News, Views and Reviews by Michael Rollins in Tokyo
I wrote an article covering some of the options available to those hoping to set up an online store or web shop here in Japan. Comments/feedback welcome. Setting Up an Online Store in Japan: Some Options
Here we go again. Just when I thought I was enjoying affordable, high-speed Internet access, along comes yet another new technology that makes my once-fat data pipe look like a swizzle stick. I’m talking fiber. Fiber-optic Internet access (known as Fiber-to-the-Home, or FTTH) has been around since early 2001, when Usen Broad Networks launched its [...]
Like me, you may have noticed a recent noisy addition to Tokyo’s otherwise drab urban landscape. Clad in garish red or brilliant white, teams of Yahoo BB “parasol troopers” have suddenly landed everywhere, and trying to locate a station exit or street corner free of their hawking antics is like trying to find a product [...]
It’s been just over a year since my personal e-mail account started getting upwards of 20 junk mails a day and I ditched it for a new, spam-free one. I created another — simple enough when you have your own domain — but found in mere months that I was right back where I started. [...]
I’m sitting with my ThinkPad in a Starbucks near Akasaka. The cafe isn’t advertised as a WLAN hot spot, so I’m pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying high-speed Internet access courtesy of some nearby wireless network. I open up the WLAN properties on my XP-equipped notebook and have a look. The network name that appears [...]
After enjoying the speed and always-on convenience of broadband Internet for about a year, I was surprised one afternoon to feel an odd pang of disconnectedness when staying at a friend’s cottage in Izu. With nary a phone line or fiber-optic cable for miles around, I briefly found myself wishing my friend had instead revealed [...]
Congratulations on finding my personal blog. It's been around in various incarnations since 1997, which is before blogs were called "blogs." See if you can top that.
My name is michael, and denbushi (電武士) is the now-dorky-seeming online name I made up back when I thought (ever so presciently) that some kind of unique nickname for the interwebs might be handy. Just for the record, it IS unique (even today!) except for this jujitsu variant/dojo in Puerto Rico which co-opted it without even asking me. If I had to cage-fight them for exclusive use of "denbushi" chances are good they'd win. But I'd still do it.
These days I live in Tokyo and mostly use my real name. A few years ago I founded a design and marketing agency called netwise. We do web and internet stuff. We're pretty good at it.