Friday, October 12, 2007

Site might be a little sluggish but it's back...
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Yes, I know none of the sites are working now. I found out that our backups hadn't been configured properly and told our ISP to do an emergency, ASAP backup of the site.

Hopefully it won't last long...
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myOtaku Thesis
I worked on the new myOtaku for our huge relaunch...it is, of course, ambitious (as if I didn't have enough to do)

Here is my thesis:

- You love to customize/hack your page

- You generally don't like to visit poorly done customized pages because they disrupt your browsing experience

- You don't want to just post rants about your life/pets (sometimes, but not always!), you also want to post things that will help others

- You want your posts to be read and you want people to comment on them

- You love to share things you find or create

- You want more of your myOtaku page to be yours - no logo, no search box, etc.
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Thursday, October 11, 2007

So Gail--and by extension theOtaku.com--was review quoted on the back of the Tsubasa Vol. 4 DVD. Awesome, I'm thinking of buying a copy just for the scrapbook

When I was 17 (geez, 7 years ago(!)), I was quoted by Pelican Accessories in an ad campaign for an accessory they had for the GameBoy Color called the "CodeBreaker." They quoted a review of mine for the product wherein I said it was a "cheaters' dream come true"

The ad ran in a few magazines, but the only one I remember was a magazine called Pocket Gamer

One day at the bookstore I held an issue of Pocket Gamer in my hand looking at the ad. "Should I buy it?" I wavered and eventually decided not to

Now, fast forward, I would KILL for a copy of that scan...I've looked on eBay and only one issue of Pocket Gamer circa 2000 is listed and it's not the right one

Pocket Gamer was discontinued and I have no idea how to find out about getting back issues.

If anyone has, knows someone who has, or finds out via research where I can get a copy or scan of that ad/back issues of the magazine, I will award that person with a special and unique gift they can use on our new version--something that no one else will have.
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Sonic Smash
Sonic has been announced as a Smash Bros Brawl playable character!!!

This will be the best selling game of all time. Mario AND Sonic AND Snake, that's three companies' star characters in one game. The only thing that could make it more epic is if they somehow snuck Cloud in there
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Tuesday, October 9, 2007

PM's Version Vibrant have been giving me a headache...as you can imagine, making a PM system is like making an email service. I had this crazy idea of making PMs work like comments work now, but I might instead retain the current look with some tweaks to make it faster

Is there anything you'd like to see with a new PM system?
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Monday, October 8, 2007

One Answer Today: On Global Warming
What are your thoughts on global warming? Serious threat or hunk of bologna?

My take on this issue is easy:

(1) The environment is important

(2) A lot of our technology harms the environment to varying degrees

(3) As the environment gets harmed there will be negative consequences, either small or large. Even the small consequences are important (i.e. breathing dirty air in NYC sucks compared to breathing clean air in the South)

(4) Fixing or tweaking technology here and there and changing a few habits could make us harm the environment less

(5) Some technology tweaks are too expensive to be practical, but others are easier and could have a big effect on aggregate

(6) Most people would be willing to sacrifice small if they had specific guidelines and numbers showing that these sacrifices were making a big difference overall

(7) Toyota has shown that companies can make a significant profit by modifying technology to harm the environment less.

(8) A lot of added pollution will come from developing countries as they industrialize (China and India especially)

(9) If the US takes a leadership position on this issue, then we can better pressure other countries to follow (such as China and India). We'll also own the rights to a lot of technology that we'd invent that we can sell to these other countries and help our economy

It seems to me that there are three types of anti-doing anything about pollution people:

(1) Type A: They want to help the environment but don't want to recklessly spend a lot of money in avenues that won't have a positive effect. This is why the government needs environmental economists and experts to make any regulations intelligent ones.

(2) Type B: They have some sort of investment in keeping the status quo. For example if you own a factory and the government saddles you with so much environmental regulation that it can put you out of business. I can understand this too, which is why we need the government to be very cautious that it respects or tries to help versus hinders and destroys

(3) Type C: I think this is the minority but a % of the population is just now-oriented and lazy, doesn't really care about pollution or the next 50 years. This type I don't understand

And that's all!
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Sunday, October 7, 2007

Ask Adam Answers Part 2
will you ever make more categories on otaku to replace the ones closed down over the years?

I have 100 ideas for each of our current sections. Ideas for new features, new ways to make them more fun, etc. My philosophy is that we can make each of our current sections a LOT better and that's a more effective use of time than launching a new site, which if it does take off, will spread us thin, and if it doesn't take off, will have to be shut down.

For each site, there are a lot of things at work. One of the most important things though is the site's code base.

Each of our sites has hundreds to thousands of lines of code. Now, with our new version I'm consolidating the code between some of our more similar sites (like fan art, ecards, wallpapers). This will let us add features to those sites simultaneously VERY quickly.

Sites like Guru though have completely different code bases. Guru just works differently than Fan Art, for example, which means that we have to do a lot of extra work if we want to add a feature or update.

One of the major problems we had previously was that we had art sites mixed with sites with written content mixed with Guru. This was a nightmare from an architecture perspective and meant you saw very few new features added.

Another issue is we're at the point where we can't afford small successes. A medium-sized site might be overjoyed to have a section with 1,000 visitors a day but for us, it would be a failure. It's a far better use of energy to make the wallpaper site grow from say 10,000 people a day to 15,000 people a day instead of creating a new site and growing that from 0 people a day to 1,000 people a day.

Whats going to be the main color of VV? What got you into computer programming? Did you ever imagion that theotaku.com/myotaku.com would get as far as it has today?

VV will be different shades of blue.

My strongest talent is in business and creating projects. I'm also a good writer and have an eye for good design. Programming is something I'm NOT naturally talented in. I had to kill myself to learn it so that I could have more control over this network and implement changes quickly.

theOtaku/myOtaku is part success/part failure in my eyes. Version Vibrant will hopefully be all success.

How would you feel if you won a million dollars?

A million dollars doesn't go very far in NYC. I would take 10-15% of it and put it into the network, yes. In terms of lifestyle, etc. it wouldn't affect me.

Do you like chocolate chip cookies?

Who doesn't?

How fast can you type?

About 90-95 words per minute from last I checked.

Which anime do you wish you'd never seen? Is there a series you're dying/wanting to see but, for some reason or another, never get around to watch? How many hours a night do you actually sleep? ¬_¬

I saw one episode of Yu-Gi-Oh, didn't care for it. I'd like to see Mushi-shi. No matter how many hours of sleep I get, it's too much. Over-sleeping is actually a major problem for me if I have nothing planned the next day, I'm not a morning person and it takes a lot to get me out of bed.

What is an anime that is currently unlicensed that you think should be?

Honestly all the anime I've ever seen has been anime that's popular on theOtaku, which is all licensed and mainstream.

What would be the best piece of advice to give to a potential writer?

Well, from my perspective: Be obsessive, be an entrepreneur/marketer as much as an author, create a strategy to build an audience online, constantly put what you write to the test to see if people will actually pay for it, define very specifically the type of people you want to buy your book and how you'd reach them, then try to reach them on your own.

Most of the advice in Artpreneurship should work for authors as well as artists, so check that out.

The majority of authors will just mail their book to a bunch of publishers and if it gets rejected, will just give up. If you can create a little buzz on your own, get some positive reviews, etc., then when you approach publishers you might have a better chance.
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Saturday, October 6, 2007

Today's Answers
What inspired you to make theOtaku.com and MyOtaku.com?

My first major site, AbsoluteGB.com, the greatest GameBoy/portable gaming site ever made (and most popular at the time), was adding a lot of sections based on anime. I created theOtaku.com because the name was applicable to both gaming and anime whereas AbsoluteGB didn't make sense as an umbrella domain. Also the name was an homage to two of my favorite sites: theDojo.com and Sega-Otaku.com. As you know, theOtaku eventually dropped all its gaming coverage and focused on anime (mainly because gaming took a LOT of time to cover on a day to day basis and anime was just starting to take off big) and the beginnings of theOtaku as an anime only portal was born.

The original idea for MyOtaku was to be a blogging service that was also the engine to submit content across a lot of different sites. When I made it, blogging was still at a very early stage and most blogging services sucked. I think we were pretty competitive when MyOtaku launched but that was years ago and technology evolves rapidly. No, MyOtaku was not named for MySpace, which I don't think even existed at the time. In fact, I think MySpace is a joke, personally.

What's your favourite dirty joke?

I don't like dirty jokes. I also never curse. I'm not hyper moral or anything, just not my style.

Are you hoping for Artpreneurship to be published in hardcopy, or are you happy for it just to be available as an e-Book?

I love this question

First, I don't think 'published' books are in any way inferior to digital books. If a book
is published, it simply means a publisher thinks that they can make a profit from it. Sadly, too, most publishers are wrong most of the time, so a majority of what they put out never makes any money. That's why publishing is such a sad industry--most publishing houses would go out of business if they stopped selling trashy romance novels

If you've written something that you think is great, then put it to the test. If other people love it enough to pay for it, then all you have to do is work obsessively hard to get the word out. If other people don't love it enough to pay for it, then refine it or start something else.

We've had a lot of success with Art of Otaku. However, even Art of Otaku is nowhere near a business, it's simply a small addition that gets drowned out in a network as big as ours.

To answer your question though, if a company wanted to publish Artpreneurship, it would do a few things:

(1) If the book sells at all (a big 'if' given the success rate of most books) then it would barely add to this network's bottom line

(2) I would get some more exposure personally, but to be honest, as the founder of a site like this, exposure isn't something I'm too concerned about. Most of what we do on this site reaches hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people

(3) I'd have bragging rights, which might admittedly be cool

(4) It would take probably 12 - 18 months for the book to actually come out and once it's out I'd have restrictions on what I could do with the digital version

(5) It would no doubt take up time that I could have spent planning a new feature, working on a business idea, etc.

In the end, I never wrote Artpreneurship to be published in the traditional sense. Even if it had the potential to be like Art Of Otaku, it still wouldn't be worth the time to flesh out. I wrote it because I had a lot of ideas in my head I wanted to put down and I thought it would be a great asset to have down the line

You'll probably see me bundle Artpreneurship down the line with another offering

What's your favorite coffee?

I don't drink coffee, I think that orange juice/water/fruit has all the benefits without the side effects. I also don't like the taste

Have you been to Japan?

Yes. It was wonderful, such an interesting country. I do think Akhihabara (sp?) is over-rated, though. I ate lots of sushi and visited the Toyota factory.

Ooh yay...when are the results of the wallpaper contest going to be announced? XD

Hopefully Monday.

Boxers or briefs?

Boxers, no contest.

Is there a different kind of site (other than anime) that you have always wanted to make, but never got around to it?

Yes, I look forward to the day when I can step away from the network for an extended period of time and try a new venture.

However, I see so much potential with this network that I'm committed to it for our big relaunch and after. We still have a LOT of ground to cover.

I like to tell people that Version Vibrant is a startup because it'll be so new in many respects, but it's a startup with 35-40 thousand people a day visiting out of the gate. You really can't beat that.

How tall are you?

Six feet even

What is so appealing about Naruto? Why do people like it? Why do you like it?

I like Naruto because there's an element of strategy in it. I'm a huge fan of strategy games and watching Naruto, you'll notice a tremendous amount of strategy in the battles between two opponents.


That's all for today, I'll do more tomorrow...if you have any more questions you can post here.
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Friday, October 5, 2007

Impromptu Ask Adam
I'm a little drained from programming, so an impromptu Q&A. Ask one question on absolutely any topic and I'll answer a few of them tomorrow
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