世論 What Japan Thinks

Just yesterday I launched a new web site, brainscannr.com. To explain what it is, here’s what my average visitor looks like:

Oops, my readers look none too happy…

There’s a couple of Easter Eggs hidden there (that’s not one of them, honest!), with more being added as I think of them!

Just a quick round-up of a few things happening here recently:

Excuse the strange code in the post title, but I’ve recently signed up for FeedM8, a mobile feed provider thingie, so the wierd string is an authorisation code.

I’ve noticed a new blog Nihon Hacks which has interesting money-saving tips for Japanese residents from a foreigner perspective.

I’ve also joined up with joblet.jp for displaying jobs available in Japan; both part-time and full-time positions are available, and it’s not just in Tokyo. You’ll find them in the left-hand column below the AdSense. What I should do is hack it so that for Japan visitors the ads appear above all the other adverts. Once I get time to do that, I’ll document it in my What Japan Thinks newsletter.

I’ve also signed up with BlogRush; the widget is hidden away down at the bottom of the right-hand column as I’m still not sure whether it is a good idea or not.

September’s been my best month for traffic so far, so I’d just like to say hello to any readers who have found their way here from my recent digg front page.

Oh, and on the 8th to 13th of October I’ll be heading to the Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles for the Trusted Computing Group’s members meeting there. If on the off chance that you’re going to be going (I know I have a few readers from Nokia, for instance) drop me a line or buy me a drink in person!

Just another quick note that there’s another wee interview with me up on Blog Interviewer. Hope you enjoy! Please visit and vote for me!

Just a quick note that there’s a wee interview with me up on Blogs On Japan. Hope you enjoy it!

Sorry folks, but for some reason my host blew up today – I think someone else on the shared hosting overdid their quota and brought me down in the process.

To make up for it, please accept a free chou cream (cream puff) courtesy of Beard Papa, a big Japanese chain that has a presence around many stations, and I hope near you too.

To collect your free chou cream, first send a blank email to pa@adada.jp from your mobile phone. Fill out the very short questionnaire (just one screen) on the web page pointed to by the URL you get returned, and select the Beard Papa shop from which you would like to get said free chou cream. You’ll get another email with a URL, which you must not click until you are queueing up at the shop, as the coupon is only valid for 15 minutes after you open the URL. Show your mobile phone screen to the staff, and you’ll get one free plain cream puff.

It worked for me, so let me know if it works for you, and please pass on to your friends!

Just a quick reminder to some of my readers – as well as this blog I also post assorted ramblings to a weekly newsletter. In addition to a round-up of the week’s post, I add some stories that have caught my eye, and I talk a bit about my experiments in running and optimising this blog. I don’t claim to be an expert in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but perhaps you might enjoy watching me stumble along the blogging path! Other SEO blogs perhaps talk to you from a seemingly unobtainably high level, but I just do as much as I can in an hour or so per week, so if I can see a benefit from that I hope that might encourage you to have a go too.

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In addition, I’ve also recently launched My Buddhist Name. Have a play with it and tell me what you think.

As you may have noticed in the right sidebar, I have a new featured link, this time the potentially rather useful Piqniq.jp, a Social Networking Service/blog/forum targeted towards gaijins in Japan, it seems, although I must admit to not having used it! I hope you’ll pay them a visit or two, and I hope they’ll stick around for a bit, as it’s always nice to get relevant advertisers for a change.

If you’d like to be a featured link too, please visit my advertising options page for details.

Do you fancy damning my web site (or even your own) with faint praise? Visit Alexa’s custom t-shirt shop, and buy a shirt that proclaims just how popular my web site is. Note that I make no money on the deal, not that I expect anyone would want to buy one anyway!

I must apologise for the terrible performance of my web site this week; I’ve had trouble posting stories, so no doubt a lot of you have also had issues connecting, as the noticable drop in my visitor count seems to suggest. Unfortunately it seems to be a hopefully passing problem with my provider, so please bear with me whilst they fix the issues.

This is also a good opportunity for me to remind you that you can get all the latest postings through my RSS feed, and also keep up to date with the comments, avoiding most of the problems surrounding site slowness.

You may also have noticed on the right-hand column that I’ve added a new advertising block for Text Link Ads, which hopefully will add some small advertising text links. If you’re interested in their service from the advertiser side, note that you can also get a bonus $100 in FREE links by spending $25 on advertising. Note that both the links are affiliate links – I get $25 if you sign up. Although currently there is no advertisement category for Japan (as far as I can see) on their web site, if a few of my fellow Japan bloggers sign up, perhaps we can get Japan added as a top-level category.

Finally, to tie the two subjects together, I’ve noticed that a few sites now have small text ads in their RSS feeds. What are your views on them? Would you mind them in my feed? Of the ones I’ve seen, I don’t find them offensive but I do find them not terribly worthwhile.

I see the 2007 Bloggies are open for nominations. I could ask for a nomination in the Asian Weblog category, but I know that I’m not the best (although last year’s winner was perhaps not the best), but I think I would rather get noticed in the best topical or best-kept-secret (is that best-kept secret or best kept secret?) categories. If you could drop my blog’s name into any of these categories I’d be more than grateful!

Second, with all the survey companies being on holiday, and of course with me being on holiday too, the quality’s been a bit lower than usual. My apologies for that, but I’ve got a nice topical survey in the pipeline, and hopefully next week will see a flood of new market research for me to translate.

Third, even if that happens, I’m in cram mode for the Kanji Kentei next month, so perhaps I might have slightly less time than usual to translate, so if I drop to a frequency of once every two days, you know why!