Sunday, 27 April 2008

Make Money with ShoppingAds

A rather new website (though by the people behind the famous TextLinkAds) that I've been trying for the last few months is ShoppingAds.

Being a new idea I honestly wasn't expecting much from it but I decided to give it a go and have been very impressed with the money I've made so far (within 3 months I got US$50 paid into my PayPal account).

Basically you place an ad on your webpage that advertises related auctions on eBay. If someone clicks on the ad you get money. If someone clicks on the ad and bids in the auction you get much more money.

The look of the code is completely customisable as is the type of auctions presented (you can enter as many keywords as you like).

You can see an example of a ShoppingAds ad on the right menu.

ShoppingAds is well worth a look. I've found it to be almost on par with Google AdSense and the fact that they pay you into your PayPal account (something AdSense doesn't do) is a huge bonus.

What have you got to lose?

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Labels: internet, make money

Thursday, 24 April 2008

Pokemon Theme Backwards!

As you know, I'm a Pokemon freak so as you can imagine I got a real kick out of this YouTube video that plays the first season's theme song backwards and reveals some hillarious hidden lyrics!

If you haven't seen the opening in a while here it is.

And here's the backwards version. Note that it uses the movie version which is why it's longer.

And while I'm freaking out about Pokemon, I'll rave about the 10th movie which is coming out on DVD in the US next month, The Rise of Darkrai which will also be the first Pokemon movie DVD to be bilingual! Yeah! It'll have both the new English audio track plus the original Japanese audio and English subtitles!!! Pretty good!

I was going to buy the Japanese DVD as I really don't like the new English actors (they were recast last year) but I think I'll be getting this Region 1 Pokemon DVD! Looks like it'll also be in WIDESCREEN (the last two have also been in widescreen as well as the second, third and (in Australia and UK) the fourth.

In other Pokemon news I really can't wait for the next Pokemon movie! It looks as if it'll be the first movie to continue from the previous one with Dialga continuing to cause havoc around the world! Looks like some pretty good animation too!

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Labels: Pokemon

Monday, 21 April 2008

Stitch in Okinawa!

A few weeks ago I went to the Tokyo Big Site (it's HUGE!) to see an international anime convention. Apparently it's really famous and a must see but for some reason I'd never been there before.

It's kind of funny. Most people who know me will describe me as an anime freak but in reality I only read / watch one or two series and this became very apparent when I went with Nikki and we only recognised about 5 of the 100 series on show.

Unfortunately a lot of the shows on display looked beyond clichéd and boring and we actually found the best works on display in the University / College student areas.

There were a few official highlights, one of which (and you may think this strange) for me was the announced Lilo and Stitch Japanese spin off anime series featuring Stitch as he moves from Hawaii (where all the movies and tv episodes have been set so far) to a fictional island in Okinawa!

I'm a big fan of the Lilo and Stitch series and absolutely love everything Okinawan so I personally can't wait for this series to start later this year in October.

To help promote the series to investors and fans, Disney created a huge walk through (cardboard) Okinawan style house (notice the colour of the roof tiles and how the concrete is used to hold it together) which was decorated with pictures of the new characters and those that would be returning.

What I thought was interesting was that they're ditching the Hawaiian girl, Lilo in favour of a new Okinawan girl character and instead of an older sister they're having an old grandmother figure both of which actually look Okinawan in their features.

Stitch's alien friends seem to be following him (names escape me at the moment) as well as his rarely seen in the series but insanely popular in Japan, pink girlfriend.

Stitch was also shown playing an Okinawan guitar (sanshin) instead of his Elvis inspired guitar.

I'm loving it.

So many of the children I teach watch Lilo and Stitch and want to learn the guitar and hula because of it. While this is great, if this new Stitch series inspires interest in the lesser known Okinawan culture within Japan and Internationally I feel a lot more will have been achieved.

Currently noone even knows what Okinawa is let alone it's location or history.

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Labels: Anime and Manga, japan, Okinawa

Sunday, 13 April 2008

Half Arsed English Translations

One of the most frustrating things about being an English speaking person in Japan is encountering half arsed English translations that has been edited or adapted for "English speakers". A lot of the time in Japan instead of having an English translation available of the Japanese content (whether it be a road sign, pamphlet or newspaper) those behind the scenes seem to edit the content and actually change it depending on what they think English speakers would be interested in.

This becomes very apparent in road signs where there'll be a good 20 words in Japanese and only a 1 or 2 word "translation" in English under it.

It becomes obvious when dealing with a lot of Japanese companies who seem to think that all their customers in Japan speak and read Japanese and if they want an English version of their content they must be investors from overseas or general tourists.

Take Sumitomo Mitsui's Official Website for example. It has information on branch locations within Japan, internet banking information, contact information... basic customer service stuff. However if you look at the English Sumitomo Mitsui Page you'll find no support whatsoever for English speaking customers in Japan. While it's great that they list Sumitomo branches all around the world you have to wonder why they don't list branches within Japan where the company is based!

Today I've been after information on branches near where I work on the Denintoshi line and to get that information I had to use Google's translation tools to translate their page (a lot of which wouldn't translate due to their image use) and then call a Japanese customer support number and ask (in Japanese) for an English speaker.

All of this was completely unnecessary and has me wondering how many other non Japanese speaking bankers in Japan have been screwed over this way.

A perfect example of this "I can't be bothered spending an extra 5 minutes to translate the rest of this into English" is Japanese ATMs. The usual ATM here will show you about 20 options on the touch screen ranging from transfers, wiring, deposits, updates, etc. Hit the English translation option and you get 2, maybe three if you're lucky: Deposit & Withdrawl.

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Labels: japan