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Jim Atwood Mobile Website

Jim Atwood — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:06:28 +0000

I just finished putting together my new Jim Atwood Mobile Website. It took me a while to figure out what approach I was going to take with the theme and mobile plugins. So far I think the site is working out pretty well. http://jimatwood.mobi

The website is using Wordpress 2.8.3 as of this writing and the following plugins.

Access Keys
Google XML Sitemaps
WordPress Mobile Pack
XHTML and Mobile YouTube

I am also looking into the Mobify Wordpress Plugin, but so far I like the Wordpress Mobile Pack the best because it is much easier and free for all my sites without any limitations.

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Jim Atwood Mobile Website

Jim Atwood News Nikon DSLR Site

Jim Atwood — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:56:21 +0000

A long time ago I started a website about photography that I did using the Nikon DSLR D200. Since then, the D300 and D700 have been released, but the Nikon D200 still remains a trusty backup camera for me. This week I finally go around to updating the website with a fresh new look and I’ll definitely be adding more videos and photos as well in the coming days.

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Photoshoot Japan Site Update

Jim Atwood — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:37:26 +0000

Photoshoot Japan has a new look which I finished up a couple of days ago. Photoshoot Japan is another one of my Jim Atwood photography sites that provides information about my workshops and photoshoots in the Tokyo, Nagoya, Yokohama, and Nagano City areas.

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Jim Atwood Pro Japan New Site

Jim Atwood — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:29:00 +0000

This week I finished creating a new site called Jim Atwood Pro Japan. The site showcases some of my photography, videos, and other info about my experiences in Japan.

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Will Japan ever go .mobi?

Jim Atwood — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:03:43 +0000

To me I am not so optimistic that the Japanese will turn to .mobi websites. You don’t have to look far in “Japanese only” websites not run by foreign expats or “maniac” tech enthusiasts to see that mainstream sites are not on the .mobi domain yet. Most companies go for the .co.jp domain because it has the highest quality and brand image in Japan. The .jp domain is secondary and much cheaper without all the red tape required for .co.jp domains. There is also a .net.jp domain too. When you factor in the .com and .net domains, it quickly becomes crowded for the Japanese to determine what would be the best domain to put a mobile site on.

Force is as strong word perhaps, but I think it’s going to take some clever marketing in Japan to get small and mid-sized Japanese companies or even individuals to purchase and develop .mobi websites when they can just as easily do it on their .co.jp or .jp domain.

In fact, here is a Japanese only website which is a popular publishing company that distributes a trendy young Japanese gal magazine called Ranzuki. This magazine is very big among young Japanese girls. If you notice, the website only has a mobile version. It has no parent desktop website. For some reason they feel young girls will only want to use their mobile phones, so a traditional site is not necessary. Second, you will notice that the website is a .com domain. Third, you will notice the website is also an ecommerce solution. Mobile shopping is critical in Japan. Finally, the website is encoded in Shift-JIS which is the defacto standard for Japanese computers and character input..not UTF-8 or EUC-JP. Incidentally, this website is built on Oscommerce Mobile version developed by a Japanese web developer.

My point here is that you have to dig deep into the heart of Japanese websites and developers. Most of the foreign expats I know in Japan are all on iPhones, buying .mobi or other special domains, and mixing with the trends. If I walk into a Japanese high school down the street, I won’t find any iPhone or equivalent. Around me here it’s all about fashion, making friends, and socializing over the phone via messaging, mixi, gree, or something similar entirely in Japanese. Many of these kids have no idea what’s going on in the States or other countries with respect to mobile technology or websites.

The idea that Japanese create two websites as I see it may help to contribute to the prospect that one day .mobi may become a viable solution for a mobile website. It also just might be that the Japanese kick the can on their main website and just go mobile entirely. In that case, I don’t think .mobi will fair well against the mightier .co.jp or .jp domains.

The golden nugget here is how will Japan convince people to go .mobi. I feel exclusive features may be the answer. The Japanese love being exclusive and are very image conscious. We all are perhaps. If the .mobi domain can provide something that .jp, .com, or .co.jp can’t, then perhaps .mobi will prevail.

Right off the bat though, .jp and .mobi differ by two characters. That’s a disadvantage in Japan at the moment.

These are just my thoughts and am very aware I could be wrong. I welcome any other insight into this as I myself am trying to predict what might happen in Japan.

As a final thought, there are three “main” groups of consumers in Japan. They are in my experience as follows:

1. Young students

2. House Wives

3. Businessmen

All three are totally mobile these days. House Wives and the young are shopping more and more online with their mobile phones. Check out the new Ageha Fashion site for the latest trend in mobile shopping http://ageha-shop.com/index.html

Note to mention QR codes are plastered on everything in sight here.

Geez, I could go on and on here. Sorry….laugh.

In any event, hopefully .mobi will catch on more here. After 17 years in Japan I’d say anything can happen. We’ll see.

Regards,
Jim Atwood

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Will Japan ever go .mobi?

A Good Mobile Wordpress Solution

Jim Atwood — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:36:50 +0000

This past week I’ve been researching mobile solutions for my new http://jimatwood.mobi domain. I found two popular solutions of which one worked very well for me. The first idea was to go with mobify.com. I tried out their website development tools and either I’m just not getting it or I’m too much of a programmer to wrap my head around it. I just found mobify too time consuming to get my site working in basic mobile fashion. I then took a week off and then later after some additional research stumbled upon the dotMobi WordPress Mobile Pack which was recently released. Today I installed Wordpress 2.8.2 on jimatwood.mobi and then installed the dotMobi WordPress Mobile Pack 1.1.1 plugin. After about 30 minutes of painless installation, I had a complete working mobile site up and running rather quickly.

Indeed if you check the site it is basic, but I think that’s what mobile sites should be at least in the beginning. Once I know something is working I can then later add more elements when needed. The following widgets/plugins were added to my site for extended functionality.

1. Recent Posts
2. Mobile Barcode
3. Mobile Access Keys
4. Mobile Google XML Sitemaps
5. Akismet
6. XHTML and Mobile YouTube

I also then tweaked the CSS to add the Orange color to the links and to change the font type in the title. I uploaded an image to the gallery and adjusted the settings for mobile output. So far I can view videos, photographs, comments, and of course posts or dedicated pages on my mobile phone. When checking for errors at ready.mobi, my site gives me a rating of 5 which is the highest. I only get one warning regarding “Incorrect or missing MIME types were detected”. I currently have a post on MobiForge which I hope gets answered. I’ll post those findings shortly. This is just a warning though and it shouldn’t cause any problems on phones.

Also, with regards to my .mobi site I have elected to have it completely in mobile format and will have no desktop version attached. So if you check out the site you’ll notice right away it’s in mobile format. This is actually common in Japan where I am currently residing. The Japanese like to make things simple and have two sites. This avoids the browser detection problems that everyone has all the time. With just one dedicated mobile site, things are much easier. In some cases, Japanese website only one version and that is mobile. In my opinion, mobile usage for the Internet is much more prevalent in Japan.

Stay tuned for additional updates as I continue to work and update my Wordpress mobile website.

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Digital Art Photography Japan

Jim Atwood — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:29:02 +0000

One of the things I enjoy about photography and often get asked to do with clients is to post process photos in Photoshop. This gives a sort of Digital Art Photography look which is quite popular with many forms of media. This slideshow is a collection of images taken in Japan by Jim Atwood Photography at http://www.jimatwood.net.

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Ropography Japan on 12Seconds TV

Jim Atwood — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:09:36 +0000

On my previous video http://12seconds.tv/channel/jimatwood/209815, I used transitions from frame to frame. Due to the short time frame, this caused the quality of the video to be reduced slightly. On “Ropography japan”, my second video I elected to remove the transitions except for the last frame. I think with photos that have more detail, this retains the quality for the most part. Again the video was rendered Youtube style in HD in 16:9 (Widescreen). On a test run I used 4:3 (TV) and it came out like total crap. The 16:9 looks much better but obviously there could be other settings involved that I am missing. Note that I’m on a PC. Photos by Jim Atwood Photography at http://www.jimatwood.net

Ropography Japan on 12seconds.tv

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Raindrops Japan

Jim Atwood — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:36:02 +0000

It had just stopped raining and this provides a good opportunity to catch some water droplets. Usually I use a water bottle and make my own "rain" or "droplets", but these are all natural.

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Flickr Japan New Look

Jim Atwood — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:23:17 +0000

Flickrjapan.com has a new look from this week sporting a brand new theme and some additional custom features. FlickrJapan includes photography, videos, and Jim Atwood Photography updates from Flickr.

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