We in Japan are not so lucky, we’ll be lucky to get them in late April but early May is also likely. This is opposite to what you know who claimed in his announcement in January. Oh well…

Anyway when it does arrive, these are the 5 apps I am most looking forward to using with the iPad and why. *Click on the images to go to the iTunes Preview page

Dropbox

Dropbox
If you’ve ever used Dropbox, I probably don’t need to explain but for some of you who haven’t it provides effortless and free syncing between computers and computers or computers and iPhones/iPod touches/iPads (paid plans are also available). As someone who doesn’t do the full USB sync often it is a lifesaver. Just drop a PDF or some pictures in the dropbox on your computer and seconds later you can access it on your iPad. If you mark files as favourites, it will store them locally.  But talking of pdfs…

GoodReader

GoodReader
The iPhone has built-in PDF reader functionality but it’s not very good. Zooming, controls, how to access it or files are all poorly implemented. It seems like an afterthought. GoodReader on the other hand is a supremely well made PDF reader. Zooming is great. It does PDF reflowing, where it tries to read the text of the PDF, fits it to the screen and then allow you to change font size. Access to files is easy too, download direct from the web, or from Dropbox or ftp servers. The files are then stored on the iPad/iPhone. With the likelyhood of the iBooks store not being available in Japan at launch and even then with limited or overpriced content, GoodReader will let me read PDF versions of books I already have or are available on the web. The biggest problem with GoodReader on the iPhone is the iPhone’s screen size. It isn’t really comfortable to read long books, even with all the tricks GoodReader has, but the iPad’s screen should be much better in this regard. It would be even better if it read ePub files, so that I wouldn’t need to use Stanza. Stanza is great for ePub files, stylish, usable, easy to read but trying to access books not in the libraries is a maze.

WriteRoom

WriteRoom
I’m actually typing this in WriteRoom and it is great for just bashing out text without distractions. You could say that the notes app is sufficient but I love the syncing abilities of WriteRoom. (see a pattern here?) Half of this post was typed on the iPhone and half on my desktop. I don’t actually see myself doing a lot of work on the iPad, but one type of task I probably could do without frustration would be writing. I can definitely see myself at Starbucks bashing out posts with the iPad 3G and a bluetooth keyboard ala Gruber.

VNC

VNC
I use vnc quite a lot with my iPhone. Of course with the screen resolution, it is bearable but not totally productive. With 1024×768 of iPad screen space I could control the mac mini being used as a media center in full screen mode and for my desktops I could control them with a lot less scrolling. Add in a VPN connection and I could access the Mac I use at work. In the same way, I’m sure some people are also looking forward to using the pricier LogMeIn Ignition.

Evernote

Evernote
This is a strange one as although it is available for the iPhone I haven’t made much use of it. I’m not alone, there are quite a number of 1 star reviews on the app store. So why am I looking forward to the iPad version? Because I can see how it can pair up with the one I have on the iPhone. The iPhone is a great capture device but it feels cramped as an organising or filing device. So I see myself using my iPhone to capture notes and photos, they would be automatically synced in the Evernote cloud and then I can review and organise on the iPad. And it isn’t just Evernote but all the other apps like JotNot that upload to the Evernote cloud that will make Evernote (iPad version) attractive to try out.

So those were my top 5 apps I am looking forward to using on the iPad. If you are thinking of getting an iPad what are yours?

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If anyone has a request for one of the other 41 prefectures, just leave a comment and I’ll make one when I have time.  I chose these prefectures for various random reasons.  For example, Shimane is the home to the Ruby language which is what we do most of our web development on, and Okinawa is my favourite place in Japan.

[UPDATE: Added 3 more prefectures, Iwate, Fukuoka and Nagasaki, as requested in the comments]

Tokyo

Aomori

Hyogo

Kyoto

Okinawa

Shimane

Iwate

Fukuoka

Nagasaki

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We attended the WordCamp Kansai event (Hiro, Asami, Chapp and I) on Friday and had a fantastic time.  It was a mini-WordCamp, more of a get together  and dinner than the one in Tokyo but all the same it was a success. The food was great too, I loved the lobster!

Matt came and gave a presentation, we got to ask him a few questions and he was gracious enough to have a chat with almost everyone, even though you could see he was tired.  We met some really interesting people who were involved with WordPress, and some who weren’t but were part of the web design and development community in the Kansai area.  It was great meeting Oli and Naoko.  I really think that we need more events like these, where we can meet up, share and chat.  I heard that CSS-Nite will become a regular event in Kansai, which is encouraging news.

I hope there more WordCamps for the Kansai area in the future.  Maybe in the future we can have hulorcamps too :)  Thank-you Matt, Naoko and all the organisers.

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Ticket Gate at Osaka by JanneM

Ticket vending machines at stations are really important for our life in Japan. A few days ago I found an interesting blog post called “If they made ticket vending machines at stations like…”  I’ve translated it below.

If they made ticket vending machines like…

Nintendo

You can buy a ticket if you trace the path from departure to arrival

Sony

High end machines with their self made CPU (But tickets cost a bit)

Microsoft

Input a departure station, a destination station, departure time, arrival time, which route you prefer, and choose grade of a train then you can buy it

Apple

You can only choose your destination station but somehow it will be all right

Google

Input like “A to B” then you can get a list of tickets with a map

Square Enix

You can buy it if you passed all of required missions (And can get bonus points if you get off at all the stations)

Hudson

Shout with a mic

Capcom

Beat off approaching evil attendants to get a ticket

Namco

There are additional parts to decorate your ticket (Extra fee required)

Konami

Find a hidden command to get a free ticket!

Koei

Figure out stats of attendants in each stations and develop a strategy to buy a cheaper ticket

Oracle

Execute SQL commands to get various combinations of tickets from the world largest stations DB

Adobe

You can get a ticket which is beyond your imagination (However it’s expensive)

Dwango (The company running Nico Video)

There are scrolling comments while you trying to buy a ticket like this “LOL it’s too expensive right?”

Hatena (One of a Japanese web startup company)

A dog fetches it (It’s their mascot)

Original post is here in Japanese: もしも、あの会社が駅の券売機を作ったら

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Gecko 2008-11-10

I met a debugger in nature at our office balcony on November 7th, 2008.
She(or he) was hiding at the balcony and keeping debugging for our office.
From that time, she joined us for a debugger.
She debuged everyday(…. sorry not everyday…, I often forgot to feed her….).
I debbuged everyday.
Debug! Debug!! Debug!!!

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I stayed at parents’ home while new year holidays.
There is an old public hall, and it’ll be rebuild.
Before break it, a lot of it’s fixtures are threw away.
In the hall, there were a lot of things that we can take out for free too.

I got dishes, and old wood boxes.
The dishes and boxes are very old.
Wrote ‘January, Showa 2′ on the wood box.
Showa is japanese era name. Showa 2 is 1927.
So ‘January, Showa 2′ is ‘January, 1927′.
It’s very old.

Ancient dishes in new office.

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37signals is obviously an effective and successful company in this industry. No need to tell how they’re great. Here is a 37signals’ interesting blog post which I found before.

Describe 37signals in 20 seconds or less – (37signals)

We’ve got a problem. We don’t know how to describe to average civilians just what it is that 37signals does.

What!? They said it’s hard to tell people what they do even though they are 37signals. It means explaining what a company does to people is a difficult but important work especially for average person on the street who don’t know the Internet well.

We’ve just started to promote ourselves. It’s time to think about right words to describe us. How about your company?

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Office Ghosts

Today, ghosts appered from a humidifier in our office.

So scary.

オフィスの加湿器から幽霊が・・・。

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One great way of course is the screencast, showing actual usage and it is in production as we speak.  I found a couple of cool ideas when was looking for a simple to use to-do list manager and came across TaskPaper.  For some reason, the link to the site was broken but instead of the standard 404 error page I got one that was like this:

How cool is that? And then I watched the TaskPaper screencast and at the end of it there was another surprise, just when you are most likely to take out your credit card.

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There were only products in the video but it was touched me. Because I saw users, customers, fans through the products.

It’s a true history the Apple build. Yes we’re just a start-up company but I’m dreaming to make our own history with our users.

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