In my capacity as an invited expert to the world wide web consortium (with specialisation in internationalisation, I had some involvement in the creation of the specifications of, “Requirements for Japanese Text Layout” a technical document amounting to around 174 pages in the English edition and almost 200 pages in Japanese. This is now a definitive guide for Japanese text layout, both on the web and in paper form. It was formally published on 4th June 2009. Unfortunately, I didn’t contribute enough to get editorial credit

As Richard Ishida said,

This document describes requirements for Japanese layout realized with technologies like CSS, SVG and XSL-FO. For non-Japanese speakers it provides access for the first time to a wealth of detailed and authoritative information about Japanese typesetting. The document is mainly based on a standard for Japanese layout, JIS X 4051 and was written by key contributors to that standard. However, it also addresses areas which are not covered by JIS X 4051.

Microsoft’s latest incarnation of its web browser, Internet Explorer Version 8, is being rolled out and taaking a stranglehold on innocent windows Computers everywhere.

As has become the custom for Microsoft browsers, the upgrade(?) makes its presence felt. Even if users have removed previous Internet Explorer startup icons from their quick start bar on Windows Vista or Windows XP, the upgrade enforces its resurrection.

To make things even worse for people who have chosen to use Firefox, Chrome, Opera or other high quality browsers that they have actively chosen to use, IE 8 tries to hijack windows PCs. Upon starting up IE8, it imports user settings from Firefox and comes to a choice of “Express” or “Custom” settings. Unfortunately, embedded in the “Custom settings” is a clause to Hijack user preferences for another browser. When choose “Express”, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 always becomes the “Default browser”.

The implication of this hi-jack is that many users’ choices to use non-Microsoft products are actively ignored, by an automated upgrade. Many users may have difficulty switching back to their chosen product. And why should they have to actively remake a choice that they have already made.

Internet Explorer may be an improvement on it’s predecessors, but the forced switch over to it being the default browser shows Microsoft’s continued arrogance, that nobody should be allowed to choose to use non-Microsoft products, and those who do will continually have to make additional efforts to keep to their choice.

I’ve finally put together my own application for The Best Job in the World.

I appreciate that the video is not a slick as some and that I’m not a bikini clad young lady, but I do possess the actual skill set that is required for the post. I’m also a stills photographer, rather than a video editor.

I have been very please to see that Dr Thomas McAuley,  Academic Tutor for Sheffield University’s Japanese Distance Learning,   has started a blog tying together threads from his Japanese experiences. The blog is for eltnews.com, a Japanese web site for English Teachers in Japan, but is publicly available.

Dr Thomas McAuley no longer lives in Japan but has been teaching Japanese language and studies for more than fifteen years.

I wish his blog well and will follow it closely.

In the Domain Registry of America Scam, I wrote about their practice of sending letters that look like a bill for domain renewal. They obviously have found that they are not scamming enough customers, possibly because of the US ruling that they are barred from Misleading Consumers in Marketing of Internet Domain Name Service.

Today, I received a letter, that looks like a bill, from “Domain Renewal Group“. Amazingly, they use the same format and wording as the “Domain Registry of America“.  I noticed that the Domain Renewal Group’s envelope was unusual, as it was sent by bulk mail from Jamaica.

The contact page for “Domain Renewal Group” unsurprisingly has identical address, telephone, fax and email addresses for support, sales and info to “Domain Registry of America“.

The scam is designed to persuade companies to transfer their domain registry from the current domain registrar to the scammer.

The Domain Renewal Group letter looks like a bill. It is sent five months before the actual domain renewal date. They charge £20 for a year’s renewal of a .com domain. Twice what United hostings, my high quality and legitimate service provider charges.

Rumour has it that they actually transfer ownership of the domain into their own name, and auction it off later.

Of course, anyone should be wary of providing credit card details to an organisation that makes an unsolicited approach, whether buy paper or electronic spam.

A flaw in the stylesheet at www.islandreefjob.com seems to prevent Firefox from loading the job application videos cleanly.

Although the promoters of “The best job in the world” in Queensland Australia seem to have fixed most of their problems, it appears that the designers of www.islandreefjob.com have failed to get their site fully working with Mozilla Firefox 3, although it does work well with Google’s Chrome browser and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Some of the CSS is broken. The w3C CSS checker shows the following errors:

URI : http://www.islandreefjob.com/stylesheets/container.css
17 html Property overflow-y doesn’t exist in CSS level 2.1 but exists in [css3] : scroll
180 #animated_title Value Error : margin only 0 can be a length. You must put an unit after your number : 0 auto 27

These errors may be the cause of the embedded youtube videos failing to fully load or play, although of course it may be some other flaw. I hope that the webmasters for www.islandreefjob.com get this technical fault completely resolved very soon, so that they don’t continue to exclude Firefox users from applying to go to be an Island caretaker in Queensland.

Following yesterday’s post about problems accessing islandreefjob.com it seem that Tourism Queensland’s web hosts have improved the availability of the site for the “Best Job in the World”. It now runs smoothly and efficiently, in both English and Japanese. Well done.

Looking at the video applications, for the $150,000 6 month caretaker and publicity job, most applications so far are unfortunately inarticulate or justifying their desire to get the job by saying they don’t like their current one. Many emphasise the their enthusiasm for the benefits of the post as if it is a holiday, not a job, without apparently noticing that paradise island caretaker will be required to communicate well and and regularly.

So far, there has been, to my mind, one outstanding application for the island caretaker job. She is Christine from Canada who shows personality and an ability to communicate well. Since I’m considering applying, she’s the current person to beat.

Apparently Japanese telecoms companies are trying to convince the world that written Japanese does not already have enough characters.

These additional characters are used to depict emotions and other symbols in a similar manner to SMS emoticons.

Rather than being combinations of characters, such a , which is entered as a : followed by a ) ,  to represent a smiley in the Latin character sets, there is a movement to create a whole range of  new symbols, into Unicode, which include colour and animation.

At present, they are exchanged in SMS messages by using privately agreed character codes, but there is pressure to add these new emoji ideographs into the Unicode specification.

Some of the key problems that adding Emoji to the Unicode standards would present include:

1. Adding shapes to Unicode, which has carefully remianed indepentant of how glyphs are drawn
2. Adding colour requirements to Unicode, which again has had no logical need to specify colours for characters
3. Adding the concept of animation definitions to characters, which is well outside the range of a character set definition

In Australia, Queensland’s Tourist Authority is pulling off a phenomenal publicity stunt. Which may be a victim of its own success, as the web site for a single job seems to be barely accessible because of the quantity of hits on their web site.

Queensland are advertising a well paid real job, under the slogan “The best job in the world“, for six month on the the Great Barrier Reef paradise island called Hamilton Island.

The aim of using this job to attract international interest in Hamilton and the other reef islands seems to be being met too well. In the few days since the Queensland Tourist authority started advertising the island reef job, it has attracted the attention of British, American and Japanese news media.

For the last three days, http://www.islandreefjob.com/ has rarely been accesible because of the overwelming web traffic.

I’ve recently been testing a new broadband line speed checker called Isposure. The download is free and the speed tester is easy to install on Windows PCs.

It is unobtrusive while running and seems to provide accurate speed results for my ADSL connection. Isposure provides charts of your connection’s behaviour and the ability to compare it with other local providers, presumably based on collated speed statistics of other Isposure users.

This doesn’t suprise me particularly, as one of the authors of the software was a former colleague of mine, who was a particulary skilled developer.

If you’re interested in trying the product it can be downloaded from Isposure.com. When you are installing, you can use the promotional code “Luke Jagger”.

It is so good to see a simple, free broadband speed checker that does what it says and doesn’t try to sell you anything.

There’s been quite a bit of coverage on the radio about a scam, where people receive a call on their mobile phone, but it rings off quickly, either just before they answer or as they answer.

The scam relies on the victims having a natural, and reasonable inclination to ring the number back.

What the victim hears when they call back is the tone that tells them call is ringing. Many people are very patient and listen for a fair time before they give up. What they are actually listening to is a recording of a ringing tone, on a premium rate number. of course, the longer the victim holds on and the more they call back, the more money they are paying on their phone bill to the scammer.

I’ve recently had a selection of calls to my mobile phone which fit the profile, but I have not wasted my money by ringing them back. In my case they all called on different days between 11:00 and 12:30 GMT, presumably hoping I’d call them back at lunch time.

The numbers which called are :

• 07506738901
• 07791832748
• 07791835658
• 07791841162
• 07908583355
• 07908583385
• 07908583386
• 07908583387
• 07944453453

My advice is not to call back any number you don’t recognise, particularly if it rings off quickly. Genuine callers will wait for you to answer and will try again.

If you know of any other numbers that might be linked with this type of scam, please add your own comments.

Freecycle is an organisation that tries to keep unused objects out of landfill, largely through locally based email groups on yahoo. Unfortunately, as with every good idea, there can be some downsides.

I am a moderator for the Congleton Freecycle group, and as such have to try and keep out the obvious scammers and spammers.

Recently, I’ve seen a surge in a particular type of scam on the freecycle groups.

It starts with someone, who usually has recently joined the freecycle group, advertising a high value item, such as a PS/2 or a Tom Tom Sat Nav.

When people respond to the advert, they get a reply saying the item has gone but directing them to a web site where the goods can be won  or purchase cheaply.

At best victims that fall for it provide referral commission to the scammer, and at worst they provide their identity and credit card details to the scammer for later fraud or identity theft.

A typical scam response read like this:

I’m really sorry, but the Playstation 2 has already been given away to someone else I wish I had more to give away.

However, the least I can do is try and provide with some useful information to grab yourself a free Playstation 3 (which is how I got mine, which arrived in just over a week!)

First of all, you need to head over to <Scam web site> - sign up to the website, and then you need to complete an offer… I’d recommend either doing the the Lovefilm offer or the HSBC Bank Offer (where you just have to open a bank account), as they’re both free! Or, you could complete the Gala Bingo offer which only costs £5!

All of the companies which are offers are really well known so there’s no risk.

I have already received my Playstation 3 through my door! And am awaiting some new games for it too. I was really skeptical about this at first, but my friend showed me what he had received for free, so I thought I may as well try it out, and I’m so glad I did! (I have the new iPhone 3G coming soon too!)

If you have any questions, please reply to this email with the subject as QUESTION.

Once again, I’m so sorry that you missed out on this Playstation 2, but I hope that you will be able to obtain a brand new Playstation 3 just like I did this way.

The website again is:<Scam web site>

Thanks a lot.

<Scammer name>
xxx