Zoho Creator

Just horsing around with Zoho Creator.

For starters, I made an embedded form which I've placed at the bottom of this blog that will allow you lucky people to contact me. Give it a try!

Although I can hardly claim to have "made" it, but rather selected something similar from their template of applications and tweaked it a bit.

Tokyo2Point0

Attended the Tokyo2Point0 get-together yesterday, at Fujimama's.

Two web apps were introduced.

1. http://www.photohito.com/
   
   This is a photo-sharing site by kakaku.com. It is very focused on cameras and lenses, and the photography aspect of photo-sharing. It ties in with the kakaku.com product database via their API, so that when you upload a photo you are presented with hierarchical pull-down menus that allow you to enter camera and lens information. I've noticed that other photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Photobucket also display some camera information which gets embedded into the JPEG header by the digital camera. photohito.com takes this camera / photography aspect to a different level.
   



2. http://www.pressarmy.com
   
   This is a site for viral projects. You can set up a profile page for your project. It is then used to track buzz about said project in the media and the blogosphere.
   

All in all it was a good time. The house wine at Fujimama's was a very nice Cabernet Sauvignon.

Fukutoshin Line

A new line is being built on the Tokyo subway, going to our station. Opening date is June 14.

As a result my life is going to get 200% better (not sure of the exact figure, I will admit).

It is going to run along the same route as the Yurakucho Line in our general area west of Ikebukuro. However past Ikebukuro into the city core it will just run directly below Meiji-dori to Waseda (hence Takadanobaba), Shinjuku, Harajuku, and Shibuya. All these places will be accessible without having to change trains! In fact Shibuya is my daily commute.

Yeehaw!

Toto Cafe

In the course of bicycling around our area last weekend I found another nice little cafe, the Toto Cafe.

It was around before, but seems to have reopened and is better and brighter. Not overly expensive and a nice place to park yourself to read and relax.

Quest for a ToDo list

As a former Outlook user I have been surprised by the lack of good To Do lists, or task managers, among the profusion of Web 2.o applications that have been in our collective face in the past few years.

It's pretty incredible, all manner of music recommendation services (cough...) but such a paucity of something so basic, and so comparatively easy to develop.

Yahoo! Calendar does have a task list, but it is very basic, hardly a task manager. The interface is not very slick either. Google Calendar, which otherwise has a superb interface, doesn't even have a task list to begin with.

All the buzz (ya, that inescapable buzz) over the past year seems to be about Remember The Milk... people talk about it as if it is the Second Coming, or Obama. But a glaring shortcoming is the lack of sub-tasks, or task hierarchies.

A new find is Todoist. Finally something with a nice friendly interface and a task hierarchy! It still could use some work, like a calendar view. Another thing, tasks are inextricably tied with appointments and schedules, so I'm surprised that both Remember The Milk and Todoist are not schedulers-come-task-managers. It seems like a no-brainer to me that two genres of application really belong together. I think there is a genre called PIM (personal information manager) that does encompass both. Remember The Milk tries to piggyback itself on Google Calendar, but it is not a very smooth or seamless operation.

Anywhoo, for now I will continue to test-drive Todoist and let you know how things are going!

Back to normal

We had a nice New Year's mid-day meal yesterday at home, cooked by Kasumi. Mio joined us.

Will post pics later... sorry I know I'm sounding like a broken record.

In the evening, the three of us went to Hie Jinja for hatsumode. We dropped by my office because I needed to pick up something. We then went to a Turkish restaurant right near my office called Anatolia. I love that place.

Noda-san party

Went to Noda-san and Tango-san's place last night for a shin-nen-kai.

Brought the obligatory wine and cheese.

Some interesting guests, including the woman who did the translation for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Sho-gatsu

Spent the shogatsu (New Years Day) celebration eating and imbibing at Kasumi's uncle and aunt's place in Shin-Yokohama.

Will post pics later.

A Happy New Year

A big countdown party at the home of my German friend, Roy (no relation, hehehe).

I took two bottles of Robert Mondavi, a Zinfandel and a Chardonnay (I think it was!). We bought them at the Bic Camera on Meiji dori for a freaking incredible 950 yen! I don't think it is that cheap in North America.

Will link to some pics after getting them up on Flickr.

Bicycling

I'm going to start keeping a more detailed account of my non-work activities from now... for my own record-keeping if nothing else. It may not always be interesting to others - you've been warned!

Today Kasumi and I went bicycling up to Nakamurabashi station, the next major station on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line. Not very far but it was a bit cold. We stopped in a little cafe, called Chez Gon, and had coffee and cake. I had a chocolate roll cake, she had an apple pie. The desserts were good, the coffee so-so.

VBA

I've started doing some VBA work, using Microsoft Access.

So far so good, except that I'm pretty unimpressed with some aspects of it, especially object-orientation.

I found that you can't pass a class instance as a parameter to a method of a different class. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I'll follow-up on this later. In the meantime it is pretty sucky. :(

Serial terminal on Linux

Here's another guy who's trying to overcome serial port issues on Linux, and provides some good information.

BI-BA-BO: ttyS0 - terminal on serial connection

Bluetooth helps Facebook friends

This looks interesting... there could be lots of potential here for taste-determination.

Bluetooth helps Facebook friends

A team of UK researchers is combining the power of social network Facebook with communications tool Bluetooth to learn more about human interactions.

Bath University scientists have created a tool which can use the unique ID of Bluetooth devices, like a mobile phone, to build new friendship networks.

Users register with the Facebook tool, called Cityware, that tracks encounters in the real world via Bluetooth.

It is part of a wider project backed by Nokia, HP Labs and Vodafone.

Dr Vassilis Kostakos, research associate at the University of Bath, said: "Networks are everywhere - social and digital.

"The really nice thing about Bluetooth is that when you are walking down the street, although you are not talking to anyone, your Bluetooth device can be talking to other devices.

"People with Bluetooth devices are actually creating an ad hoc communications infrastructure where information can flow through the city over time."

He said the project's motivation was in helping people find out more information about "familiar strangers".

'Publicly online'

He said: "Most people you bump into or see regularly have made information about themselves available publicly online.

"But the internet is such a big place that it's difficult to find contextual information about who someone is, where they are etc."

The tool lets users find out if any of the people they bump into regularly is a Cityware user and has a profile of Facebook. If so, they can then choose to add that person to their friends' list.

The tool works in four parts: Facebook account, Cityware application, Bluetooth device and Cityware node.

Users must have a Facebook account, install the Cityware application and register the Bluetooth ID of their mobile phone or laptop with the software.

The researchers have set up a series of nodes around the UK and at locations in the US.

These nodes are computers which constantly scan for Bluetooth-enabled devices in a given area, and send that information back to servers which compare the IDs of the gadgets with any enabled Facebook profiles.

Dr Kostakos said: "The node sits in the environment and records everyone's unique Bluetooth ID. Cityware itself doesn't know your name, or who you are."

Nodes have been set up in Bath, University College London, the University of California in San Diego, with more nodes going online in Sweden, Hong Kong and Sydney.

He added: "When you return to Facebook you will see a list of all the devices you were near and the link to profiles of people who have tagged themselves on Cityware."

The Facebook tool is part of a wider project looking at issues around pervasive computing - connected devices in the environment.

"We are interested in understanding how cities work, how people move around. More recently we have been looking at how viruses spread in cities - biological and digital viruses."

Reinforcing theories

He said analysis of encounters was reinforcing theories that viruses are spread through encounters that "last a long time and are frequent".

"It is also demonstrating that encounters that are short and infrequent help spread innovation and new ideas," he said.

The ambition for the Facebook tool is to have mobile phones alert each other when in the proximity of another Facebook user who shares common interests or common friends.

Dr Kostakos said: "This won't happen in the near future because it is very difficult to write an application that runs on a lot of phones. But it is possible."

The team is also working on an application for virtual world Second Life.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6949473.stm

Published: 2007/08/16 14:37:06 GMT

© BBC MMVII