I am currently losing to zzeroparticle of Anime Instrumentality in my 2nd round match of the current Aniblog Tourney (zzero’s 120 votes to my 43, as of 5/21 12:30PM PDT) and I’m okay with that because I know I haven’t been doing the best job with this blog and I also like zzero’s stuff. I was a little surprised when the seedings came out and I was seeded 21st with a first-round bye – I think the age of posts might have been a factor in that. I don’t recall who said this when the tournament began but it’s an opportunity for me to look critically at my own operation and determine how I can improve the look and the content.
In the comments section of the match post (where you can vote for this blog if you’d like until May 24, I think), there were some remarks pointing out things that I already knew.
Canne: Without any hesitation, I voted for zzeroparticle because of the blog’s shear quality. I actually think Nigorimasen is good, too. I just don’t like the orange letters -_- #
Baka-Raptor: I like AI a lot. I ended up voting for it, but I gave Nigorimasen very serious consideration even though I’ve never read it before. The deal-breaker was that Nigorimasen does a lot of industry posts, which has even less to do with anime than anime music. #
Josh on his eponymous Anime Blog has been writing about his choices in each matchup and said my content was fine but my design was quirky and my post rate was not so good (here’s an earlier post by Josh explaining his criteria):
Design: Is it just me, or is the background for the entire page on Nigorimasen! gray? Also, while it’s not a big deal, I kind of always disliked pages shoved off to one side of the screen or another instead of being centered. And the gray thing is bothering me. Anime Instrumentality may not be the slickest looking blog out there, but there isn’t really anything particularly bad about it. Winner: Anime Instrumentality
Post Rate/Style: On post rate, Nigorimasen! has posted only 10 times since the first of March, if my count is correct. That’s less than once a week, which is clearly in my danger category. Otherwise, I don’t see anything particularly wrong with their post style. Anime Instrumentality also has an issue with posting a lot, though they did decent in March, and it seems to be better than Nigorimasen! in any case. Though, I guess when one is writing mostly about anime OSTs, you can only write posts so often too. I also like how they have music samples intermixed in their posts. Winner: Anime Instrumentality
Content: I think Nigorimasen has a lot of good, well written content on his blog, especially about the CPM situation. He just doesn’t post a lot. Meanwhile, Anime Instrumentality is able to write quite a bit, despite being a blog about OSTs…and they have samples! I think this category is very close, but it goes to AI by a nose. Winner: Anime Instrumentality
Overall: Another sweep. I think Nigorimasen’s lack of posting and quirky design really hurt it.
Winner: Anime Instrumentality
The current blog design is not ideal – I’ve crudely coded the CSS to allow for a wider, er, width and the left alignment is off a bit, which bugged me initially and I seem to have gotten used to over the past several months. The orange color for links is a conscious choice because I didn’t feel like settling for the standard blue or black. It’s also an attempt to grab people’s attention but I suppose a well-styled overall design would do a better job of that than just the text color. The gray background is intended to be not as bright as a white background and hopefully improve visual readability but I can understand if it bothers some people.
The lack of regular posting is primarily due to a diminished fire-burning-within-me motivation to read/watch things quickly & then write about them (mainly caused by now having a day job) and secondarily, not wanting to just write commentary on many news stories where I don’t have too much to add to the existing posts that have already been written by others.
While writing this, I looked back to a post I wrote last June about my belated 3-year “aniblogiversary” (last Friday was my four-year anniversary – yay!) and saw that I didn’t “feel like I’m an A-list aniblogger” and know what, that’s not a bad thing. I don’t want to write things I’m not proud of. The lack of comments on some posts still occasionally bothers me, though.
Closing out and coming back to design, the harder of the two areas to fix – readers: do you have any suggestions on how I can improve the aesthetics of the blog, e.g. switch to a black background? How about banner content or other features? Feel free to suggest improvements to the written content as well.
A breaking news panel discussion from “Zettai Shonen”
Short Comment About Anime Expo Pricing Elements from a Non-Attendee
June 15, 2010 in Commentary, Conventions by Tom Langston (calaggie) | No comments
Earlier today, Anime Expo announced the release of an iPhone/iPad app for this year’s convention and some of the people I follow on Twitter took contention with the fact that it’s not a free app – rather, it’s priced at $1.99. Not expensive but still fodder for observers in the wake of learning tickets for Main Events – the concerts and Masquerade – will start $15 for 4-day attendees ($15 if obtained online, $20 on-site) and cost $30 for 1-day/2-day attendees, which Zac Bertschy complained about on a recent ANNCast with the fear that it might cause other cons to charge for similar events, something I don’t wish to become a trend.
I already decided months ago that I wouldn’t attend this year’s AX because 1) it’s a long drive and 2) I’m going to Otakon later in July so that’ll be my big “industry” con of the summer. However, I still want to briefly write about these two pricing matters. First, I can understand charging for concerts because they are an extra event (people often pay more for concerts, right?) but the Masquerade, despite being a well-attendance event, is not something I would be inclined to do as an organizer because of the amateur, fan-based nature of the event.
Those who don’t want to pay but still want to attend the events do have a last-resort free option:
If a particular Main Event has not sold out, a limited number of tickets may be available for free after the start of the event at the discretion of the Main Events ticketing staff. It is recommended that interested attendees purchase a Reserved Seating ticket either online or at the Main Events Ticketing Booth.
Anime Expo is a large event – last year’s attendance was 44,000 – and so there are significant costs in putting on such the entire ordeal. Part of that cost is paid through the registration fees from attendees. (I think other sources include exhibitor and artist alley space costs as well as sponsorships.) This year’s pre-registration price for a 4-day pass is currently $75 and I suppose some attendees may have expectations that concert or masquerade entry fees would be included in that.
Now onto the iPhone app, an easier subject. The features of the application [iTunes page] include a sortable schedule, an searchable exhibitor index & map, a map of nearby businesses, convention announcements, the ability to save items to your favorites, and some upcoming items such as a crossword puzzle, blog articles, and photo gallery. I assume there are some development costs involved in putting the app together so $1.99 sounds reasonable for what you get. If you don’t want to pay for the convenience of having all that on an Apple mobile device, that’s fine – there will still be daily PDF schedules you can download or the listings in the printed guide you’ll get in the registration bag.
I would prefer there be a platform-neutral mobile schedule for convention updates, like Fanime had this year. (I wouldn’t be able to use the AX app because I have an Android phone.) It was nice to quickly know about changes to panel times and get a quick glance at which events were happening concurrently, something that I could check in the printed Pocket Guide except for the events that has scheduling changes over the weekend.
To sum up: both the priced ticket events and the iPhone app are optional things that many fans may not need to deal in order to attend and enjoy the convention. The ticket costs are a bother for those who do want to attend those events and I’m sure a fair number of people are willing to pay for the concerts and not very many, if any, will pay for the masquerade. No one is forcing anyone to purchase and use the iPhone app so the pricing should be less of a concern, particularly for resourceful attendees who do some planning ahead.
Tags: anime expo, Conventions, pricing