Monday, March 21, 2005

   Comment Reversal
I hope Justin doesn't lynch me for making this public, but for our upcoming code update, we're going to be pulling a huge reversal on how the comment system is done.

First, there will no longer be a maximum comment length. And second, there WILL be a minimum comment length. This should, in theory, put an end to spammy one-word replies. We're really trying to push intelligent discourse into the site. Hope it works!
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Sunday, March 20, 2005

   I have returned with the first of many great announcements: namely that we have tapped two long-time otakuites to become staff writers: Josh "ShyGuy" and Dagger. Read the main page of theOtaku for details.

So how was my vacation? Pretty good. Two quick recommendations: (1) See the new Porco Rosso Disney release ASAP. Fantastic stuff. (2) Wait on the new Sony PSP until it has more games and the price has fallen. I played it briefly and the load times on all the games I tried were ATROCIOUS. The system itself was sleek as heck though and the graphics floored me--so I see potential.
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Saturday, March 12, 2005

   Spring Break!
For the next week I'll be enjoying my favorite holiday: Spring Break! I'll definitely be checking up on the site, just not as much as usual. When I return we'll be announcing some new changes, including the addition of two new, key staff members.
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Tuesday, March 8, 2005

   Wonderful New Changes
We have a lot of wonderful new changes we're going to announce soon. Stay tuned!
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Saturday, March 5, 2005

   How Time Passes
I spent some time today browsing the wonderful WayBackMachine, a service that keeps a constant archive of websites. I was reading through posts I made as far back as 1999 when I was the owner of AbsoluteGB.com (a Game Boy site) and then went through the evolution of theOtaku.com.

It really boggles my mind how long I've been doing this web stuff (and how long I've been working with many of the same fine people).

Over two years ago, I made the following post:

Otakuites!

What I'm going to type to you now is absolutely true. I wouldn't break your trust.

The other night, I had great difficulty sleeping. I was lying in bed, restless, and all of a sudden, a vision came to me.

I saw the perfect anime site floating in my mind. I saw how it worked down to the tiniest pixel. It was absolutely brilliant--beautiful and complete. It made me stare at my ceiling in awe. Before you think you know what I'm going to say...

This site in my head wasn't Version Next.

For a couple days, this simple fact depressed me greatly. That is, until I realized...wait a second...Version Next leads into this perfect site *beautifully*.

That's right, my vision of the *perfect* anime site is so advanced it requires Version Next as an in-between with what we have now and my ideal.

Make no mistake, Version Next will break every boundary of what I have ever created before and will give you some things you've never seen before. It will be one of my favorite days when I can announce it.

But remember: Before slime could evolve into humans, it had to first evolve into apes. (People who don't believe in evolution please disregard this.)

Just wanted to let you know ^_^

-Adam
"The Prince of Anime"

It's so amazing. The current iteration of theOtaku.com is what I had envisioned two years ago and what I needed "Version Next" to help accomplish. "Version Next" if you remember was when we introduced myOtaku.com and our Fan Art site.

Of course, even then, I could never have dreamed that we'd have such an amazing design (ala James), such great code (ala Justin), and such great features (ala Gail).
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Tuesday, February 15, 2005

   Ah, Fresh Air
It's been a rollercoaster ride, but we've finally conquered our speed/bandwidth concerns. I'm so lucky to have had Justin at my side during this massive server migration (also special thanks to Guy Cohen, an Israeli consultant we also hired).

So where do we go from here?

A lot of work needs to be done. First, we still have a huge myOtaku revamp pending a code redo. Next, we have more site concepts to launch. Finally, we have to re-organize some management-related things related to getting more staff, improving customer support, and better handling moderation.

Whew--one step at a time.

BTW, 100,000+ members now. Neat, eh? ;-).
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Sunday, January 23, 2005

   theOtaku.com: New Traffic Record
Yesterday was the highest day in the history of our network's traffic. What was the count? An astonishing 355,000 page views.

Of course, with increased traffic comes increased responsibility. We will soon be adding a second server to our network to help distribute the load and give us room for growth.
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Sunday, January 16, 2005

   A Fun and Breezy Contest
Tune into theOtaku tomorrow for a fun and breezy contest with some equally fun and breezy prizes. I promise, this'll be easier to win than our previous ones. ^_^

UPDATE: No, the word 'breezy' is not a clue of any sort.
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Monday, January 10, 2005

   Interesting Stat
After we implemented the wallpapers change, a few very unexpected things happened: (1) The traffic to our wallpaper site stayed *exactly* the same (meaning our bandwidth numbers remained the same as well), (2) The number of myOtaku registrations pretty much doubled.

Ah well, back to the drawing board of ideas.
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Friday, January 7, 2005

   Just Between Us
Justin and I talked at length over our bandwidth problems. It turns out that we're consuming over 1.5 TB per month. Way, way more than we should (and it's costing a fortune in extra charges).

Some quick research showed us that the reason for this increase was the massive popularity boost in our wallpapers site. Non-myOtaku members have been descending on the site en masse and downloading billions of these images.

So a neat fix: We're going to soon make it so that non-myO members can only view the thumbnails of wallpapers. This should increase our registrations AND simultaneously save us a bundle in bandwidth fees. Even better, it'll give us room to grow.

Sound good?
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