Sharekoube Candies Secret Stash

I’m not interested as much with connecting buyers with comics as much as connecting an ecosystem with creators. Because in the world of self-publishing with Print On Demand, all you need to do is drop a PDF. Amazon.jp may work great as a distribution channel for retail ops like First Spear, but Amazon is not yet very robust as an ecosystem for publishing stuff that is very temporary.

Plus, the costs! How do we lower it?

So I have a few ideas.

Do the leg work and contact POD sites who may be interested in this business idea. The pitch is a doujinshi fair, but it’s all going to be online. There’s this Japanese cultural aspect to it which makes it feasible at all, and the question is a valid one as to who would ever want to do this. But I think of it like NaNoWriMo for comic books and magazines: give people a reason to create something, and sample the fruits. There’s already a template. There is a demand for creators. Maybe there is one for buyers too? I don’t know.

But creators are POD’s clients. If an organizer can bring the two together, there’s an opportunity there. The act of doujinshi publishing is still a subgenre of self-publishing after all.

The organizer will instill the doujinshi process and philosophy behind it, groom the authors so their submissions will fit guidelines for publishing legally. Not as censors, but to avoid the lawyers. That’s kind of the same idea behind Comiket and the like? I guess. Ultimately the good doujinshis should be products that will sell, for whatever the reason. This is kind of a driver for that. The organizer should tip the author as to what is smart investments and what isn’t. But also a clean hands-off for the opportunity post-retail. Whatever that makes it tick, hopefully, and give people the freedom to do stuff while respect the “event.”

Details to be determined… including Market Validation!

Rob G, my former CEO, tweeted this piece.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/11/time-to-rethink-every-website-in-the-world/

It’s something that is inevitably to come; during the Adobe feud Steve Jobs hinted as much; now the same technology is used to thwart Apple’s walled garden.

The other cool thing is the Facebook messenger. It’s like iOS 5′s message app, except with way less press and way more threat to Blackberry Messenger. Why? Because Facebook’s app works on all the major smartphone/tablet platforms (you can even run it on a BB OS5 device lol), and in the near future will support just about everything Apple’s app does.

Think about it. It’s way more potent!

OmoHaus!

Unfortunately this is a rental opportunity. As in, if at all possible, I want to rent out one (or two!) of the rooms. Need to network some!

So I cannot make it the most moe house! And may be that is all right.

Now, the closing stuff!

For a non-mac user like myself I sure talk about Apple’s hardware a lot. I guess it goes to their credit that they do make quality hardware.

But the new MBA is a major disappointment. It’s got the same specs as your typical Asian manufacturers, plus a couple bells and whistles (thunderport is going to become the new mac-only whatever port at this rate).

The problem I have is how it drops discrete graphics for the HD 3000. It’s a totally sensible move, one that I would not had mind at all 10 years ago. Or even 5 years ago.

But I’ve grown to expect more from my mobile hardware. I want enough beef to play Starcraft. Intel HD 3000 can play Starcraft fine…at low quality. That’s not to mention that even with its LED-lit IPS screen, the resolution is not exactly high–just like all the other laptops out there.

I guess it’s time to plunge for an Alienware M11x. But it’s ugly and thick. Com’on, computer industry! Give me a bone here. All the MBA did today is just join this list of slick but gamer-unfriendly laptops. But I guess it’s a fool’s errand to expect that from Apple.

Which is true; the gamers don’t do mac thing is still a solid rule of thumb. I’m just as disappointed with Asus, Sony, Acer, MSI, Lenovo, Samsung, etc…

Or maybe is 3000 HD really good enough? Benchmarks show that it’s on par with an nVidia M310, which is about what the old MBA had. I guess that’s fine. But Starcraft on low is … not desirable.

Back to the ASUS U31JG-A1!

http://www.baltimoremagazine.net/people/2011/07/beautiful-freaks

To be fair, Otakon is a con that used to be older and is now trending down. Most anime cons in America trends much younger; glorified proms for college age kids sometimes.

I think AX is a little older, if just by the price of admission.