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Events Magazines Meta Web

SNOW Magazine Cafe Blog

Yesterday I launched a special blog for the SNOW Magazine Cafe. For those of you who are unable to attend the event here in Tokyo, that’s where you’ll find more details about the show — I’ll be posting stuff throughout the month, including photos and the like. Today I revealed the list of participating titles (in the main part of the show), 33 in all. Note that you can subscribe to a feed as well.

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Meta Web

SNOW Magazine on iPad

I don’t have an iPad — YET — but big thanks to Paul Baron for sending in this screenshot of how SNOW Magazine looks like on the iPad. Although I didn’t think there’d be any problems — since it works fine on iPhone — it’s alway good to have confirmation. Now to start thinking about whatever else SNOW-related I can get on the iPhone/iPad…

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Meta Web

SNOW Magazine Goes White

No, it wasn’t an April Fools prank, SNOW Magazine really has gone all white. I thought April 1 was a good day to do it because in Japan it also marks the start of the year for many (new school year, start of new recruits in companies) and so why not do it then. Longterm readers may also remember that I used to like switching color schemes on my site on a fairly regular basis. But also, when SNOW launched at the end of January, I did see it more as a 0.9 version of the site, and I still wanted to mess around with it a bit post-launch.

Thinking about it now, I think my first instinct was probably to go white, but I forced using colors because I didn’t want to come off as a sort of clone of this site (which I revamped last fall) and my GAME site. But in the end, I think it’s really what I wanted for the site, something very minimal, and I think it suits the logo even more.

Categories
Photography Web

Twittering Kyoto

If you follow my Twitter feed, then you may have noticed all of the tweeting I was doing while in Kyoto this past weekend, and more importantly, adding the @hitotoki tag to all of those tweets. The reason is that I’m currently helping with the beta testing of the soon-to-relaunch Hitotoki, and as you can see, it now revolves around a strong Twitter component. I’ll just leave it at that for now, but if you want to be alerted when the site relaunches, you can sign up on the site, and follow them on Twitter as well.

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Meta Web

SNOW Magazine, A Week Later

So here we are, almost a week since the launch of SNOW Magazine. How have things been? Well, it was a bit of a rough ride for the first couple of days, mostly because I wasn’t happy with the way I had set up the domain (a lot of people will recall that you could only see “http://snow-mag.com” in the URL bar no matter the post, because I was just using forwarding/masking), and so I struggled a bit with this, but I can’t thank enough the man who always comes to my rescue when it comes to web-related problems, Patrick Benny (he’s helped countless times on this site as well). Do check out Patrick’s first column for SNOW as well, covering the launch of Yasuharu Konishi’s new label, READYMADE V.I.C.

So I think things should be running relatively smoothly from here on out, although do continue sending feedback if you encounter weirdness. The feed should also be working fine, so please subscribe to make sure not to miss any new content.

Also, here’s a quick list of the recent posts that went up on the site, in case you missed anything.

 

Categories
Art Web

Please Help Tokyo Art Beat

As we’ve seen with many a site and company, 2009 was a very rough year, and our dear Tokyo Art Beat — itself a non-profit — was hit as well. So if you can, PLEASE help TAB keep going by making a donation here. PLEASE!

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Design Stores Web

The Future of MUJI

MUJI posts a beautiful flash-based essay — mixing visuals and text — on its global site, explaining the rationale behind the company’s line of products.

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Art Stores Web

Azito

Azito is an online gallery that deals with sales of Japanese contemporary art worlwide, including works by the likes of Takashi Homma, Kenji Yanobe, and Keiichi Tanaami.

Pictured above, “New Waves,” a print by Homma.

Categories
Games Meta Web

Recently on GAME

Just a note to say that I continue to update my new gaming site, GAME, on a regular basis, with a new selection going up every couple of days. The latest additions are the flash “experience” Every Day the Same Dream (pictured above), the latest PixelJunk release (Shooter), classic PlayStation-era platform/puzzler Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, and the PS3 Breakout-homage Shatter.

Also, I am open to the idea of sponsorship, although it would need to be done in a way that fits the site’s aesthetic (meaning no “block” ads). If you’re interested, get in touch.

Categories
Design Web

HENGE

HENGE is certainly an intriguing item: it’s a “transformable interior object,” or model if you will, that goes from an aircraft-like mode to full robot. It’s self-produced by Tomoo Yamaji, who lives in Takarazuka (Hyogo prefecture), and he’s selling the limited edition model through his online shop. Here’s a video of the transformation process.