July 19, 2007 at 5:11 pm · Filed under Things Found Online
More from Pink Tentacle: writes about a mini documentary on the guy who makes the tape signs in Shinjuku station. Construction in large stations can be HELL and involve a lot of redirection signs. The man making these ones does an incredibly beautiful job at it.
Links to video:
Part 1
Part 2
They are in Japanese (with Japanese subtitles) but watch it for a bit at least to see this man’s work. Reminds me of something I love about this country: people take pride in their work and people take pride in other people’s work. But I guess pride is not the right word because people are humble. Maybe…”put importance”…please replace that for me I’m leaving early….
July 10, 2007 at 9:23 pm · Filed under Things Found Online
K I have not gotten into it that deeply yet and won’t tonight because I am supposed to be working on the T-H-E-S-I-S but yubnub looks soooooooooo cool. A google like interface with a command library expandable by…yes…you! You can enter something like “g nunnery” and it will do a google search for nunnery. Then there’s the mash command. Enter “mash g wp nunnery” and get a google/wikipedia split pane of nunnery results. Entering “simpsons” gives you a random simpsons quote (Homer: The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication.) and the list goes on…
Literally hours of entertainment awaits me…motivation to get back to work!
May 28, 2007 at 6:22 pm · Filed under Things Found Online
From Popgadget – the chalk mug. The second after I realized what it was a shudder ran through my body and I writhed around in my chair for a bit. Even now, having a hard time handling the thought of handling this mug. Chalkboard…dusty chalk…putting your mouth on it…….aahhhhhuurrrghhhdhfdsfdsfadfbdsfajkhvbalgkhsdkgjahewaoruiy(’489y6!!!
Can I get the magic marker mug please?
May 17, 2007 at 2:20 pm · Filed under Social Technology, Things Found Online, Work
I was searching for a project done by a woman I am meeting on Monday called “kotonoha” and came across kotonoha.cc. Very interestingly because both are related to my work – object interface to information and (given the current direction of things) questions, surveys, and polling for personal expression and satisfying that desire to see what other people think.
Kotonoha.cc looks addictive and with my current Japanese and browser translator I am already enjoying the type of questions posted and the responses. Oh yeah – what is it? It is a site where people can indicate their opinion on various “things” (koto) by choosing “O” or “X” and add a little explanatory comment. The “O” “X” o tsukeru system is the common “yes” “no” system in Japan. Examples of things are:
- which are scarier, spiders or cockroaches
- can you remember numbers past 3.1415
Users have simple profiles (photo, nickname, URL) and you can subscribe to different users and receive feeds of their posts in an site-based inbox.
Browsing the questions so far has been really really interesting. I am not just learning about the people or “community” through their responses but also through the questions they are posing. Yes some (like my examples above) are about mundane, general things but others are about current events, issues, popular things (indicators of what the “current” in the country might be) and others about the kotonoha community itself.
モスバーガーはモスと略す O X
(“mos burger” abbreviate to “mos”?) from what I can tell, most people do. It is good that I know this.
The one thing that bugs me is that they don’t display (from what I can tell) a tally of “O” and “X”. I can see that 690 have responded to the mos burger question and a list of the most recent results and comments…but not those two numbers – how many “O” and how many “X”. But…is this intentional? To avoid bias?
What if it went a step further and I had to respond before seeing any responses/comments? While this might motivate people to respond and eliminate bias from seeing what the majority thinks, it might take away from the experience of being in the kotonoha social space which, now that I think of it, seems less to do with knowing what the majority thinks, what the winning side it, etc. and more to do with knowing that people have an opinion.
May 1, 2007 at 3:20 pm · Filed under Things Found Online
It is Golden Week and most people have taken Tuesday and Wednesday off of work as well so currently there are like 6 out of 40 some people in the office. It is a good chance to travel but expensive so I am limiting my adventures to the park/tokyo bay by my apartment which actually has been very vacation-y and relaxing. Both Sunday and Monday afternoons were gorgeous and I sat by the water drawing with the sound of waves lapping over voices of children and BBQ aromas in the air. A nice prelude to the summer and enough alone / meditation-y time spent for me to get to the thesis for the rest of this week. Except for on Thursday – I am going to check out the digital public art festival in Tokyo.
But…the reason why I called you here…please look at these amaaaaaaazing works of art in cake form. Astonishing.
