Monday, July 2, 2007

I Heart Otakuites
Anime Expo has come and gone. I'm in Seattle now for the second half of my west coast vacation. I'll probably post an addendum to Gail's convention report with my personal thoughts, but here are some rapid fire highlights from LA:

* Spending a lot of time with Gail and her husband John, our official photographer

* Saying hi to Rich from Anime Vegas and Dan/Kyle--all of whom I had met first at Tour For The Cure

* Hanging out with members at our meetup. I remember everyone who came, just have trouble remembering the exact screen names. Bellpickle, NekoMimi16, Griff.....comment here to remind me of your screen name--thanks for dropping by and I'm sorry it wasn't more organized, I hadn't done it before

* Finally meeting ShyGuy and reminiscing about making the Evangelion and Outlaw Star old school sites

* Meeting Raiha, another OtakuBoards member who's been with us a long time. She tried to kill me with a spear, muttering something about terrorism RPGs

* Meeting Batou from Anime Pulse and recognizing him not by sight, but by voice in the press room

* Going to the SKIN (i.e. Gackt) and SOS concerts free of charge and seeing the three voice actresses of Haruhi Suzumiya do the famous dance

* Seeing all the cosplayers!

Whew. Thanks again all...Also, I have a lot of new Haruhi dance challenge videos to post...soon.
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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Good night
And good luck
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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Would you kill me if...
I removed the PM information ("You have XXX unread private messages) from the left menu of theOtaku?

It would stay in the backroom, though. Most importantly, it would make the site faster.
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Monday, June 25, 2007

My Life
I spent three hard hours on the PM ghost problem. I think I solved it. This glitch has caused me more grief than any other bug in the sheer amount of emails/comments/PMs I get about it.

If you still see ghost PMs, please let me know ASAP. There should be no reason to ever have them again, ever.

This is my life...

"my message thing that tells me if i have any new messages is messed up. my pm message thing says i have 5 unread messages but all the messages have been read and deleted"

"Even with no more messages in any of my boxes, it still says I have 2 unread messages, 9 messages total, and 2 blank pages in my inbox. How do I get to these 'unseen' messages so I can take care of them?"

"My message box says "You have 6 unread private message(s) in your inbox. Read now." I have checked it time and again but there are no new messages in my pm box. Every so often it adds an extra hidden and/or nonexistent message. Other people get them too; usually people who use the messaging system."

"I'm having problems with my PM system, and I know several users are having the same problem. It says there are 1 or 2 new messages unread, but there AREN'T any new messages when you check your inbox. Please help us with this bug!"

"My PM box says I have 2 unread messages, yet when I check there isn't anything there. I've tried clicked the delete button to see if it would do anything, and it doesn't. What can I do, if I can do anything?"

"My PM box says there is one unread message but there isn't. I have checked everything and still can't find the unread message. Also, there seems to be two pages of PM when I only have 3PMs. the 14 out of 250 is not true."

"I hope you're reading this, but my account is acting weird. It keeps saying that I have 1 unread PM, about when I open my inbox, nothing's there."

"for the longest time now, under my pm thing it says i have 3 unread messages"

"I used the contact feature previously to ask about a weird PM problem I was having, but no one got back to me. It's been about a month or two,
so I figured I'd email directly."

"the reason for this email is because everytime i log on, it keeps saying i have 1 unread PM, and theres nothing there. Its been this way for a few weeks."

"On my backroom page it says I have two new private messages but they do not show up anywhere on the PM page, there is nothing there."

"My account sais it has 3 new messages in my Pm box yet I cannot find any new messages. what is wrong with that?"

"Hi! i love this site very much! i have a question. My inbox says i have 1 message but when i click on the link and it brings me too the inbox area the pm dosen't show up. it's been like this for a while know. only one pm is stuck"
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Sunday, June 24, 2007

I have THREE new Haruhi dance videos to post too. I'm thrilled by the response :-D.

Morning update: An evil twin posted something last night...deleted it.
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Saturday, June 23, 2007

One of my dreams is to enter a competition where the outcome is determined by online voting...and then flood the vote with otakuites.

Sadly (fortunately?) that opportunity has never risen. Ah well.

I'm glad we're getting Haruhi dance entries...I was about to desperately post one of myself, but now there's no need...whew!
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Friday, June 22, 2007

I've been watching GACKT music videos on YouTube in anticipation of AX's SKIN concert (hey Gail, do press passes give us VIP concert access?). If not I'm going to be an unhappy mammal.

I've received a few complaints that browsing anime hubs results in having to wade through too many original character drawings. That is, characters that the artist invents that live in the universe of a particular anime.

I'm not sure how to handle this issue, is it a big problem? Any ideas?
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Thursday, June 21, 2007

The Haruhi dance entries are starting to flow in...

Jeff Borncamp, everyone's favorite greasy-fingered charity burglar, now has a myspace page

We're gonna have an amazing contest forthcoming, either fan art or fan manga. It's going to be on the scale of the AnimeFF contest except it'll be with a legitimate company :-). Something to look forward to.
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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

This is the process we're using for the new theOtaku:

Step 1: Interface Design
I made a wire frame rough layout of what elements the site will have.

Step 2: Graphic Design
James used the wire frame as a guide and designed on top of it, creating images

Step 3: HTML/CSS Splicing
This is the tricky part...Our HTML/CSS guru will take James' design and interpret it using the latest front end techniques.

Step 4: Back-And-Forth
Me, James, and the HTML/CSS guru will have a back and forth. Our HTML/CSS guru is also a design whiz so he'll no doubt have a ton of ideas as well. "Can we change the color here" - "Can we create a mouse over effect" - "can we make comments a little wider?" - etc., etc.

Step 5: Development
Someone will then dive into theOtaku's code and wrap the new design around the content. This will certainly require a ton of editing and will also invoke back and forths - "the way this HTML is set makes it impossible to program around" - "we could do it this way but it'll take 50 hours of extra work"

One thing I want to do is, before spending all the time wrapping the design around our code, is to poll people comparing the new design to both the current design AND to other sites online in the anime field....if a majority of people don't think we're at least as good then we need to spend more time...

I'm sleepy just thinking about it...
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Monday, June 18, 2007

Daily Notes
- Went kayaking today in the Hudson River. It's free!

- I wonder if Gail and John will spend the entire time at AX or if they'll go to the beach/play tourist at all. I'll probably tag along with them

- I spent a lot of time researching credit card offers. I've been using a debit card for years--ugh, I could have earned SO many frequent flier miles had I used a CC instead. The Starwoods card by AMEX is the best deal I found.

- I worked on high resolution wallpapers today... think we're going to start with just two new resolutions:

1280 x 1024 and 1280 x 800

Both new resolutions will be optional...

This takes us from about 66% penetration to 87% penetration among visitors.

I always like to test on a small scale first before any big roll-outs. I have no idea what % of people will upload or even download different resolutions. Based on the #'s we'll make our next move into adding other resolutions. There are also disk space issues to consider.

As you all know Massin is deployed 100% on reviving Art Of Otaku: Sessions, so the last 4-5 new features on theO have all been my own coding...

It's not optimal, since he's a much better software engineer than I am, and I can add much more value doing marketing stuff, but it works. I have learned a few nice tricks just from looking at his code.

I made an email sign-up form on the Convention meetup page...join!

- After high resolution is online, I'm going to dedicate myself completely to the new TheOtaku.com. Front and backend web technology has advanced so much in the last few years that we have a ridiculous amount of work to do...

- With the new TheOtaku I also want to introduce shortly after launch (FINALLY!) a subscription program. It will be cheap ($2.50 a month) and will add a ton of value. Most importantly: It will provide backup in case the online ad industry experiences a big drop.
Comments (15) | Permalink