COMMENT
Japan is the cradle of mobile advancement and Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo is often at the forefront of some of the most far-sighted - and far out - developments.
Dropping by their stand today, I took a look at some new functionality the operator is touting. One device which caught my eye came equipped with a breathalyser - the idea being that it could be used to monitor the booze levels of lorry drivers, for example.
Why hasn't this been done before? Ignoring the lorry drivers for a moment, in-built breathalysers have many more uses. What about a phone that breathalyses you if you try and make a call after 1:00AM on a Friday night and blocks certain numbers accordingly?
No, you can't ring your ex. No, you can't ring the kebab house. Yes, you can ring a taxi. That sort of thing.
Other health-focused initiatives debuting at the show have included a $10m public private partnership to fight diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis in Africa, with health workers equipped with mobiles to map disease spread.
Meanwhile, the NFC Forum was talking up standards - particularly their appearance by the summer. Among the issues still to be settled is how peer-to-peer NFC will work.
One group of people the NFC Forum predicts could take advantage of P2P transfers is parents paying pocket money to their kids. How long 'til kids work out how to nick each others' dinner money with crafty use of contactless?
Whether said standards turn up or not, it will be interesting to see if the financial services and retail communities get involved - problems over how to split the cash are the main reason analysts believe we don't have NFC services in the UK.
Meanwhile, proof - if proof were needed - you can bring next-generation mobile services to the masses but you cannot make them drink. On the way to a briefing in a taxi today, some colleagues and I were held up by the confused driving of another taxi just ahead, decked out in Nokia Navigator branding. (That's the Finn's latest GPS phone to the uninitiated.) For all its livery, the Nokia Navigator was well and truly lost. If only he'd had a phone with GPS…
Another manufacturer with GPS plans is RIM, which launched its first GPS-enabled device at the show: the 8800.
RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillie today refuted charges that the advent of the BlackBerry has ruined business meetings by driving users to check and reply to email constantly. "I don't think we've ruined meetings - I think we've liberated people from really boring meetings," he joked.
Read more of Jo Best's 3GSM Diary:
