I recently moved a few years' worth of email from an old archive onto my current Mac.
Look at what I was interested in back in 2000!
I impress even myself sometimes! : )
From: Gen_Kanai@toyota.com
Date: February 15, 2000 4:07:01 AM JST
To: gkanai@earthlink.net
Subject: ruby
new language to check out
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/
Joshua Schacter of del.icio.us, who I've known since 1999 or so, went up to Harvard to be hosted by David Weinberger and the Berkman Center. Good Q&A here.
"Why didn't Technorati build a Memeorandum?"
GREAT question.
The Japan Times has a decent interview with Alex Kerr, one of the most prominent writers on Japan. I met Kerr in NYC at a Japan Society event with Eiko Ishioka, who is good friends with Kerr. Most interesting is his comments on how the Japanese have read Kerr's critique of modern Japan "Dogs and Demons," as well as Kerr's thoughts on Arudo Debito, a naturalized Japanese citizen who has worked to raise issues surrounding civil rights and racism in Japan.
What kind of reaction did you get to Dogs and Demons?I lot of people tell me that it is deeply disturbing, then after they read it they have this catharsis.
I'm (also) accused of being racist and all this stuff -- but you can't worry about that. It's very often people fresh off the boat; it's the newcomers who feel that way, (who) have come to make a new life in this exotic fabulous place.
I think of myself as coming from the inside. The reaction from the Japanese has been overwhelmingly positive. In the tourist industry (Dogs and Demons) is practically a bible at this point. I get constant requests to speak at Japanese tourist industry conventions. For the people who say, "how could he say this? Isn't this racist and terrible?" -- you have got to look at how the Japanese have responded.
The book is now in its 8th printing in Japanese. Ishihara Shintaro, of all people, has now given two press conferences holding the book up to the press and saying "why haven't you read this?"
In Dogs and Demons you argue that Japan has failed to internationalize. What do you think about the work of Debito Arudou and others to combat racial discrimination in Japan?Well, somebody has to do it. I'm glad that there is a whistle-blower out there. But, I am doubtful whether in the long run it really helps. One would hope that he could do it another way. He's not doing it the Japanese way. He's being very gaijin in his openly combative attitude, and usually in Japan that approach fails.
I fear that his activities might tend to just confirm conservative Japanese in their belief that gaijin are difficult to deal with.
That said, perhaps we who live here are slow to stick our necks out when we sense an injustice, and quick to self-censor in order to get along smoothly in our communities.
To me the most interesting aspect of Arudou Debito is that, in taking on Japanese citizenship, he has brought the dialogue inside Japan. His activities reveal the fact that gaijin and their gaijin ways are now a part of the fabric of Japan's new society. A very small part of course, but a vocal and real part.
Japan sees beginning of change - 'Dogs & Demons' author Alex Kerr
Absolutely important reading for everyone who is interested in the recovery of Japan's economy.
The Japan Stock Blog - Merrill Lynch's Jesper Koll, 'Japan is Back, For Real This Time'
I have no idea if this is iChat or AIM or what, but I get this EVERYDAY and it is SO FARKING ANNOYING!!!
MSN logs me in each and every time without fail.
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
One of my good friends has recently launched a blog for Maybelline in Japan.
Enjoy!
With the recent news of the joint venture between NTT DoCoMo and Rakuten to build a new mobile auction business, I've been thinking a bunch about the mobile auction space.
Then, out of the blue, an analyst from a European mobile/telecoms newsletter contacted me regarding my musings. I spent a few more minutes elaborating on my ideas and they may make their way into a newsletter.
However, I reserve the right to publish my own thoughts on my own blog, so I'll jot them down here as well. We'll see how much of my ideas get into the article.
--- Q & A between a European mobile/telecoms analyst and me, Gen Kanai ---
Technorati Tags: auction, DoCoMo, Japan, kddi, mobile, analysis, Rakuten, Vodafone
Fortune magazine has a profile of Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Internet Media, who has made some significant purchases this year in order to bring News Corp. into the Internet age.
I was drawn to the article because, like most people, I'm wondering if Murdoch and News Corp. really understand the Internet, or if they're just scrambling around spending cash without a clear strategy.
In reading this Q&A, I was pretty surprised, taken aback really, by two quotes from Levinsohn. Tell me if they seem really strange to you as well.
Earlier this year you were running one website, Foxsports.com. This summer you were put in charge of Rupert Murdoch’s web strategy. How does that feel?
I know this is going to sound like bullshit, but I really mean it. For me to be able to sit and listen to Rupert and Peter and Roger Ailes (CEO of the Fox News Channel), as well as Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman (co-chairmen of the Fox film studio), it's like I'm going to school every day with these industry leaders. Not that I ever really learned anything at school.
It's one thing to be humble. This is quite strange to see a company president proclaim in public that he never learned anything at school.
Then later on Levinsohn was asked:
How do you plan to make to make Fox Interactive Media work with the rest of News Corp.?
So that it doesn't seem like we're buying all these idiotic, disparate businesses, here's the thing that sort of runs throughout what we're doing: We've bought audience, youth and communities that play to the sweet spots of News Corp.’s strengths.
Huh? "idiotic, disparate businesses"? Did he really say that? What did he mean to say?
RUPERT'S WEB RULES Q&A: Murdoch's Web Czar [fortune.com]
Technorati Tags: Fox Internet Media, Myspace, Murdoch
THIS IS WHY I LUV TEH INTARWEB!!!
caliente!
testing blog update via Flock 0.5
Hi everyone.
I'm looking for a good backup solution for Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger.) Carbon Copy Cloner, which I used with Panther hasn't been updated yet.
I see that LaCie's SilverKeeper product is freeware and is updated for Tiger.
Anyone out there using SilverKeeper?
Comments would be wonderful.
My second cousin, Nao Tamura, has designed a phone for AU!
I have to put in screenshots from the AU site because IT IS FLASH AND HAS NO WAY FOR ME TO LINK TO IT. GRR!!!
This page shows profiles of two of the designers.
This is the profile of Nao.
Nao-chan, this is awesome! If it is a WIN phone, I'll be sure to upgrade :)
I've recently learned about what looks to be an interesting documentary about the internment of Japanese-Americans and the crisis of nationality that the experience created.
The documentary will be screened in Berkeley on October 29th and in NYC on Nov. 13th. If anyone of my readers attends either screening, I'd love it if you could send me your thoughts.
From a Silk Cocoon is a true story based on the actual letters exchanged between a young Japanese American couple, Itaru and Shizuko Ina, while imprisoned in two separate American prison camps during World War II. Labeled as "disloyal" and deemed "enemy aliens dangerous to the public peace and safety of the United States," they struggle to prove their innocence and fight deportation. With the discovery of their censored letters, diaries, and haiku poetry, their story tells of the frightening and tragic outcome resulting from wartime hysteria and racial profiling. A story of love and survival, Shizuko and Itaru renounce their American citizenship in protest and then must face the reality of raising their children in war-torn Japan.
Technorati Tags: Berkeley, documentary, Japan, New York City, NYC
Congratulations to Tom Coates who is leaving the BBC to work for Yahoo!
The sucking sound from Sunnyvale continues.
While I realize what an opportunity it would be to work at an Internet giant like Yahoo! or Google, it does concern me to see a trend where these two companies are literally hiring every single talented engineer or designer. It may be a competitive advantage, but this creates a monoculture and de-facto oligopoly that I believe is unhealthy for both the industry and to the Internet at large.
This has nothing to do with Tom (and let me apologize to him in advance for using his news to gripe about this), it's just that I am seeing so much hiring by Yahoo! and Google these days, it is very sobering.
New Hotel Costes album: Various Artists - Hotel Costes 8 by Stephane Pompougnac
Hrm. This looks good...
HOTEL COSTES 8 RELEASE PARTY
STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC JAPAN TOUR
2005年10月28日（金）@WAREHOUSE
Genre: House
Special Guest DJ: STEPHANE POMPOUGNAC（1st. 2nd共に出演いたします）
DJ: MITOMI TOKOTO (CYBER JAPAN)
Takashiro Tsuyoshi. *NORME aka DJ KOUTAROU.A . YASUO FUKUDA (EMS) .
LIVE: project TAKUMI
PART-1 LOUNGE SET 19：00〜23：00
PART-2 LOUNGE SET 23：00〜
ENTRANCE: ￥4000/1D. WF\3500/1D.
CYBERJAPAN // TOKYO CLUBS INFO
Technorati Tags: Costes, Japan, POMPOUGNAC
The news about the NTT DoCoMo & Rakuten joint-venture hit the wires a few days ago and so I decided to send that in to the Organized Shopping Blog, one of the better e-commerce blogs I read.
I put most of my thoughts on that site in a comment but essentially, I believe that mobile auctions are close to exploding. Maybe a year or so. 18 months? 18 months from now, in Japan, many many mobile users will be on 3G networks, with 3 megapixel camera phones, fixed-rate data plans, and the ability to auction items just with a camera phone. If the applications are easy to use and smart about notifications, it could be a killer app, especially if the phone networks offer insurance or payment gateways or other ways to purchase these items.
One last thought: if KDDI AU is partnered with bidders.jp for mobile auctions, and NTT DoCoMo is partnered with Rakuten, then who partners with Vodafone? Someone just got left out on the playground all alone ;)
Organized Shopping Blog: Rakuten and NTT DoCoMo in strategic allience
Cool new search engine UI by David Watanabe.
Has anyone else noticed that Gmail now has Auto-Save?
We all know that every browser crashes from time-to-time. Auto-save in the browser is just yet another little step towards total domination of web email.
That is until Yahoo! launches their new Oddpost-backed webmail client....
Google has launched an RSS reader on steroids!
Very good article on peer production that quotes and links to Umair of Bubblegeneration.com.
Om, as always, on point.
This was funny: "#6 Not spotted at the event, Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman, early investors in Web 2.0. End of cycle for the trend."
Om Malik's Broadband Blog - 10 Things About Web 2.0 Conference
Friday afternoon- this is where you should be if you are in San Francisco. See you there!
Upcoming.org: Web 2.1: A BrainJam for the rest of us at TBD (Friday, October 7, 2005)
Mary Meeker's presentation at Web 2.0. Lots of good data in there. Sat with Brian Pitz at dinner last night.
Rafat Ali has the exclusive (yet again) that Jason Calcanis has sold Weblogsinc.com to AOL.
This is actually a good fit in many ways: content for a content company, blogs for a company that doesn't have any high-traffic blogs, and an NYC media company buying an NYC Internet startup.
Exclusive: Weblogs Inc Being Bought Out By America Online
Technorati Tags: AOL, weblogsinc
Niall does a great podcast interview with Greg Reinacker and Brent Simmons of NewsGator. Look to have NewsGator be purchased within 2006.
This is exactly what makes podcasting so awesome.
Niall Kennedy's Weblog: Interview with Greg Reinacker and Brent Simmons of NewsGator
Web 2.0 Launchpad: web 2.0
SOCIALTEXT
- first wiki company
- wikipedia: open content, open tool
- Socialtext built on top of Kwiki
- Currently 20% open source-> moving to 80% open source by early 2006
- WikiWYG.net: what you see is what you get open source wiki editor
- SynchroEdit.com - open source synchronous editor for wikis
- Offline editing with Ecto
ROLLYO
- Dave Pell
- built search by source on top of Yahoo!
- Roll-Your-Own search engine
- searchrolls: personal searches
JOYENT (site down at the moment- DOH!)
- web-based platform for small groups (2-20 people)
BUNCHBALL.COM
- network platform for flash games
REALTRAVEL - ken leeder
- travel site to aggregate blogging and social networks; marketing venue for travel marketers
- journals, roadmaps, photos, including Google Maps
ZIMBRA collaboration suite
- open source enterprise collaboration server
- VERY COOL mashups with Google Maps, Skype, FedEx, calendaring, etc.
- ALL in browser - zero footprint client
Zvents - local events search
- google maps mapshup AGAIN
- has blogging tool
- TechCrunch
KNOWNOW - Ron Rasmussen
- funded by Kleiner
- notification service by RSS
- looks fairly simple and easy- RSS on traing wheels?
ORB -
- media aggregator?
- browser-based... everything? your own media, etc.
WINK - Michael Tanne
- aggregate and analyze tags (using tags to find most relevant site)
ALLPEERS - Matthew Gertner
- Firefox Web.20 development platform
- challenging programming model: async. communication, unstructured data, little componentization,
- Allpeers Media Centre: tag and organize your data
- Web page sharing tool- even async.
FLOCK - social browser
- click favorite to add locally as well as to del.icio.us
- favorites, del.icious, rss subscription all the same
- flickr top bar
- blogging client
PUBSUB - Bob Wyman
- structuredblogging.org
- competitor to microformats.org
-
If you are in SF for Web 2.0, please consider attending Web 1.0 as well.
Upcoming.org: Web 1.0 Summit at House of Shields (Wednesday, October 5, 2005)
whoa...
Jason- why can't SMS do this? In Japan, we use mobile email (no SMS in Japan) for this kind of thing.
I'm not sure where to tear into this press release...
- Shall I start with the non-existent "international presence" of Livedoor? As far as Om Malik is concerned, there was no annoucement of Livedoor's intent to purchase, only an annoucement of the acquisition. So if there is an "International presence" for Livedoor, this is the first anyone has heard of it.
- I'm not going to spend time to dig deep into this acquisition, but it smells fishy from the outset:
"ClickDiario's proprietary network consists of over 30 vertical websites which are visited by over 45 million unique users per month. The company's main websites include portals such as Deportes.com (Sports), Salud.com (Health), Mujer.com (Women), Mascotas.com (Pets), Boletines.com (Newsletters), Dietas.com (Diets), and Tarjetas.com (Greeting Cards), among others."If I had put together a portal site having bought out a number of general popular word URLs, and placed relevant content on those sites, that might approximate what ClickDiario is supposed to have done. Prove me wrong- are any of these sites truly influential to a wide audience of Spanish-speaking Internet users? Maybe all Livedoor wants are these URLs?
- Shall I mock the idiot PR flack who wrote this line, "Livedoor is one of the largest web portals in the world, as well as the leader in web blogs and web blog search in Japan." Obviously someone who has never read or written a blog. If Livedoor purports to be a leader in "web blogs" then they better know how to spell the term properly.
- Or how about this line, "For more information, visit http://corp.Livedoor.com/en ." Which currently goes to a 404 page not found. This press release was made publically available on Friday September 30, 11:46 am ET. It's October 3rd and the link in the PR is still dead. Let's see how long it takes for them to fix either the link or the PR.
Livedoor Completes Acquisition of ClickDiario.com: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
UPDATE: Richstyles' comment made me want to dig a bit deeper.
- deportes.com Alexa ranking? 33,222
- salud.com Alexa traffic ranking? 75,326
- mujer.com Alexa traffic ranking? 95,115
- mascotas.com Alexa traffic ranking? 172,715
- boletines.com Alexa traffic ranking? 77,195
- tarjetas.com Alexa traffic ranking? 15,248
- ClickDiario.com Alexa traffic ranking? 15,199
SECOND UPDATE: ok, ok, I just had to share this. Richstyles points us to the proper English-language PR page for Livedoor. Only it hasn't been updated since early 2004!!!
Let's keep an eye out for these shady SEO, viral blog marketers. They do not deserve our links.
One way or another - whether these specific people are directly responsible for spamming our conversations with their marketing - this whole enterprise stinks to high heaven. The fake weblogs that pretend to be real are almost bad enough - it's an attempt to muddy the reality of a community with the fantasy world that they need to flog cleaning products and make it seem glamourous or exciting. But someone out there - associated with one marketing group or another - is also keen to directly stick their dirty little hands in the cookie jars of well-meaning, honourable people. They're quite happy to pollute or destroy the value of the enterprise for everyone else if they can derive even the tiniest return from it.I'm going to give them the benfit of the doubt and say that this whole enterprise is based on clumsiness and stupidity rather than evil, but we have to make a stand and make it clear to these people that if you live by the sword you die by the sword. It's not good enough for just these marketing people to realise that they've screwed up and damaged the brands they were associated with - we have to keep making examples of them to stop other clumsy organisations viewing our self-created territories as nothing more than sales opportunities. Do not lie to us because we will expose you. Be honourable, or we will erase you. And all anyone will see when they search on Google for your products is that there is no depth to which you will not stoop to get another few bottles into someone's shopping basket.
On Cillit Bang and a new low for marketers... (plasticbag.org)
