Some minutes ago I published an article at japaninfo.at which focuses on japanese asian Smileys. What are your favourite Smileys/Emoticons/Kaomoji and what are they called in your country?
Personally I really like emoticons which feature kanji
Meet my weird friend (`益´) or my cat ミ^・.・^彡 and dog u・ェ・u
Sometimes I feel just so indifferent（　´_ゝ`）
But anyway… who cares? 凸(｀∇´)凸

Today my generous wife surprised me with a really cool gift. She gave me a book with the title “Japanese Graphics Now”. It’s a book full of photographs and with hardly any text in it (very good feature for lazy people like me). It gives a very good overview of the current product and marketing designs in Japan. You see tons of posters, products, logos and much much more which are presented in over 350 pages. This version of the book is brandnew and sold at a special price (€ 9.99). You might want to click on the image to buy it online from amazon directly.

Another small step into the correct* direction was made. The European union launched a public online forum for everyone to share his thoughts about all the problems and fears which people are facing. Internet might not be the best media for debate but it is still better to discuss online than not to discuss at all. The forum is available in 20 languages. Check it out here: European Forum

*) This is purely my own opinion. Feel free to have your own opinion and probably share it with others on the forum mentioned.

Do you want to see a vision of the IT landscape in 2014? Then take a look at the following article which presents to you a construct called “EPIC” which might really come true by 2014.

Vision of 2014