#93: 1 February 2010
FROM THE EDITOR
Angelica Lim, English Editor
newsletter@…
It’s February, and as a Canadian with Chinese roots, I’d like to wish you an early Happy Chinese New Year! The Year of the Tiger starts on February 14th this year, coinciding with Valentine’s Day.
This past month I finally jumped on the Twitter (www.twitter.com) bandwagon. You’ve probably heard of it: it’s a way to update the world (or a limited set of followers) about what you’re doing at the moment. In 140 characters, you can “tweet” your thoughts and daily activities, such as “I can’t believe they named it iPad!” or “Eating delicious goat cheese and raspberry salad”. These might seem insignificant, but I find it’s a nice way for my family overseas to hear about the little things happening in my life, to make me feel more connected.
On a more practical level, I also get to “follow” my co-workers who use Twitter in Japanese. I may have limited Japanese oral communication skills, but with my handy web dictionary I can still read their Twitter updates, understand them, and reply to them in a way similar to texting. Pretty neat, I think! When I’m not at the computer, I use an e-mail service called TwitterMail to update my status through my cell phone e-mail. If you haven’t used Twitter yet, I highly recommend signing up for this fun networking tool!
ROTA LEADER REPORT
Cathy Cox, Rota Leader for February
leader@…
It’s February and that means Valentine’s Day is just around the corner – that means fancy chocolate displays in my local grocery store. Whether or not you need to buy some for a special someone or simply co-workers, don’t forget to treat yourself as well! We’ll be marking Valentine’s Day weekend with our first Meet The DEvas get-together of 2010 on Saturday, February 13. So if you have time that afternoon, please drop by the Voleur de Fleur cafe in Shimokitazawa and say hi, have a coffee, and maybe treat yourself to some cake! Details below in the EVENTS section.
Of course, the big tech news that everyone was buzzing about at the end of January was Apple’s new iPad. If you don’t know about it yet, check this link: http://www.apple.com/ipad/. While many people were disappointed that the iPad is basically just a large iPod-Touch, perhaps the more interesting content of Steve Jobs’ keynote address is how he presented Apple as a maker of mobile devices, thus reconfiguring its main competition to be not Microsoft, but Nokia, Samsung, and Sony! Does this mean no more PC vs Mac wars? For a thoughtful critique of the new iPad from the perspective of someone working in creative computing, check out this recent article from one of my favorite blogs, CreateDigitalMusic.com.
MEMBERSHIP TEAM NEWS
Misao Kajiro, Membership Coordinator
membership@…
Total membership was 353 as of the 31st of January.
Welcome Takara Swoopes to DEJ! Please send your introduction to the main list.
We sent a reactivation request to bouncing email addresses. Members can always verify their addresses from the My Email Preferences section of My Groups. One problem is that members who need to reactivate their subscriptions are not receiving emails such as this newsletter, so they don’t know about their bouncing…!
My family had an unusual experience in this new year. We three began to eat melon at teatime, but it was so bitter. Two of us gave up eating it, but my husband tried to find the sweet parts and ate most of his melon. After three hours he developed food-poisoning symptoms. I searched the internet and found that melon sometimes contains mold that can make us sick. We asked the store where we bought the melon, a big supermarket, to check the cause, so they took back the rest of the melon.
Ten days later, they reported that the cause of the bitter taste was unknown, but it turned out that the melon had been kept in their warehouse for more than two weeks which might have caused the mold. They gave us our money back, but my husband spent a miserable new year.
Health Canada writes another possibility: “melons are grown close to the ground, their outer skin or rind can become contaminated in the field by soil, contaminated water, wild and domestic animals or improperly composted manure. Bacteria may also be transferred during and after harvest from handling, storing and transporting.”
If there was no internet search engines, we couldn’t find out that melons cause food poisoning. I searched it in Japanese and English, and learned that there were very many blogs and sites about it.
EVENT TEAM NEWS
Waki Kawamoto, Event Coordinator
events@…
I have been using an iPhone for about 5 months now and like every other iPhone user, the iPhone has become my must-have item. I want to introduce some of my favorite and funny applications here!
My Favorite Apps
* CookingPad: This is an application where everyone posts their cooking recipes.The recipe is usually very easy to follow and I use this application A LOT.
* 今日の星占い: This is a horoscope application. I know it sounds ridiculous but I feel like this horoscope is very accurate…? I do not trust it every time but it’s fun 
Funny Apps
* Bijin-Tokei: One of my clients introduced me to this application. I do not use this application – men can come up with such silly ideas sometimes…funny.
* iType2Go: Our newsletter team member Ailsa introduced me to this app. Will I actually use this app…? In any case, I think this is such a clever application.
We had a DEJ committee brunch with the Newsletter team and we could not stop talking about iPhone applications! I am thinking about planning an iPhone event in the future. What does everyone think? If you have some ideas, please let me know!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
WEB TEAM NEWS
Cathy Cox, Web Content Coordinator
web@…
The new DEJ website is scheduled to go public this month. If anyone has any content they would like to contribute photos, weblinks, etc. – please send it our way!
We will also be creating a DEJ group profile in Facebook as another way for members to network with each other. We’ll be sending an invitation to the list, so any DEvas who are on Facebook can feel free to join – but if you’re not on Facebook, please do not feel any pressure to join.
SUBMISSIONS TO THE NEWSLETTER
Have an announcement to make? An article to submit for consideration? (We can’t pay you, but we’ll give you a byline.) Please send your submissions in plain text format to:newsletter@…
***SEEK***
Editors (E to J) who can help in publishing this newsletter.
Please send an email to:newsletter@…
The Digital Digest is brought to you by the Newsletter Team:
Koko Iwata, Yoko Kawabe, Angelica Lim, and Ailsa Wylie.