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  • Video: Cute Teddy Bear Charatter Reads Tweets For You

    Serkan Toto

    Dr. Serkan Toto is an independent consultant and advisor focusing on Japan’s web, mobile and social gaming industries. Based in Tokyo, he works together with financial institutions and startups worldwide. Serkan has been the Japan contributor for TechCrunch.com since 2008. He is sept-lingual, holds an MBA and is a PhD in economics. → Learn More

    Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

    On Friday, we’ve shown you Twimal, a super-cute USB toy for Twitter users that can read specific tweets out loud (so you don’t have to look at the computer screen to follow your time line). But before Takara Tomy, a smaller Japanese toy company called WiZ has brought the so-called Charatter [JP] to the Japanese market, a teddy bear that’s able to do the same.

    What’s special about Charatter is that it can be used on both Windows PCs (software install required) and the iPhone (after the user installs the free Charatter iPhone app/see below) and that the little bear moves his lip in sync with the tweets he reads.

    The bear stands 9.5cm tall, is battery-powered and was released in Japan last year.

    As the Charatter is Japan only, I am not sure how well it handles tweets in English. If you want to lay your hands on one, I suggest contacting specialized shopping services like Rinkya or Flutterscape (they can can surely get one shipped outside Japan).

    Here is Charatter’s official promo video (in Japanese):