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WordCamp Boston 2010

mitcho — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:02:01 +0000

This past weekend I gave a couple talks at the inaugural WordCamp Boston. WordCamps are local, community-organized events for WordPress users and enthusiasts. We had about 400 people at the Microsoft Cambridge campus.

(I invite you to also check out more photos below as well as my full WordCamp gallery.)

My first talk was “Getting Into The Loop,” which gives a quick taste of The Loop which is a central programming construct in every WordPress application. (SlideShare, SpeakerRate)

My second talk was an Ignite talk on the importance of beta testing plugins. Ignite talks are five minute lightning talks with 20 slides which auto-advance every 15 seconds. (SlideShare, SpeakerRate)

The videos for both talks will ultimately go up on wordpress.tv.

The event was a huge success and I’m looking forward to help organize WordCamp Boston 2011 as well!

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The Ubiquity Persistence Project: exploring a persistent Ubiquity in the toolbar

mitcho — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:50:13 +0000

It’s often hard to remember Ubiquity’s presence and keystroke without a visual reminder—even I often forget that I could use Ubiquity and end up going to a search engine or using the search bar for some quick lookup task. What if the Ubiquity input were in the toolbar and always visible? How would that affect people’s use of Ubiquity? And what could we make that look like and how would it behave? Today we’re kicking off the Ubiquity Persistence Project, a new Ubiquity initiative to explore what a persistent Ubiquity might look like in the Firefox toolbar.

In order to facilitate this discussion, we created the Persistence tool. With the Persistence tool you can quickly try out new design and interaction ideas, mocking things up with some simple jQuery-powered JavaScript and CSS and see your changes live. The Persistence tool is bundled with our latest Ubiquity beta (install link).

The Ubiquity Persistence Project: exploring a persistent Ubiquity in the toolbar from mitcho on Vimeo.

I just put together a screencast introducing the initiative, demoing the Persistence tool, as well as talking about this project’s relation to the ongoing work on Taskfox. We’ll look forward to your comments and designs!

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Converting your Ubiquity command to Ubiquity 0.5

mitcho — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:15:37 +0000

Converting your Ubiquity command to Ubiquity 0.5 from mitcho on Vimeo.

This video walks through the process of converting your Ubiquity commands to Ubiquity 0.5 with Parser 2. For more information, please consult the command conversion tutorial.

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日本語サポートを含む Ubiquity 0.5 リリース

mitcho — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:01:33 +0000

Mozilla Japan ブログで Ubiquity を紹介する投稿を上げたので、ここでもクロスポストします。 Here’s a cross-post of a Ubiquity 0.5 announcement (in particular regarding the new Japanese support) I wrote for the Mozilla Japan blog.

Mozilla Labs の実験的プロジェクトのひとつ、 Ubiquity の最新版、バージョン 0.5 を昨日リリースしました。 (Mozilla Labs 正式発表 [英文])

Ubiquity はウェブをより有益に、より使いやすくするために自然言語で Firefox を操作するインターフェースを提供します。ウェブ上のオープン API と機能が増えて行く一方でどのようなインターフェースが必要であるのか。その答えを追求した結果、テキスト入力の正確さとスピードと自然言語の心地よさを合わせたインターフェースができあがりました。例えば「麹町を地図で表示」、「これを (誰々) へメール」などを自分の言葉で入力してブラウザを操作することができます。新しいコマンド (動詞) も簡単に JavaScript で書けるので、拡張性も非常に高いプラットフォームです。

ユーザにとって「自然な構文」 (“natural syntax” [英文]) という目標の下、数ヶ月の研究の結果、Ubiquity 0.5 では複数の言語の異なる構文に対応できるパーサを実装しました。Ubiquity 内蔵のコマンドもローカライズ可能になり、0.5 ではすべての内蔵コマンドの日本語、デンマーク語とポルトガル語版が搭載されています。

リリース直前に Ubiquity の日本語紹介ビデオを作成しましたので、どうぞご覧ください。日本語モードでの使用方法も説明されています。

Ubiquity 0.5 日本語紹介ビデオ from mitcho on Vimeo.

日本語サポートが入った Ubiquity 0.5 を是非ご使用ください。このインターフェースをより多くのユーザが「自然に」使えるよう、これからも開発を続けていきたいと思います。

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Ubiquity 0.5 日本語紹介ビデオ

mitcho — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:08:03 +0000

今夜リリースされる Ubiquity の最新版、0.5 に備えて日本語で Ubiquity のスクリーンキャストを作ってみました。 Ubiquity 0.5 は特に多言語化を重視したリリースで、 Ubiquity 内蔵のコマンドが日本語とデンマーク語で使えるようになっています。是非インストールしてみてください！

追伸： ７月３日現在、 Ubiquity 0.5 のリリースを遅らせる方向になったので、残念ながら今日はリリースされません。是非リリース後インストールしてみてください。

Ubiquity 0.5 日本語紹介ビデオ from mitcho on Vimeo.

As Ubiquity 0.5 will be released soon (Thursday morning in Mountain View), I decided it was a good time to put together a screencast in Japanese demoing the use of the new Japanese parser and commands.

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Matt Mullenweg recommends YARPP on Tekzilla!

mitcho — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:13:13 +0000

A new user of my WordPress plugin tipped me off to a recent Tekzilla segment where WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg recommended Yet Another Related Posts Plugin as one of his personal favorite WordPress plugins. Thanks Matt! ^^

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Ubiquity presentation at Tokyo 2.0

mitcho — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:54:13 +0000

This past Monday I presented at Tokyo 2.0, Japan’s largest bilingual web/tech community. I presented as part of a session on The Web and Language, which I also helped organize. Other presenters included Junji Tomita from goo Labs, Shinjyou Sunao of Knowledge Creation, developers of the Voice Delivery System API, and Chris Salzberg of Global Voices Online on community translation.

I just put together a video of my Ubiquity presentation, mixing the audio recorded live at the presentation together with a screencast of my slides for better visibility. The presentation is 10 minutes long and is bilingual, English and Japanese.

Ubiquity: Command the Web with Language 言葉で操作する Web from mitcho on Vimeo.

The event also coincided with Dave McClure’s Geeks on a Plane Asia tour, attracting even more interest to the event. In the end it was the largest Tokyo 2.0 event ever.

As I leave Tokyo next month, I’ll be sad to not be able to continue to be a part of Tokyo 2.0. I’ve met a lot of fascinating people and learned a lot at the monthly events. I’ll definitely make sure to schedule them in in my future travels back to Japan and I highly recommend any of you who travel to Tokyo do so as well.

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Changes to Ubiquity Parser 2 and the Playpen

mitcho — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:21:47 +0000

Here’s a quick screencast highlighting some of the changes to Parser 2 and the updated Parser 2 Playpen. This video should be particularly useful to people hoping to add their language to Parser 2. It’s also a good reference for Ubiquity core developers.

Changes to Ubiquity Parser 2 + Playpen from mitcho on Vimeo.

All the features covered, as with all Parser 2 features, require that you get the latest Ubiquity code from our Mercurial repository.

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Ubiquity interview in Chinese

mitcho — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:07:55 +0000

Mitcho on Ubiquity i18n / l10n on YouTube

This past weekend was Mozilla Party JP 10 here in Japan and one of the speakers was Bob Chao (趙柏強) of Creative Commons Taiwan and MozTW. We got to talking in Chinese and he got a video interview of me talking about Ubiquity and our upcoming Parser 2 and the challenges of localization. I’ve never talked about my Mozilla work in Chinese before so it was definitely a challenge and I stumbled a lot, but hopefully some of the ideas got through.

前天我參加了Mozilla Party 10，一個日本 Mozilla 社群的會議。我在 Mozilla Party 才認識台灣 Mozilla 社群的趙柏強，我們就開始講國語。因為我自己很想念用中文，所以我非常高興有這個機會跟他談話。以後他拍一端 video，我給台灣的 Mozilla fans 把 Ubiquity 介紹一下。我的中文真的亂七八糟，大家對不起喔。 ^^;

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A Demonstration of Ubiquity Parser 2

mitcho — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:45:31 +0000

Here’s a quick demonstration of Ubiquity Parser 2, aka “the new parser.” I’ll show you how you can use the parser yourself and point out some highlights of the new functionality.

Ubiquity Parser 2: better noun-first suggestions and command localization from mitcho on Vimeo.

Testing Parser 2 requires the latest Ubiquity source, as explained here. If you find any problems or suggestions, please add a ticket to our trac with the keyword new-parser.

Here are some resources for those of you who would like to read more about different features touched on in this video:

In the near future we’ll also be writing up some documentation on how to take advantage of this new parser in your commands as well.

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桜

mitcho — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:11:58 +0000

桜 (sakura) is Japanese for cherry blossom, an important symbol of spring time in Japan and, with it, a symbol of renewal. The cherry blossom is a beautiful fluffy and light flower which falls quickly off the tree with wind and rain, making it also an important representation of 物の哀れ (mono no aware).

Last weekend my family (including my aunt Mikako and Bailey) took a short trip to Yugawara (湯河原) at the base of the Izu peninsula. Last weekend was possibly the peak of the cherry blossoms this year, making it a very picturesque trip. It’s quite rare for the four of us to all be in the same place at the same time, so these photos are definite keepers:

One of my personal highlights was going down a slide at Azumayama Park in Ninomiya right through a grove of cherry trees in full bloom—it was so beautiful that I had to go back down it again and take a video! Unfortunately the Flash video encoding (or my camera) doesn’t do it justice, but I hope you can fill in the gaps with your imagination.

Cherry blossom slide - 桜のすべりだい（二宮吾妻山公園） from mitcho on Vimeo.

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Foxkeh demos Ubiquity Parser: The Next Generation

mitcho — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:10:43 +0000

I just made a screencast with Foxkeh to demo the Ubiquity next generation parser demo and to demonstrate how easy it is to add your own language. Foxkeh wants you to localize the parser into your language. How could you say no? ^^

Foxkeh demos Ubiquity Parser: The Next Generation from mitcho on Vimeo.

There are some details which are not covered in this introductory video, such as how to deal with case marking languages or languages without spaces. Hopefully this’ll inspire some people to play with the demo, though. I’d love to hear your comments! ^^

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Localizing Ubiquity: an open letter to linguists

mitcho — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:26:47 +0000

Localizing Ubiquity: an open letter to linguists from mitcho on Vimeo.

Below is a transcript of this video. Please distribute this video far and wide to anyone who may be interested. ^^

Dear linguist,

My name is mitcho and I am currently involved with an exciting open source community project at Mozilla Labs called Ubiquity. The project’s goal is to empower the user to accomplish more on the web, and to do this, Ubiquity connects disparate services from across the web with language. Let me show you what I mean.

Example 1

Suppose you’re emailing a friend to tell them where to meet later. It would be great if you could insert a map in your email, but you would regularly have to go to a maps application and insert a link.

But with Ubiquity installed, you can just pull up Ubiquity with a keystroke, enter map Shinjuku, pick the right result and rearrange it, and click “insert map.” It’s that simple.

Example 2

Let’s say you’ve stumbled upon an article in French and you want to send a bit of it to a friend. Again, you could just send a link, but with Ubiquity we can do much better than that. We’ll first select the quote we want and translate it to English. There we go. Now I’ll select the bit I actually want to send, pull up Ubiquity and execute email this to Aza. Because Ubiquity interacts with my address book, it knows who I mean by “Aza” and composes my email for me.

As you can see, the Ubiquity interface makes it easy to accomplish tasks with minimal interruption to a user’s workflow. New verbs are easy to write and there’s already an active community writing new verbs and sharing them with users.

The localization of Ubiquity

Right now Ubiquity offers a basic English parser and an experimental Japanese one, but Firefox itself currently ships with 55 distinct localizations. We hope to localize Ubiquity into a number of these languages.

In order to accomplish this, we need support from viewers like you.

For each language—whether Basque, Polish, or Esperanto—we hope to build a parser to take the command and pick out its verb and the arguments and then identify the semantic roles of each argument. Ubiquity will then apply the verb to those arguments and execute.

We’ll need both data and expertise into the languages we hope to localize. If you’re a native speaker or researcher, what is the structure of commands in your language? How do you code for different kinds of arguments? What do your pronouns look like? We’d love to see blog posts, discussions, or quick mockups on these and other topics.

For those of you with NLP experience, we’d love to get more folks involved in writing these parsers. And in the near future, we’d appreciate anyone who wants to simply try out Ubiquity in their language and give us feedback.

The idea of using natural language to direct computers is far from new. But in this limited context of individual commands—single imperative clauses without complexities such as negation or quantification—I believe there is great potential for Ubiquity to support other languages and bring this interface—this new way of interacting with the web—to more people in more communities.

ubiquity.mozilla.com
bringing linguistics to a browser near you

wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/i18n
help us localize the future

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selecting from Ubiquity

mitcho — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:50:13 +0000

I created a new Ubiquity command that gives you super fast access to your MySQL database’s data: select.

select Command for Ubiquity from mitcho on Vimeo.

Get the command and set it up here.

External orders in WordPress queries

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The Big Chart

mitcho — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:08:33 +0000

The Counter-Intuitive Comparison Institute of North America (CICINA) hopes to definitively identify the best thing in the world. And don’t worry—CICINA isn’t like the “east-coast media elite”:

“We are like you—only more so.”

Brilliant. Watch the video:

(via kottke)

The Children of America

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ラーメンズ：日本の形

mitcho — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:28:40 +0000

Bailey just pointed me to a hilarious series of videos apparently introducing Japanese culture to foreigners, produced by the Japanese comedians Rahmens. Rahmens are incidentally the ones who play Mac and PC in the Japanese versions of the Apple ads.

Here’s one to get you started:

Modifiying WordPress plugin activation behavior

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