Jim Breen. Japan-related tools

On September 24, 2008 in Nerd Rant, On the J-web, Resources

Warning: Nerdy content to follow

Hopefully, you know who that man in the title is. Yes, I am going on another rant about Jim Breen.

To me, he is one of the most interesting characters on the J-web.

His was one of the first Japan-related websites I ever visited (all of my Japanese teachers recommended him). And his wwwjdic (J/E dictionary) and Japanese page are two of my favourite www resources.

But more than that, I love his interest in Japan-related tools.

I think that tools have been overlooked some lately on the J-web (Nihonhacks’ post about rikaichan is a pleasant exception). Or maybe they are just taking new forms (like JapanSoc as an example of a tool). Either way, I am excited to see what tools we dream up next.

Anyway (before I get off topic here), what I really want to mention are some interesting articles and lecture notes from Jim Breen’s past classes at Monash University.

Two of my favourite subjects are Japan and computer technology (especially web tech). I would have loved to have taken one of Jim’s classes!

There is an archive of Jim Breen’s papers. Now these are some high quality Japan-related web rants!

I found a few interesting ones that the nerds amongst us might also like (see the end of this post), but I will only highlight one. It relates some to Nipponster and the way Japan-related information (and information in Japanese) is organised and searched.

WWW Search Engines and Japanese Text

An interesting quote from the article:

“…it is known that both Google and Yahoo use Basis Technology Corp’s Rosette Language Analyzer software”

I had never heard of that software. I know that Google is currently working on one of the largest translation software projects in history. It will be interesting to see what this technology brings about. I wonder who at Google Japan is in charge of this type of research and what they have to say about it.

What do you think about all of this? I always look forward to seeing what others have to say about these things, so please comment!

And have a great day,

DailyJ

p.s. Koichi has a good post about using Jim Breen’s Japanese dictionary on the iphone.

p.p.s. More interesting Jim Breen articles:

Japanese translation and the computer - the past, the present and the future

Computing in Japanese; what are the frontiers now?

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