KazuyaYokoyama.com

I’ve never written my blog for 3 months. What did I do? I was thinking about lots of things; iPhone apps, Android apps and web-based apps. I understand that it’s very important for me to develop web-based apps that are open open sources. Of course developing iPhone apps such as SpeedMemo and Translator is also important in aspects of studying the architecture and making money.
Developing web-based apps is challenging and exciting. I’m going to write my blog, that is “lab.kazuyayokoyama.com” in Japanese only, about what I’m doing and how I’m developing it. I’ll show it to you soon. By the way my iPhone apps, SpeedMemo and Translator, will be updated for iOS 4 soon.

My second iPhone App “SpeedMemo” has been released on App Store. You’re able to download this app here.

Have you ever forgotten important ideas or to-do list? “SpeedMemo” is application specialized in taking the memo fast. You can take memo as soon as it starts up. After you save memo, you can e-mail memo, tweet it to Twitter and save it on Evernote.

It supports the latest technology of Evernote. You know, Evernote launched “Emailing Into Evernote Just Got Better « Evernote Blogcast“. It’ very easy to save everything on Evernote.

Please try this new app and review it if you like.

My first iPhone App “Translator - in your hands” and “Translator Lite - in your hands” have been released on App Store. They are very simple applications. You’re able to translate lots of languages from your native language with these apps.

“Translator Lite” is free, and helps you to translate quickly. It supports Google Translation Service and Microsoft(Bing) Translation Service, and you can select them as you wish. If you are foreign language learner, it must help you. Please try it.

“Translator” is paid application. It has bookmark, Twitter and mail supports. You can bookmark the result of translation if you think the result is good. Twitter support makes you to tweet the result directly. It’s very easy operation. If you have many chances to mail with foreigners, it must be great time saver for you.

The back-end of these iPhone apps use Google App Engine with Python. Google App Engine is one of the best platform as a service in my opinion. It’s easy to control the scalability of apps even though it’s difficult to move apps on it into other platforms like LAMP. I need to learn it more.

I’ve noticed that Twitter has launched new function ‘Lists’ from this month. Fortunately I’m able to try the beta preview version of ‘Lists’ on my Japanese Twitter account.

My review of ‘Lists’ beta:

• It’s very easy to create lists and add followers to the lists.
• We are able to add users we don’t follow to our lists. It seems to be great idea but we should think about the meanings of ‘follow’ at the same time.
• We can follow not only the lists others made but also users.
• We see the number of lists including ourselves.
• It’s convenient to create private lists. I’ve already created one as my co-workers’ group.
• How many lists we belong to must be more important than the number of followers.

I’m looking forward to Twitter client software such as Tweetie, TweetDeck. When will Twitter launch it as an official version?

Google Chrome for Mac has been released. It seems to have full functions, is just an official developer preview. Anyway, It’s good news for lots of Mac OS X users including me. We can download it from Google Chrome for Mac. You have to check it out if you’re a Mac user.
My review of Google Chrome for Mac; It has very simple UI, good-looking and is working as lightly as Safari. Firefox is more powerful than Google Chrome if you live on a web browser all the day; where is mouse gesture? where is Greasemonkey? There is no strong reason that we should choose Google Chrome for Mac with quitting Safari or Firefox in my opinion. I’m looking forward, though, to its influence to web browser market share on Mac OS X.

iPhone has over 20,000 apps so far and many people including not geeks use it all over the world. What does it mean for Apple? Apple has got lots of platforms to drive themselves and develop their products.
The platform of product is very important for many companies. It makes money though it costs much to build it. Especially contents platforms such as music, movies and games are very strong. Once you release a product on the platform, you just focus on producing impressive contents for users. Of course you need to update your products as well as contents increase.
Apple have got at least five platforms so far : music, movies, games, applications and computing. And they have connected with each other efficiently. You’ll notice that the connection works on just one application; iTunes. We can sync all of our contents through iTunes with operating very easily. It’s not too much to say that iTunes is Apple’s platform. They are going to realize everything on the platform. What will they do next? We’ll see.

I started my Japanse blog(bluetune) in 2003 when I was a collage student. I’ve been blogging but recently it’s likely to be stopped and restarted. There is a vicious circle that something new like Twitter occurs to me and my blog update is stopped.

I ‘live in’ Twitter the past year and the pace of blogging is getting down. I’ve never felt like updating my blog because I’ve done everything on Twitter instead.
If you’re interested in me, you can follow on Twitter :
Kazuya Yokoyama (kazz_yokoyama) on Twitter

Twitter is usually expressed as “Micro Blogging” and it’s easy to say. I think Twitter is a real-time tool not micro blog of character limits. Tweets on Twitter get feedback on blogs and blogs as well. The circulation that Twiter and Blogs are connected with each other will make many people happy.
I’m thinking about how to use Twitter and blogs after this.

We made a reservation of new iPhone 3GSs last week, and then we got them. The black one is mine and the white one is my wife’s. I’m deeply concerned with DoCoMo that is a carrier we’ve had connection for over 9 years. Mobile Number Potability in Japan is very easy to use for us. We needed just 1 hour for the processing of getting iPhones.
If you want to know the goodness of iPhone, you may visit the other blogs. I write the bad points of it for ordinary people like my wife below.

• When we reply with IMAP mail, we have no choice except the quotation.
• We can’t configure the e-mail sounds in detail.
• It’s hard to understand whether i.softbank or SMS/MMS we have to use.
• We can’t check received e-mail writing new e-mail.

In my opinion, they are not really matter without using it everyday. I’m looking forward to how my life will be changed with iPhone 3GS.

I had used Bloglines for 4 years. I loved this RSS reader online because it has great features — clear blog listing, keyboard shortcuts, and simple UI. But its service sometimes is down, and we can’t open a site as new tab/window on iPhone App. Last weekend I’d gavin up on Bloglines any more.
I’d decided to move to Google Reader™. It has a lot of good point like Bloglines does. I need a few hours to get used to it but its keyboard shortcuts are very useful. If you’re not sure how you use it, you should type “?”.