Saturday, July 15, 2006

Quick Survey
We still have more speed stuff to do :). But had a question for you:

On our new fan art main page...how many 'recent' fan art should we display?

Before we did 8, but some people thought we should do more. Now we do 12. But then when you click 'view all' you see a refresh of that 12 + only 4 more. We could show 16 and then make 'view all' go to the next 16, but then the main page becomes huge.

What do you think?
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Friday, July 14, 2006

Attacking Speed @ Full Speed
If you had to choose between the tiny image next to your username in comments that said you were online/offline or a faster site, which would it be?

I thought it was a no-brainer. So Massin and I went to work and removed that functionality.

By doing this, we saved approximately 80,000 write queries to our database per day.

With a combination of caching (like how fast the fan art site is?) and tweaks like this, we're gonna rock hard on speed :-).

UPDATE: Oh my gosh! This has MADE my week. The site is loading SO quickly for me now. I'm dancing :)
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Thursday, July 13, 2006

This Makes Up For My 4-5 Hours of Sleep Per Night
This has been an amazing week :-).

Gail's AX coverage has been first rate.

Sarah's back and on a roll.

And Massin and I have become an unstoppable combo. Case in point, the AMAZING new fan art main page that launched today. It makes me want to visit the fan art site daily.

Best of all, because it uses caching technology, it's FAST. And once we do this for the other sites, our server load should go down dramatically.

What do you think?
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Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Woah, Changes!!!!
Sometime tomorrow we're going to launch the beta version of a new fan art main page. Massin and I have been working hard on it.

There will be two things at work:

First, the main page won't just show new fan art anymore. Instead, it'll be more the type of place you'll want to visit daily to see what's "hot."

Second, the main page will be one of our first efforts to use a technology called 'caching.

Our speed sucks big time now. But we're confident with caching implemented on all sites, it will be lightning fast again.

Fan Art is kind of the beta test. Once we improve/tweak, we'll launch this goodness on our other sites as well.

Exciting times ahead. I'm also making more progress on getting our official t-shirt printed :-).

Also: Check out Gail's AMAZING AX coverage on the main page.
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Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Quick Art of Otaku Survey
This is for our "Art of Otakuites" :-).

(1) Describe the types of tutorials you enjoyed most? (What tools used, what subjects covered, # of steps)

(2) If you could improve one thing about Art of Otaku, what would it be?
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Saturday, July 8, 2006

More on PR Opportunity
I got a lot of great responses from top members of our community for the Art of Otaku PR assignment. To be fair, I'm going to ask all people interested to email me (link in left menu) the following:

>> Pretend you're emailing the webmaster of a Naruto fansite. What subject and body email would you use? Pretend I then say I'm interested but you don't see the review on my site after I get the free download. How would you follow up (subject and body)

A few things to note:
(1) Long emails tend to get ignored
(2) People who run smaller sites like to feel appreciated
(3) No one likes generic emails, personalization is always best - mention something you like about the site specifically
(4) Stress the benefits of getting a copy to review and make them feel special for getting chosen

Can't wait to see what you come up with!

PS: When I ran AGB, a portable gaming website, I CONSTANTLY got emails from PR people asking if I could review their games...
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Friday, July 7, 2006

Who Wants PR Experience??
We need more reviews for Art of Otaku.

Who wants the really fun job of giving anime sites free copies to review :-).

You'd basically create a huge list of all the best anime sites/podcasts/videocasts and then email professional letters inviting them to review it. You'd then follow up with them as our point person.

PR companies do this type of stuff all the time, it could be valuable exposure :-).

(And who wouldn't want to give away such an amazing guide??)
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Wednesday, July 5, 2006

At Last...
Fangirls/fanboys rejoice, Massin has created "tag hubs" - portals that show you all our fan works organized by tag.

For example, did you ever think we'd have a hub dedicated to Sora?
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Tuesday, July 4, 2006

Returning From My Hiatus
First, am thrill-thrill-thrilled that Sarah has returned :-).

Second, I have a bold and somewhat controversial new vision for theOtaku.com.

On a third note, Massin has been doing amazing programming work. I'll have something cool to show you soon.
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Saturday, July 1, 2006

Much-Needed Break
I've been taking a much-needed break to relax and get new ideas. Enjoy your 4th of July and be sure to eat lots of barbecue :).

(That goes even for our International guests--about 20%!)
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