This WORLD features all official updates from our network.
- Created By Adam
Sakura-Con 2010, Part 1: The Ashton Show!
Well, I'm back.
Sakura-Con was pretty good in all this year; long lines and more of the same from the dealer's room, granted. Still, if nothing else, I'd have to say the company was excellent.
Case in point: The Amazing Panda and the CORGI which we hunted down in the Red Lion Hotel. Here's but a taste of the videos to be officially posted thus far, featuring Gail the Panda, Ashton the Corgi, and a whole slew of Canadians affiliated with folks affiliated with theO:
Admit it. If they had made the meet-up, these two alone would have been worth the time taken to come out.
Videos from the official meet-up on Saturday shall be up tomorrow. And believe me, it's good.
theOtaku.com Anime Podcast VII - Ep. 24
The name you search for is Raymond Burr as the American reporter covering Godzilla's 1954 tour of fun. Also, Batou has an aneurysm and it's great.
Music - Forces by Hirasawa Susumu from Berserk
The following podcast may contain some coarse language that may offend some listeners. Discretion is advised.
For a link to Anime Pulse's theOtaku.com World, go here.
For a link to The Watercooler World, go here.
And finally, you can find Ichigo's travel log over at the Anime Pulse website (under the "features" tab). He's gettin' some crazy adventures over there. Go read. Right after the podcast.
Obligatory Instructions:
There are two ways to keep up with this podcast. First, you can just visit us weekly and listen to it by clicking the "play" button in each podcast news post. Second, if you use iTunes, simply open it up and then click here. This will subscribe you. You can also click "Advanced" at the top, select "Subscribe to Podcast" and type in the following URL:
http://theotaku.libsyn.com/rss
Once subscribed, you'll get each week's episode automatically delivered, whether you visit us or not.
So let's start! To listen to our podcast, click the play button above. You can also download the mp3 directly by clicking here.
Contest Winners
We're pleased to announce the winners of the Tsubasa and Bamboo Blade DVD giveaway; theblackERspot and babydensity. If you haven't had a chance to see them yet then take a moment to check out the beautiful winning entries.
The Princes by theblackERspot.
Bamboo Blade by babydensity.
Congratulations to our winners and special thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in the contest. 
Sakura-Con 2010: One Last Surprise . . .
Alright, so remember when I lied about Panda not being at the con?
Well, the lie has officially turned into a half-truth.
Panda, Panda's husband, and the CORGI will be floating around Sakura-Con and the local area Friday evening, probably around 8pm and after. They'll just be chilling a bit, taking pictures and the like, and probably won't be too involved in the con itself (especially since you can't really take a dog into these places).
If you're feeling lucky with your hunting, the best potential places to find the elusive Panda would either be the main lobby of the Red Lion hotel (about 3 or 4 blocks away from the convention center), just outside the convention center itself, or at the parks around that area.
So if you see a jovial Japanese woman, a tall, probably bearded man, and a corgi with a red collar... chances are you have just found the elusive Panda!
Something to think about. Otherwise, we'll see you all at 3pm on Saturday! If you see Valkyria Chronicles cosplay, you're probably on the right track for that one. See ya then!
Three Feature Updates
We're pleased to announce three highly requested updates to features here at theOtaku.
Update #1: Removal of the flood warning from Chat. A lot of our members like to create a room in chat for the purpose of role-playing. However the system is designed to prevent members from putting too much information in quickly and would often kick them out of the chat room. So now all of you can play your games in chat without worrying about being kicked out by the auto mod system. 
Update #2: Increased Privacy for world posts. Many of our members have worlds that are for their friends only or just for personal use. With the recent change to how updates are displayed in the backroom, this meant that anyone subscribed to them could see the title even if they couldn't read the post. To help keep those worlds private, as they rightly should be, if a world is set to "Just Friends" or "Just Me" then other people who are subscribed to you can't see the title of its posts in their backroom.
Update #3: Increased front page coverage for artists. As many of you know, if someone has more than one popular fan art, wallpaper or e-cards up, all of them can end up displayed on the front page. Since we have so many talented artists a filter was added to the system so that a member can only have one item in each section (wallpapers, fan art, e-cards, etc.) at any time on the front page. By doing this people still get their art displayed but other artists won't be left out if someone has more than one item up at the same time.
Special thanks go out to all of our members who took the time to let us know about the changes they would like to see.
