Friday, August 31, 2007

Wow, just wow. You have to read this.

As long as I'm around I'm proud to maintain theOtaku as one of the few honest anime portals online. This means two things, especially:

> No ads for bootleg DVD stores

> No hosting fansubs for licensed or unlicensed properties. This doesn't mean we're against fan subs per se, it just means we don't believe in profiting from them

Yes, CrunchyRoll and dishonest sites like them might receive more visitors than us with **far** less effort. And yes, they might have at one point received a mind-boggling offer of $10 million, but at the end of the day, we're helping the industry and they're leaching off of it...
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Thursday, August 30, 2007

I wasn't able to make the announcement today--right now it looks like Friday will be the day.

Things are progressing very well on Version Vibrant. Massin has been showing me some cutting-edge technology we're going to implement. The layout gets better every day and I'm doing all the programming personally.

We've always had a tradition of innovating in technology and that will continue.

I had my second salsa class today, I absolutely love it. I practiced Kung-Fu from two schools for 6-7 years, but I think I prefer dance to fighting...
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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

- Gail (Panda) has the most ridiculous video I've ever seen on her blog. Katamari-fueled...

- Our team can now preview news posts before submitting. Massin has returned from a long absence to debut with this useful feature

- I'm taking salsa dance lessons. Today was my first day. After I post, I'm going to outstretch my hands toward an invisible partner and step back and forth and in circles practicing. I also do a mean Haruhi dance ;-)

- Go download a free Lite version of Artpreneurship, my humble and fuzzy-feeling'd book for young artists and interested non-artists.

- I'm not sure if we'll have that post tomorrow I told you about yesterday. We'll see...
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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

What a day...hours and hours of tedium.

A few notes:

- Fullmetal Alchemist will be sponsoring theOtaku starting tomorrow. This is the first really mainstream property that's putting their faith in us. FUNimation is a grand ally.

- I want to be sure that Version Vibrant's layout is objectively superior to what we have now. To accomplish this task I'm going to put together a survey and have a small panel of (1) members, (2) anime fans who aren't members, and (3) non-anime fans who aren't members to take the survey comparing the two designs

- A lot of people seem to really really want a big wallpaper contest...

- On a note unrelated to everything else: I encourage you to check the main page of theOtaku this Wednesday...
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Monday, August 27, 2007

Haha, I never get a break. I wanted to take today off with absolutely no site stuff...

Instead a freak server problem arises and I spend the entire day trying to fix it. The site didn't go down but it was slower than normal due to the issue. Things are OK for now...

Here's an impromptu Ask Adam:

#1: I'm none-too-happy with the amount of news. The podcast is already in the archives, and IT'S ONLY SUNDAY EVENING.

I HOPE we get this many items every day! We can increase the # of stories on the main page to 20 instead of 10, hehe. Thankfully for the podcast, 90% of people listen to it via iTunes and not on theO's actual website.

#2: I also want make a suggestion on the hub. Can we be able to add J-music artists?

Show me that people have uploaded a significant amount of fan art for Jpop artists on the site and sure. We have 6 pieces of Gackt fan art but that's not really enough...we have over 100 pieces of Harry Potter fan art, of all things...

#3: I would like to know this...what about us graphic designers? Will we ever get a chance for contests?

Come on!! I spent so much time on negotiating two epic contests, how could I possibly have had the energy to do a third for graphic designers? Just thinking about typing the headline: "theOtaku.com Announces Epic Wallpaper Contest" makes me feel utterly exhausted.
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Sunday, August 26, 2007

What the heck happened to Tokyopop's traffic?? (The blue line is theOtaku, the red line is Tokyopop.)



Come on guys, we need more competitors, not less.

Did anyone else notice the sheer number of news posts made today? Great job.

I have a million ideas and features in my head I want to implement but we have to get Version Vibrant out of the way first.

The big thing to remember is that new versions are new beginnings. We launch them and then build upon them. Sometimes to launch a new version you have to take a step back in order to get it released. You might have a feature now on the site you love but it might take too much time to transfer it to the new version so we'd drop it and then re-add it later.

BTW: Gail needs to update her blog, I'm going through Katamari-withdrawal...
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Saturday, August 25, 2007

This was a fun review to write. For someone to start a shoe company is inspiring and I invited a representative from the company to be on next week's podcast show.

I was thinking about our Final Fantasy hub today. There are so many games in the universe that I wonder if it was the right move to group them all under one category. Should I have made a hub for each game? Same with .hack, Fire Emblem, Tales Of, etc.

What do you think?
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Friday, August 24, 2007

I'd like to see LOTS of collaborative works for our fan manga contest. As everyone knows, fan manga is 50% story and 50% art, it's REALLY rare to find someone who is both a great storyteller and a great artist so a strong two-person team could take this contest by storm

If you can't draw but can write a story then you have NO excuse not to enter; theOtaku alone has 20,000+ artists and you might NEVER find a contest like this with such strong odds of being in the top 15 or actually winning

Plus the theme is zombies!!

Go forth!
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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Double-Punch
My eyes are red and sore, such a mad day...I hope you were stunned to see a second contest announcement just one day after the first

theOtaku's reputation is heavily on the line for three major anime companies; we have to shock the anime industry at large and show them that we're the single best place online to host these epic contests.

Which prize do you think is more impressive: Getting your work PUBLISHED in a manga or winning everything Del Rey publishes in 2008 (this could be like 200 books)??
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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Contest and VV Design
Another awesome contest. Big props to NYAF and Del Rey for putting their faith in our humble site to host it

These contests take a lot of time to negotiate and put together, but anytime I see an opportunity to help our audience in this big a way, it becomes a priority
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