Ben Miller | Tokyo

I'd heard the name, but I had no idea...

2007-01-29T02:13:00.000+09:00

Maria Callas - Ah! non credea mirarti (La Sonnambula)
As Wikipedia notes "Her dramatic life and personal tragedy have often overshadowed Callas the artist in the popular press." This 4:27 fixed that for me.
via Chris Case

Dude, get some sleep...you're here on business

2007-01-24T23:16:00.000+09:00

In the real world, a mere five-minute walk from my cubicle, a fellow middle manager also loses his focus on his business priorities and seeks temporary escape from the rigors of the corporate grind via non-work-related internet surfing on his laptop. In the virtual word, we both end up at the same place - this site, although we come at it from slightly different angles...

8apps

2007-01-21T12:49:00.000+09:00

I am trying the 8apps set of lightweight online tools. Handshake is the SNS and is billed as

... the place to meet your next friend, programmer, project manager, accountant, interface designer and more. By adding someone as a contact here, you can collaborate online in 8apps. Handshake is social networking with purpose.

Radar (aka spider) charts are popular in Japan, and it is interesting to see how they are being used here.

This could hit a little closer to home than I would wish. If I disappear suddenly from Handshake, you'll know a lightweight SNS does not necessarily need to be anodyne.

scrybe

2007-01-17T22:49:00.000+09:00

Just as I was contemplating bringing a major bout of procrastination to an end, Scrbye lets me in.

notes

calendar

sends me an email reminder

can it sync w google calendar?
google calendar offers an address for ical; so far, so good

looks like scrybe needs a file from my disk

I downloaded the ical for Japanese holidays from google calendar then uploaded it to scrybe; it worked (kanji didn't render; double byte, but that's another story); but for things other than a series of dates, it seems like a lot of effort compared to pen and paper

but, it's only a matter of time

all in all, it's very smooth; I've got it on two machines now; eventually it will be able to sync w google calendar (via a url) and then allow editing of calendar while not connected to internet, for re-syncing upon reconnection. More or less have that now with abiword and google docs.

I bought a domain via google the other day. Seems like combining individual scrybe accounts w each of the (200 x 2g) mailboxes in the set of google apps for a domain would allow a reasonable biz setup for $10 p.a. Is that $0.05 per user per year? There must be a catch.

Beatles Sgt. Pepper's 40 'years ago today' countdown

2007-01-14T21:02:00.000+09:00

It's difficult to know when to date some sorts of events. For example, it was approx 40 years ago today, that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. The creative process began when?; the recording sessions in late '66; the release in mid '67. In some sense, there is a countdown to the day on which we can say "It was 40 years ago today that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play." Unless you were buying records in the summer of '67 you may have no idea what I am talking about. If you were...

sources:
wikipedia
last.fm
pandora

Megite wisdom of crowds

2007-01-14T19:38:00.000+09:00

I am so glad I checked out Megite. The wisdom of crowds let me know the second most important thing about which I should be informed.

follow up:
David Foster Wallace (p.37 A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments)

In the comments, someone connected with Megite made it clear that this sort of stuff is meant to be filtered out. Good point by Mr Wallace. Cheap shot by me; sorry.

MyBlogLog spam splog

2007-01-13T19:23:00.000+09:00

You may have heard of MyBlogLog. Lately, proving once again, that which can be spammed will be, I was chosen to be a friend (I assume by an automated script) by a guy who has been using the service for three weeks and has joined 1500 communities and has added 1600 contacts. I left him a message. I hope he reads it.

follow up: So, perhaps not an automated script, rather someone immune to carpal-tunnel syndrome. Anyway, he leaves me two truculent messages about my hypocrisy - my use of MyBlogLog signifies I want to connect, and he's only doing more of it than me just as is Eric [one of this sites founders]. As far as I can see, he remains my contact despite that he still hasn't viewed this site and has no way of knowing whether or not I may be saying really horrible and hurtful things about inter alia (his or his loved one's) ethnicity, culture, religion... with which he would be in violent disagreement. (I've masked out his details as I am of the opinion this is really a systemic issue, and this overzealous promoter of his services is merely a symptom. An internship at Edelman awaits.)

delicious bookmark google co-op search engine

2007-01-08T22:08:00.000+09:00

This is a customized search engine that is driven by my del.icio.us bookmarks. It doesn't actually work well yet. I think the problem is that Google Co-op only allows 5k annotations all up, and I have approached my limit with my Lijit and OPML uploads. I guess tomorrow I will create a new account with Google and see if I can get this to work. It is potentially interesting as the developer of the technique has split the XML uploads (skeleton of urls and separate set of annotations) in a way that should allow greater control over search results.

reference: some really smart guy who is very co-operative in helping me figure this out

related: Eats your del.icio.us tags and spits out a tasty timeline

at the end of the day, I have four tailored search engines available through one widget

pageflakes widget

2007-01-07T14:22:00.000+09:00

Pageflakes makes exporting their widgets pretty easy. I still haven't found a widget that performs a critical function for me. The one that gets the closest and in which I have the most hope is the Lijit wijit at the top of the lefthand sidebar. I could give up all the rest of my widgets and widgety pages (netvibes, pageflakes) with little loss, although I would miss fooling around with the toys.

follow up:
the widget seems to append "#FlakeId=25308303&Height=203" to the URL. This is correlated with the URL not being recognized as a valid address from which a RSS/Atom feed can be derived by, for example, feedvalidator and feedburner. Maybe this is temporary and/or actually caused by some other factor such as slow response time from blogger. Hope so. Breaking some poor schlub's feed(s) seems like a rather large demerit.

...several hours later: I turned off the feeds and then immediately re-instated them. After that things seem OK. So, correlation but apparently not causation.

WoW dashboard, handling information overload

2007-01-04T20:59:00.000+09:00

Until I saw Joi Ito's WoW dashboard, I thought submarine commanders and options traders had a lock on the most complex/dense mediated views of their environment.

related:
* ambassador from the next economy
* twofones

Wikipedia eats Google eats Digg

2007-01-04T15:46:00.000+09:00

1) Google eats Digg [searchblog, Matt Cutts, micropersuasion, touchstone ]
2) Wikipedia eats Google [micropersuasion, Ross Mayfield]
3) Lijit further improves targeting/relevance by allowing one to use (the OPML of) self-selected and FOAF-selected information-gatekeepers *now* (by leveraging Google Co-op) rather than waiting for a quantum improvement in natural language techniques; this may be a long wait as language is truly one of the mysteries of the universe (cf Chomsky) [datamining]

follow up:
* Google ReWriter is on the way
* The Wikipedia Threat to Google's Empire

xkcd hallucinations

2007-01-03T17:52:00.000+09:00

source: xkcd

Which Superhero are you?

2007-01-02T19:49:00.000+09:00

I should have kept quiet about the push-up bra; maybe I could have been Hulk instead.

source: The Superhero Quiz

InformationArchitects Tokyo rail transport/web2.0 mashup

2007-01-02T10:00:00.000+09:00

InformationArchitects have used the schematic (can't call it a map because of the spatial distortion) of the Tokyo rail system as a point of departure for visualizing the web2.0 landscape/trends. Web2.0 is great, it has remapped my real world from the intersection of anomie and mendacity and SSRIs to an imaginary wonderful place, where I now live at Digg [Meguro] (humor and advertising), close to Google [home of the Shibuya epiphany] and work [Kamiyacho] on usability, a stone's throw away from openness and technology. I feel better already. It really is all about one's mental maps. click image for A4 size

ConnectViaBooks widget

2007-01-02T08:50:00.000+09:00

Japan mobile handset cornucopia - the paradox of choice

2006-12-29T09:35:00.000+09:00

Choices, choices, choices:

via: TokyoMango: Brian's Cellphone Orgy Video

Paradox of Choice (more is less):

source: TED Talk - Barry Schwartz

My choice (less is more - not Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but Robert Browning!):

This phone is marketed to geriatrics. It has no LCD screen, no email, no GPS, no downloadable java apps, no choice of ringtones, no call screening/blocking, no answering/recording function, no calculator, no calendar, no network voicemail, no nothing...you name it, it doesn't have it.

What it does have is huge buttons, an on/off switch and the choice of loud (actually, earsplitting for those occasions when I'm not using my hearing aid) or medium ring (louder than your alarm clock) or no ring with vibration. It also allows one to invite the grandkids over to program the three push-to-call buttons. It's much simpler than the controller for my airconditioner, and as a result I can actually use the thing with some degree of confidence. NTT DoCoMo has a similar model, and with number portability in effect since October, I may go see if that one is even more idiot-proof. (More seriously, the layout is uber-logical and has small braille-like symbolic protrusions to allow the blind or blind-drunk to know where their not-visible thumb is and what would happen if they were to push it down on the adjacent button.)

I've seen Volkswagens with bumper stickers saying "Don't laugh, my other car is a Rolls-Royce." I need something along those lines too. Although "laugh" doesn't quite capture the correct nuance. I'm considering, "Please cease the howls of derision, my other handset is so cutting-edge you couldn't figure it out either."

also:
* Jean Snow on the Willcom R9
* Google Tech Talk - Barry Swartz, Paradox of Choice

Onrushing decreptitude - motivational messages

2006-12-28T18:50:00.001+09:00

Needing inspiration, I turned to the pantheon of the gods:

Mao Tse Tung, 1966, age 73 swims 9 miles across Yangtze River. Presumably aided by the current, he swims at 4 times the pace of an Olympic champion. [ref]

Kim Jong Il, 2006, age 65 shoots 11 holes-in-one in a round of golf. [ref]

Pat Roberston, 2006, age 73 leg presses 2,000 pounds; he has a miracle shake for sale that will help you do the same. [ref]

slick internet marketing - Denmark's Bikini Bandits and qashqai "world's fastest growing sport, underground, extreme"

2006-12-28T00:20:00.000+09:00

Note to self: 1) learn how to drive; 2) get international drivers' license; 3) get visa for Denmark; 4) use accumulated vacation days cruising streets looking for that which does not exist.

I often can't get widgets to work in Blogger (I live in hope). An embedded video (eye-catching spoof newsreport) is meant to be above this para and below the screenshot; anyway, try speedbandits.dk.

via: KandaNewsNetwork where the video is not only embedded in his site but also the RSS feed. My usual view of Google is that they can do no wrong. But this time I think Blogger done me wrong. The limitations around CSS, javascript, flash, RSS make me feel like a poor relative of the residents of the land of WordPress and TypePad. I guess it's because I am a poor relative, paying Google zero for the software and hosting.

The widget itself is streamed from 5x5m.com, which seems to be the microsite of choice for spoof news designed to be spread over the internet as part of a marketing campaign. For example, it currently directs to http://5x5m.com/files/qashqai which is a short clip of what appears to be a car speeding up a ramp to launch into a 360 and barrel-roll. It's a promo for the over-the-top http://qashqaicargames.com/. It's obviously all advertising, but I was still a click or two away from figuring out it's connected with Nissan U.K. and buzz they are trying to build around an "urbanproof" vehicle http://www.nissan.co.uk/home/microsite/qashqai/fullscreen/index.html

references:
* Nissan uses power of the Net to promote its Qashqai
* AdsOfTheWorld
* Speed Control Bikini Bandits

widget = ultra-WIDe-field telescope for GRB Early Timing

2006-12-27T22:04:00.000+09:00

I like widgets. But if you want to take a step back from blog bling, and instead think about a perspective that carries a bit more weight (Carl Sagan died ten years ago - 20 DEC 1996), this Tokyo WIDGET (ultra-WIDe-field telescope for GRB Early Timing of optical flashes and unexpected transient sources) does the trick

bookmarks are for oldies

2006-12-27T01:02:00.000+09:00

Bookmarks are for old people. I have some regular readers. I can sorta guess their ages. The younger ones revisit my page by using Google to search on "benmiller" or "ben miller" or believe it or not "benmiller.com." Even with incipient Alzheimer's I can remember the www and save a few of my rapidly dwindling (probabilistic) store of seconds of (borderline) lucidity. Youth, so truly wasted on the young. For the young'uns, my referrer log shows variants of:

The oldies use bookmarks, so when they revisit my log shows no referrer:

followup:
* more common across all age groups than I thought according to AOL search data leaked earlier this year discussed in the context of the self-serving nature of the end-of-year lists of popular search terms offered by the rival search engines. [ref]

Google co-op custom search engine

2006-12-27T00:18:00.000+09:00

This is an experiment. I uploaded my Google [RSS] Reader OPML to Google Co-op. It seems to do much the same that lijit does for me.

Admittedly, there is a bit of self-referential (how unusual!) circularity here. While I don't think this is a tool to expand my worldview, it is an excellent card catalog for my existing perspective (as determined by my preferred information gatekeepers listed in my OPML). With jonswift (gets all his "news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues"), chemgasm (libertarian doper), fafblog (hysterically erudite), and Brad DeLong ("fair and balanced almost every day") in there, I am assured of great results when trying to identify, say, the stupidest man alive or the link between recreational pharmaceuticals (esp hallucinogens such as LSD) and the rather staid policy wonks at the Cato Institute.

The only problem I can see is that because the OPML is output to a file as opposed to a URL (cf bloglines, newsgator) I will need to go through the process again if I want the search engine to reflect my evolving interests as embedded in my OPML. I've only just discovered by doing a search that Time Magazine resides in my OPML, but because I have it tagged with some sort of priority indicator that means I would not see a post under normal circumstances I've long forgotten it's there. Obviously, having dynamically updating OPML at a URL is a feature that will be offered soon, but I think Google is remiss in not having addressed this already.

reference: Google Operating System

amen break ishkur

2006-12-26T22:32:00.000+09:00

James Brown died 25 Dec 2006. This made me think about sampling.

Which reminded me of the amen break.

source: Ishkur

picassa widget

2006-12-25T14:12:00.000+09:00

test01

gickr animated gif widget

2006-12-25T13:28:00.000+09:00

test01

test02

via: Widgets Lab

profilactic widget

2006-12-24T13:21:00.000+09:00

Profilactic is an internet-identity management site similar to claimID in its self-selection of URLs one wishes to claim, and similar to Ziki in aggregating one's feeds and then outputting a blended RSS feed. I tried the widget, but it broke the CSS in the sidebar of the blogger template, so I had to uninstall it. I may have done something wrong, so I will give it another try soon.