09.11.2002

japantoday > technology

Mona Lisa offers i-mode advice

TOKYO — Index Corp and the Japan Acoustic Laboratory jointly said Friday they have started offering a cell phone service in which historical figures such as Mona Lisa and Sei Shonagon, the 10th-century author of "The Pillow Book," offer advice to subscribers.

The service, available through NTT DoCoMo Inc's i-mode cell phone services, also allows users to download dinosaur sounds, said the two, which recently collaborated with toy maker Takara Co on a product called Bowlingual that translates dog barks into Japanese.

They said the service features advice by Napoleon, warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the Tokugawa shogunate, novelist Osamu Dazai, and Sugawara Michizane, a ninth-century academic, poet and politician who is the patron saint of Japanese students and scholars.

Michizane, for instance, offers encouragement to students cramming for exams, while Sei Shonagon can provide enlightenment on "how to woo those you love," they said.

The two claim they used scientific methods to simulate the voices of the dead people and dinosaurs, adding they will issue reports on how they developed the voices. They have set up an institute to continue research into the field.

The Japan Acoustic Laboratory says it employed its "voice montage technology" through which voice approximations are derived by using data on the shape and size of human skulls.

Two types of i-mode services will be available for a monthly fee of either 90 yen or 300 yen, depending on the number of voices that subscribers download. (Kyodo News)

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