I seem to be seeing more and more of these lately, mostly thanks to them being forwarded by confused and concerned clients. If you want to get someone’s attention these days you can start by injecting a little FUD into their thinking about their Internet domain name.
Those ever-industrious Chinese have taken this idea and run with it, giving the world yet another high-quality Chinese export, this time delivered by email.
The subject often reads “Registration Proclamation,” and the message looks like this:
Dear CEO,
We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in china, have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on July 30, 2010. one company which self-styled “West innovation Ltd” were applying to register “domainname” as Network Brand and following domain names:
domainname.asia
domainname.cn
domainname.co.in
domainname.com.cn
domainname.com.tw
domainname.hk
domainname.in
domainname.net.cn
domainname.org.cn
domainname.twAfter our initial checking, we found the brand name were similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for “West innovation Ltd”.
Best Regards,
Peter Chang
Senior Consultant
Tel : (+86) 555-1212
Fax : (+86) 555-1212
Address: Bizpark West
Ningguo Road, Baohe District, HeFei, China
First things first: this is merely an unsavory sales tactic, nothing more. There is absolutely no need to “check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names,” and what you’re really looking at is an inducement to pay the sender to register these additional domains. If you get one of these I suggest you simply ignore it. If you want more detail/background have a look at this detailed blog entry on the subject.
- In: Technology
Vinotokyo featured in The Japan Times
9 Apr2010
Netwise wine portal site Vinotokyo was featured today in The Japan Times along with a short interview with Netwise president Michael Rollins. Read the full article text.
The site–billed as “Tokyo’s Guide to All Things Wine”–offers information of Tokyo wine events of all kinds, classes, Tokyo wine bars and restaurants and more. Members can post reviews of wine bars, wines and events, as well as add their own listings of shops and restaurants they know and love. Content is only available in English at the moment, but we are planning to roll out a Japanese version by this Summer.
- In: Food/Dining|Wine|Work
Your site without JavaScript. Seen it lately?
16 Mar2010
With the arrival of JavaScript libraries like jQuery web development has gotten a lot easier. Better still, these tools make it possible to design website user experiences that are simple, intuitive and interesting. Our use of jQuery and MooTools has opened a world of “cool” possibilities and makes our work a lot more interesting. However, as we recently discovered, the use of and reliance on these tools involves a certain degree of risk.
We recently lunched a new, redesigned and much improved website for a Tokyo-based client. This firm’s website has grown over the years–as happens with many businesses–to be its primary tool for customer acquisition and interaction. Web-based forms and a host of back-end systems–most of them browser-based and built by Netwise–handle key business operations such as inquiries, estimate and work requests and the like.
As part of the website redesign process we sought to optimize and refine the customer-facing functions in order to create the most positive user experience possible. We made changes to the information architecture and workflow, improved the design, built in improved error handling, assorted Ajax functions and more. In this critical area we succeeded in realizing significant improvements over the previous version of the site, using the latest tools and practices. But we had a problem.
One of the main jobs of the website is to collect information and documents via a somewhat lengthy form. With the launch of the new site, however, we started seeing a drop in the number of documents that accompanied inquiries. In this area documents are more or less assumed, but now we were getting 5% of inquiries with no attached documents, or about a 300% increase. Something was clearly wrong.
We tested and tested some more, using all of the current browsers and also older ones. We used fast connections and slow ones. We tried big files and small ones, and myriad file types. We could not reproduce the error. We scoured the data from Google Analytics to try and find some clue, a hint as to the cause. We collected information from users who reported problems, tried to reproduce the issue with the same combinations of OS and browser, all to no avail. Frustration mounted.
Finally, one of the team, trying to reproduce the bug reported by phone by a customer moments earlier, decided to try the site at IE’s “High” security setting. And in doing so, he saw the bug for the first time. That simple setting disables JavaScript, and by extension just about all of the new, cool functionality companies like ours use to create useful and interesting websites.
Who browses the web with JavaScript disabled? Nobody, right? According to Google, only 0.75% of users surf with JavaScript off. Why? One reason is that the web can be a pretty barren and forlorn place these days without it. While there are certainly sites that work the same with or without JavaScript, the majority today definitely make extensive use of it as well as frameworks and libraries that rely heavily on it. Nobody would disable it, right? Wrong. In our small sample we saw figures at or around 5%, which is, well, a lot.
Finding these users was especially tricky because–like so many other sites and applications–Google Analytics relies on JavaScript as well, and needs it to collect traffic and usage data. Each visitor that came to the site, and everything they did while there, was essentially hidden from our view. It was only through more thorough testing that we were able to identify the source of the problem.
The lesson learned in this case is this: jQuery, MooTools, form validation code as well as most client-side behaviors and dynamic functionality all reply on JavaScript. If you’re not testing your websites with it disabled then you really have no idea what a small percentage of your visitors are experiencing while there. Developers and testers are used to working from a matrix of browser and OS combinations, but need to include a “security” dimension in there as well if they’ve not already. Even today, when common sense and experience suggest otherwise, JavaScript can’t and shouldn’t be assumed.
- In: Technology|Web
- Tags: browsers, javascript, jquery, testing, web development
I got an email from Metropolis today. It came to an address I used when I joined their community, though I don’t remember opting-in to anything. At any rate, I opened it and was amazed at just how completely bad it was. Clumsily composed in plain text and littered with duplicate links, it looked more like a parody of an email newsletter, like someone’s farsighted 6-year old had been given an event calendar and a Palm Pilot and told to share the important bits with the Internet.
So bad was it, in fact, I’ve included it here. I figure with all of the useful articles out there on how to do email marketing right, the world could use one that illustrates how to do it really crap.
- In: Distractions|Work
The new year, off and rolling
25 Feb2010
February is drawing to a close, putting us firmly in the new year and looking forward to onset of Spring. The past few days have been warm enough to suggest that hanami season is just around the corner. We’re all ready to open the windows and start enjoying some cool breezes in the office and (especially) out on our spacious new balcony. Which reminds, I need to get my hands on some director’s chairs…
The year has gotten off to quite a busy start, which is a refreshing change from the end of 2009, which found us with a bit more free time on our hands than we like. Lots of inquiries and many approved projects have us all feeling very good about the coming year and excited to do some interesting work.
Some of what we’ve been up to so far this year includes redesigning client’s websites. One of these, for destination management firm Villissima, went live just last week and looks like this.
The redesign was mostly cosmetic, and we thinks gives the site a much more sophisticated look overall and better fits the company’s high-quality image. Have a look at the live site if interested in seeing the whole thing.
We also completed the redesign of the website for Japan’s leading translation and rewriting company, Forte, specialists in scientific and academic papers. The new design represents a huge improvement over the previous site, and the project also gave us the opportunity to implement various enhancements in the areas of usability and user experience.
We also performed extensive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on the site to get it into page 1 on both Google and Yahoo! for all 10 of their core keywords, such as 英文校正 and 論文校閲. Conversions are up one month after the launch of the new site and we’ll continue to tweak and tune to get the best performance possible out of the site.
Finally, our most recent launch is the website for Tokyo-based venture Australia Property Inc. Find full details on this great project on the Netwise website shortly…
Keith Olbermann: refreshingly frank.
16 Jan2010
Nice to see someone on a national network call these pricks out on their hate-mongering and general small-mindedness. I had begun to get the feeling the American news media had devolved into two antagonistic camps comprising Jon Stewart and everyone else, but now I need there are some other voices of reason out there as well. Good on ya, Keith.
- In: The Culture Wars
Netwise launches Tokyo’s first wine portal
16 Jan2010
One of our recent projects is now online and is picking up steam in terms of traffic and membership. Here’s the “official” blurb:
Tokyo has a lot to offer wine lovers.
From world-class restaurants to standing wine bars to the massive retail and online wine trade, Tokyoites have access to an incredible range of not only wines, but wine-related events, education and—of course—wine socializing. However, keeping up with the myriad events and topics of interest to lovers of the vine has been difficult at best. But now that’s all changed, and for the first time Tokyoites have a one-stop, comprehensive resource for keeping up with and getting the most out of the world of wine here in Tokyo.
Welcome to Vinotokyo.
Vinotokyo is a community wine portal that exists with the goal of collecting and sharing wine-related information of interest to Tokyoites. It is the first and only online directory of wine bars and wine-centric restaurants in our vast metropolis, with the first comprehensive calendar of wine events such as tastings, dinners and wine parties.
Here are some of the things you can find or do there:
- Consult the comprehensive (and growing!) restaurant and wine bar listings to discover new places in and around Tokyo to wine and dine.
- Read and write reviews of wines, restaurants, wine shops, online stores and just about anything else in our directories.
- Join the Vinotokyo community and interact with others in our access-protected social network.
- Have a Facebook account? Login with your Facebook details and skip the registration process completely!
- Check the event calendar to see what’s happening around town in the world of wine.
- Submit new listings for your favorite wine spots not yet in the system.
Join the forums, share tasting notes, recommendations and more.
Ready to get started?
Then either create an account or login with your Facebook
credentials using the Connect with Facebook button.
- In: Technology|Wine|Work
Tokyo’s Coffee Shops, Best to Worse
16 Jan2010
1. Tully’s. Understated, cozy, jazzy BGM. 「アメリカノ、お湯少なめで。」
2. DEAN & DELUCA. Expensive and worth it.
3. Seattle’s Best Coffee. Very few Tokyo locations. Enjoy it at Beacon after lunch.
4. Sagafredo Zanetti. Stylish and tasty.
5. Starbucks. What’s to say?
6. Kohikan. Home to the shortest chairs in Tokyo and dated “Blue Mountain”-type offerings.
7. Pronto. My morning stop-in, mostly owing to a local lack of Tully’s.
8. Doutour. Widest demographic swath of them all. Taxi drivers sipping and smoking next to teenyboppers.
9. Cafe Veloce. The chain most often selected by salarymen for a quick meeting or post-meeting chat.
10. Renoir. Step back in time to Japan, 1985. Lots of deals and calls being made, stick-around-a-while furniture, refills.
11. Excelsior. So bad on so many levels.