June 16, 2005
Comments back on
We have reenabled commenting on the site and will shortly be upgrading MovableType in the hope that it'll give us a less manual way of combating spam. Apologies to all those who've been frustrated by our draconian commenting restrictions in recent weeks.
May 19, 2005
Awards!
Not sure what we've done to deserve this, but PC Magazine has picked dottocomu as one of its "Spring 2005 top 100 sites you didn't know you couldn't live without". In any case, thanks!
May 17, 2005
Despamming
We are gradually getting through the 8000 or so comment spams that we've been deluged with, and should be returning to posting soon. Thanks for bearing with us.
[Update] We are fully despammed. Please note that in view of the sheer volume of spam we were getting we are now effectively blocking all URLs in comments. Apologies for the inconvenience.
[Update 2] A kind reader informs us that apparently the URL-blocking rules we're using are making it nigh-on impossible to submit comments at all. We'll fix this as soon as we can, but bear with us for now.
March 18, 2005
New contributor
You'll have noticed from our last post, "Roh Drama", that we have a new contributor who goes by the cryptic pseudonym of Totoreo. He'll be fleshing out our mandate to provide coverage of the broader sphere of Japan news and politics among all the gadget reports.
Unfortunately, he cannot fix templates or style sheets; we will have to do that ourselves, once we can locate the rusty hook and the CSS editor.
February 28, 2005
Geekified workflow, more posting, better templates
We should note that to allow us to actually post more frequently (we're feeling bad about the radio silence recently) we're now employing probably the geekiest workflow imaginable and posting from a Clie UX50 using mo:blog, hooked up to our Fujitsu F900iT as a Bluetooth modem. We'll be posting up a brief how-to later, should you happen to own both devices and be interested.
We are also planning an upgrade to bring the site onto a later version of MovableType and update the hideous templates we've been using all this time, so stay tuned.
August 02, 2004
We're back
A week in the UK left us with considerably less Internet access than we'd expected (i.e., none), hence the silence. Back now, batteries recharged, raring to go. Some updates shortly.
May 21, 2004
Back from the dead
After some severe (terminal, in fact) connectivity problems, we're back up with a 20Mbps DSL connection and happiness once again reigns at dottocomu Towers. From tomorrow over the weekend we'll be catching up--do check back!
April 18, 2004
Double duty
Sharp-eyed readers may notice some uncannily similar posts showing up on dottocomu and Engadget, and with good reason: I have signed up as Engadget's Tokyo correspondent, joining Peter Rojas and the team in providing wall-to-wall coverage of the gadget universe. The plan at present is that I'll crosspost anything gadget-related to both sites; shorter posts will appear on both in pretty much identical form, while longer posts will go up here in their entirety with a summary at Engadget. We'll refine that idea as seems necessary as we go along.
Thanks for your continued support!
March 29, 2004
Database problems
We're in the process of dealing with some database problems--site will be back up shortly.
[UPDATE] We're back up. A switch to a MySQL database and automated backups is on the way to prevent a reoccurrence.
Please note that permalinks may not be working as previously; if you're following a link from Google, please make sure the post matches what you were expecting before you post a comment. If it doesn't, please use the search box to find what you were after. Thanks.
March 14, 2004
Comments are back
Comment spam had been getting beyond a joke recently, so I'd turned off comments by default. Thanks to Jay Allen's mt-blacklist plugin, we hopefully are now spamproof and comments are back on.
January 19, 2004
Nothing happening
We're still here, just...waiting. Things are quiet on the gadget front and in Japan in general. Meanwhile, we're testing the beta of Dude, Check This Out as a scratchpad for news and notes on Japan and other stuff. Our page is here. Check it out, dude.
January 04, 2004
E-mail notifications
An announcement for those who had signed up for email notifications from dottocomu; the recent database trouble here vaporized our address list (yes, we will be keeping a backup from now on), so if you wish to receive email when a new article is posted, please sign up again. Apologies for the inconvenience.
December 26, 2003
Normal service resuming
Sorry for the disruption--we've just reinstalled MovableType after some cataclysmic database trouble and are in the process of restoring backups. All posts should be back up now, and everything should be looking normal soon.
And a belated Merry Christmas to all.
December 22, 2003
A request re comments on dottocomu
We are recently getting a lot of comments requesting more information about pricing and availability of the products we're blogging about. A quick look at the site should show that we're not selling anything and that we're not affiliated with the product manufacturers. Our aim here is to present hopefully unblogged-about information about new products and technologies, which probably aren't available yet (and we're often summarizing information that is only available in Japanese); further than that is beyond both our scope and our resources. If a Google search brings up nothing relevant, be patient; these things will make it into the shops eventually.
One more specific thing; as of now we're blacklisting anyone who leaves a comment saying "Please send me more information about this product asap".
The Editors
October 31, 2003
Brief interruption of service
We will be relocating to London for a three-week spell, so there is liable to be a few days' hiatus while we get everything set up. New stuff from us should start appearing early next week.
For the moment we'll leave you with a gallery of concept cars from the Tokyo Motor Show; running this through Babelfish should give an idea of what's what, though beware that it will translate Suzuki as "sea bass".
October 09, 2003
One year old
A week late, but it just occurred to me that dottocomu is a year old and, with the last posting, I'm past the 250 posts milestone. Hopefully I am keeping at least some people interested at least some of the time; and to those who continue to arrive via search engines in the hope of, er, specialist material, I offer my apologies. Do please try to get out and meet people more.
Image courtesy of awesomeclipartforkids.com