At last year's WIT Conference in Singapore, Professor Adrian David Cheok spoke of being able to send senses over the Internet – smells, hugs and touches.

Well, at WIT Japan, his students at the Mixed Reality Lab at Keio University demonstrated a prototype of a ring – called Ring U – that allows you to "touch" your loved ones while you're apart.

Still in prototype and billed as the world's first tele-hug ring, it is a solid white band which when squeezed, sends a signal through the Internet to your friend or partner's ring so that he or she can feel the squeeze and they, in turn, can reciprocate by squeezing their ring.

Professor Cheok describes it as "a new product where everyone can easily and inexpensively send touch and communication to each other remotely through the Internet".

You can also send emoticons and change the colour of your partner's ring to signify your mood.

It's not quite fully there yet – apparently the product will be launched late next year – but the intent is there, to be able to "touch" someone you miss when you're on the road.

The reaction was mixed from the people I showed it to. Dorsett's Philip Schaetz' face lit up when his finger was "squeezed". Cool, he said. Travelstart's Stephan Ekbergh wasn't too impressed. "I've been away from my wife for a week, I am going to need more than a touch," he said.

Personally, depending on the cost and how it is marketed, I think Ring-U will be a hit especially with Asian youths. I can also see this working with people who're always on the road. Cute also works in Asia like nowhere else and this is definitely cute, cool and fun.

Look at the emoticons and stickers that are so successful with chat apps like Line, WeChat and Kakao.
At WIT Japan, Akira Morikawa, CEO of Line Corporation, said that the bulk of Line's revenues come from games and stickers – 50% from in-app purchases across its 24 different social games and 30% from the 191 stickers that are sold in the chat app.

Line announced quarterly earnings for Q4 2012 for the first time this month – earnings climbed 92% from the last quarter to hit JPY 5.82 billion (US$58 million) – 80% of that total came from Japan.

Launched in June 2011, the Line app now has 160 million users and is growing by three million new subscribers a week. (If you haven't used Line, think of it as What'sApp on social steroids.)

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