Point and click technology goes commercial in Japan

Rating: the world is not enough

By Annie Turner

Your mother might have told you that pointing is rude, but GeoVector of San Francisco doesn’t agree. It’s teamed up with CyberMap Japan to launch Mapion Pointing Appli for mobile camera phones in Japan. After trials, the service has just gone commercial. Consumers can simply point and click their phones at one of 700,000 points of interest across the country to receive content. The points of interest include retailers, restaurants and historical sites.

GeoVector says its technology is now easier to use, provides a personalised, local search service and means that consumers and advertisers can interact without any the exchange of any personal information.

The service was launched on KDDI’s network in January 2006 and can be downloaded on to the Sony Ericsson models W32S, W41S, W44S, the W41K from Kyocera and Casio’s W42CA. This amounts to 2 million phones, apparently.

In that bizarre way Americans have of patenting universal words and phrases they didn’t invent, GeoVector has registered the Whole Wide World as a trademark, as in you use a mouse and your PC to search the world wide web and the Mapion Pointing Appli to search the Whole Wide World…

Perhaps someone should mention 700,000 points of interest in Japan doesn’t constitute the whole world, wide or otherwise?

Related News:

1. The Geovector handset discovered in Earls Court
2. MyClick – one click image recognition technology
3. Three questions with Mobile Search providers MCN on the big move to Japan
4. Chinese Search Provider Baidu goes to Japan
5. QR codes, Coupons Big in Japan – but don’t forget France