The O-Talk Podcast

The summer anime season is finally here and I'm feeling very generous. I can assume that my readers like anime and I can also assume that they like free stuff as well. How about free anime for 3 months via Crunchyroll.

For more than year, I have been unhappy about my site's content and I have been burned out from blogging. During that time, I really didn't know what could get me out of that funk and I was trying different things to fight against it. Most of these things worked but because the lack of energy I had, I couldn't do it. However, podcasting saved me and now I'm better than ever.

It seems that Blogger, the blogging platform that I use is getting a redesign. I'm pretty excited by this because I'm bored of certain looks and features. As you can see in the picture below, The Blogger dashboard is getting a big makeover. It seems similar to the Wordpress dashboard. I really like the clean, it has a modern feel to it.

It was about 2 years ago, I made a post titled Why Do We Blog?. To summarize that post, I pretty much wrote about my reasons for blogging and why love doing it. Not too long ago, my site turned 3 years old and it really didn't hit me until recently what I have learned from this experience.

This post is going to be about me writing about the direction I want to take my blog and my future.

For those who have not been following me for long, I would make a post every single day. That all stopped because real life happened. I even use to have the free time to read and comment on every single blog on my blog roll. As of right now, I'm starting to get into the habit of being an active blogger just like I use to be.

As for the License This and Kicking it Old School post, I feel terrible that I had to put those on hiatus for the time being. License This is a tricky post to make, There have been times that I had the post completed and really to be posted. However, it has to scrapped because every single anime or manga in said post was just announced that it got licensed, there for making my post useless. Kicking it Old School is a little hard to make, because I have to think of anime series that would catch the attention on anime fans who are not interested in the older stuff. New posts will make a return soon.

Now, as for the Dissecting Fandom posts, it is not on hiatus. At least once a day, I get an email asking when the next post is coming. Those posts take a lot of time to make because the amount of research and analyzing I have to do.

There is something that I want to do, I want to go pro as a blogger. I know it sounds a little silly but I think I could do it. Its going to take a lot of time and work but in the end, it will be worth it. The one disadvantage that I have is that I'm only one person and I don't have a staff, but that should not stop me.

Well, sorry that I have not made a post in the last few days. My insomnia has kept me awake for over 72 hours and when I was able to sleep, I was out for about 15 hours. While I was awake, I got the craze idea to fix and change my blog roll.

As you can see, Otakudan.com has gotten a well needed make over. For a while, I felt that the old layout became somewhat stagnant. I had been using it for about 2 years. I was planning to have a new one around January but college and life took most of my time. I decided yesterday that I was going to sit down and not get up until I had a new layout.

I really like this layout. It looks very clean and bright, At the moment, I'm still not done fixing it, I need a new banner that matches the color scheme. I'm also thinking of moving the blog roll bar to its own page. As you can see, its really long and I may remove inactive blogs from it.

Recently, I was asked to become a guest writer for Wide Island View. I gladly said yes. The Wide Island View, is the JET programme webzine for the Hiroshima prefecture. This is a great example of guest blogging. Guest blogging is pretty much becoming a guest writer for a blog that is not yours(pretty self explanatory).


There are two ways to become a guest blogger, you are invited or you can ask. The most common way of becoming is getting invited because the person likes your style of writing and/or they just like you in general. You can also ask, it does not hurt to ask but be prepared for any answer.

There are benefits to guest blogging like:
Increase Exposure.
Increase traffic to your blog.
High chance of getting new frequent readers.
Good chance of being asked to be a guest writer on another blog.

Just in case you have any questions, yes I will be writing for Wide Island View, I'm not looking for guest writers at the moment but I will do it in the future, and I don't have a pet ferret.
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Lately, I have been thinking about the future of my blog. I have seen many other long term blogs in the past few months slowly going away. It got me thinking that either my blog will end up going away or I'll make my dreams come true.

OtakuDan.com will be getting an overdue face lift. I mentioned that in another post but it seems that it is going to be a little more difficult than expected. The thing is that blogger templates can be either HTML and XML. I have not decided which one to go with but I have heard that XML is a little tough to understand. Before I get started, I have to wait until classes are over for the semester, learn more about XML, and I also have to get DreamWeaver CS4.

One of my dreams, is that I would like to make a book and have it published. I do have several great book ideas that are anime related. All I need are the resources to get some of these idea going. When my blog gets more exposure, I'm going to make my ideas come to fruition.

I decided that for my blog's 2 year anniversary(February 2nd), I will be having a giveaway. I still don't know what the prize will be, maybe a figure or something. For those who are wondering, I'm not going to shutdown my blog anytime soon. WOW, this was a boring post, lol.

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I have been looking back on my blogging past lately. With over 580 blog post in the span of almost 2 years, there have been some posts that actually never got to see the light of day. This is something I have never revealed, I plan most of my post ahead of time because it gives me time to think. I'm going to show you some of these posts that almost came to be and why they were pulled.

Samurai Legend
This was an interest one, I tried to make this review over 3 times but there was not much to say about. Its a historical fiction manga about the legendary samurai Jubei. Since it is only one volume long, it is hard not to give away the ending when writing about.

My Top 10 Favorite Anime Of All Time
It was hard to make this post because I have seen a lot of anime in the span of 15 year as a fan. After 2 weeks, I narrowed the list down to 50. I was about to hit the published post button and I deleted it. It felt pretentious and I don't like making myself look like that.

April Fools Day
It was a joke post poking fun at anime blogs. I was going to making fun of myself and other bloggers but it looked too real. It would have caused some unneeded drama in the community. It was replaced by this post.

Revival of Team Blue
Team Blue was a club of bloggers that was started by Panther. After Panther left do to personal reasons, TB was in disarray and it eventually disappeared. I was planning to bring back TB with the help of Blowfish but in the end, it was better not to bring it back. It would have not been right to do because it would have been an imitation of something that was good.

Dragon Ball Evolution
The title says enough.

Older Anime
This post was good. It was a post about how older anime(anything before Neon Genesis Evangelion) is still good after so many years. However, it evolved in to an angry rant on how the newer generation of fans(the ones that have been watching anime for less than 3 year) that think that if an anime is old or looks old, then it sucks.

Giving up on Twitter
I pretty much gave up on twitter and why I lost interest in it. However, I downloaded TweetDeck and the rest is history.

So, those are just a few of them, the rest are pretty much personal stuff that should not be written about. If you want to, you can use some of those ideas for your own blog, I don't mind.

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I have some big updates coming to OtakuDan.com. I'm planning to change the template for my blog because it has been the same for over a year. This time I'm going to make one myself instead of finding one on the net and modding it. Since now that I have Microsoft Visual Studio and Photoshop CS3, it is going to be a fun and interesting experience. I'm hoping for the final project for my C++ class is something the students get to pick what they want to do because I can just turn in the template.

From now on, Kararu-Chan will be doing anime reviews(I gave her a long list) which is why I'm introducing a rating system. The scale is from 1 to 5, 1 being the worst and 5 being the best. The rating system will also be used in the figure photo shoots and any other type of review that is done.






I would like some feedback from the readers on how I can improve the site. If you want to tell me privately, just email me(and no, I'm not jumping to Wordpress). So, what anime would you like Kararu-Chan to watch and review?

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It has been announced that the Federal Trade Commission(FTC for short) will start cracking down on bloggers who do paid reviews of product. This means if you don't disclose that a company sent you a free product to keep and do a review on it, you could be fined up to $11,000 per post. I think this is the point in the post where bloggers that live outside of the United States start laughing and say, "sucks to be you".


There is a guideline that the FTC has that if a person is endorsing a product, they must disclose that they are being paid for that said endorsement. Before that change even happened, blogs were never affected by that guideline. I feel this is good in way because there are some reviewers who are being paid behind closed doors and are given free stuff just so they can give a good review to products that suck. This revision to the guideline governing endorsements will uphold what little ethical standards blogging still has. The readers will learn about the relationships between advertisers and bloggers.

There is a small issue, what happens to those who use Twitter as their method of "blogging"? For example, if a company sends me a product for free to keep and I mention it on Twitter, am I going to be affected by that guideline as well? I hope that when this is all done, it will be more clarified. So, what are your thoughts on this matter?

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My site has reached a big milestone. I have finally got over 1,000,000 hits. I was actually surprised when I found out. The thing is that I had not checked my stats for about a month because I have been spending most of my time with Kararu-Chan and I was getting back into the flow of college. When I saw that I had pasted a million hits, my jaw dropped.


I would like to thank E2046 for when they featured me on the front page of their site, everyone who has me on their blog roll(If you are not on mine, tell me so I can add you), and the readers who site visit my site every single day. Without you, this would have not been possible.

When I started blogging, I never thought that I would ever reach a million hits. I feel proud of myself that all of my hard work has paid off. However, now I have to work even harder to make it to 10,000,000 hits.

Well, in a few days I'm starting my third year in college. I know for a fact that I'm not going to have a lot of time for blogging. I have been thinking for a long time and I notice that my blog lacks in video game reviews. I would do video game reviews but I do not see myself buying a PS3 or a Xbox 360 any time soon. So, I have decided to look for a new writer.

Qualifications:
Must have a Playstation 3 and/or a Xbox 360
A vast knowledge in video games and its history
Must be up to date with video game news
NO FANBOYS.

Good news: I finally have a new comment box that won't screw me over

Bad news: Any comment that was not recorded by blogger was lost(it's JS Kit's fault) and from now on only new posts will have the new comment box.

I need your help for something. For those who used my previous comment box, which one do you prefer? The JS Kit comment box or the DISQUS comment box?

Test Test Test

Blah
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Damn it. For those who visited my blog yesterday, you may have noticed that my comment box was screwed up like there was no tomorrow. I first thought that blogger gave me the finger, but after doing some investigation, the problem was that JS Kit was promoting their new comment box by forcing all of their users to have it.


Thank goodness I was able to switch it back to the original template I was using. However, on their site they are announcing that they are going to retire the template that I'm using. I think it is very unprofessional what that website is doing because I paid to use their service just to use that comment box, but I'm getting screwed over. If JS Kit does retire my current comment box, then I'm switching over to DISQUS comment box.


After thinking for a long time, I decided to start a banner page. I have been getting a lot of emails asking to exchange banners but I don't have a page for that. The closest thing to a banner page is the Team Blue page but since Team Blue disbanded, I'm going to take it down. If you would like to exchange banners or blog roll links, just drop me an email. I will have the banner page up on Monday.

There is one main thing I would like my readers to do. I want you to randomly click any blog on my blog roll that you have not visited before. When you get there, I want you to leave a comment and then check out 2 blogs on their blog roll and repeat the process as many times as you like. I have been doing this lately and I have discovered so many great blogs that were not on my radar before. I also believe it is a great way of creating a community in the anime/otaku blogosphere.

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One day, I got an email from a man named George. He was asking me in I was interested in a Friend link program, this was when I started blogging. At first, I thought it was a scam but then I talked to other bloggers about it and I took up his offer. Let me just say that E2046 helped my blog grow.

How the program works is very simple, you add a E2046 banner on your blog and they add your banner on their friend banner link section and it could appear on their front page and newsletters. If you're starting up in the anime blogging community and you want to gain readers, this is the best way. Click here to learn more about the program.


While you are visiting E2046, you should check out their merchandise. If you are ever interested in garage kit figures, this is the place to be. For those who don't a lick a talent when it comes to making a garage kit figures, you can also buy it pre-painted(complete). I have been meaning to buy a smaller display base for my Kallen figure, its takes up a lot of space. So, for those who are part of the friend link program, what do you think of it?

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I finally got my business cards and they are sweet. I have been meaning to get some since last year but I forgot about it. During that time, one of my readers made the design for it which was cool but it had anime characters on it and I wanted to avoid any copyright issues. I asked my favorite artist and great blogger, Chun to design my business cards because she is the one who redesigned my mascot and did a fantastic job.

Originally, I was going to print the cards myself but for some reason the cards came out crappy. So, I ordered my cards from the online printing store Vista Print. I got 250 cards for $7.73 with a glossy finish but shipping is a little expensive.

For over a year, I had mediocre comment box that worked ok but it was not the best when compared to the Wordpress comment box. That comment box had a little glitch of not going through the first time when you clicked "submit comment" and I had over 100 people in a span of a year emailing about that problem. However, I found the perfect solution.


It all started when I visited CommentLuv for the fun of it and I notice a post there about JS-Kit comment box for Blogger. JS-Kit is a website that has a lot of features that one can use to improve their websites but they are better known for their comment box. I added the comment box but it was still a little bad when it comes to user friendly. While I was still on CommentLuv, I saw there was a post on how to customize the JS-Kit comment box with the CommentLuv widget integrated within it.

About 1 hour later, I give you the final product which you can see below. Thank goodness that I found that new comment box because I was about to switch to Wordpresss just for the comment box because I know that some of my readers hated the old comment box. So, what do you think is better, the new comment box or the old one?

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