Yu-chan no Megane

It’s not often I decide to do a review (short or otherwise) for anything technical, but ScribeFire for Mozilla Firefox has certainly impressed me sufficiently to get these lazy fingers going.

ScribeFire is essentially a blogging extension for the brilliant browser, Firefox. I’m using Firefox 3 at the moment and it certainly works brilliantly. The moment you click the orange notepad and pen icon that resides on the status bar after you’ve installed the extension, it pops right up over the bottom half of your browser screen. This means that you can read whatever it is you’re blogging about at the same time. More importantly, you can move through multiple tabs without ever leaving ScribeFire.

Since I’m using the Wordpress blogging platform, logging into my blog via ScribeFire means that I’ve got added functionality on the right, including a list of recent entries, categories (and tags) and other blog post options, such as trackback pings. I’m not entirely sure what else the extension has to offer for other platforms, but I’m fairly certain it works well.

Additional fun functionality include inserting images and YouTube videos into the post and sharing webpages in other social sites such as Facebook (a plus for me!) and Digg.

From the ScribeFire website:

ScribeFire currently supports the following services:

• WordPress.com (http://www.wordpress.com)
• LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com)
• Xanga (http://www.xanga.com/)
• Windows Live Spaces (http://spaces.msn.com)
• Performancing (http://www.performancing.com)
• Jeeran (http://www.jeeran.com)
• Tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com/)
• MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/)
• b2Evolution (http://b2evolution.net)
• Splinder (http://www.splinder.com/)

The currently supported blogging platforms are:

• WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org/)
• Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.org/)
• Drupal (http://www.drupal.org)
• Textpattern (http://www.textpattern.com/)
• Roller (http://www.rollerweblogger.org)
• Blogger (http://www.blogger.com)
• MetaWeblog API (Any blogging software that implements this API)

If you’re a seasoned blogger or just love sharing sites, this Firefox extension is for you. And if you’re not using Firefox… shame on you! (>_-)

新携帯HTCTytn

Having a rip-roaring time with my HTC Tytn II. I’m running an English ROM but with CE-Star and Microsoft Japanese IME installed. The keyboard works brilliantly and I can also view and type Softbank 絵文字 (albeit in black and white).

You won’t believe how happy this makes me. Seriously. An almost-keitai with the full functionality of a PDA locally. Woo!

To celebrate, a nice random pic of a friend’s kid. 〜〜〜〜〜 ＼(^o^)／♪

Edit: It seems that the text that comes with the photo needs to be sufficiently long so that the html on this thing doesn’t screw up.

The QR Code is essentially a 2D barcode that looks like this:

The code for this blog, YuMe.

The nifty image above contains the url for this blog. You can pretty much store anything on it… urls, text, contact details, etc. Don’t ask me how it’s encoded or decoded though as I really have no idea. You just need a QR Code reader like Quickmark (Google it) in your mobile phone to help you decipher the code. Most Japanese keitais come equipped with a QR Code reader and generator (e.g. Softbank Toshiba and Sharp phones) and the Japanese make use of it for a variety of purposes.

The main selling point of this code is its convenience. If you’ve flipped through Japanese magazines, you’ll have noticed the plethora of such codes scattered all over advertorial pages. It provides the Japanese with the ability to capture a single url or information and store them easily on their mobiles for future reference.

And as we’re all aware, the Japanese do everything on their keitais.

While I don’t expect Singapore to move towards the typical keitai way of life (look at how i-Mode, made popular by NTT Docomo, flopped majorly over here - much to my chagrin), we really should make use of good technology. As QR Code readers are becoming more accessible such that anyone can get a copy of the free software on their mobiles, we should really utilise it.

Unfortunately, some things are just slow on the uptake over here.

Nonetheless, I’m really starting to do everything on my mobile, Singapore style. Despite my love for exotic keitais, I realised it’s quite pointless to trade function for style. I still yearn for their messaging system though. How convenient is it to have an email address tagged to your mobile number?

Besides, I can read and enter Japanese text just fine on my device.