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This Japanese vending machine is a virtual girl who sends you text messages

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If you have ever visited Japan, you will know that there’s a vending machine on nearly every street. You may recall that we previously wrote about a futuristic vending machine which uses facial recognition technology to recommend suitable drinks to whoever is standing in front of it. And now just recently we found another interesting use of vending machines from a well known company. Georgia, is a popular canned coffee brand produced by Coca-Cola Japan. Canned coffee has always been a popular and affordable beverage among Japanese salary men long before Starbucks arrived on the scene. Even now many of them will opt for vending machine coffee instead of neighborhood stores or cafes. With this specific demographic in mind, Georgia came up with a clever promotion that involves vending machines and mobile phones. Their idea is to turn a relatively boring vending machine into a more neighborly store, doing so in an effort to prompt more purchases. Here’s how it works. You can download an app to your smartphone, and choose one female manager from a list. By reading the QR code posted on your most frequented vending machine, the app registers that machine as your favorite. The female manager…

Georgia-app

If you have ever visited Japan, you will know that there’s a vending machine on nearly every street. You may recall that we previously wrote about a futuristic vending machine which uses facial recognition technology to recommend suitable drinks to whoever is standing in front of it. And now just recently we found another interesting use of vending machines from a well known company.

android-georgia-coffee

Georgia, is a popular canned coffee brand produced by Coca-Cola Japan. Canned coffee has always been a popular and affordable beverage among Japanese salary men long before Starbucks arrived on the scene. Even now many of them will opt for vending machine coffee instead of neighborhood stores or cafes. With this specific demographic in mind, Georgia came up with a clever promotion that involves vending machines and mobile phones.

Their idea is to turn a relatively boring vending machine into a more neighborly store, doing so in an effort to prompt more purchases. Here’s how it works.

You can download an app to your smartphone, and choose one female manager from a list. By reading the QR code posted on your most frequented vending machine, the app registers that machine as your favorite.

The female manager will send you friendly texts whenever you’re nearby and you can then communicate back and forth with her.

This experience turns otherwise ordinary vending machines into more of a store-like destination that keeps you coming back. The Georgia app is available on both iOS and Android platforms.

You can check out the promotion video below to see how the app can bring some enjoyment to a working man’s life.

In Japan, sticky notes have gone high tech

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I primarily use Google Calendar for my daily planning and task management, but when it comes to weekly or monthly plans, I still use a regular paper planner. But I recently came across a fun product called Picotto Fusen, comprised of a small sticky with a QR code printed on it. The code lets you conveniently attach or embed photos from your mobile phone to that particular sticky. Just add the sticky somewhere in your notebook. Then, by using the dedicated smartphone app (available for both iOS and Android) to read the QR code printed on the sticky, you can choose photos from your photo library to associate with it. In fact, the sticky can record as many photos as you want, giving you instant access to those photos. In work meetings with white boards, I usually take photos of what has been written on the board for later reference. But finding these photos in a cluttered photo library can be very time consuming. But now I can add a sticky in my planner to find the information I need. Picotto Fusen was a standout product at ISOT, a large annual stationary products fair held in Japan. It is available…

Picotto-Fusen

I primarily use Google Calendar for my daily planning and task management, but when it comes to weekly or monthly plans, I still use a regular paper planner. But I recently came across a fun product called Picotto Fusen, comprised of a small sticky with a QR code printed on it. The code lets you conveniently attach or embed photos from your mobile phone to that particular sticky.

Just add the sticky somewhere in your notebook. Then, by using the dedicated smartphone app (available for both iOS and Android) to read the QR code printed on the sticky, you can choose photos from your photo library to associate with it. In fact, the sticky can record as many photos as you want, giving you instant access to those photos.

In work meetings with white boards, I usually take photos of what has been written on the board for later reference. But finding these photos in a cluttered photo library can be very time consuming. But now I can add a sticky in my planner to find the information I need.

Picotto-Fusen-stickies

Picotto Fusen was a standout product at ISOT, a large annual stationary products fair held in Japan. It is available in three different color variations (classic pink, chocolate beige, and charcoal grey) and comes with 24 stickies. The product can be purchased for 420 yen (or about $4.25) over on the company’s online shop or on Amazon.