May 24, 2004

Putting up an online blog aggregator for the Japanese community

Would you like your blog added to another aggregator? Thanks to the much needed help from Mike Chambers, I'm finally getting up an online blog aggregator for the Japanese community this week. There are quite a few online aggregators out there for English (MXNA, fullasagoog, flog) and other latin based languages but I've only seen one so far in Japanese and weirdly enough most of the entries were English.

The thing is though that in Japan blogging has only just lately caught on and most are just using it as a kind of diary (walked the dog yesterday...) type of thing, sort of a what can we do with this period I think (I could be wrong..). There are some really cool options now like posting pics from your phone (and almost every phone in Japan can do that) so there are quite a few picture blogs out there too.

Though to go with the theme of my site I'm hoping to keep those type of blogs out and concentrate mostly on web, design, development and internet related blogs. I would like to add in some of the more useful English blogs too I think (less chit-chat and more pertainable info) so if you think you have a blog like that please let me know (webmaster AT 3enhancedesigners.com, or use the comments on this entry) and I'll add it in. There are quite a few Japanese des/dev people that can read English quite well but just have trouble writing and speaking it. Of course some can do all, but most of my friends are just best at reading.

I can't wait to see the Japanese community take off a bit more. There are a LOT of web des/dev people here and a lot of potential just waiting to break out and show itself, but I think that there is still the old way of thinking that if they tell all their secrets about how to do something they'll reduce their chances of being better than the other guy. In some ways I can understand that, but I think it's smarter to get into the community and help it grow, as you can most likely get a lot more out of it in the end.

Posted by Graeme at May 24, 2004 02:25 PM
　



Comments

I totaly agree. It reminds me how few 'well designed', usable sites I could find in the Japanese online community a couple of years ago, even though the rest of the online world was 'maturing' at a great rate. But then there are those like yugop, who are amazing!

Very interested in your progress. I hope to be back there soon and it would be great to have a window into the dev community.

Posted by: Whiteangle at May 24, 2004 05:20 PM

Add me, plz! I need an excu...er, reason to improve my grammar, anyway.

Posted by: JesterXL at May 24, 2004 09:29 PM

This is the Japanese-site(?) of MXNA.
http://www.cfmx.jp/mxna/index.cfm?category=Flash
Although there is also a category which is not Web.

I will watch 3E4D aggregator.

Posted by: n-kawai at May 24, 2004 11:36 PM

White, you're right, there are few, but the few that are done well are really well done! It's just got to catch on a bit faster, and I think it will as long as there are more and more doors and windows into the english speaking dev community and the outside world. That along with a communal group style of getting together and sharing all the hidden secrets! :)

Jesse, you're added, I've sent your ping info to you (as per our mail).

Kawai-san, thanks for the link, that was the one aggregator I was writing about in my blog entry. Though I found that it had a LOT of english compared to japanese. If you know of any good japanese blogs to put in, please please let me know. I've been searching but have only found about 6 so far and could use a bit of help :) Keep an eye out! I should have it live by wednesday our time!

Posted by: Graeme at May 24, 2004 11:51 PM

Blog-site which I often look at is as follows.

GUS blog (ColdFusion, Flex, other)
http://www.thebadtiming.com/

MakionLog (Flash, other)
http://homepage.mac.com/makion/iblog/index.html

T-Blog (DW/CSS, other)
http://www.t-studio.jp/default.aspx

cyano (DW/FW, other)
http://www.wcan.jp/blog/katz/

Flash-JP (Flash)
BBS. http://www.flash-jp.com/

ColdFusionLab (ColdFusion)
Not blog. Japanese ColdFusion User Group WebSite.
http://www.coldfusionlab.com/

Posted by: n-kawai at May 25, 2004 01:23 PM

What, no Japanese blog aggregators? But of course :)
In order to aggregate something you need that "something" to exist... I was desperately searching for tech-related news feeds on Japanese web sites... nothing, none, nada, nai ;)

Given all the high-tech savvy of Japanese people it might seem strange that they are not blogging. Well, as one might discover after living here for several here "high-tech" means 90% hardware. When it's about software.....

And another reason is that, well, it's not "trendy" here to blog your thoughts out to the world... At least not yet ;) Wait until you'll be able to blog straight from your mobile phone and in Japanese (language barrier is also a factor) and then you'll have heaps of things to aggregate.

Just my 2 ... yen :)

Posted by: Alex Muntean at May 25, 2004 01:39 PM

Kawai-san, thanks for the links! Those are great. I've known of a few of those, I entered thebadtiming, makionlog and cyano but T-blog didn't have a valid feed it seems.. (this has happened with a few blogs so far but not all....) though if I validate it, it's fine (MXNA bug?) I also found your blog URL from my logs and added it in if you don't mind?

Alex, I've got some thoughts on my mind for your comments but would rather stick it in a new post as you have hit some good points that I'd like to bring up in a more visible place. What part of Japan are you in?

Posted by: Graeme at May 25, 2004 07:00 PM

T-Blog seemed to be under maintenance. I think that it can see now.

My blog is the memo of URL for going-out places. Since the contents also only took up MXNA, I think that it overlaps.

Posted by: n-kawai at May 26, 2004 12:38 AM

Really, I didn't think that about your blog, should I take it off then? or leave it? It does have useful information I think, and the english blogs almost always have double, triple, quadruple the same information ;)

I'll try T-Blog again.

Posted by: Graeme at May 26, 2004 12:49 AM

nope, no luck. It says it is missing the root element. I think it's a bug in MXNA, so I'll try to look into it when I get a bit of time.

thanks again.

Posted by: Graeme at May 26, 2004 12:54 AM

OK, I've taken your blog off (it seems to be one of two blogs that pull in double/triple.. posts into the DB too.. so I have to fix that bug first)

Let me know if you would like it added, I haven't added everything you look at, so I think it would be useful, but of course it's up to you :)

Posted by: Graeme at May 26, 2004 01:10 AM

Graeme, I live in Yokohama now. Nevertheless, this is the same as living in Tokyo. Only the air is cleaner ;)

Trying hard (and succeeding little) to find Japan-related blogs I would be more than happy if your quest succeeds.

.a.

Posted by: Alex Muntean at May 26, 2004 01:24 PM