I just got this via email from Amazon.com: “We regret to inform you that the Hawaii state legislature has passed an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that, unless vetoed soon by Governor Lingle, would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with Hawaii-based Associates. You are receiving this e-mail because our records indicate that you are an Amazon Associate and resident of Hawaii. Please note that this is not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Associates Program. All referral fees earned on qualified traffic will continue to be paid as planned. But…
Hawai‘i Tax Dept’s “Fresh Start” Program
The State of Hawai‘i has been operating a tax amnesty program for the past month. When I heard about it I realized that I had not filed my GET forms for 2008, and stopped in to make sure that I was all caught up on paper filings and taxes. It was very enlightening. I found out that I had failed to file for a few years ago and apparently owed a few bucks for that year, and that I also had a few old licenses that I had either never used or not used for years. The clerk helped me…
Macron Support in iPhone 3.0 Update
I laid out $9.95 for the iPhone 3.0 update for my iPod Touch last night, and just discovered why it was worth it – the standard US Keyboard now allows you to insert the vowel-kahak? characters and ‘okina. Here’s how you do it: When you want to type an ‘okina-vowel, touch and hold down your finger over the vowel for a second or two, and it will pop-up a list of available diacritic characters (see the graphic at right to see how this list looks when I held down over the letter “a” on the keyboard). Whether the vowel-macron is…
Memories of K?ke‘e
Last weekend my wife and I traveled to Kaua‘i to participate in the K?ke‘e Hawaiian Music Songwriters Camp. Kenneth Makuak?ne, Puakea Nogelmeier, Kaliko Beamer-Trapp, Walter Keale and I taught workshops on haku mele and other aspects of songwriting. The camp was held at some cabins deep in K?ke‘e State Park, where I had never gone to before, and it was a very inspiring setting. I did two workshops – one was an overview of some of the more common and essential elements of mele, and to demonstrate the composition and editing process, explained how my mele Facebook Hula came about.…
More To iPod Touch Hawaiian Support
I posted a few days ago about finding the Hawai‘i region in the iPod Touch, and apparently the system-level support is even better than I thought. I set up a few locations using the Weather application, and found that it displayed the days of the week in Hawaiian as well. Too cool. What would be cooler would be to have the Hawaiian keyboard, too. I did find that I could not post this screenshot to this blog using WordPress for iPhone application – I kept getting: “Communication Error. Operation could not be completed (NSXMLParserErrorDomain error 5.” Hmmm.
Curbing The Clutter
view original Originally uploaded by lylamerle I thought we did a really good job of cleaning house and getting rid of a lot of things that we’d likely never use again before taking off for Aotearoa in January. We sold a lot of things in a garage sale, some went to the Salvation Army, and anything left over was taken to the dump. Our perspective on clutter changed a bit after our experience in New Zealand. We only brought those things that we felt we needed to survive, and likewise we bought few things that would need to be sold…
Honolulu Hypocrisy
One of the ways I monitor the news back home by subscribing to the the “Breaking News” feed of the Honolulu Advertiser in Google Reader. Today the news feed brought these two tantalizing headlines: Hawai’i must redouble war on child obesity and L&L Drive-Inn rolls out 3-pound plate lunch. Personally, I can’t even finish a standard plate from L&L Drive-In and usually opt for the mini-plate. Shame on the Honolulu Advertiser for treating this advertisement as a news item.
Go! Goes Native (Language)
I got a sneek peek at this Go! Airlines website which has been translated, as much as their technology currently allows, into Hawaiian. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin carries a story on the work, which includes participation by many individuals. This is a wonderful development, and I hope it encourages other commercial entities to offer Hawaiian language versions of their websites. As Kenneth Makuk?ne notes, he and I have often spoken of their being new opportunities for Hawaiian language speakers and graduates from our language programs beyond becoming teachers of the language. The language needs to grow into more contemporary contexts if…
Is A Hawaiian Language Social Network Possible? It Seems So
Mahalo to Conn for pointing out the localizability of Ning. I’ve been searching for a platform on which to develop a Hawaiian language social network, and Ning just might do the trick. Ning is a social networking site co-founded by Mark Andreeson (of Netscape fame) and Gina Bianchini. It looks to have enough functionality to be attractive to our students who are using MySpace extensively, and includes enough interoperability with other services (Google Video, YouTube and Flickr) to be very useful. You can also directly upload videos (up to 100Mg each), photos (up to 10Mg each), have a blog and…
Boy Killed By Texting Driver
Engadget reports on a driver who not only struck and killed a 13 year old boy, but was so engrossed in his gadget that he was oblivious to what he had done. Thankfully politicians in some places have shown the cajones to put proper laws in place. A few years ago the Hawai‘i legislature meekly discussed the issue of drivers using mobile phones, and was faced by telecommunication industry lobbyists who refuse to acknowledge the dangers of using these devices while driving. In the end the legislature wimped out and there are have been several fatalities due to drivers distracted…