Who is Yongfook? Where is Yongfook? When…is Yongfook? This page seeks to answer some of those questions, but still leaves many others tantalisingly unanswered.
The Basics
I am a freelance web producer and live in Chuo-ku, Tokyo. I specialise in usability, web standards and multi-lingual platforms. I have a passion for semantic HTML, clean and maintainable CSS, beautiful MVC-based code and emerging technologies.
I work with Japanese companies and foreign companies in Japan, to help them get the most out of their online strategy - from improving user experience, to increasing conversions and revenue, to assisting companies reach new markets. I am also part of a research group at Dentsu Avenue A Razorfish, where I help to brainstorm and implement new and exciting ways of using web technologies for business and marketing applications.
My Tools of Choice
“What did you use to build XYZ project?” - I seem to get asked this question a lot. I dislike convoluted IDEs and 99% of the time I use nothing more than a text editor (currently I favour skEdit) and MAMP as a local development environment. I do my design work in Photoshop. I work mainly in a combination of XHTML/CSS and PHP. I go back and forth between building my own frameworks to using open source frameworks such as CodeIgniter and the Zend Framework. I also have a very real and alarmingly human affection for jQuery.
My Personal Projects
In addition to my professional work, I enjoy developing web-based personal projects which I manage in my spare time.
Open Source Food is a social network for food lovers, and is the result of two of my great passions combined - food and the web. In OSF, I have created a clear, simple platform for people to share recipes with each other in a social context. The response to OSF has been amazing so far and I personally get a great amount of satisfaction from the site. In just a few months, OSF has gone from zero to over 2000 registered members and 1300 recipes, each with a beautiful picture. It has also received critical acclaim from all over the web.
Download Squad says:
Open Source Food is like a Web 2.0 cookbook, and we mean that in the best possible way.
It has also been reviewed by AppScout, Australian celebrity chef Benjamin Christie and popular podcaster Natalie Del Conte.
My original launch post on OSF can be found here.
httpAsia helps me keep up to date with the industry that I work in. It is a social news site about startups, business activity and news items from the Asia internet industry including Japan, China, Singapore, Korea and more. I created it for many reasons, one being because I didn’t see enough commentary on this subject (Asia web) and wanted to help spread the word.
httpAsia is still young and I’m still building an audience. My original launch post on httpAsia can be found here.
8apps is a social network for productive people. It is a unique, collaborative network with built-in productivity tools that help people work together in an online space to do things like manage tasks, brainstorm ideas and set up meetings. I designed and built 8apps whilst at my now defunct startup jonkenpon, in early 2007. 8apps received excellent feedback from all over the web and was reviewed and name-dropped on countless websites. It is now home to over 10,000 registered members.
Mashable says:
Social networking is designed to be unproductive - except on 8apps.
Download Squad says:
It goes beyond just connecting people and actually gives them tools to develop whatever brainstorms happen to come up once they get to know each other.
I no longer have the time to maintain 8apps and am looking for a suitable team or individual who sees the value and potential of 8apps, to pass the torch on to.
My original launch post for 8apps was on the jonkenpon blog and can be found here.
The Yongfook FAQ
What is your name?
Jon Anthony Yongfook Cockle
What kind of stupid name is “yongfook”? That’s not part of your real name is it?
Yongfook is my Chinese name in the Teochew dialect or something, and is part of my birth name. The more conventional pronunciation in Mandarin is “yongfu” and it is made up of two characters meaning “forever happy” or “forever prosperous”, or my own translation, “titillatingly mild-fingered”.
I was born in April 1980. An Aries in the year of the Monkey - Gods own recipe for a mischievous person with a touch of horn.
I am from Her Majesties United Kingdom of Great Britain Scones Tea Cricket Beer. Ethnically, I am Eurasian - a mongrel hybrid of Chinese and British blood, gaining neithers strengths, but inheriting all weaknesses.
Apart from programming the internets I like to listen to, compose and play music (violin, guitar), read cheap spy novels that all end the same way, spend hours hunched in front of my computer, play video games, and occasionally experiment with activities that don’t involve a sofa.
Varied. But mostly classical or classical/electronic fusion - such as Craig Armstrong or Rob Dougan.
What is your favourite video game of all time?
If I were a supercomputer and you asked me this question, I would enter an infinite loop, which would ultimately end with my internal circuit boards exploding into millions of tiny pieces, killing the innocent technicians who were sitting next to me having coffee, waiting for the results. At a glance, I would have to say that a very strong contender for this title is Zelda: A link to the past. Or Leisure Suit Larry.
I attended the University of Kent back in the day, and have a degree in Accounting & Finance, but the worlds best scientists are still hard at work to discover whether or not I learnt anything. UPDATE!: The scientists’ supercomputer exploded into millions of tiny pieces, killing them all.
What are your some of your favourite things about Japan?
Cold soba, all-night karaoke, and rakuten.
My Music
Some people have lamented the culling of the music section from my about page - well my music is still around, I just put it all on Last.fm, so listen to it there. For the uninitiated, a while back I was dabbling in music composition and put together a few tracks to form an “album”. It’s mostly instrumental electronic, with orchestral influences and some live violin - it’s all free to listen to on my Last.fm profile page.
