A while back I announced that I would be removing the commenting system on this site, instead inviting readers to contribute comments either through Twitter or Facebook. The result? I can’t say that the number of “replies” I get on Twitter has noticeably increased much, but since it’s not like this site was getting a huge amount of comments anyway, the biggest thing to come out of this is that at least I don’t have to deal with any spam or “requests for moderation.” In fact, since I don’t feel that SNOW Magazine gets a huge number of comments either, I think I’m going to switch and do the same thing there from September.

Let me also thank everyone who entered the Graniph contest this past month. I’m currently compiling all the entries/artist suggestions we received (from comments, yes, but also through email and Twitter), and winners will be contacted soon. Please note that a new contest will start in September.

And we’re off: The SNOW Magazine Cafe is now go at Cafe Pause, and runs until August 30. I just posted something on SNOW Magazine that details everything you can expect to find there. Sure, there’s all the magazine stuff (33 titles as part of the main exhibition, and then a large selection of zines, as well as special displays for Knee High Media and OK Fred), but I’m also pretty happy with what we (me and the staff at the cafe) came up with for the special menu. You will find the SNOW LASSI (Peach Lassi, 600 yen), the SNOW COCKTAIL (Malibu Rum and Milk, 700 yen), and the SNOW PUDDING (Annin Tofu and Tapioca, 500 yen).

The important thing to note is that the opening party is Monday night (August 2), from 19:00. There will be a short PauseTalk session at 20:00, but the event is definitely open to everyone, and so please join us even if you would normally not attend PauseTalk. Entry is free, and we’ll have a 500 yen drink menu, with all the event menu items available at that price as well.

That Graniph thing I teased last week? Details are now posted on SNOW Magazine, so go have a look. In short, every month I’ll be selecting my five favorite Graniph tees (produced during the previous month) to giveaway on the site, and at the same time we’re enlisting everyone to recommend artists who should work with Graniph, with the idea to produce a tee.

Pictured, one of the tees I’ve selected for this month’s contest, “Vale Tudo.”

Feels like I’m due for a bit of teasing, so how about this: Be sure to check out SNOW Magazine on Monday for a bit of news in regards to something that involves everyone’s favorite design tee brand, Graniph. I won’t say too much, just that you will have a chance to get something, and maybe even help get a tee made. Even better, it’s going to be a regular thing.

The SNOW Magazine Cafe flyer is now out in the wild. Again, big thanks to Hiyoko Imai for the wonderful design, based on Luis‘ original poster design.

I’ve been a bit quiet on the SNOW Magazine Cafe front, but yes, it’s still happening next month at Cafe Pause (August 1-30), and I’m very happy to reveal the poster for the event. It was designed by my GOOD Inc. compadre, Luis Mendo, and I absolutely love the illustration he came up with. The poster will appear at the entrance to to cafe, and a slightly different version will be used for the flyer (and big thank to Hiyoko Imai for the help with that).

I also have a very exciting new development regarding the event — and SNOW Magazine in general — that is going to be very cool. I’ll announce more soon, but for now let’s just say that it truly embraces the medium that is being celebrated at the exhibition.

I’ve finally done something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now: Remove the comments section on posts. Now let me start by saying I’ve got absolutely nothing against feedback, and quite the opposite, I’ve always enjoyed receiving it — there have been 14,500 comments posted to this site since its launch back in 2002 (and far too much spam to mention) — and that goes for feedback that comes through Twitter as well. It just somehow feels like a vestige of another era, and to be honest, the number of comments that are posted here has definitely gone down over the past year or so, especially following the launch of SNOW Magazine.

The thing that inspired me to make the change was seeing how Information Architects deals with comments on its site. It doesn’t. iA only adds a link to its Twitter account, and for those who followed the passionate discussion that followed Oliver’s first impressions of WIRED Magazine on the iPad, you’re well aware that it certainly didn’t hurt any, and in fact it was quite interesting to see where those discussions ended up taking place (on Twitter and on Flickr, as well as on other blogs).

So I’ve pretty much done the same, and now at the bottom of every post you’ll simply find an invitation to offer feedback through Twitter or Facebook. I’m really interested to see how it’ll all work, and welcome you to get in touch that way — and active as I am on Twitter, you’re bound to hear from me faster than you would here on the site. Of course, another bonus to this is that I won’t have to deal with comment spam anymore — YES!

I’m still unsure if it’s something I want to do for SNOW Magazine, but I am considering it. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this, let’s just take it elsewhere.

One thing that’s happened to me over the past few years is that I’ve pretty much stopped taking photos. Sure, the odd iPhone-to-Twitter shot is still a regular occurrence, but in terms of taking photos with a relatively descent point-and-shoot — in my case, a series of Canon PowerShots — either for this site, for other sites, or even just for personal use, that just kinda stopped. You’ll notice it also if you check my Flickr account — except for a little rekindling courtesy of an iPhone/Toy Camera fling last year in Macau, not much has gone up over the past couple of years, to the point where I haven’t even renewed my pro account in years, and this coming from someone who was particularly active there.

So why? That’s a good question, and there are several answers to it. One thing is that I grew dissatisfied with the quality of what I was taking and sharing, but lacked the energy (and money) to move up to decent gear and shoot (yeah, pun sadly intended) for more. It also doesn’t help when you have a lot of friends who are so damn talented when it comes to photography — some would say this can be inspirational, but I’m on the side that tends to think, oh well, better leave this to those who are better at it.

But to be honest, the biggest reason is one that actually affected a lot of the content that you saw appear on this blog, and that’s even pre-SNOW Magazine. It got to a point where I just couldn’t “experience” anything for myself anymore. Every time I was out and about and spotted something interesting, I was immediately composing a blog post in my head about it (even if I had absolutely no intention of writing one) and taking photos to “document” it. This ended up literally getting in the way of my enjoyment of things. Many are sure to say that this is a handy skill to have, and I wouldn’t disagree, but it can also be a negative in the sense that I started losing something rather important, and that’s the pure sense of enjoying the moment/space you occupy.

Sure, this wasn’t just about photography, but I think one way to fix this for me was to remove that part from the equation. And you know what, after a while it did in fact work. I no longer cared which angle of what I was seeing or experiencing would best tell the story.

“OK, Jean, but this post is titled ‘Panasonic Lumix G2,’ no?”

Yes, how perceptive of you.

My wife has been wanting a decent camera for a while now, at first mostly to use for her next field research trip to China, but also to just start taking better photos of the things around her, including of course our dog. She finally pulled the trigger on a purchase yesterday and ended up getting the aforementioned Panasonic Lumix G2, the follow-up to the company’s G1, the camera that kicked off the whole “Micro System” craze. For months I’d been suggesting to her the GF1, in part because of Craig Mod’s amazing field test article, but also because at least 5-6 of my friends ended up buying one, to great satisfaction. She was able to get something a bit better — the GF1 is sort of a paired-down more compact version of the G2 (or rather its predecessor, the G1).

So this means we have a nice new camera in the house, and she says I’ll be able to use it when I want — although there seems to be some sort of unwritten rule stating that such sharing will happen after a fixed amount of time. The prospect of learning photography has me rather excited, and despite my fears of getting back to that sense of always being in reporter mode, I’m thinking that it will help get some more original (not reblogged) content on SNOW Magazine.

To be fair, I also have a feeling that the iPhone 4 is going to help with that. I finally got around to ordering one yesterday — the wait will take up to a month though — and from the examples I saw in this Boing Boing post, I think it will make for a great device when you’re in a pinch. But more than just the camera, it’s the prospect of HD video recording that has me excited, and I’m hoping that you’ll see the results on SNOW as well — and hey, that G2 takes some pretty decent HD videos too, just look at what Craig was able to get out of his GF1.

Next up is moving to some more serious photo editing tools — iPhoto and quick Photoshop touch-ups have been fine so far, but I want to move up. After asking about Adobe Lightroom versus Apple Aperture on Twitter, the feedback was overwhelmingly pro-Lightroom, and Adobe certainly makes it easy for you to try it out for yourself. It seems that Lightroom 3 was actually released just recently, so looks like I’m hopping on at a good time.

What you see at the top of this post is just me having fun with some of the filters in Lightroom, on a photo my wife took of me this morning — this is pretty much what I look like, and where I find myself, everyday. Funny how adding a vignette/sepia filter makes everything look oh-so serious. Looking at the photo, I really feel like a hard-working writer. Yeah.

Don’t you just hate posts that refer to the lack of posts on a blog? Oh well, such is what you must deal with on occasion, as your humble blogger feels the need to assure everyone that it “ain’t dead yet.”

I’m coming off what has a been quite a project — it’s no secret that I’m a contributor to the upcoming updates to The Rough Guide to Tokyo and Japan, set to come out in early 2011. I still have a bit of follow-up work to do, but the bulk of it was handed in the other day, and so suddenly I have a bit more breathing room.

Throughout this I continue with my work for PechaKucha — for those who don’t know, part of what I do there is update the PechaKucha Daily blog, but I do a lot of stuff on the administrative side of things as well. And without going into details, I can tell you that I’m lining up a lot of interesting things for PK this year, and I can’t wait to see it come to fruition, and be able to share it with everyone.

Part of this involves the fact that this year I’ve associated myself with Amsterdam-based art director Luis Mendo, a good friend I’ve mentioned on this blog a few times, and who I met just last year when he came to Japan for a 3-month “inspirational retreat.” Luis runs his own company, GOOD Inc., for which he pulls help from the Goodfellas Network, an amazing collection of potential collaborators who work in pretty much all fields. Not only am I a “Goodfella” — both professionally and personally, me thinks — but me, Luis, and graphic designer and artist Hiyoko Imai have formed a Japan branch of GOOD Inc. Our expertise is magazine-related production, so do get in touch if you are interested in working with us. And yes, we are currently developing something PK-related (which is how this paragraph came about).

Other than that, SNOW Magazine continues at a fine pace, and if you missed it, here’s a media kit we recently put together for the site — it includes details about advertising on the site, both pricing and placement, as well as a few reasons on why you might want to do so. I’m of course very excited about the upcoming “SNOW Magazine Cafe” event as well, and have already gotten lots of amazing contributions — imagine my surprise when the first email I received after announcing it came from The New York Times Magazine! If you’d like to participate, please get in touch. Oh, and there’s a great collaboration with the site Poolga coming too.

I think that’s enough for now. Yes, I’ve got my hands in other things — of course — and I’ll try to cover more of it here in the days/weeks to come. For all you Radio OK Fred fans, a bit of good news: me, Ay2, and Yoshi are getting together next Wednesday to record a new episode, so expect that to be online very soon (very likely on that day).

I announced the SNOW Magazine Cafe event a couple of days ago, and already I’ve been getting some great feedback — lots of people who wish they could actually come to Tokyo to attend — and also lots of contributions. I think we have the makings of something special, and I’m already excited about coming up with some new elements to add to the month-long celebration.

Also, I’ve set up a more permanent area for the event, so please feel free to share that link instead of the post on SNOW Magazine. I’ll also be using that space for future updates, both before the start of the event, and during. Notice that “2010″ in the title at the top of the page? Sure, why not make this into an annual event. And I’m certain that whatever I learn from putting together this year’s edition will contribute to making an even better event next year.

And again, if you are a publisher of (or work on) an art, design, or culture magazine and would like to participate, it’s as easy as sending me your latest issue. Zines are also welcome — I do love those too — and Ian Lynam is already going to help me put together a nice selection for the event.

I’m very happy to announce that the first SNOW Magazine-related event will take the form of a magazine exhibition at Cafe Pause this summer (August 1-31). The SNOW Magazine Cafe will be a month-long celebration of art, design, and culture magazines from around the world, on display for everyone’s reading pleasure.

It will be accompanied by a drink and snack menu created for the exhibition, to enjoy while browsing through the magazines, and a special edition PauseTalk (August 2) will cover discussion topics revolving around the theme of “magazines.”

I’m of course on the lookout for magazines to include in the event, so if you are a maker of an art, design, or culture magazine (or know someone who does), please send them to the announcement page. Each magazine included in the exhibition will be on display in the cafe, easily browsable by anyone, and will include an info “bookmark,” with details about the magazine in both English and Japanese.

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…

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.

After I tweeted that I got some business cards made for SNOW Magazine, a few people asked to see what it looks like, and so here goes. Big thanks again to my fellow GOOD Inc. compatriot Luis Mendo for the image on the front, and font suggestion for my name on the back — it’s the font off which the SNOW logo was created, Los Niches.

Looking for something to read this weekend? You could definitely do worse than catching up on this week’s new articles on SNOW Magazine — yes, despite my trip to Boston, I kept updates to the site timely. I don’t usually post anything during the weekend, but I’ve just added the first column by Sophie Knight, “My Yamanote Romance,” a long essay on a cycling tour of the famous train line.

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