Takumi's Blog

Every organization needs project management software. Whether it be NetOffice, Basecamp, eGroupWare, etc.

37signals is well known as the creator of Basecamp, the internet’s leading project management software. They provide a hosted solution, which means it’s on their servers. The interface is easy to use, and it’s based on a subscription model.

But I think, after some quick usage, activeCollab is probably one of the best. And the plus is, it’s free, and downloadable. It hasn’t reached 1.0 yet, and is still alpha software, but I suggest checking it out, it’s worth it.

Meebo, the beloved online chatting app. recently got an upgrade, and a nice face lift too. I nearly always use it, and now with the new features, I’m probably going to use it more often.

Some of the new features include:

• New way to browse your chat logs
• Individual sign off
• Pop-outs (you can pop your buddy list, chat logs, chat rooms, and chats out into new windows)
• Easier buddy list management

The biggy for me is the ability to pop out the windows. That way I can have the main meebo page in a tab buried with the page I’m looking at, and my chats in another window that I can look at simultaneously.

Google’s new Firefox extension, Browser Sync does what .Mac does for safari. And I love it.

That was one of the things I didn’t like about Firefox, you can’t sync your information with other computers. But thanks to Google, it’s now possible.

I haven’t been using it for a long time, but from what I can tell, it ONLY syncs with your browser(s).

The feature I was hoping it would have would be for it to sync your browser bookmarks/history with your Google Bookmarks/History

News sites. There’s lots of them. And most of them look the same. NYTimes.com used to look like all the other news sites, but recently, they updated their site.

And guess what. It’s awsome.

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So it’s October 25th, and you know what that means? Round 5 submissions to the 9rules network!

Like I said in my previous post, it would be a dream come true if I was accepted into 9rules. Seriously.

My blog was first just for personal purposes, pointless posts, etc. Basically a typical teenage blog. But over time, I grew out of it. And now, hopefully, it’s geared more towards Business, Apple, Google, Amarimono (my company), Internet (design, server stuff, etc.), Japan, and the occasional Personal category.

Why I’d like to be in the 9rules network?

I’ll feel more pressure to improve my writing skills, stay on topic, and write quality posts. Lately I think I’ve been able to keep a consistency in the quality of my posts. They’re not a whole bunch of short posts with links to other articles, but medium length posts with a more detailed explanation of the link to other products/articles.

I’m going to give it a try and submit my blog today (As soon as I figure out HOW to submit your blog ), but even if I don’t make it in this year, I’m sure there will be a next time. And by then, hopefully I will have created a blog worthy enough to be in the network.

There’s lots of blogging networks out there,

• 9rules
  best known as the network of elite bloggers
• Random Shapes
  the best teen blogs on the net
• Mind Petals
  Young Entreprenuer Network

Those are just to name a few. I’d personally like to be part of all three, but I’m only 16 (turning 17 in a few days), I’m not thatgood at writing, and my business isn’t as big as some of the people in the network.

9rules, it would be a dream to be accepted into that network, seriously. Full of people who know what they’re doing, and know how to share it with their readers in a way that makes them want to come back for more.

Mind Petals just got off it’s feet, and I haven’t really read into it that much, but I’m sure it’s a pretty good network too.

Random Shapes has good intentions, and their network has some good writers, and some who are very successful in the business world. I’m also a new member of Random Shapes.

Lets see how things go.

The Undersigned had a survey up since Oct 1st, which I didn’t notice, and he already posted the results of it. But I guess late is better than never. Here’s my answers to the survey.

1. When did you start blogging?
   2005
2. Average, how often do you blog?
   I try to once or more per day. (Probably ends up around once every two days)
   
3. How do you host your blog?
   I host it myself
4. What blogging application/service do you use?
   WordPress
5. Do you use an application to blog directly from your desktop, rather than from your blogs administration?
   No
6. Do you use a free theme for your blog?
   Yes (slightly modified, working on my own theme right now)
7. What type of blogging do you do?
   Mostly personal, a little topic based
8. What is your primary blogging motivation?
   I like it, it’s fun to share ideas and interesting things you’ve found on the web with other people.
   
9. Do you care much about the amount of visitors?
   No
10. Does the total account of visitors on your blog count more to you, than the amount of visitors who comment on your blog posts?
    No
11. Do you use some sort of anti spam solution for your blog comments? (Such as Akismet)
    Yes (Akismet)
12. If you run advertisements on your blog, do you sell the ads yourself?
    No (Text-Link-Ads + Google AdSense, I’d prefer to sell them myself though)
    
13. If you earn money on advertising on your blog, how much do you approximately earn per month?
    $20-$50
14. If you are running a business blog - have it helped your business to start blogging?
    n/a
15. Are you a member of a blogging network such as random shapes or 9rules?
    No (tried for Random Shapes but was turned down)
    
16. If you are member of a blogging network - has it helped you noticeable in any way?
    n/a
    
17. How many daily unique visitors do your blog have?
    0-100
18. Do you keep statistics of feed subscribers?
    Yes
19. Do you put work into search engine optimisation for your blog?
    No
20. Have you ever bought advertisement on other websites for your blog?
    No

Google’s been upgrading a lot of their services lately. One of the most noticable ones is that they combined Writely and Google Spreadsheets into one product “Google Docs & Spreadsheets.”

The new interface looks good, I like the color combo better than Writely’s original one.  As for the features, it doesn’t look like those have changed that much.

Google Notebooks and Google Reader are the two that have a more noticable feature upgrade.

You’ve always been able to ‘publish’ your notebook so everyone in the world can view it. But sometimes you want to work on things together. And now you can. In the sharing preferences of your notebook you can invite users to edit your notebook.

They also have a nice way to view all of the published notebooks an author has. For example, here’s my public notebooks.

Google Reader now has the #1 feature I’ve wanted this whole time. To be able to delete subscriptions, and have the feed items associated with them deleted as well.

Other than that, the UI for the reader is much better too. Much, much easier to use. Google even created two widgets for their Personalized Homepage feature.

One lets you view your notebooks, and one lets you view recent articles from the reader.

I’m sure the Japanese youth will love this, if it gets into production. It’s a lotion that changes your pigmintation (Just like a real tan does) while providing protection from ultra-violet rays that are harmful. Interesting huh? I wanna try it.

AllPeers is a Firefox extension for BitTorrent. They’ve thought of a pretty friendly way to bring filesharing closer to the typical user. (I still think Azureus is the best, by far).
It’s kind of like a buddylist, where you can drag files to their names (or groups), and it will send them a link for them to go to and they can choose to either download it or download and share it.

I suggest you try it out, it’s still in beta and can be downloaded from the Firefox Add-on’s site.

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!

The other day (sunday night), I was working on this REALLY long post for my blog. And, well, Firefox quit on me. Now, if I was writing the thing in Gmail, at least most of it would have been automatically saved as a draft. But good old WP offered to me to write a new one instead…

Thus the reason for no post that day, I was really tired that night.

Meh, I got bored of my old theme, so I’ve started to work on a new one. You guys are going to be seeing the progress of it for now, lol…

So, I want to have a way to archive all of the sites I go to so that I can look at them later on, and MM3-WebAssistant is the best way to do it.

How it works: The software is actually Java, so it can work on any OS. Basically, it asks you where you want it to keep a cache of all the sites you go to, and then it acts as a proxy, so you setup your browser to go to a port that it designates. That way whenever you go to a site, it keeps a local copy of it on your hard-drive.

Features: The personal edition just lets you keep a local copy of things… not that great, but the Pro edition lets you view what you have locally, and lets you search it! (It only costs like $30 for a lifetime license and 2 years of updates).

One interesting thing is you can view how much data you consume just by looking at websites. In just 3 hours I have 300 MB of websites. (That’s mostly just TEXT!) Pretty cool eh?