Willcom will be launching "Willcom ADSL Service Type 2" o­n the 24th, which allows those without landline phone contracts to use ADSL services. In December of 2005 the company introduced "ADSL Service Type 1," bringing ADSL access at home, AIR-EDGE wireless access while away, and fixed landline service to a single bill.

ADSL Service Type 2 will be available in two different packages: "ADSL50M Mega Course" for 4,773 yen per month, offering a download speed of 50.5Mbps and upload speed of 12.2Mbps, and "ADSL3M Course" for 3,873 yen per month, offering a download speed of 3Mbps and upload of 1Mbps. There's a sign-up fee of 5,145 yen, but sign up before September 30th and the fee will be waived if your service starts by November 30th.

Inspired by:
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/0608/22/news030.html

Press Release:
http://www.willcom-inc.com/ja/corporate/press/2006/08/22/index.html

We'll start our day with an announcement from Synaptics, an American company that manufactures touchpads used in notebook PCs. In collaboration with Germany's PilotFish, they've developed a buttonless mobile phone called the "Onyx." It takes advantage of Synaptic's "ClearPad" capacitance touchscreen technology.

Traditionally, transparent touchscreens have been clear membranes placed over standard LCDs, requiring the user to use something like a stylus to register input o­n them. ClearPad however is similar to the touchpad of your laptop computer, meaning it can recognize complicated gestures and such drawn with just a finger.

This approach opens a number of new avenues for mobile phones -- ITmedia gives examples of drawing an "X" o­n the screen to close an application, sending messages by dragging them outside the window, and answering a phone call just by touching the phone.

Since Synaptics is an American company, they have an English press release and product site already available. The ITmedia article is here.

KDDI is all set to release a new mobile phone you're supposed to give to your children. This o­ne adds a new feature that will automatically transmit the GPS coordinates of the handset in the event that its power is turned off.

NHC's new device in the "Magic Talkers" line is a portable media player for those who want to try their luck at English conversation. Readers of this article however may be more interested in the device's other functions, such as playback of DivX and XviD files.

Onkyo's new "MP-1000J" is a media player casing for 2.5" hard drives set to be released o­n September 1st. It's going to be around 14,800 yen from o­nkyo. Media files stored o­n a hard drive inside the casing can be output via o­ne of the device's output jacks: Composite, Component, Composite audio, and S/PDIF. It features a USB port for connection to your PC.

Supported file types (and extensions) are MPEG-1, 2, 4, DivX, XviD (avi/mpg/mpeg/m2v/dat/ifo/vob), MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, WAV (mp3/wma/ogg/wav) and JPEG (jpg).

Inspired by:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/0821/onkyo.htm

Press Release:
http://www2.jp.onkyo.com/what/news.nsf/view/mp1000j_0901

Casio's "GPR-100" watch is the world's smallest and lightest watch to include a GPS receiver. Details inside.

Coming soon to a FOMA handset near you: full episodes of "Mobile Suit Z Gundam," "Mobile Suit Gundam SEED," "Noein - to your other self," "Eureka Seven," "Wings of Rean," and "Neon Genesis Evangelion."

We don't need to explain what Social Networking Services are; Americans need o­nly think of MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Japanese need o­nly think of mixi (who is by the way putting out their IPO).

Word o­n the street (if you want to call the Nihon Keizai Shimbun "the street") is that SoftBank plans o­n introducing a Social Networking Service intended, obviously, for the company's mobile phones. Users can create profile for themselves, write entries, post comments o­n other users' entries, and so o­n, using their mobile phone. Also in the pipe for the service is the ability to allow users to share images captured with their mobile phone.

SoftBank blew off the report, saying that it "isn't anything that we've announced, and it's just a speculation piece that didn't involve any actual newsgathering from us... so we can't comment o­n it."

Inspired by:
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/0608/21/news094.html

That's the million dollar question over at NTT DoCoMo right now.

Japan has recently seen a big surge in popularity of One-Seg, the 1st segment of terrestrial digital broadcasts intended for mobile devices. Each of the three major carriers has at least one handset that offers One-Seg support: DoCoMo the P901iTV, Vodafone the 905SH, and au the W33SA, W33SA II, and W41H.

Vodafone's and au's handsets are setup such that when you cancel service, you will no longer be able to watch terrestrial digital broadcasts using that mobile phone. From a hardware point of view, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- One-Seg signals are just as public as terrestrial analog signals, and the phone is still equipped with the capability to handle them. Vodafone said that their 905SH "cannot operate without a USIM card inserted," and KDDI said that "One-Seg is offered as an au service called 'EZ TV.'" How about DoCoMo?

They don't know either. The P901iTV is designed such that it can handle One-Seg broadcasts without a SIM card, but recent Japanese media reports have suggested that, also on DoCoMo, you'll be unable to watch One-Seg broadcasts if you cancel your DoCoMo contract. DoCoMo has today issued an official response: "we haven't decided." Uhh, thanks for nothing?

Inspired by:
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/0608/21/news062.html

DoCoMo is set to launch a new system tomorrow that allows FOMA users to make better use of their mobile phones during disasters and big events.