2004年03月08日
Rethinking and redecorating
This blog started almost a year ago as a group effort, commenting on various aspects of Japan and Japanese Studies. Since then some coauthors have started their own weblogs, others are occupied with other priorities. It's not likely that I will have the time or the inspiration to maintain this blog on my own, at least not within the present concept . So I've been considering integrating it with some of my other work into a “Japanese Studies Resources”-site.
The coming weeks this blog will show all the characteristics of a construction site, it might be quite erratic, probably chaotic and you may expect some noise as well.
2004年02月03日
Statistics Portal
Japan's government public information site links to a new portal, managed by the Bureau of Statistics (Ministry of
Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications). Many sections are still under construction but as a whole it looks quite impressive, take for instance a walk along the GISPlaza. An other major source of statistical info is on the Japan Information Network.
By the way, I couldn't help noticing that abovementioned 「政府広報オンライン」-site uses OpenSource Namazu as its search-engine and offers keitai-versions in 3 flavors.
e-Japan Strategy II
The February edition of Asia-Pacific Perspectives:Japan+, a monthly public information magazine of the Japanese government, has a special feature on IT-society and ubiquitous computing. The article gives a number of examples of how wireless tags and smart appliances have been put to use (library, tourist guide service, supermarkets, Matsushita's kurashi.net …). My favourite part is the "e!-school" experiment at an elementary school in Mitaka City in which third graders are using laptops in an wireless LAN to email local shopowners, in order to make posters for the stores. Hmm.
2004年01月30日
Eajrs News
The EAJRS-site reports a number of developments and initiatives:
- The Naraehon Digital Database, an open digital archive with text and images of Nara Ehon (Nara Picture Books) and Nara Emaki (Nara Picture Scrolls) from various collections.
- The National Institute of Informatics (NII) is going to merge with the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, the National Institute of Genetics and the National Institute of Polar Research on the 1st of April.
- Nichibunken announces the creation of a database of historical photographs of Kyoto (about 7,000 items from the slides and photographs in the Nichibunken collection).
Details in the abstracts of last year's EAJRS-conference in Valenciennes.
2004年01月28日
New Resources
- Konrad Mitchell Lawson: East Asian Libraries, Archives, and More - a wiki-project for information on libraries, museums, and archives in East-Asia.
- Masayoshi Yasuda: RSSSearch - web application to search multiple blog aggregator sites, including 2 Japanese, from one interface.
- Digital Academic Repositories (DARE) - portal for the OpenAccess repositories of 17 Dutch institutes, including all Dutch universities. Source: -=(In Between)=-.
2004年01月27日
Mapion Searchplugin
These last days I've been preparing a new syllabus for the "Encyclopedia of Japanese Studies"-course. The part on internet-searching is getting bigger every year - Google hacks, bookmarklets ans searchplugins in abundance. Going My Way blogs a handy Firebird Mapion searchplugin today. I must admit to have smacked the pingu quite a few times before trying it though.
2004年01月26日
Highschool-level Japan Info
We have got a request in to help with a highschool project on Japan. Indiana University's National Clearinghouse for U.S.-Japan Studies has a fine collection of suitably preprocessed information: InternetGuides (for instance this one on art) and Japan Digests.
Grace and Fascination
Its also probably not a good idea to learn new things according to deadlines. Your UNIX knowledge should evolve by grace and fascination, rather than pressure.
2004年01月25日
RSS Japanese Studies
Andreas came up with the idea to add a page with links to rssfeeds on Japan (first draft). Probably a good idea, I don't think that kind of resource is available yet. Speaking of link-collections, it has been fun watching del.icio.us/tag/japan grow last week.
Open Travel
From an article on Smart Mobs: 4 user-edited travels sites with plenty of info on Japan. The first two are Open Content Projects:
