As you can see from the previous post, I’ve managed to figure out how to post to this site from my cellphone, using wapblogger. It’s still a bit rough around the edges (it takes the first 5 words of the post as the title, and I can’t categorize the post, which is why the “possibly related” area is blank), and frankly I’m not sure why I need this functionality in the first place, but I can’t deny I’m pleased I actually figured it out. Admittedly posting text isn’t as sexy as photos like Joi Ito’s Moblog (and don’t think I haven’t started working on Naoko for a new camera-equipped phone!). I kind of like the implementation of cellphone blogging seen at gomi no sensei, who has put his cellphone posts in a sidebar entitled “oyayubizoku” (and yes, I’m jealous he’s using that title!). I’d still prefer a way to do this via email (which is dirt cheap), rather than via my phone’s web browser (which isn’t as cheap)…
Moblogging
I’ve been getting excited about various endeavours from Joi Ito and others in the “moblog” arena, that is blogging from mobile devices like cellphones. Joi and others put together a special New Year’s Eve moblog event which demonstrates some of the real-time capabilities of mobile blogging (and some of the inevitable problems as well that come from early-adopting).
I don’t have a camera-equipped cellphone, but I have found myself longing to publish entries to this blog from my phone via email for quite a while now, so I’ve been following recent happenings in the area. I actually use my cellphone primarily as a email device, and have built up quite a dexterous thumb in the process of typing out emails on the phone keypad that I might actually be part of what young Japanese call the oyayubizoku. (In point of fact, in the 7 months I’ve had the phone, I’ve probably made less than 20 phone calls on it. I hate talking on the phone, generally, and anyway, emailing costs only about 1 yen per email (less than a US penny)).
Joi has released a mail2entry script for coverting email to Movable Type entries, which looks simple enough but unfortunately is still a tad more complicated than I have the time for, but I’ve got to think a more end-user-friendly app (or explanation of Joi’s script) is around the corner (blogging tools Radio and Blogger already have this capability built in to their products).
Happy and fulfilled?
The search strings web users have used to lead them to your site is a fairly easy target, but trying to get back into blogging, I need easy targets.
So I bring your attention to Happy+and+fulfilled+foreigners+in+Japan.
I’m number two on the list (humorously number one belongs to a 1997 article from that old Web relic suck.com). So my question is this: was the person who searched on this pondering a move to this country and wondering how other foreigners have made out in the all-important “happy” and “fulfilled” aspects of life, or someone already here and perhaps plaintively searching for some foreigner, anyone, who might be possibly be “happy and fulfilled” in Japan?
As this very post is probably the first time in my life that I’ve uttered “happy” and “fulfilled” in the same sentence (don’t fact-check me, just take my word for it), I’m wondering what answers this person found on my site.