# Justin Hall

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2007-07-18T04:03:27Z




According to Wikipedia, "Justin Hall (born December 16, 1974 in Chicago, Illinois), is an American freelance journalist who is best known as a pioneer blogger (internet-based diarist), and for writing reviews from game conferences such as E3 and the Tokyo Game Show."

I don't know exactly how I officially met Justin, but it was probably through Howard Rheingold or something back in the early early days of the Web. (Howard is one of Justin's mentors.) Justin had a site called Justin's Links from the Underground. It was the first website of his kind where he wrote about his life. This was a great inspiration for my own website which was also one of the earlier personal websites.

Suddenly, Justin decided to move to Japan in 2001 and lived there/here until January 2003. In Japan, we grew closer and he became a closer friend of the family. It was during this period that Justin convinced me to dump my old hand-coded website and switch to Movable Type. Justin was the first webmaster of my blog and is the one who got me started blogging. He was also the one who recommended that we use Movable Type. (Thanks Justin!)

When he was in Japan, he wrote Just In Tokyo, a crazy guide to Japan.

Justin eventually moved to Los Angeles where he studied at USC in Scott's department and recently graduated. In LA he became a member of Mimi and Scott's extended family together with Merci and Pixley Wigglebottom. Pixley is like Justin's doggy twin.

Recently, Justin has become an entrepreneur as he begins to build some structure around his passively multiplayer online game. I'm trying to help him out with this process.

I've really been enjoying watching Justin develop over the years, never losing his super-happy, honest, fun and spazzy core. He's one of the most lovable bundles of energy that I know. He's also great because he's always pushing me to be more social and proactive.





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