Living Spirit (via Voices of the Okinawan Spirit)

We are very happy to announce the summer 2011 issue of MANOA: Living Spirit: Literature & Resurgence in Okinawa. A companion volume to Voices from Okinawa (published in 2009), Living Spirit is a collection of compelling prose and poetry representative of the Okinawan renaissance that began in the 1960s. Katsunori Yamazato, who worked with us on Voices, again serves as guest editor. The authors include Kathy Foley, Kawamitsu Shinichi, Makimina … Read More

via Voices of the Okinawan Spirit

Big Update: WordPress for iOS 2.8 Available Today! (via WordPress for iOS)

It's been in the works for about two months, and we hope you agree with us that it was worth the wait. This is the first app version in a long time where we're actually adding features, previously we've been 100% focused on improving stability, error messages, and help. While these efforts will continue indefinitely, we now feel like the app is stable enough to start adding some long-awaited features. The Quick Photo button, lets you snap a pictu … Read More

via WordPress for iOS

Black Okinawan contingent at the Uchinanchu Sekai Taikai in 2016? (via Grits and Sushi)

Let's do it! I've been getting lots of emails from black Okinawans who have come across my blog and from so many walks of life. I am so loving this.  And I don't know what to do with all these contacts yet.  I'm wondering how we can harness all this interest. My dream would be to get us all to Okinawa for a sekai uchinanchu taikai (the world Okinawan festival) one year–it happens every 5 years.  It's happening this August in fact.  Okinawans and … Read More

via Grits and Sushi

What’s next for WordPress for iOS (via WordPress for iOS)

Stats view coming to a future version of the app. Yay!

Version 2.7.2 of the WordPress for iOS app just became available on the App Store. It fixes a number of lingering crashes and bugs. All in all 28 crash/bug reports were closed in this release: Fixed crash when the password had a space, on comment moderation, plus 7 more. Several bugfixes. Use blavatars instead of favicons. XML-RPC fix for self-hosted blogs. (Note: if you were unable to use 2.7.1, you should be able to use this version!) Check out … Read More

via WordPress for iOS

Okinawan woman beat to death by her husband (via Grits and Sushi)

I just learned of this event.  A former military Airman killed his Okinawan wife by beating her to death in Fairview Park, Ohio. I cannot tell you how sick this story makes me.  Domestic violence, especially in the military, is still not adequately addressed.   I don't know how to begin this post because the story rattles me so.   I guess … Read More

via Grits and Sushi

Automattic’s Worldwide WP 5k (via WordPress.com News)

As Scott mentioned in his How is WordPress.com Made? post, at Automattic we work from all over the world, and we use internal blogs for socializing and exchanging non-work ideas in addition to making WordPress.com and our other products more awesome. One of the things we're really concerned about is staying healthy – we even have an entire blog dedicated to fitness. We had a great idea: Get all 80 Automatticians from 62 cities to run/walk a 5k on … Read More

via WordPress.com News

Circulating Okinawa and “Security” (via Grits and Sushi)

So much of my work focuses on how Okinawa is circulated, race, and "security imaginaries." I came across this video on youtube a few months ago.  It's an old U.S. Army PR video about Okinawa–positioning it geopolitically as the "keystone of the Pacific."   In many ways, much of this discourse is sedimented in the language of Okinawa today, including some of the very Orientalist imaginings … Read More

via Grits and Sushi

Wow Your iPad Readers (via WordPress.com News)

With the launch of Apple's iPad we have seen the future of computing and it is touch. Nothing matches the visceral feel of navigating your digital world with your hands. The past four months we've been working closely with Onswipe to bring your iPad visitors our vision of what a blog can look like re-imagined for a touch experience. Our iPad-optimized view is app-like in its functionality, but pure HTML5 goodness on the backend: it supports touch … Read More

via WordPress.com News

Okinawans are lazy, exortionists? Shame on Maher. (via Grits and Sushi)

Some of you readers may have already heard the news about U.S. Diplomat Kevin Maher's racist remarks about Okinawans to a group of students at the State Department.  Maher was head of the Japanese Affairs Office and Former Consul General in Okinawa which makes his comments even more a tragedy for Okinawans and the US.  He is accused of saying Okinawans were lazy and "masters of manipulation and extortion" amongst other disparaging comments. I am … Read More

via Grits and Sushi

Jetpack to the WP.com Cloud (via Jetpack)

No one really gets the distinction between the two things called WordPress at first, the dot-com and the dot-org. On dot-com in just a few clicks you're set up on a web-scale centralized platform that constantly gets new upgrades and features. And you never have to worry about it because it’s completely hassle-free and completely supported by our happiness team. On dot-org you sign up and host your blog with a hosting company and you get complete … Read More

via Jetpack