iPad的日式生活料理

    在日本的一个婚礼上，伴郎森川智之拿出了两台iPad。尽管日本以科技发达而著称，但在场的不少年龄较大的宾客对触摸屏并不熟悉，在他们面前，森川算是较早精通这款产品的人了。不过，当这些客人在iPad上开心地浏览一对新人的生活照时，平板电脑便捷好用的特性立刻征服了他们。在亚洲以外的国家，婚礼上不太可能安排这个环节。但在日本，这么做完全合乎礼仪。

    苹果（Apple）iPad问世后，日本涌现出大量特有的本地化应用。因为本国没有流行的替代产品，日本的程序员就自己开发了一些特别的用途，有时候还真能给人不少灵感。位于东京的日本技术分析师林伸行说：“北海道的渔民现在开始用iPad记录自己捕捞过的地点，以防过度捕捞。在佐贺县，所有救护车都用iPad快速定位病人需要转诊的地点。神户的外科医生则在手术中使用iPad。我还能再举出另外50个很酷的应用，但它们大多都不能在安卓系统上安装。”

    日本人喜欢什么样的应用呢？下面举几个例子：

婚礼助手

    在日本，婚礼的繁文缛节一大堆，所以婚礼策划是件非常复杂的事。请人来执行婚礼策划成本很高，但一款名为Chabio的应用却能保证基本不掉链子地完成任务。它不仅能标出所有必需的信息——比如您丈母娘的名字——还能提供一大张预先填好的事项清单。这张清单按照时间段来划分婚礼筹备进程（比如婚礼举行前的6到12个月，婚礼前的4到1天等），到大喜日子到来的那一天，新人就不用大喊“送我准时赶到教堂！”之类的话了。来宾们也能使用移动运营商多科莫公司（Docomo）的人气服务“i-concier”。只要把手机对准婚礼请帖，手机就会详细告诉他们，如何到达婚礼现场。

漫游世界

    日本的手机用户很早就开始使用各种定位服务和导航服务。但新应用Sekai Camera的开发者井口崇人表示，Sekai Camera进一步拓展了定位功能，创造了“大家都梦寐以求的全新四维空间”。和其他所谓的现实增强应用一样，它先计算出你所在的位置，随后用一个摄像头在一幅真实图像的顶部显示跟你位置相关的特定地理信息。这个应用的绝妙之处在于，个人和商家都能添加自己的信息。他们只需要把智能手机或平板电脑对准某个场景，就能添加包括文本、图像和声音在内的“标签”，来到这个区域的其他人就能读到这些信息。这些标签可以变成商家提供的优惠券（比方说，你可以在一家黑啤酒吧领取一瓶免费的吉尼斯黑啤），或者朋友给你的旅行建议。

    Best-man Toshiyuki hands out two iPads at a Japanese wedding reception. He's something of an early adopter while some of the older guests are unfamiliar with touch screens, despite their country's tech-savvy reputation. But the tablet's intuitive quality wins them over as they begin happily perusing a slide show of images from the betrotheds' lives -- not something wedding guests might do outside of Asia but which, in Japan, is de rigueur.

    Applications unique to Japan are blossoming here thanks to Apple's (AAPL) iPad. In the absence of a popular home-grown alternative, domestic app makers have come up with some unusual -- sometimes inspiring -- approaches. "The fishermen in Hokkaido are using the iPad to record where they have fished to avoid over-fishing. In Saga prefecture, all the ambulances uses iPad to quickly locate where the patient has to be transferred. In Kobe, physicians using iPads during operations," says Tokyo-based tech consultant Nobuyuki Hayashi. "I could name another cool 50. There is almost nothing on Android tablets."

    What is working in Japan? Here are a few examples:

Marriage of Convenience

    With heaps of protocol to observe, wedding planning in Japan is a complex affair. What an expensive, human wedding planner might otherwise do, the Chabio app promises to accomplish with minimal fuss. Not only will it keep tabs on all the necessary information -- such as your fiancée's mother's name -- but it also sports a huge pre-populated to-do list. It is divided by time frame (e.g. six to 12 months prior to wedding, four to one day before the wedding, etc.), so users won't be shouting "get me to the church on time" on the big day. Guests can also use Docomo's popular "i-concier" service to point their mobiles at a wedding invite and be told how exactly to get there.

See the World

    Japanese cellphone owners have long enjoyed location-based services and spiffy mobile navigators. But the Sekai Camera app goes further to generate "a new, fourth dimension everybody has dreamed of," says Takahito Iguchi the application's creator. Like other so-called augmented-reality apps, it calculates your position, then, using the camera, displays location-specific information graphically on top of a real-world view. But the genius of Sekai Camera is that individuals and businesses can add their own information. They just point a smartphone/tablet camera at the landscape adding "tags" that can include text, images, and sound that can be picked up by others in the area later. Tags can translate into coupons from businesses (a free Guinness when you stop at a bar serving the black stuff for example) or travel tips from friends.