Yohei Nakajima

Author: Yohei

  • The Way Things Change and Stay The Same

      “Today is the day” says the hard working bee. “What is today?” asks the tall sunflower. “Today is the day, I told myself, I get to fly over the meadow, and enjoy my work, which I diligently do, to provide for my family, and benefit the world.” “You did that yesterday, and the day […]

  • How To Design and Develop a Website: Content First, Functionality Second, Design Third

    I once briefly mentioned the process of Design by Coding, inspired by an article on Quora, “Life Without Photoshop.” Apparently, every part of Quora was designed in code from day 1. The benefits mentioned in the article are as follows: – Consistency and re-usability. – Forces simplicity. – Code structure begets design structure. – Ability to […]

  • Syncing My Phone, Computer, Gmail, Facebook & LinkedIn

    I’m currently reading Keith Ferrazzi’s book, “Never Eat Alone”, and decided to act upon his seemingly obvious tip to keep track of the people I know and want to know. I have no intention of becoming a serial “networker”, but I do love meeting people. I love studying the chemistry between people as their relationship […]

  • #LAFI Chapter 4: Skipping Ahead, Prototype Done!

    Between my work, some recent travels and the Founder Institute, it’s been a little hectic and I haven’t had a chance to update my progress. Hopefully, I’ll get back to recapping it later. Tonight, I finished my first functioning prototype! After receiving some feedback during last night’s session, I realized my next step was to […]

  • Santa Monica Open Data Initiative

      Update (9/21/2011) – Unexpectedly,I’ve recently joined a group to work on this open data project. Read the next blog post here. A Mashable article from this past February titled How Open Data Initiatives Can Improve City Life discusses how some major city governments in America that have opened up public data as an API […]

  • Japan, Day 1

    I flew into Tokyo today, because my brother’s getting married on Sunday. It’s a 16 hour difference from Los Angeles, and a 12 hour flight, meaning I arrived at the place my parent’s are staying at 30 hours after I left Los Angeles. Even crazier, I’ll arrive in LA a few hours before I leave […]

  • #LAFI Chapter 5: You Can’t Afford the Luxury of Depression

    Tonight’s class was about legal and IP, but what stood out to me most from today’s class was a lesson that only received a quick mention before the session topic began. A man I can’t give enough credit to as an the amazing organizer of the Los Angeles chapter of the Founder Institute, Ken Rutkowski, […]

  • #LAFI Chapter 6: You’ll Like This Product Development Process

    Today, we were lucky to have Robert Tercek talk to us about creativity in the work place. I was very happy to hear him talk about the importance of having a creative process. I once interned at a creative agency that had a 300+ index card deck of brainstorming processes for company use only; I […]

  • Speed-to-cool

    Your speed-to-cool is basically your personal elevator pitch. It should do is make the person listening think your cool/special, very quickly. For people who’ve accomplished something significant, this is easy. For the rest of us, we have to get creative. We have to identify the one thing about ourself that makes us different, and try […]

  • Tracking Your Friend’s Flight From Anywhere

    My friend happened to lose his cell phone on the beach this weekend, we’re assuming it’s buried in the sand. He’s flying home to LA today and asked me to pick him up. As far as I can remember, I’ve never had to pick up a friend from the airport who didn’t have a cell […]