Japan may be a little too trusting on security issues. (I use "security" in the IT sense here: keeping the bad guys from doing things they shouldn't do.) At my local 7-11, when buying a beer, I was caught off guard when the typical mumbling cashier pointed to the LCD screen facing me and mumbled something I don't usually hear in the everyday convenience store cashier transaction. I still don't know what was said, but the idea was clearly to direct my attention to the screen.

The LCD, whose screen space is typically 80% ads / 20% running total, was replaced with a big dialog box with big red text.

In typical Japanese, lengthy, indirect politeness, the screen asked "Are you at least 20 years of age?"

To answer, there's only one button: "Yes."

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Hello from Tokyo!

I'm still in the process of settling in, but here are a couple shots
to show everyone what my neighborhood is like.

The cherry blossom at sunset is at the bottom of my building, but the
other two are from Shinagawa Shrine, which is the big neighborhood
Shinto shrine.

The shrine grounds are at the top of a big staircase, so once you get
up there the view can be impressive.

It'd be nice if you could hear what I heard: mostly silence. This is a
big city but the bright lights are a ways off. I live in a
*neighborhood* and the only dominant noise at that height is the odd
passing train.

It's nice here.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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"I wish we would stop hearing comments about Adele's weight. 

A) she's far prettier than Gaga, who you realize, if you can avoid being distracted by her crazy outfits, looks a bit like a bridge troll, and 

B) they are both talented young women, even if I don't always like their music (I do like some)--why don't we focus on that? Are John Lennon, Paul Simon, or Bob Dylan nice to look at? I don't hear anyone saying 'Yeah, Cee-Lo is great, but he sure is a fat bastard'…."

-My brother, the excellent Kris Maloy

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I meant to do this a while ago:

I made a website!

I wanted to build my own web app as a learning exercise, and it's certainly been that. I also wanted to build something that I'd really find useful. 

That became the beginning of BlakeyTV, a not-very-creatively-named video player that will let me keep up with everything I want to watch on YouTube. I just enter a list of YouTube user names that I want to follow (similar to your YouTube subscriber list, just manually entered), and every 24 hours that person's newest videos are added to the front of a never-ending queue of videos that will play back-to-back with no ads. It brings to YouTube what it's missing as it tries to get taken seriously as a media delivery service: a completely passive option that requires no user action.

For all of you, people who are not me, I hope there are two possibilities:

1) With time and suggestions, it becomes a generally well-curated site with consistently good videos that lots of people like

2) I keep working on it and create the ability for people to create their own channels

I think those two aren't mutually exclusive. If you're a programmer who can handle Python, Django and Heroku, please let me know! I'd love a little advice in building up the backbone necessary for new features.

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Chicago was a great success - and, naturally, very windy. What you’ll see here includes: A gourmet charcuterie shop that had been open one week and was already overrun by hipsters to the point of standing room only The Bean, the outdoor theater, the Marilyn Monroe statue, and other awesome touristy landmarks The Hughes brothers, childhood friends since age 4, separated from me for 15 years and reunited by Facebook A Lego store! The wonderful Jeff and Abby (henceforth Jabby ), who kindly hosted me for the latter half of the trip and showed me their awesome city neighborhood A truly bizarre picture owned by Jabby A black paper crane on the anniversary of 3/11 What you won’t see here: Food porn, despite eating wonderfully well (thanks to Jon Hughes’ mastery of all things culinary!) The Hughes brothers’ parents or girlfriends, all of whom were wonderful. The parents, especially, were great to catch up with as someone verging on grown-up The rest of the Mexican clothing shop Jeff and I walked through: though that denim blazer thing is unique, there were also tactical vests and a belt buckle with a weed leaf and ‘SINALOA’ in giant lettering (hint: drug cartel reference)

See the full gallery on Posterous

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The iPad chipped away at me and now I want one. That's how I've felt about it since it was introduced. The value prop just got gradually better, little by little, and I would necessarily go past some tipping point. Here we are thanks to the new hardware and software.

I think the initial proposal was that Apple would sell you everything you wanted: books, magazines, newspapers, TV shows, and maybe the occasional Angry Bird. But it looks like what emerged instead is a fractured ecosystem in which content makers privatized and decentralized whatever it is they offer. The downside is that I have to have separate apps to read, watch, or otherwise consume the stuff I want to. The New York Times and The Economist, two of my regulars, live in separate apps. But on the plus side, apps for Netflix and Hulu hold a lot of video. I can get live Japanese TV from NHK World. And with a web browser and an RSS reader I can follow all my usual websites. And once I can get a decent TV, for $100 I can start beaming all my stuff everywhere thanks to AirPlay. And best of all, I can do all of those things all over the world. 

What's more, iPhoto for iPad is a big deal. It's a fully-featured desktop app with a wholly replaced interface. It's the Minority Report interface we've dreamed about. We're now really getting stuff done with gestures and touch. It's Direct Manipulation taken to its logical extreme. I think it's a sign of very good things to come. 

One thing I love is the Photo Journals feature, where your photos fill up the page along with contextual maps, calendars, and blocks of text:

Why am I not publishing a website that looks more like that? Why aren't there images strewn about in every which direction? Why aren't there big quote boxes setting off my best lines? Some high-readership websites are beginning to take their cues from print magazine layouts, but why isn't that in my blog software? I think Apple has quietly pushed the envelope here for web design. 

I'm so swept up in the mood that I've changed this blog's design yet again, this time to something a little better suited to tablet reading. Images will be prominent, when they're there, and text columns are much wider for much less wasted space. Colors are very e-reader-ish, too. 

I think everyone will eventually hit the tablet tipping point, if they haven't already. This is just the time where I'm convinced I need one. 

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