Archive for the ‘Helping Japan Bloggers’ Category
Video Tutorial of the JapanSoc Social Bookmarking Button - helpful guide for Japan-bloggers
On March 01, 2008 in Community building, Helping Japan Bloggers
If you haven’t yet be sure to leave your thoughts on the discussion about the Japan-related web!
Just a few days ago I posted a video I made in an attempt to guide people in putting a JapanSoc voting button on their blog (blog posts). The video didn’t turn out that great (and the audio didn’t work), but I will be making a second attempt soon.
But, the video did inspire Nick to make his own tutorial for another JapanSoc gadget, the social bookmarking button. And I must say he did a better job! Here it is:
I think it would be great if video tutorials like these became more and more common on Japan-related sites. There are many possibilities. We could have tutorials that teach newbie readers how to navigate the site or give them a simple self-introduction. For all of the Japan-related tools available it would be great to have screen-capture videos that explain how to use their more difficult features.
What do you think? Once I gain a little more skill with the software I might go on a tutorial making rampage.
Screen capture tutorials for JapanSoc
On February 22, 2008 in Community building, DailyJ Mission, Helping Japan Bloggers
Hi All,
I am creating some tutorials to help Japan-bloggers install some of the tools that make submitting your posts to JapanSoc easy. If you are new and don’t know about JapanSoc (been under a rock? 
) here is a link where you can learn all about JapanSoc
For the acquainted, let me begin by warning you that these tutorial videos were made as examples of what could be done (i.e. they are not polished works of art).
Hopefully people with more artistic talent than myself (that’s probably anyone) will make better ones from scratch or add to these.
If you want to give it a go, here is a website that let’s you download youtube videos. So you can download these tutorials and edit them if you like. Unlike with all of that music you’ve been pirating, this time you have permission. 
I made them using this screen capture tool I found on tucows.com (a great site by the way)
I am planning to make a tutorial for each of the items on Nick’s JapanSoc Toolbox page. So far I have done one for the “voting button” and tried to do one for the “bookmarklet.” They are not as easy to make as I had hoped. It took me three attempts and about four hours to get a half decent one but I like JapanSoc and I want to learn how to make these so I don’t mind spending the time.
Sometimes it is hard to follow only written instructions and if you don’t know how long it is going to take (or how hard it is) it can be frustrating to do something. And then you get lazy. That’s why I am making these. Hopefully they will help combat that. Let me know if think this will be useful.
Here is the one I struggled to make today (couldn’t get the audio to work 
):
Helping J-bloggers: feedburner part 2 - FeedSmith and some free stylish rss icons
On February 16, 2008 in Helping Japan Bloggers
It’s that time again. Time for “Helping Japan bloggers.”
If you have any helpful tips that you’d like to share be sure to tell everyone about them in the comments! Let’s spread the love!
So far there have been some great ones, like the ones from Nick and Chris I mentioned in this post.
I have been giving many wordpress tips so far. I need to give more general ones because I know not everyone is on wordpress. But for today it’s wordpress again. But I also found some free RSS icons for you that any blog can use (see below)!
In the last feedburner post I shared a tutorial video from a site called becomeablogger.com.
One very important thing they left out of that video is the feedburner “Feedsmith” plugin for wordpress.
That plugin lets you keep track of your pre-feedburner RSS audience. So anyone who has been using your old RSS feed to subscribe to your site will still show up on your feedburner statistics. And feedburner has nice statistics!
Free RSS feed icons
These are some really nice RSS feed icons that I found the other day and I thought someone might like.
They come in a variety of colours and with or without a reflection! You can download the whole pack here.
Hope that helps some Japan-bloggers. Let me know if it does!
The Japan-related Web: The Future
On February 06, 2008 in #The Japan-related Web Debate, Future of the J-web, Helping Japan Bloggers
| If you are just joining us, Bill from Rising Sun Of Nihon has invited me to use his blog as a platform where we can all come together and discuss the Japan-related web! |
For the last few posts of the Japan-related web series I mention three web projects that I think are leveraging innovative web technology to build community and help webmasters/bloggers.
#1 Japanopedia
#2 Japan-Hopper
#3 JapanSoc
Number 1 and number 3 have been mentioned before on DailyJ (and I will be talking about them more later). Right now I want to talk a little bit about number 2 and then an idea about how all three can work together.
Japan-Hopper.com:
I contacted Kiyotaka, the owner of Japan-Hopper, and asked him a little bit about the project (there will also be a full interview with him later here on DailyJ). You can read what he said in the original article. Basically Japan-Hopper is a site where anyone can add a “placemark” (some info about a location) on a map of Japan.
The great thing about it is that it is perfect for you if you are a Japan-blogger and you have posts about specific places in Japan. You can take a snippet or a summary of your post, add it to Japan-Hopper as a placemark, and add a link back to the full post on your site! Extra traffic.
Now my idea, and it is just an idea (i.e. don’t kill me if you don’t like it)
JapanSoc, Japan-Hopper and Japanopedia if used together could amplify the community building work and send even more traffic to blogs. Here is my thinking:
Japanopedia is like a blank open slate. Anyone can start a project there. Currently there is a project on it to help JapanSoc. A similar project could be made for Japan-Hopper. Maybe a project for bloggers to talk about their favourite places in Japan. Or maybe a project to add screenshots of Japanese monuments on SecondLife to the right places for them on JapanHopper. What do you think about that?
Whatever the case, once it is on Japan-Hopper maybe then it could be highlighted on JapanSoc! You could take your Japan-Hopper placemark’s address and submit it to JapanSoc. If it is interesting and gets “soc’ed” you get exposure for your post on two sites! And you support both projects at the same time.
Of course I am not advocating spamming either site with worthless junk, so I hope you make your contributions meaningful. And have fun too!
Last words?
Tomorrow the last post of the Japan-related web series on RisingSunOfNihon will be posted. But it’s my hope that this series is just the beginning.
As always, I am eager to hear what you think. So let me know!
And have a great day
Helping Japan Bloggers - Feedburner Video (and thank you Nick and KenYN)
On February 04, 2008 in Blog Improvements, Helping Japan Bloggers
I hope you enjoyed the Tofugu interview. If you missed it here are the posts: 1, 2, 3, 4
One thing I really like to post about here on DailyJ is Helping Japan Bloggers. The last post I did on that topic was about a comment notification plugin (and I asked everyone to spread the word). Today I have a little treat for any blogging newbie (like me):
How to videos!
One of my favourite bloggers is Yaro from Entrepreneurs-journey.com so I was ecstatic to find out that he just launched a blog to help out newbies with great tutorial videos. You can find all of them at becomeablogger.com
KenYN suggested making the DailyJ RSS feed more prominent and Nick from Longcountdown.com gave this suggestion in a comment:
For feeds, I’d recommend using Feedburner. With Feedburner (owned by Google) you can access statistics about your rss subscribers such as how many there are and how have they subscribed. Also, if you move blog, you can still use the same feed. Oh, and when you change to Feedburner, you can point all your existing subscribers to the new feed! There are also some little icons they give you to put on your site to show off your reader count and encourage more people to sign up. Oh, … they also offer “subscribe by email” which is awesome!
Finally, I think it’s a great idea helping out fellow Japan bloggers. Keep it up!
SO,
I’ve set up my feedburner account and added a nice big RSS icon at the top of DailyJ. Now you can learn to do it too with this great video!
Pass it on to other J-bloggers!
Friends don’t let friends blog without comment notification ;)
On December 19, 2007 in Blog Improvements, Community building, DailyJ Mission, Helping Japan Bloggers
In my last “Helping Japan Bloggers” post I asked Nick from LongCountdown.com to “share the love,” and share it he did!
Nick gave all of us the plugin that notifies your commentors when someone replies to their comment.
Quicknote - This is a wordpress plugin. If you use Blogger you are lucky and already have this function. If you are on another blog platform leave a comment and hopefully we can find the solution for you too (or switch *cough**cough*).
Nick Ramsay Said,…To notify people of new comments on my blog, I use the Subscribe to Comments plugin for Wordpress.
He also mentioned somethings about RSS that some might not know (more on that next time).
Now this is my commission to you:
If you have a wordpress blog or if you know a Japan-blogger with a wordpress blog, why not tell them today to install this plugin for better blog communication?
And why not spread the word on your own blog too? You don’t have to mention this post, just take this information and use it on your blog help your fellow Japan-bloggers make their blogs better!
Share the love!
Daily J
Helping Japan bloggers with their wordpress blogs
On December 16, 2007 in Announcements, Community building, DailyJ Mission, Helping Japan Bloggers
One thing that I would like to do here on Daily J is discuss, as Japan bloggers, how we can improve our blogs.
So I am going to post “Helping Japan Bloggers” posts from time to time.
*You can help by offering suggestions. And if you have solved a problem others are having SHARE your solution! *
I mentioned this to JapanItUp.com on his post about displaying Japanese on wordpress (my comment is at the bottom) and it is time to talk about it here.
I want it to be an interchange of help.
The idea is that we talk about what could be better and then we blog about how to do it technically.
Here is an example:
JapanItUp had a problem with displaying Japanese, so he figured it out and then he posted about it so that every one else could learn from it.
That is what I want this series to be about!
So here are two things I see on J blogs that I think could be better:
(btw, I am guilty of just about all of them still, so don’t feel bad)
#1
Wordpress bloggers need to install a mod that notifies commenters when there is a reply!
(If you have done this please teach the rest of us how to do it easily. I could search for the mod. But I am too busy already)
longcountdown.com has it! Not fair. Share the love Nick 
Work around (?) - (In case you want to know if someone replied to your comment but the blog doesn’t have auto-notification)
Take the URL of the post that you commented on and add RSS to the end:
http://www.longcountdown.com/2007/02/10/technical-problems-with-lc/
becomes http://www.longcountdown.com/2007/02/10/technical-problems-with-lc/rss
I think this should work. not sure.
#2
Prominently displaying RSS feeds.
I’ve been bugging a few bloggers about this one (you know who you are) I am a hypocrite though because my rss feed is still way at the bottom of this blog I need to stop being lazy…
What other things have you guys seen that we all could work on? And what do you think of this idea for helping each other out? Let me know!
Have a great day
Daily J
