Takumi's Blog

I’ve been trying to get to know different people on imeem!, the social networking site that i told you about before, and I came across this: Think Different.

It’s an old Apple commercial during their “think different” campaign, and a very inspiring one too.

With that video, there was also other ‘related’ ones, like their Newton commercial, and their 2002 iMac introduction video.

Watching these… It’s like looking at what Apple has done. They may not have the biggest marketshare, but they have made a difference in the world.

They introduced the first personal computer back with Apple II in the late 1980’s. Soon after they had their GUI (graphical user interface) Macintosh ready for the public. Which Microsoft copied…

They also released Newton in the 1990’s, and their color iMac’s. The Newton was a first of it’s kind. Other PDA’s never got similar features (wireless capabilities, handwriting recognition) until wayy later in the game. But the Newton was just too early, and it wasn’t a succesful product.

Every new computer Apple releases is always a design marvel. They look great, are powerful, and have the best operating system out there.

Now I feel like I want to do something, to Think Different.

imeem is a social networking site, just like MySpace. Well, I shouldn’t put it on the same level as MySpace. I mean, let’s admit it, the original idea for MySpace might have been good, but it’s a lot different from that now, and plainly, it sucks.

imeem is much better than that. The site design itself is clean, and easy to use. The advertisments are not a nuisance, and are tolerable. And the features the it provides and the community there are friendly and awsome.

Video, audio, photos, communities, forums, all available online. There’s even a program you can download and view imeem from.

The program is actually quite thoughtful. It lets you login to your other IM accounts (AIM, MSN, GTalk, etc.) and manage everything related to your account from the program too. Although the Mac version still has a ways to go, it’s looking like a great start.

imeem > myspace

So, my dad pointed me out to this service called JaJah. It’s kind of like Skype, but really more like a normal phone.

Basically, you sign into their website, and enter your phone number, and the number of the person you want to call. Then you’ll get a call from JaJah and so will the other person, and you can talk all you want.

If both of you are JaJah members, and have the number in your account then the call is free! If one of you isn’t a JaJah member then it costs around $0.025/min (varying to where you call), which is very similar to what Skype charges you for calling a normal phone.

I haven’t used this service yet, but I’m hoping to try it out soon… Will get back to you with a better description then! All I can say now is I think it’s a great service (well, my dad does), and that you guys should give it a try!

The website for Ueno-Shyoukai itself is not that impressing. And I originally thought that I was going to be interning in some unkown company. But that was all based on not much information.
So, the day of the internship finally came, and my partner and I got their 1 hour early just to make sure we wouldn’t get lost. We ate some breakfast, and then after getting lost a little, got all the address… But something wasn’t right. We were told to go to the 4th floor, but this, house, building, whatever it was only had 2. So we took a closer look at the address, and noticed it was just Ueno, not Higashi-Ueno… With 15 minutes left, we RAN, and I mean RAN to the right place… (and we were still 3 minutes late!)

Anyways, the company ended up being pretty big, and the people there very nice. They own multiple clothing chains, with a total of 50+ stores (pretty impressive for a local company I say!), and the style is targeted towards 18-30 year olds.

They gave us a tour of the building, (multiple floors and different stores), and even bought us lunch and drinks!

By the end of the day we got to work with some images for their products, and experience how they manage clothes and making sure everything is like it’s supposed to be. (A very fun internship!)

Summer break has officially started!

But… it sure doesn’t feel like it. Soccer practice is practically scheduled for every other day during the break, and I’m supposed to meet with four of my teachers to talk about how bad my grades are.

I love that :sarcasm: They try to give the impression that they really care for you, so they say we need to talk about your grades. Then when you have a ‘meeting’ with the teacher, all they do is nag on you and say your study skills suck. Really, teachers here have NO problem whatsoever saying that the student sucks, or “are you stupid?”.

Now, I know that I haven’t exactly studied much here, I’m not really that type of person. But, since I am here, I might as well, and that’s what I plan on doing.

Things don’t always work out as planned, and if by winter break, my grades don’t go up, I’m moving back to Portland. (Unless a University here guarantees my acceptance regardless of what grades I get :unrealistic: ). I can’t risk having my future destroyed just because I want to learn Japanese. And if worse comes to worse, I will move back to save that chance.

Enough of my nagging, I have soccer practice tomorrow… and I have to meet some more teachers to talk about my grades…

One week ago I told both my parent’s they should buy a bunch of Apple stock. I had this feeling that something was going to happen. And well, look at it’s stock. It has risen over 10% in a day and a half! (now it’s at $60/share and counting)

Some analysts have been saying that it wont meet expectations, and have, for the past few weeks, been beating on Apple. For what reason? I guess one is their jobs depend on giving some sort of news, but I also think Apple’s been getting a lot of bad press in general lately.

I’m writing this late at night, so I don’t exactly remember where I read this (I’ll get the source within the next 2 days hopefully if I can find it in my history), but there was an article that summed it up pretty well. Apple’s the center of attention, so not only do they get all the good press when they want it, but small things get blown up out of proportion when they come up.

Personally, living and walking around, I see that more and more people are deciding to get Mac’s, and more and more people are saving up for iPods (and when their parent’s get something else because it was cheaper, they complain about it). So I think Apple has not yet hit it’s high-point. (Or whatever you call it in the stock-world )

So last night, I finished studying for the day (at like 1 am lol), and I decided I wanted to see if I could get my old iBook to work. You know, the one that “blew out” on me a while back, which forced me to get my MacBook earlier than expected?

Well, it turns out, that the iBook still works. I did a PRAM reset (one that isn’t written anywhere), and that just happened to make it work again!

Now I just have to find that Tiger install disc that my uncle bought me a while ago… Then I can have a cleanly installed iBook! (And I need to reinstall the OS on my mom’s computer back home… I kinda messed it up before I left).

Well, must go study now

Presentation Zen always has stuff worth reading, seriously. I’ve been watching the TED conferences lately, and it just blows my mind away. All of these intelligent people, in one room, presenting what they know to each other… Wow, I wish I could go to a conference.

So far I’ve seen Al Gore, David Pogue, and Hans Rosling. I’m about to watch Tony Robbins and Sir Ken Robinson once I finisht this post.

Hans Rosling’s presentation was enlightening. He has a software company that displays data. Literally, but in a way that you can see how the world is changing more than what we expect and what our stereotypes are. Here’s a link to Gapminder. It’s really great, and I encourage you guys to take a peak at some of the vids available at TED.

Wowza, all my friends (or nearly all) from Portland at least said hi to me by email, chat, or MySpace today… that’s sooo awsome.

I can’t wait to go back to Portland and see them all, this is going to be a fun summer, I can already tell.

Well, the Sempai from school will have stopped soccer by the end of August I think (so they can study for their college entrance exams I guess).

Well, my midnight news was: PayPal doesn’t accept Google Checkout as one of their 40+ payment options! Now this obviously means they take Google Checkout as a competitor (though, I personally like PayPal better, they already have a brand thing going)

Well, I will finally start development on the MacProbe website, using the (x4) version for the homepage!

As some of you may have seen, I’m using a cleaner theme for my blog… And I don’t plan on developming my own theme. Partially because I’m lazy, and partially because I like to make changes… and well, this one actually fits all of my content pretty well.

We’ve got a bunch of reviews written up, so all I gotta do is make the theme, and then Sam and I will start publishing! Hurray!

I’m a long-time Apple fan, and constantly getting Apple new customers, but I can’t wait for their Leopard release.

The Unversal version of Tiger is just too buggy. On my old PowerPC Mac’s, the computer would never freeze, and only occasionally would a program crash.

But now that I’m on a Mactel, it seems to happen quite often. Every time though, I send in the error report so that if Apple does read it, maybe they can fix it!

I’m not a programmer, so I don’t exactly know what’s going on to make them crash… I did watch some of Apple Developers’ “how to convert your application to a universal binary” videos. And I kind of got that the bits are switched (instead of x01234 on a powerpc, it’s like x43210 on an intel chip)…. Meh, I just lost myself in that. You get my point

I’ve been secretly working on three new website designs.

One of them is for a client, so I’m not at liberty to talk about it until the project is finished, but the other two I can.

My company, Amarimono, has a pretty boring website now. And believe me, I’m not that good at writing copy, which is why I got Sam to work with us. Anyways, in my redesign of the site, I initially let our ‘designer’ do the work. I consider him a ‘designer in training’ for multiple reasons. He has not got a good foot hold on how to use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, and doesn’t know how to emplement what he creates in those programs in a website friendly way (ie. he doesn’t know HTML or CSS).

He brought me the first idea of the site, which was clean. The words “amarimono” in the middle, and then four links at the bottom. And I fell in love with the idea. It as simple, yet it caught your attention.

But… the writing for ‘amarimono’ didn’t seem unique to me. It felt like we were some old man’s company. So I modified his idea and put up a ‘draft site’. I can’t wait to show you guys it! (I do admit though, no fancy AJAX…. which kinda saddens me, and no custom PHP…. I still need to learn those things).

Meanwhile, I was also working on a website design for MacProbe. The Mac software review site Sam and I are working on… We have our differences on what the frontpage should be like, so that’s still undecided, but I’m pretty sure we are at agreement on the logo, and the rest of the layout.

So I guess I ask you this, which layout do you think would fit the frontpage better? This one (lets call this x4), or this one (lets call this x1)?