Christopher Kobayashi: Blogging

Tool and Time split

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 17:34:46 GMT

I'm moving things around and experimenting. Trying to figure out how my moblog, blog, and wiki will fit together. Also, thinking about how to split my time, and where/when/how to use each tool. Here are some quick thoughts on how I currently use these tools and the next steps:

moblog for capturing moments in realtime. Use my keitai's camera to take a close up shot to remind me of that moment. The shot needs to be close up since the photos are at 120px X 120px. Need to upgrade my phone to play with other moblogging features such as GPS, and larger photos. Hopefully end up with an AU A5403CA ... 2 megapixel beauty.
blog - migrate and learn MT. Redesign. Explore CSS and Perl. Play with plugins, and hopefully make some simple experiments. Stop blogging about blogging, and redesigning. Just do it. Keep my current Radio, but copy it over to my own hosting . Got my MT up and moved most of my posts over. I'm gonna keep posting here until I get things straightened out w/ MT. The new URL I'm pushing things to is blog.oreno.org, and this design will goto blog.oreno.org/radio.
wiki - keep adding to it. Hopefully other like minded people will join in. CSS it. Currently dumping things I learn at work.

To MovableType or Not

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 19:32:03 GMT

My Radio Userland blog is about to expire. Wow, I've been blogging for a year now. How time flies. Radio Userland is nice, but one thing that I don't like is that I have to use a certain PC to post. I would like a tool where I can post from anywhere ... enter MovableType. Some things that are pushing me toward MT are: I'm learning Perl, it's free, alot of customization options, many plugins. Oh, and Ke-Ta's subtle nudges ;)

Regardless of tool I'm glad that I blogged 2003's experiences. I was just discussing with a friend how I liked to visit my past blog posts. It's kind of neat how memories flood back. Addicting.

Feedster Powered Search

Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:56:59 GMT

Added a Feedster powered search to my sidebar. It searches my RSS feed and displays the result on their site. Paul introduced me to this service. It's got alot of possible uses and tools. There's a tool to boost or drop my ego ... under tools you can create a custom RSS feed to track your name.

There's also a Feedster interface within WINKsite.

WinkSite Sidebar

Thu, 15 Jan 2004 13:59:33 GMT

Got my WinkSite moblog into my sidebar. I guess it looks painfully obvious.

Kewl thing is it's a Javascript (or I should say ECMAScript) that writes an iframe tag that calls a ColdFusion page. The WINKsite emulator then reads my Radio RSS feed and spits it out. So my blog calls the WINKsite moblog, which calls stuff from my blog again.

I'm Getting FOAFy Too

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 17:19:49 GMT

My coworker Ke-Ta setup a FOAF file. While trying to figure out how to add him as a friend, I ran into Marc Canter's blog post titled, Getting FOAFy. Decided to add the FOAF icons to my blog as well.

view my FOAF Explorer page
ADD me as a FOAF friend to your page
view my RAW FOAF file

My previous blog post on FOAF:

FOAF and foaf-o-matic - (2003-7-28)

WINKsite UPDATE

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 17:58:34 GMT

OK, the great people at WINKsite (Wireless Ink) have got their service viewable on JPHONE!! Subscribed to Joi Ito and Gen Kanai's RSS feeds. I named my moblog site Ore No MoBuloggu. Here are access methods:

URL : http://winksite.com/chriskk/mobuloggu
WINKsite ID #2510

Keitai RSS reader

Keitai RSS reader

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 07:42:58 GMT

A couple of posts ago I made a todo list, which included coding a Keitai RSS reader. I was gonna do it in ColdFusion, of course. WINKsite beat me to the punch and in ColdFusion too!

I tried out their service, but unfortunately I can't access it from my Vodafone keitai. Normally I wouldn't have tried again and probably forgotten about the site, but an interesting thing happened. When I signed up I mistakenly entered my email address as chriskk @ NO S P A M pixic. om, whithout the N O S P A M portion. A company rep emailed me using pixi.com and explained that I might've mistyped my address. WOW, great service! It made me feel like they wanted me as a user. A valued customer!
Now they're helping me so that I can actually see their service through my keitai.

They're also a ColdFusion house. Another major plus.

Some links to help with getting my Sanyo J-SA05 Vodafone (formerly known as JPhone) work with their services:

CGI variables of my unit
List of keitai phones with browser version, supported image formats, and colors supported.
Official Vodafone spec of Sanyo J-SA05

Another interesting note is that Adam Greenfield of V-2, the organizer of the 1st International Moblogging Conference (See previous blog post, and google search), is now on WINKsites' board of advisors (See v-2, and Wireless Ink PR page 12-30-2003 Announcement).

GEEK To Do List Before the New Year

Tue, 16 Dec 2003 17:45:36 GMT

Some peronsal projects that REALLY need to be pushed forward:

Wiki - Here's a link to what kind of Wiki I'm thinking about.
Wiki Blog - learn how they work together. Base technology behind them.
moblog - view by category, date, time ... and maybe someday by mobile photo color. This is an idea I picked up from Andreas Schneider. Note: I bet he's got the first moblog w/ GPS on the planet!
Keitai RSS reader - I would love to read RSS feeds on my commute to work on the train. This could be a web-based keitai site, or something that gets emailed.

FeedDemon, TopStyle, and Homesite

Mon, 17 Nov 2003 17:10:06 GMT

After playing w/ a couple of RSS readers I've come to love FeedDemon. This bad boy is developed by Bradsoft, the same company that originally created Homesite. FeedDemon's fast, easy to use, and includes tabbed browsing. It'll eventually be an app that you can purchase, but it's currently available free as a pre-release.
The other readers I've played with include the built in reader in Radio Userland, Feedreader, and AmphetaDesk. Didn't like Radio and Ampheta. Both use your browser to hit against a mini web server app. Feedreader was alright, but craped out alot.

Bradsoft also created TopStyle, which is a CSS editor. I use TopStyle Lite that comes bundled w/ Homesite + or I should say Dreamweaver. Haven't really played with TopStyle too much until this past week. Using CSS-P to layout an Intranet app. NO TABLES. Positioning w/ DIV's is a pain, but NO PAIN NO GAIN. ;)

Homesite is under Macromedia's control now and is packaged together w/ Dreamweaver MX 2004. Dreamweaver seems like Word. Too many features. Slow to start. Feels like it's eating away at my RAM and polluting my hard drive when it starts. I just need a fast text editor that colors my code and helps me reduce typing. I hope Macromedia doesn't kill Homesite. Or hopefully it axes it and the tool gets back into BradSoft's hands.
Another coding tool I recently tried is UltraEdit. Used it for an .asp based project, but haven't touched it since. It seemed very felxible and was a solid app. I missed my code completion ...

It's all Homesite +, TopStyle Lite, and FeedDemon now. All Bradbury originated tools. My tool god! ALL HAIL BradSoft!!

What's in your tool kit?

ReDesign

Wed, 05 Nov 2003 18:17:00 GMT

Finally got around to playing w/ the design of the Radio Userland blog. It's a jumbled combination of my homepage and the Radio template. It's not elegant and needs alot of work. It doesn't validate yet either. That's my next priority.

Notes to self:

get Wiki up
clean HTML and create valid XHTML code
redo CSS
photo album
next version of moblog

Link Knowledge!

Thu, 04 Sep 2003 18:47:58 GMT

Got a glimpse into the Japanese blogging space tonight at Link Knowledge! This is an area I've wanted to explore, but haven't yet due to my lack of reading and writing. I wanted to get an idea of what Japanese people think about blogging and find out what's going on here.

There were two speakers. Taguchi-san and Daiji-san. Both are Japanese blog book authors. I didn't get a chance to speak w/ Taguchi-san. Daiji-san is someone I got to see in a panel discussion at the 1IMC a couple of months back. He's part of Joi Ito's Neoteny and created the Japanese patch for MovableType. I got a chance to speak w/ him and pick his brain. VERY knowledgeable person regarding what's going on in the blogging space here in Japan and around the world. I can see why he's the Chief Research Manager at Neoteny.

Interesting people I bugged (not spy stuff) and other notes:

Nob Seki of the same company as Daiji-san. Note to myself ... he mentioned that he'll help w/ setting up TrackBack for my MoBlog. ;)
Nakamura-san of Honda: Had a conversation regarding English and European languages have an advantage over asian languages due to the way the language is structured. Especially Japanese having so many "fuzzy" words. "Bi myou". Also, got into a discussion on blogs in the Enterprise w/ Daiji-san. Something to the effect of blogs could help the "real" minds get credit where credit is due. Make it difficult for free riders taking advantage of your ideas.
Suda-san of Steelcase: lived in New Orleans for awhile, now part of an innovative company that sells modern office furniture. The event was held at this awesome office.
Self intro'd myself to Kohici Aoki of Sony. I think I found his blog through Gen Kanai's. He has photos on his site of this event. The blog system he uses is called Plone and runs on a Python based CMS called Zope. We swapped some ideas on MoBlogging. He showed me a kewl gadget, but I didn't get a chance to ask him. Also saw another person with it ... Linux Zaurus. Looks like a GameBoy Advance SP w/ a little more keys ;)
Link to Daiji's post post. Lot's of trackbacks, let's see if my trackback goes through.
He mentioned that another way of explaining trackbacks is reverse linking. People usually leave trackbacks, because they want the original poster to know that I've got an interest on your post and I wrote or added some thoughts about it on my site. Personal WebService Platform -> Microcontent (by category, date(s), etc) + MetaData(RSS) + Webservices(APIs). Reason RSS took off was because blogs took off. Didn't think about building a massive all encompassing system. Just a simple and easy to use CMS w/ built in WebServices and RSS. Where's the Semantic Web? Any apps out there. US' got Social Networks (social software like friendster or tribes), which Japan is 5 years behind. Japan's got Mobile Networks, which US is 5 years behind. Merging both ways. Open invite to all developers to jump into this space now. Lot's of opportunities and easy to jump into. Standards are still simple.
A question that popped up a couple of times was How different is US and Japanese blogs.
Couple of RSS News Reader app developers were present.
When you think of WebServices you think of Enterprise-class. Blogs include WebServices made for Peronal-class.
Japanese blog aggregation site: rss-jp.net
Similar to Technorati?: MyBlog Japan

Ranked 251 for Sexy

Sun, 24 Aug 2003 15:40:37 GMT

Here are some traffic patterns to this blog that I've noticed.

Search word "Sexy" on Google in Arabic - ranked 251 - why would anybody go through 25 pages worth of google search results. Someone must've been really itchin.
Search word "matrix pingpong" on Google - ranked 3 - this is probably the highest referrer.
Search word "playstation portable" on Google - ranked 10 - recently very frequent referrer. Probably the third highest.
Search word "louis vuitton murakami collection" on Yahoo! - ranked 4 - Top referrer. This search word and it's various combinations.
Search word "virgin cinema roppongi hills" on Google - ranked 1 in US and 2 in Japan - Pretty frequent referrer.
Search word "Anime Porn" on Yahoo! - ranked 4 - Yess ... come and see Anime porn on my blog. NOT! Some horny kid'll probably get pissed when he finds this page. I'm gonna tell your mommy.
Search word "Chemical Addiction" on Google - ranked 1 - You want drugs ... wait, I want drugs. Low traffic from this, but if this increases I'll start a Wiki about BAD drugs.

Something's gotta be wrong with Google's PageRank system for some of the blog posts to be ranked so high for certain search words. Interesting post on Jeremy Zawodny's blog titled, "PageRank is Dead", but my blog hasn't been affected or dropped in rank yet.
I can see how the PageRank can get screwed. Dave Winer's blog has probably got a very high PageRank. He's a colossus blogger. Weblogs.com, which is run by Dave's company and directly linked, also probably has high PageRank. Maybe this blog get's a little extra rank help from the fact that I'm using Dave's Radio blog software/service, and whenever I update this blog a notice is sent to Weblogs.com.
Since Yahoo! doesn't use Google anymore, what's up with Yahoo! traffic?
I'm not redefining words ... Googlewashing
This post probably boosted my results for the above search words too. :)

FOAF and foaf-o-matic

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 09:44:59 GMT

I setup a Friend of a Friend RDF file. Here's the URL: http://www.oreno.org/foaf.rdf
It's basically a XML document that describes you and your friends. Currently no friends :(
Similar in concept to Friendster except FOAF is based on the RDF standard and is decentralized. Friendster is a centralized web app that holds all your data, and not based on any standards. FOAF RDF file is only the data so there needs to be some app that grabs and manipulates this stuff. Now gotta go find some FOAF apps to play with.

Notes and links:

FOAF-a-Matic - automatically create a FOAF.rdf file
Joi's thoughts on Microcontent, MetaData, and Trends w/ good info on how FOAF is important
Technorati grabs the foaf.rdf file to create your profile
Guardian Unlimited article, Click to the clique, good article on Social Networks (FOAF, Friendster)
FOAFnaut search through the FOAF universe by email

Moblog of a Moblog of a Moblog

Thu, 17 Jul 2003 03:38:16 GMT

Tokyo Bloggers Party(was Meetup). It was nice to see the regulars at The Pink Cow and to connect with new dots. Had some pretty interesting talks w/ Mike of Hunkabutta and the gentleman of (Ack ... forgot your name!?!) Antipixel. Something along the lines of the migration of Japanese people and heart that goes into wedding ceremonies.

Paul and Mie had their creative engines going thinking of new and crazy ideas for MoBlogging. It was kinda neat to see Paul use our keitais to Moblog of a Moblog of a Moblog. Reminded me of that effect you get when you put two opposing mirrors. They're starting some *TOP SECRET* MoBlog project ... gotta get my spy gear out ;)

www.oreno.org

Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:35:05 GMT

Finally got an Alpha of the top page for my new personal/work blog + calendar + photo album + etc. It's at www.oreno.org. I got it XHTML 1.0 Transitional valid, but I'll need to play around a little more to get the CSS to validate. I didn't use any tables for the layout, but coded Div tags and CSS Absolute positioning. It's my first attempt at both XHTML and CSS so please bear with me until I get a decent Beta out.

Next step is to code a RSS reader to grab my Radio blog titles w/ their respective dates .. then recode my moblog, create RSS generator for it, and finally the RSS reader for the moblog to add the most recent photo to the top page.

First International Moblogging Conference

Sun, 06 Jul 2003 08:55:20 GMT

Yesterday was the First International Moblogging Conference. It was AWESOME! I hadn't slept for over 30hrs, but when I got there I was re-Energized.
Left photo is the stamp - like getting branded .. we're just cows.
Right shot - an underground club was the perfect setting for this event. Most of the audience were casually dressed. Initially seemed like a very relaxed atmosphere, but when the 1st coffee break hit ** SO MUCH ENERGY ** So much brain waves flying through the air. To bad my brain's dead !?!

The left photo is of Justin Hall - bumped into him and Jane of Game Girl Advance on the way to the event. All of us were pretty lost, but found the spot just in time. Both are gamers and writers.
Middle shot is of Kevin Cameron of MFOP fame .. and now MFOP2.
Right photo is a shot of "Why MoBlog" session. Interesting story - the reason I took it is I found a moblog event called 24, through a post by Gen Kanai on the Japan Bloggers mailing list. I wanted to participate and emailed the guy in charge, Raphael Grignani, but was too late. I mentioned the 1IMC to Raphael and he said he's not gonna make it but look out for Jan .. the first person listed on the 24 site. Jan so happened to be sitting next to me and asked me to take a shot of the panel. He said see the 1st guy on the site .. that's me. It was trippy! ... sorry if that was long, but I had to get it out there.

Centralized vs Decentralized :: Daiji's and Kevin's MoBlog systems allow you to hold the photos and posts on your own blog (mainly Movable Type) a decentralized model, while Phlog and HipTop Nation uses a centralized model. Seems like people who are technically savy like the decentralized way (again Movable Type types) and people who don't have time or don't care about the why/how like the centralized approach. Pretty obvious I guess. I've been thinking about a hybrid mode, where you can use an easy centralized host, but customize the output by calling it via WebServices .. kinda similar to the BlogRolling approach.

Here are other posts about 1IMC:
Tokyo Tidbits - 1, 2, 3
Joi Ito - blog post, another, wiki
SyncWorld - 1
Pete's Eats - good notes here
moblog.oreno.org - finally got me a simple moblog up.

Here are some notes of the event in OPML format (1imc.xml). Made using OmniOutliner on OS X 10.2. The extension's set as .xml so that the browsers don't crap out when they try to read it, but you can change this to opml if your outliner needs it in that format.

Left is a shot of the Early Adopters panel - Justin moderated it, Mie from Tokyo Tidbits, Carsten of Based on a true story, and Stuart of stuartwoodward.com. Go Tokyo MoBloggers!
Right is Adam Greenfield of v-2 and the organizer/host of this great conference. Awesome job Adam!

Radio back to XP

Sun, 06 Jul 2003 06:36:25 GMT

OK .. moved my Radio back to the laptop. Looks like it's updating again. So until I program a new blog I'll be posting using Radio from XP.

Broken Radio

Sat, 21 Jun 2003 17:25:05 GMT

F**************K
This frikin suxs. Gotta build my own blog. I've hit my limit. 2 many bugs w/ Radio. I haven't been able to post anything for more than 4 or 5 days now. NANDE!?!

Radio RSS Parser w/ ColdFusion MX

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 19:00:55 GMT

Got around to do some coding ... finally! Couple of weeks ago I decided to setup a development environment on the Mac box in the closet. Basically, it's ColdFusion MX J2EE on JRun4 for the OS X. Suprisingly it wasn't that bad to setup. Now onto funner things like CODING!
I'm thinking about getting a domain with a nice brand spanking new design. On the homepage I'm planning on pulling my Radio blog's title, link, category, and publish date info from the RSS file and dynamically show it. If this works out .. do the same for photo albums, and work related blog.
Here's the code .. in CFML of course! ;) Problem/Bug is getting multiple categories for a single item to show up correctly.

Radio moved to OS X

Sat, 07 Jun 2003 15:14:18 GMT

OK .. moved my Radio Userland stuff from my Dell laptop (actually Win3's) to the mac box in my closet desk. OS X Jaguar is nice. NO! It's SEXY.
Also, got ColdFusion for J2EE running on top of JRUN. Now onto developing a ColdFusion based blogging tool. Thinking about hosting it on Medit Temple's Shared-Server Linux ColdFusion MX hosting.

Connection Building Networks

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 16:56:03 GMT

Got to chat w/ some pretty interesting peeps today through IRC. Joi setup an IRC channel on Freenode, and the channel's name is ... ta da #JoiIto. Well, anywho I haven't played with IRC in awhile so checked it out. I had a blast. Too bad I didn't have any BEER ;)
First off .. got to meet Jeanniecool and she introduced me to Friendster. She was my 1st friend!
Then .. got ta meet the guy who created blogrolling .. Mr. Jason DeFillipo.
And .. Mr. Ito showed up. You can feel his presence through IRC .. GUSHING .. that's right folks .. GUSHING. Kewl braddah!
Well, while we were IRCing .. I decided to spam all me friends .. that's right all 10 of them and create my digital social network. I gots me 8 friends on Friendster now! WooHoo! Thanks Shirley, Tyson, Doug, Kris, Elmer, Paul , Jeannie, and Joi for being my first Friendster friends! All in a days work ... whew.
Ok .. here's a list of stuff for u to read. u = chriskk:
- Social Software
- Connection Building Networks

ReDesign

Sat, 31 May 2003 18:04:12 GMT

OK .. I've been slacking on my blogging lately, but i have't been idle. Trying to think of a new look and at the same time contemplating about a new blogging system. Here's a version 0.1 of what I'm thinking about for the design:

Blogging, Keitais, GPS, Maps, and Neighborhoods

Mon, 26 May 2003 17:08:03 GMT

I've recently noticed alot of activity in the area of moblogging and GPS. First there's the damn mobloggers (can you tell that I'm jealous!) catching live events and shooting this info to their sites. Between April's Tokyo Bloggers Meetup and last week's one Kevin (MFOP - MoBlogging For Other People) said that he's got 80 users. I remember he mentioned like he had only 2 in April. The 'KEWL' crew moblogged at the last meetup .. bastards ;) Remember there's also the First International Mobloggers Conference on 7/5.
Now they're onto GPS. Dav setup a way to grab the GPS info from Mie's moblog photos and send this data to MapFan (in Japanese), which is like MapQuest in the states.
Since we're on the subject of maps, there's a project called the Japan Blogger's Map (version 1.0), which places the various blogs onto .. a map. Also, a few months back UltraBob started the Neighborhood Project, which is a collection of photos from various 'hoods in Japan. There's a really kewl applet by Dav called Geosphere. I haven't looked into this, but looks like mapping URL points onto a globe. Other blogging to map projects: London Bloggers Tube Map, The New York City Blogger Map.

And what does all this mean ... F*CK if I know, but it's motivating me to get off my ass. There's my point. HA! <- that's my alcohol induced thought process.
REALLY, maybe we have some kind of urge to see on a map where the blogging/viewpoints come from. Termed "Geolocation". There's also "Geosearch", which is searching within a certain vicinity. I figure you can relate to people that are in a similar geographic location. Notice that London, New York, and Tokyo has subway/railway system. Riding trains drains.
I look smart yeah! Got these words from an article on the Guardian Unlimited.
OK, now I'm trying to figure out my Longitude and Latitude so I can add this blog to GeoURL. (used MapFan to get my long/lat which was in arc format, then used this site to convert it to digital format .. tip from Dav's comment on UltraBob's blog)
GeoURL

New Title: Lament? What lament?

Sun, 20 Apr 2003 18:01:47 GMT

Ok .. followed a link from Weblogs and power laws to Steve's onepotmeal blog post regarding "A-List" blogs. Fabio's comment on the bottom of the post makes me want to follow two more links: Adam Greenfield and Anne. Following these conversations reminds me of newsgroups .. following the threads. Now these threads flow through blogs. The scary thing about some blogs is that (like mine) many are centralized. If a "hub" goes down alot of these conversations will disappear.

Weblogs and power laws

Sat, 19 Apr 2003 08:19:21 GMT

After Clay Sharky's paper visited Jason Kottke's post titled "Weblogs and power laws". Ooo! (my brain overheated .. I need an upgrade .. a Mod chip .. anyone)

I paused for a minute on the section, "But what are weblogs competing for? ...", and asked myself this question. Am I competing? I gotta admit I constantly check for comments, look at the Referers, goto Google searching for "ore no buloggu", and checkout my BlogShares. Checking my digital popularity (getting digitally slapped in the face.. ego level dropping). Competing for eyeballs. Want to be heard!?! ... Is that what's pushing me to post in a subliminal way? Ponder, ponder, ponder ... hmm.
Thinking about UltraBob and Gary's "Brain Fart" posts.