Just upgraded to MT 4.2.
Please test the comments to see if this is working. I'll start blogging again if my comments start working.
Recently in Blogs Category
Wretch.cc now #1 site (by traffic) in Taiwan. If the reported purchase price is true, it was a very good purchase.
Wretch.cc was ranked the top Web site in Taiwan in a top-100 list tabulated by Business Next, a local magazine, and Taiwan's Access Rating Online (ARO). ... But despite Yahoo's best attempts to keep up with new features such as blogs, Wretch.cc continued to grow and gain popularity. It proved such a difficult battle that Yahoo Taiwan finally used cash to end the battle, buying Wretch.cc for an undisclosed sum. Local newspaper reports valued the deal at NT$700 million (US$22.7 million).Yahoo Taiwan came in second in the ranking overall, but it remained number one against other Internet portals.
Rounding out the top five overall Web sites in Taiwan, PChome Online came in third, Yam.com ranked fourth, and Gamer.com took fifth place in the Business Next/ARO list.
The U.S. version of Google ranked first among search engines, and 14th overall, while Google Taiwan came in second, China's Baidu ranked third and video search engine Flurl came in fourth.
As you can see, I've finally fully upgraded to MT 4.01 with a new design. My old weblog design was many years old and with the help of a good friend (thank you BA!) I'm finally in 2008.
My comments should be working as well (although I'm still getting a lot of comment spam and I may need to turn off anonymous comments if I can't fix this) so please test my comments.
W. David Marx, proprietor of many interesting websites including Néomarxisme and Néojaponisme, and I will be speaking with Prof. Jennifer Urban of USC at the USC Global Conference this weekend on Saturday the 27th on the topic of user-generated content in Japan. If you'll be attending, please be sure to say hello.
I have a post at MetaFilter for those who might be interested in da Vinci or Tokyo.
Very funny post from Joey deVilla
I just wish I had bought AAPL at $22 (that's what I remember the price being at when I switched from XP to OS X.)
Justin, an American who used to live in Japan and now is married to a Thai woman and is living in Thailand relates an aspect of Thai society which is hard for Americans to imagine.
Poor parents sometimes give their children away to people who they think can take care of them better. Of course, I was flabbergasted when I heard this. I mean, I guess you could kind of view it as adoption without an adoption agency, but then you have to remember that adoption agencies exist for a reason. We could be axe murderers for all her parents know! I mean, they really have no fucking idea who we are, and they are offering up their daughter? Yes, I can honestly say this is one cultural wall I have run smack into, and will have a hard time recovering from. This wall kicked my ass.
I've been inundated with comment spam again and have chosen to implement a challenge-response for any future comments. I hate having to do this but managing the spam comments recently was taking me a significant amount of time that I could not afford.
Please let me know if there are any problems- by leaving me a comment :) Seriously though, I appreciate the comments and I apologize for having to add this extra step.
Stephanie Quilao, who writes the Back in Skinny Jeans blog, spent 9 1/2 weeks as an Enthusiast Evangelist for Microsoft. She recently left the job and her post on why she left was pretty interesting.
I created my blog business for less than $100, and it costs me about the price of a pair of nice jeans a month to run beyond my time and energy. I cannot do this with the current MS products or services. And I tried. I am making money while helping to evoke change in the beauty industries. I can use CSS and be creative in my blog design, and control what is advertised on my space. You can’t do that in [Microsoft] Live Spaces.
...
As a Pro blogger, the only tool I use that is MS made is my wireless mouse, which is fabulous but, for real, there needs to something meatier than that. And again, I tried real hard to find more MS tools to integrate into my uber blogging, and could find none that were more compelling, more productive, or easier than what I already use, so why change?
...
In the Valley, the trendsetters are about webware. Software is not bad, it's just costly. What you can do on the web is just utterly interesting. People can also share much easier and faster. Companies must start looking at the web differently. Things are changing, rapidly.
Good luck Stephanie. You will be glad that you followed your heart.
p.s. Not all software is costly. Free and open source software costs nothing for the users :)
Back in skinny jeans: 9-1/2 weeks: Leaving Microsoft not as sexy or tormenting
David Marx of Neomarxisme is blogging for his employer at clast. Marxy is one of the most insightful blogs on Japanese pop culture and media and his new blog looks amazing.
via Jean Snow
