Instead of typing the URL directly in the browser they’ll go to Google or Yahoo and type the site name, or sometimes even the URL, into the search box. This is understandable for obscure sites of course, but I see people doing this all the time for sites like Hotmail or CNN or Amazon. What’s wrong with these people? This is almost as bad as people who write emails in Microsoft Word and then attach it to the email instead of writing it directly in the body. Believe it or not, I know people who do that. Drives me nuts.

Unrelated, did you anyone see that news about the Monkey in Shibuya Station? Too funny…

Information Architects Japan put out a new Web Trends map for 2007 last month which I found a lot more interesting than last years. I studied it for a good hour and had some snickers at the in jokes here and there. Basically, they mapped the 200 most popular websites on the Internet onto the Tokyo Subway Map based on their popularity or genre. If you know places in Tokyo you can have a good laugh at some of their choices although some left me thinking WTF? I imagine they put Apple/iTunes in that Tameike-Sanno/Akasaka-Mitsuke/Nagata-cho cluster because it intersects all those subways lines (used to represent different trends) rather than any similarities with the area. They put all those Bittorrent and P to P sites along the Asakusa line. The Asakusa line has quite a bit of traffic but it’s one of those train lines that people forget exist because it passes near some major stations, but not through them. Also, I don’t see MY blog on this map!!! But then again I wouldn’t map my site on a subway station anyway.

Have you ever noticed that when Mixi changes their top page advertisement your auto login suddenly doesn’t work? Usually if you check the “automatically log me in next time” checkbox when you login, on the next visit you jump directly to your profile page. But whenever they have a new sponsor they change something in the cookie which forces you to login AGAIN. While this only happens about once a week, I find this low-level tactic rather irritating. I suppose when they first designed Mixi they didn’t expect it to become as popular as it is and failed to plan for where and how to embed advertising into the system. At least the amount of ads in your face are still rather low and not all over the place or in the middle of your blog post like in other free blog/SNS systems. But then again, I have ads all over my blog posts so who am I to criticize! ;-P

Last week, I upgraded my long neglected Flickr Account to a pro account and have been painstakingly uploading ALL my photo archives. So far I’ve uploaded around 7,000 files and have another 10,000+ to go. At the moment they are all private since I’m interested in using Flickr primarily as a storage/backup place. Once I get all my photos organized and tagged I’ll start sharing some of them and participating in groups although I’ll still keep on photos for this blog on my own webserver. If you visit my Flickr Account now you won’t see much expect the same 2 photos (above) and some Mazinger daigokin pics which I uploaded to test out FlickrExport, a plugin for iPhoto, which was worth the $20 I paid for it. If you have a Flickr Account please add me as a contact. Going forward I will be updating regularly with all kinds of good stuff.

Here’s a pretty good example of an Amazon Affiliate site that actually adds some value beyond simply linking to products. Ama Watch is basically an alert system where you can flag high demand items that are always out of stock, e.g. Nintendo DS (in Japan). Once Amazon updates the “in-stock” status you get an alert to your mail or keitai or RSS feed. You can also get alerts for when the price goes down. The site lists items ranked by most flagged. Currently, in the Health section the number one item is a big bag of Whey Protein. Now why would you need to register an alert for an item you can get in any drugstore?

I’ve been using the Google RSS Reader because I’m too cheap to pay for any shareware so all my RSS Readers stopped working. The Google RSS Reader is good but I wish it could be integrated into Gmail. Anyway, there’s a little link thingy which you can drag into your bookmark bar. When you click on it (it’s the “Next >>” link in the image above) it basically loads all the unread items that you’ve subscribed too. Very handy. I had a good laugh when I got to the end and saw this message. The link leads to this page. The Internet has an end!

In other news, I’ve been preoccupied with that unfortunate activity called work so have not been able to do anything blog worthy of late. I hope to change that soon. In the meantime, I still have lots of old photos that I will post periodically.

I’m going to bore you with another post about wireless in Japan.

So tonight I got the setup guide and made another attempt at connecting to a Hotspot. I chose Omotesando Station because there are several comfy cafes inside the station and it was on the way home. I could get a fairly strong signal and authentication worked this time, but then there was a login screen where I had to input an ID and password. Obviously the one issued by my provider when I signed up, this is usually a random character-number string which you can’t remember. I have it written down somewhere at home. So no connection tonight, again. On the login screen there was another pull down menu where you could select overseas providers like Starhub and British Telecom which means that foreigners visiting Japan can get wireless broadband roaming. It works the other way too I guess.

I tried to see if I could spot the wireless antenna but could only find PHS ones. There were lots of signs (above) advertising the Hotspots so I imagine the whole place must be wired heavily. Also something I noticed, Omotesando station is full of gorgeous ladies and cockroaches. I saw lots of both while walking around this evening.

Hotspot has one of the largest networks of broadband wireless spots in Japan. Unlike Freespot you need to pay a subscription fee like a provider but it’s relatively cheap at a flat rate of ¥1600 per month and there are a ton of spots all the country including every subway station in Tokyo. This means that in theory if you were to ride the subway you could surf the web when the train stops at each stations. Is the signal strong enough to extend into the tunnels? Hmmm..this looks like something I’ll have to try and find out for myself.

Anyway, I discovered that with my fiber-optic connection at home I got a hotspot id/login automatically although I would be billed ¥10/min but could upgrade to unlimited usage for ¥1500. That would mean if I used wireless outside for more than 2.5 hours a month it would be worth it. So I signed up and tonight went to MOS Burger. All MOS Burgers are Hotspots. The signal was fairly strong but I forgot to download the setup guide so unfortunately I couldn’t connect. Ate my kinpira rice burger and came home. Here’s some advice to anyone who wants to move to Japan and save money on Internet. Find an apartment near a MOS Burger and you can just pay the ¥1600/month and get unlimited Internet. Then again so many people here don’t bother putting any authentication on their wireless networks so you could just scam off your neighbors.

Let’s Note R5 is my new favorite friend! I used to be a mobiler-road-warrior way back in the days when the only method of connecting to the Internet was using your cell phone. I carried around my Toshiba Libretto in my coat pocket and connected at 14,400Kbps but paid dearly for every packet. Fun days. But since then I never really felt a need to do that anymore, even when hundreds of people began hauling around their giant note PCs to Starbucks or where ever. But now with the R5, it’s just begging me to take it some place new each day!

Tokyo is rather poor in the free Internet wireless broadband area compared to other countries like South Korea or Singapore or Hong Kong (I have no first hand experience, just assuming from what I’ve read) but after searching I found some places to check out (1) Seattle’s Best Coffee has free wireless in all their coffee shops in Japan. But this one in Shinjuku was kinda dirty and the people working there looked sick. Everyone there had a laptop but none were as cool as mine, of course (2) The bus terminal in JR Shinjuku station had a faster connection than at Seattle’s Best and you didn’t have to buy a cup of coffee either. There was even an outlet under the bench where I could plugin. It’s reassuring to know that if I ever become a homeless guy in this city I will be able to continue blogging. Yeay! Neither the coffee shop nor the bus terminal had signs to tell you that it was a freespot. I suspect there are many good free wireless areas in this city but I just haven’t been paying attention. I’ve seen many wireless hotspots where you have to be a subscriber to connect but few of the free kind. If you know of any please tell me where they are.

This is another post about mail migration that is probably only of interest to Andy who happened to IM me today asking about it. I promise to bring more wonderful pictures of utterly boring things in Japan soon, but unfortunately I’m in one of my “must fix up my blog’s backend and reorganize all my computer files for no apparent reason” moods rather than the usual “go out and meet interesting people, take their picture, breath air and have a normal life.”

So anyway, I signed up for the Google Apps for Your Domain Beta which basically is a service where they will host your domain. You can then have Gmail, Googletalk, Calendar etc using your own domain. All for free!! I was mostly interested in Gmail without the @gmail.com address but using my own @q-taro.com instead. I signed up and then had to point my MX Settings (DNS for mail) to google. My provider Totalchoicehosting.com is totally cool and when I sent them the request, they responded within 5 minutes. The MX config change was done immediately. If you are looking for a good web hosting provider, they are tops!

I love Gmail more than sex (that’s a lie, but you get the idea) so I can’t describe how happy I am to be able to use Gmail with my own email addresss. It’s a dream come true!!

Then I had to figure out a way to move all my mail into the new account. Not that I need it but I like to have all my email archives in one place. I have managed to keep all my emails since 1993 and hopefully after this time I won’t have to think about it for a while.

So last night, I downloaded all my Gmail mail to Thunderbird (it took all night) and then this morning I used Mark Lyon’s GMail Loader to import all that mail to the new account. I used this freeware the first time I migrated all my mail to Gmail but that was almost 2 years ago and I only had about 7,000 or so mails. As everyone knows Gmail is more like a chat than mailer so you tend to write/send more mails of shorter length. In the 2 years I’ve been using it, I’ve accumulated a ton of mail. About 15,000+ mails. After downloading it all and then deleting all the crap I didn’t want, I proceeded to import it using the Gmail Loader. The freeware is set to send only 1 mail every 2 seconds to prevent flooding the smtp server. I started the process at 5am this morning, went to work, came back, and now 15 hours later it’s still not finished. It takes longer than 2 seconds for mails with large attachments which I have tons of. I’m sending all the mail to my inbox so as you can see (above) I already have almost 6,000 items. There’s actually way more than that. Those are unread items only and number of conversation threads, not individual mails. Also, with Google Apps you can change the Gmail logo to your own. Do you like my Doraemon gif?

No such thing as a product in Japan without some character mascot. And so Mozilla Japan has created one for Firefox and is now asking you to think of a name for the guy. Enter the contest before the deadline 9/14.

The first DIY that’s been on my mind is putting in a home network. Of course, I already have the wireless setup which is adequate but I really want to have LAN ports in the walls of every room so I can set up cameras and servers and what not. Also, with wireless I’m limited to 54Mbps. I could get a 80Mbps Wireless Router but I’m skeptical about whether it would be any improvement. Anyone have any good advice before I start punching holes in the walls?