Every php developer who work in japan realized that mb_* function don’t work that good with SJIS encoded string. Some characters are considered as 1 byte length, or as 2 bytes and some as 3 bytes |-| ; Not really useful in the end. i recently discovered this article (in Japanese : http://phpspot.org/blog/archives/2005/11/php_17.html). The presented regEx is supposed to split a Japanese string into word. Linguistic-wise, I’m completely disagree with the results, but it was an interesting starting point for Japanese string manipulation and specially SJIS encoded ones :> .
then i changed a little bit the regEX in order to obtain a one-character tokenizer one. This regEx enable me afterward to re implement the basic but really useful string manipulation command as substring, str_replace, strpos, strlen etc…
here is the code of the class
//implementtation of the most basic string manipulation function for japanese, work the same way as the monobytes ones
class processJ
{
public function __construct()
{
mb_regex_encoding("SJIS");
}
public function __destruct()
{
}
//this method split a sjis encoded japanese string by character an return an array
public function charSpliter($str)
{
$token = array();
while(1)
{
$bytes = mb_ereg("[一-龠]|[ぁ-ん]|[ァ-ヴー]|[a-zA-Z0-9]|[ａ-ｚＡ-Ｚ０-９]", $str, $match);
if ($bytes === false) {
break;
} else {
$match = $match[0];
$token[] = $match;
}
$pos = strpos($str, $match);
$str = substr($str, $pos+$bytes);
}
return $token;
}
public function substrJ($str, $start, $lenght = NULL)
{
$strToken = $this->charSpliter($str);
$end = !empty($lenght) ? $lenght : count($strToken);
$substr = "";
for($i = $start; $i < $end; $i++)
{
$substr .= $strToken[$i];
}
return $substr;
}
public function strlenJ($str)
{
$strlen = $this->charSpliter($str);
return count($strlen);
}
public function strposJ($haystack, $needle)
{
$strToken = $this->charSpliter($haystack);
$needleToken = $this->charSpliter($needle);
$tokenLen = count($strToken);
$needleLen = count($needleToken);
for($i = 0; $i < $tokenLen; $i++)
{
if($strToken[$i] == $needleToken[0])
{
for($j = 0; $j < $needleLen; $j++)
{
if($needleToken[$j] !== $strToken[($i+$j)])
{
continue 2;
}
}
return $i;
}
}
}
public function str_replaceJ($search, $replace, $subject)
{
return $this->substrJ($subject,0,$this->strposJ($subject,$search)).$replace.$this->substrJ($subject,($this->strposJ($subject,$search)+$this->strlenJ($search)),$this->strlenJ($subject));
}
}
$test = new processJ();
print($test->substrJ("ようこそcyberblogへ漢字",0,4)); > "ようこそ"
print($test->strlenJ("ようこそcyberblogへ漢字")); > 16
print($test->strposJ("ようこそcyberblogへ漢字", "cyber")); > 4
print($test->str_replaceJ("cyberblog","サイバーブログ","ようこそcyberblogへ漢字")); > "ようこそサイバーブログへ漢字"
?>
have fun
french version
It’s been 2 days that i’m testing the microsoft silverlight and i wanted to share my opinion about it. It simply the end of the HTML. This is what dev, designers and project managers waited for; a finally clear cut of the tasks that lead to improve the coordination in the creation flow. But first let’s do a small presentation.
- Presentation.
There’s two version of silverlight actually, 1.x and the beta 2.
- version 1.x : it’s a XAML based application from the huge SGML familly. The interaction are coded in javascript and it’s interpreted on the client side. An interpreted flex-like.
- version 2 : Still based on the XAML representation but integrate the .net framework. That mean you can code it in the language you like (c#,VB,php,…), it’s compiled and get the best of the infamous frameworks.
- Why silverlight 1.1 was a deception.
It’s maybe because i thought to hight about it. When i knew that it what an interpreted SGML (XML) my first thought was to generate it dynamically with server side language (php, perl) and it works (see this article). Q funny tricks lead to another one, i tried to DOM scripting a little bit. It was a failure. Then i was in front of a flash/flex like. But flash player is installed on around 90% of the computer that goes on internet; abode won.
- Why silverlight 2 make me dream.
By integrating the .net framework, it directly a step beyond pragmatically wise and production wise. For those who are already familiar with the .net environment, they can start right away in the project production as they’re used to. At this moment, my craziest dream was in from of my eyes : the end of this good but too old html. I already briefly saw this dream in flex but flex is just a 0Kal flash 9 version instead of silverlight 2 that can be used as a graphic protocol.
- Conclusion
i’m very interesting in this technology, because i’m pretty sure if the development continue in the way, it’s the end of the html. All the most important interface design software as firework can export in XAML, That mean once the designers finished the mock up, the whole design is finish in the same time. On top of that in the visual studio 2008 when you create silverlight project, the software generate a class skeleton like the Poseidon module for java/eclipse. No more designer that touch the js or server-side code or dev that play around with the css or the div 
I posted this story on my personal blog about 6 month ago and decided to also post it here and update it a little as this topic is becoming more and more mainstream
SNS in Japan
Mixi is Japans most popular SNS service with a claimed market share of close to 70%. When conversation in the media come to SNS, Mixi is also the most mentioned Social Network Service. Mixi had around around 12 million in January 2008 a quite impressive number achieved in less than 3 years. After going public the stock value doubled within 12 hours. Mixi turned into the Japanese showcase for 2.0 success. So far the good part. But looking a bit deeper into the service reveals that the glory days of rising users numbers seem to reached its limit sooner or later. More and more users move and will move away from Mixi looking for alternatives. The reasons: too much little time, too much advertisement, too little added value.
Heavy Competition
Competitors like Gree, Mobage, S!Town and others offered a wide range of feature right from the start: the possibility to upload and watch videos, other platforms allow users to play games, listen to the playlists of people in their network, locate friends using GPS or even enter into mobile 3D worlds.
Mixi tried to keep-up by introducing video and music functions a few month ago but still Mixi stays what it is: a pure SNS service with some extra services attached to it.
The New Breed
If sheer user number speak for themselves then these two example can show where developments are going:
MobileGameTown (MoBaGe) by DeNA combines casual mobile games and SNS services. Just within less than 6 month registrations surpassed 6.5 million and they are still growing. And different from Mixi (which is web and mobile based) MoBaGe is only available on the mobile phone
“Maho no Island” is a mobile novel platform which allows users to write their own novels on the mobile phone and submit it to the site. The site offers thousands of novels written by users. They even published a book featuring some of the novels and it sold over millions of copies and made it into the best seller charts in Japan. Maho no Island also offers SNS functionalities to its 5.7 million mobile users.
Beyond SNS
All of these services did not start as a SNS service but they offered a unique value on its own with SNS as an added value to its users. And this is where the trend goes.
For example LISMO, KDDI AU’s mobile music service started to offer a function called “Utatomo” in 2006 for finding people with similar interests based on a users individual play list and their general interests helping the company to increase their overall music sales by 15%.
Conclusion
The time of SNS only services will soon be over. (Expect for maybe specific B2B or special interest SNS offers). In the future a SNS service will not be able to survive simply by providing a social networking functionality as a core service. Instead SNS functions will become part of other services helping to drive personalization (through the data gathered), drive loyalty and in the end to drive sales and generate revenue.
The last two days, Tokyo witnessed the first MySQL users conference in Asia. Held in the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Odaiba, it was a very informative event in a relaxed atmosphere.
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As the 2.0 world is heating up with more money being thrown out into the wild by the big companies for acquiring “start-ups”, “service providers” and “platform operators” the big questions arises: “When will this money burning ever stop”? What is the future of 2.0?
Many experts are now discussing about the end of the 2.0 era and about a bubble that is going to burst like it did 7 years ago in the times of the 1.0 web. Back in 2000 the web was the darling of the media and big investors. Everybody was putting high expectations into the new media without asking the question if all those activities and investments would ever provide real revenue.
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