3d illusion arts: Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Japan’s “Infidelity Phone” Keeps Extramarital Affairs Private
Nigerian Artisan Covers Car in Woven Raffia Palm Cane to Advertise His Business
Meet the Guy Who Built a Train in His Basement

Japan’s “Infidelity Phone” Keeps Extramarital Affairs Private

Posted: 14 Jan 2013 04:30 AM PST

These days, the world is going crazy over smartphones, but in Japan, people who engage in extramarital relations remain faithful to a seemingly outdated mobile phone which does a great job of keeping their affairs private. It’s even been nicknamed the “uwaki keitai” or “infidelity phone”.

The Fujitsu ”F-Series” flip-phones are not coolest-looking or most feature-full mobiles you can buy in Japan, but they remain very popular thanks to some very efficient stealth privacy features that help people cheat on their partners without being caught. According to a recent article by the Wall Street Journal, not even the latest smartphones come close to the aging Fujitsu, when it comes to keeping their private business private. Apparently, the F-Series “private mode” is a layer of invisible security that does a perfect job of hiding incoming calls and messages from contacts marked as private. The only visible signal that lets users know they’ve been contacted by one such contact is a subtle change in the color or shape of the battery or antenna icons. The changes are practically undetectable by the untrained eye, and even if someone might get suspicious, the private mode can only be turned off by a secret combination of keys, to make concealed calls, text messages and voice mail available.

Photo: Thinkstock

Bakanabe, a Japanese blogger who writes anonymously about picking up women recently tested out some smartphone alternatives, but ended up refurbishing his three-year-old mobile with a new case and battery, after he noticed nothing came close to it. ”Women may want to check my phone for strange emails or calls when I’m not around. With Fujitsu’s ‘privacy mode,’ they can’t see that information at all,” he told WSJ in an email. “The key is to give off the impression that you’re not locking your phone at all.” Another blogger, Poza, who is currently juggling three girlfriends, tried switching to the iPhone, and using its stealth apps, but quickly went back to his F-Series, as well. ”In terms of keeping my cheating hidden, this does more than enough,” he wrote in an email.

Fujitsu first introduced the privacy features in 2002, as part of strict security requirements for all phones carried by NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan’s biggest carrier. After hearing stories of couples and families splitting up, and workers getting in trouble over leaving their mobile phones unguarded, Takeshi Natsuno, a senior DoCoMo executive at the time, insisted on more stringent security for the phones. ”If Tiger Woods had this Japanese feature in his phone, he wouldn’t have gotten in trouble,” commented Nastuno, now a professor at Keio University’s Graduate School of Media and Governance. he was probably right, as a Tokyo-based consulting company who helps people find out if their partners are cheating, reveals overhalf of his 600 clients find evidence of cheating on their partners’ mobile phones.

Fujitsu promotes the security features of its phones, but has never acknowledged their usefulness at keeping cheating private, and refuses to comment on the infidelity phone nickname. These days, the company is trying to phase out its older models and promote its line of smartphones, but cheaters loyal to the brand’s private mode say the newer models are “totally useless”. The Japanese company says it will roll out more convenient and secure features in the future.

Photo: Crooz.jp

Unfortunately for cheaters in the Western world, the Fujitsu F-Series runs software created for the domestic market, and aren’t available outside Japan. Still, there is an alternative – CATE, or Call and Text Eraser, an app for Android phones that hides calls and messages from contacts added to a “blacklist”. These, as well as the app itself remain hidden until the used enters a secret code. After hearing about Fujitsu’s private mode feature, Neal Desai, the app’s creator said: ”That’s more genius than my app.”

Japan’s “Infidelity Phone” Keeps Extramarital Affairs Private was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Nigerian Artisan Covers Car in Woven Raffia Palm Cane to Advertise His Business

Posted: 14 Jan 2013 03:10 AM PST

Ojo Obaniyi, a talented artisan from the Nigerian city of Ibadan has come up with an ingenious way of advertising his raffia palm cane weaving services – he covered the inside and outside of his Volkswagen pickup in the natural material.

There are a lot of raffia palm cane weavers in Nigeria, but one of them has managed to attract the attention of the whole internet, after photos of his unique advertisement-on-wheels were picked up by major news sites. 40-year-old Ojo Obaniyi had the original idea to cover up both the inside and outside of his small Volkswagen pickup in raffia palm cane. That includes the entire car body, the wheel caps, chairs, steering wheel and the entire dashboard. When he was done, he jumped in his one-of-a-kind vehicle and started driving around the city, attracting the attention of passers-by. Ojo, who has 20 years of experience weaving raffia palm cane, said "I wanted to prove a point that it is not only the educated elite that can make positive changes in society. We, the artisans also have talents to effect a change and make a positive impact in the society. That is why I decided that I too must do something that will make people to recognize me and know me across the whole world and by extension prove to the world that African and indeed the entire Black Race have very talented people." This just goes to show you creative ideas and talent don’t need big advertising budgets to be effective.

Photo: Postman

Photo: REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye

Photo: Postman

via African Spotlight

Nigerian Artisan Covers Car in Woven Raffia Palm Cane to Advertise His Business was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Meet the Guy Who Built a Train in His Basement

Posted: 14 Jan 2013 01:57 AM PST

Canadian Jason Schron loves VIA trains so much that he actually spent four and a half years and $10,000 building his own genuine replica of a 1980s VIA train cart, accurate down to the tiniest details, right in the basement of his home, in Vaughan, Ontario.

“The train is where I feel most at home,” Schron says. It’s where I feel most at peace. Especially when it’s hurtling along at 85mph with the snow and rain pelting down outside – it’s the perfect place to be.” But since he could’t really ask his family to live in a real train, he settled for the next best thing – building his own VIA train cart replica in the basement of their house. ”I’ve always wanted to have a VIA train in my basement since I was a kid,” the Canadian rail-geek admits, so when it was time for him and his wife to buy a house. he would always say no if the place didn’t have a basement big enough to accommodate his dream replica. And after they found a suitable space, he dedicated around 2,500 hours over the course of four and a half years to getting every detail of the 1980s VIA cart just right. Making it look authentic was as difficult as you can imagine, and Jason says he had to scrap everything and start over three times, but it was all worth it for the model train company owner. Now he’s known as the “the guy with the train in his basement” and he even posted a video on YouTube showcasing his impressive replica.

Photo: Jason Schron

In order to make his basement train look as real as possible, Jason Schron needed some original VIA parts, only getting his hands on them was no easy feat. “I still have the letter from when I wrote to VIA in 1987 to ask them if they would sell me their seats,” he remembers. “They said they couldn’t. But then my friends and I find out about VIA train 5647 – it was going to be scrapped.” That’s when they managed to acquire all the little things that make his life-size model feel so real, like the genuine seat numbers, the coat hooks and the original carpet. The toilet was converted into an audio room that most often just plays train noises, and at one end of the basement cart he added a photo mural that makes it look likes you could step into the next train cart.

Photo: Jason Schron

Jason Schron becomes a member of our club of eccentric people who built cool stuff in their basements, joining the guy who built a submarine and the artist who decorated his basement with a sharpie.