stations in the local area. From here, if you click on ‘Map’ you will see (surprisingly) a Google Map with all the POI listed. To enable Augmented Reality, click on ‘POI’ (Points of Interest). This will fire up your iPhone camera, and all enabled points of interest in the local area will show up, floating in the air (as shown above).

The app uses not only GPS, but also the iPhone 3GS’ built-in compass, so as you turn around, so the floating tags will change (see below about compass accuracy).

One neat thing is that as you then tilt the phone down towards the ground, the floating tags are replaced with a list, as shown below.

Click on any of these and the display will change to an arrow pointing towards the place.

When it comes to options regarding what is displayed: as well as the basic enabling / disabling of POI databases, you can also set the localization distance (200m – 3km).

The Verdict

Well this is very cool. A few years ago I never would have thought I would have this kind of AR device in my pocket, and especially not in the form of what has essentially just been a minor software install for the phone I already carried (is the iPhone not the sexiest device on Earth?!)

But to be honest, cool does not equal functionality in this case. Why? Accuracy. I’m guessing that this is not due to the app, but due to the limitations of the iPhone itself in this case and the limits in accuracy of today’s GPS (how many times have you used Google maps on your iPhone and have it tell you you’re on the other side of the street?).

Because of this, if you’re using it in AR mode to find a place the chances are you may be going in slightly the wrong direction. You are also at risk of tripping over big rocks in the road / falling down storm drains and breaking your leg because you have your eyes fixed on the screen.

BUT – the Google Map integration is good (just like the native google maps app but with more POIs). Using it in Map view allows you to make up for any inaccuracies in the positioning device.

The AR function is however great for impressing friends at parties who have yet to see convenience stores and Starbucks floating in the air.

It’s an incredible reasonable price for what is essentially cutting edge consumer technology, so if I were you, I’d get it.

N.B. Presselite’s ‘Bionic Eye Tokyo’ has no functionality that the Tokyo Metro app doesn’t have.

The iPhone and a Japan Rail IC card - a great combination to improve efficiency

More efficient use of time

Before the introduction of the iPhone, having arrived at the office employees would spend 30-40 minutes every day checking their emails – time that could have been better spent visiting clients. With the iPhone, consultants and sales staff are now able to connect to the company’s mail server and deal with their inboxes during what are often quite lengthy train journeys around the city – time that previously had been totally unproductive, and boring for the staff involved.

Thus, the average time it takes consultants to acknowledge emails has improved dramatically. Not only this, the company’s internal communication culture has changed, with emails becoming short and to the point – a positive by-product of having such a small keyboard to type on.

Cost benefits of the iPhone

The company also praises Softbank for its fixed-price unlimited data plan, which now allows effective budgeting, something that previously had not been possible. When asked about the costs of voice calls, whilst the company provided no details of any overall saving, it did point out that 47% of internal calls were now made by iPhone (fixed line extensions having been phased out for many staff) – and with Softbank offering free calls between users of its network from 1am to 9pm this naturally has had a big impact.

Security

When it comes to corporate use, the iPhone is often said to be inappropriate due to its relative lack of security. But due to the way in which they use the device (i.e. phone calls / email access / internet access) Bearing Point wouldn’t agree . Having restricted access to the iTunes App Store, and without programs such as MS Word or Powerpoint or any easy way to transfer documents to or from the iPhone, this is not such an issue (consultants also carry laptops and data cards should they need to work with documents when on the move).

Who’s responsible?

With the phones being on loan to staff from the company, there’s just one main rule: don’t lose them! Staff are warned not to leave them out ‘on display’. If they wish to download games, they can, but are required to pay for the cost of the data.

The company has also notes that less time is wasted with faulty phones. With an automatic backup being made of the phone when synched with iTunes on a company PC, should there be a problem, it doesn’t take long to restore lost settings or data. Additionally, specialist staff are not required: the users themselves are able to sort it out.

Bearing Point are now looking into setting up a VPN server for their iPhone-enabled staff.

Overall, the company is delighted with how the iPhone has changed the way its staff work, and find nothing to fault in the device.

(Original article: 「iPhone」1000台で働く形はこう変わった　ベリングポイント、導入半年
Nikkei Net, 13th March.

iPhoningJapan.com is delighted to bring you the most epic iPhone challenge yet seen in the world (probably).

Joseph Tame, known for his addiction to his iPhone (a.k.a. ‘my baby’) is going to attempt to complete the Tokyo quarter Marathon in record time whilst carrying 30,603 pairs of eyes on his forehead. This epic feat has been made possible by months of training, an Apple iPhone, Qik.com and a new invention of Joseph’s, which he calls ‘A Modified Hat’.

He will be joined by his trainer, Tom Kobayashi.

35,603 people applied to run this epic race across Tokyo – only 5000 got in: Joseph and Tom were two of the lucky few.

Knowing how disappointed the unlucky unfortunates must be feeling, Joseph vowed to make things right. He decided, he’d let them run with him.

The full story of this epic adventure will be featured on the new podcast that Joseph co-produces – Japan Podshow.

To get live alerts via twitter of Joseph’s progress & broadcasts, be sure to follow him @tamegoeswild.

Exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of this epic challenge is also available on YouTube.

Be there and submit your comments as he runs to make his iPhone vibrate – he’ll know he’s carrying your eyes and your hopes too.

UPDATE! JOSEPH POSTS VIDEO RESPONSE TO CRITICISM

In Japan, everyone wants an iPhone. So much so, that the market for small Apple stickers has exploded. Note that only one of them is holding the genuine article. These stickers were kindly provided by Japanese Snack Reviews.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Japan’s relationship with the iPhone.  Softbank’s decision to give away free iPhones with new two-year contracts has been cited as proof that sales have been disappointing thus far, and that desperate action has to be taken to increase sales.

Special edition iPhone COLOUR owned by my friend / teacher / ticket manager Nami

Others point out that this is a tactic frequently used by electronics manufacturers to shift stock prior to a new model being released (in June 2009?).

Personally though, I don’t see these online postings as having any bearing on my reality. I doubt Steve is going to pull the iPhone from Japan on the strength of one poorly researched article on Wired, nor do I think that app developers in Japan will stop developing for it as a result of bad press.

And the fact is, the iPhone is an incredible device. I mean, really incredible. I’ve never had the pleasure and the privilege of owning such a powerful, sexy little gadget before now, and six months after I first swiped my finger across its silky smooth touch-sensitive screen I continue to experience ‘Wow!’ moments as I find some new app that makes use of its outstanding native software and futuristic hardware.

It has had a massive meteor-sized positive impact upon my life here in Japan, helping me countless times on a daily basis to keep connected, stay organised, and to get stuff done.

Whilst I’ve reviewed many of these apps on this site in the past, I wanted to draw them all together in one post as a reference for people wondering what apps to download in preparation for the purchase of their precious iPhone.

Here’s a few examples.

GPS & compass

Until I bought my iPhone (which I did a mere three hours after touching down at Tokyo’s Narita Airport) I had never thought of GPS navigation as having any use in my life, as I didn’t have a car and had no intention of buying one.

However, back in the big city I was reminded that living in one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas results in ample opportunities to get lost when trying to reach a previously unvisited destination by train, bus or on foot.

The iPhone’s GPS capabilities, coupled with the built-in compass and Google Maps, make for the most amazing anti-get-lost tool yet to be invented (probably). Before heading somewhere I’ve not been before, I will quickly google the place and add it to my iPhone’s Google Map bookmarks (or the person’s address book card) – no need to devote further thought to figuring out the route. Providing I get off at the right railway station, I’ll be fine. Just walk so that the pulsing blue dot that is me gets closer to the red pin that is my destination.

This also means I can now take buses too. I used to avoid taking city buses  in Japan as I would soon lose track of where we were, and would find it hard to figure out what the driver was saying. Now I can just follow the bus as it trundles across the map, and get off at the correct stop. Amazing! Google Maps also incorporates some bus routes too, although it’s not comprehensive.

The GPS has also saved me from a lot of grief on the trains. Sometimes, when going somewhere new, I get on the wrong train. For example, I’m no stranger to the getting-on-the-express-train-when-I-need-a-local-train scenario, which results in my bombing past my stop and on into the unknown inaka. If the train’s crowded it can be tricky to see the map above the doors / the signs at the stations whizzing by. In that situation, I now just open Google Maps, and see exactly how much of an idiot I am. Oh yes, I really am going north when I should be going south.

Train timetable app: Ekitan

Now at a station whose name I can’t pronounce, I open Ekitan Express [iTunes], the railway timetable for the whole of Japan, and ask it to show me the stations nearest me using GPS – match the kanji in the list of results with those on the platform sign and moments later I have the timetable back to where I was meant to be going. Ekitan is a phenomenal app, with its bookmarks, history and fantastically easy-to-use (and sexy) interface. (It should be noted that whilst although it does have a romaji input option, a basic ability to recognise station names written in kanji is necessary)

Ekitan also provides you with information about major delays on the majority of train lines in Japan (Japanese only). You can choose which lines it provides info for, so there’s no scrolling through endless pages detailing trains that are 3 seconds late.

(Ekitan’s other seasonal apps featuring Christmas lights and cherry blossom can be given a miss).

Dictionary app: ‘Japanese’

The next Japan-related app I rely upon is ‘Japanese’ [iTunes 2300yen]. I’ve reviewed this app before – thus here I’ll just say it’s blooming marvellous. In particular, I find the ability to easily add words I look up to its word lists immensely useful – when I get home I manually transfer these to Anki and flash cards (the fact that this has to be done manually is a bonus as it’s in doing so that one starts learning). Note that at 2300yen it’s not cheap – you may want to check out some of the other free or cheaper dictionaries in the appstore first.

Anki

Speaking of Anki – iAnki is another of my first-page apps (not to be confused with the web-version of Anki, which you can of course also view on Mobile Safari). You can easily sync your word decks via a wifi network (once you’ve set it up once it’s very easy to do), then study your words regardless of whether or not you have an internet connection. I use it a lot on the Subway.

(note that iAnki is not a typical app and is not available form the iTunes store. It simply runs locally on Mobile Safari – no jailbreaking required)

Currency

Being a recent returnee to Japan, I still sometimes find myself wanting to know what something costs in British Pounds, and thus have currency [iTunes, free] on page two. Thinking about it though, recently I’ve used it more on payday to see just how many millions of pounds my monthly salary is now worth (as opposed to seeing how many millions of pounds our 32sqm apartment is costing).

Gengou Free

Gengou free [iTunes] is another handy app for people living in Japan – I reviewed that here: essentially it converts the non-Japanese calendar into the Japanese calendar (and vice-versa) – handy when form filling.

Today’s Earthquakes

今日の地震＋ (Today’s Earthquakes) [iTunes, free] is another must-have for Japan-residents. Having used it following a few recent earthquakes I must say I’m mightily impressed with how quickly it updates following a shake. I did find that the server went down in the first few minutes following a fairly long shake a few weeks ago, but it was soon back up and running and delivered the results within the promised ten minutes.

The developer did launch a Push service for this app, but the demand meant that the servers went down whenever there was an earthquake, and so for now Push has been tunred off.

Yahoo Weather

Another 1st page ‘app’ I use is not actually an app at all, it’s a Safari short cut to Yahoo Weather. I found the native iPhone weather app to be a pile of pants, and so instead use Yahoo Weather which can provide a very localised forecast using your Japanese post code. Just search once then bookmark the results page – this puts you just one tap away from a detailed 72-hour forecast.

Twittelator Pro

There are a few other apps which, whilst not exactly Japan-specific, do play an important role in my efforts to feel thoroughly at home here. Mail aside, Twittalator Pro for  Twitter is King. There exists a very active Twitter community here in Japan, and I’ve found this to be a great support.

Whilst I now have the beginnings of a family here in Japan and thus am not so prone to isolation, it was not always the case. I can imagine that had I had twitter access when I first lived here in 2001 I would not have felt half as isolated as I did then. I also really enjoy being given glimpses into the lives of other Tokyoites. More than that though, it’s really useful, with news and links to other useful / entertaining resources constantly being exchanged.

If you want to find more people on Twitter near you that speak your language, you can use Twitter’s advanced search)

Everytrail

My final ‘favourite’ (totally non Japan-related) app is Everytrail, which uses the iPhone’s GPS to track where you are – and uploads your route to a Google Map, complete with stats re. speed / elevation etc. I’ve been using it for training for the Tokyo Quarter Marathon (which on Sunday saw us run from Shibuya to near Shinuku via the other side of the Imperial Palace). Having a visual reference / record of my interactions with the city helps develop my sense of where I am, my relationship with the place. Like my trip by train back to the UK from Japan in 2007, this kind of experience of overland travel (which I probably wouldn’t do if I didn’t have a GPS tracking device) is immensely valuable, giving me a real sense of place that excessive use of the underground robs me of.

Incidentally, the actual marathon is taking place on the 22nd of March 2009, and I’ll be attempting to live stream video [to our sister channel Pokya on uStream.tv] from the iPhone whilst I’m running from Shinjuku to the Imperial Palace. An alert will also be sent via Twitter to remind you to tune in to the action – and you’ll also be able to urge me onwards via the live comment box.

Whilst I now have over 100 apps on my iPhone, these are the ones I turn to again and again, and are what I consider to be a part of one’s essential toolkit for a fulfilling life in Japan.

So that’s me – how about you?

How does your iPhone light up your life?

(I so should be paid to blog by Apple)

If you’re interested in that, you might want to do a search for ‘Japanese’ in the iTunes store – it brings up a lot of results, including audio flash cards, dictionaries, travel phrase apps etc.

If you have any to recommend, let us know – you can reach us here or reply to us on Twitter!

“…if you are a gaijin, it’s way easier to get married in Japan than to buy an iPhone!!

Read Jerome’s full post here.

There will be no change to the existing data plan, so iPhoners wishing to pay less for unlimited data will need to manually apply for a change in contract.

Doing so will result in the standard 2-year contract being renewed, thus if you change your plan on the 1st April 2009, the contract will be extended until 30th March 2011 (but can be cancelled at any time in exchange for a 9,960 yen fee).