Happy Sunday everyone! It’s been a really long week as we prepared for the new forum design. It’s now up so go take a look. We hope that this new design will be easier for you to search through and participate in our forums. You can read more about the redesign here.

Getting down to business, here’s this week’s wrap up:
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Tags: News, ningin, redesign, weekly, wrap up

Most likely you need to refresh your browser cache by pressing F5 or use a forceful refresh by pressing CTRL+F5.

You’ll find the new layout of the forums to be dramatically different from what you’re accustomed to seeing on typical forum websites. Just about every major forum software uses the typical “table row” format found on 95% of websites (a number I pulled out of my guessing hat but probably correct). Why fix what’s not broken you ask? Well it’s more like trying to be better by not staying satisfied. The main advantage of this new layout is that you can view all the latest activities — newest topics and newest replies — all at once. Of course we didn’t completely get rid of the “table row” format as we still use forum categories to organize topics which you can easily click to see topics in their individual categories. So really, you have the best of both worlds.
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Tags: firefox, forums, ningin, old boy, open search, peppero day, redesign, remake, search, upgrades

Hope you guys enjoyed your week as it was a very exciting one. I would like to congratulate President-Elect Barrack Obama for winning, we’re all looking forward to change.

Here’s this week’s wrap up.
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Tags: asian, barrack obama, election, News, ningin, weekly wrap up

Just in case you missed it, every Sunday we’re going to do a weekly wrap-up of the most popular/interesting news that you can find here on Ningin. The news accumulated below will be from all areas of Ningin including blog and social news.

Be sure to check them all out and tell us what you have to say!
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Tags: ningin, weekly, wrap up

Phase One of the Ningin redesign. Please enjoy the new Community Page!

Ningin doesn’t have a home page per se like most websites. Rather an equivalent that we call the Community Page which takes a snapshot of all the different things happening within Ningin at a given time. It was natural for us to start with this section first. The goal of this redesign was to introduce a cleaner layout and more intuitive navigation. I hope you can agree that we made a big step towards accomplishing that goal.

You might have to refresh your browser by pressing F5 for everything to work properly.

As mentioned before, a new design was only part of the new Ningin. There are many more features and functionally in the pipeline. This phase of the upgrades not only changes the Community Page, but adds the foundations for those new features which will be added in later as they are developed and tested. Every one of our current applications, Forums, Blogs, Social News, and Profiles, will receive major upgrades in features and functionality. When this upgrade is all said and done, we will be at Ningin 2.0 =)
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Tags: Design, firefox, ie6, ningin, upgrade

As some of you already know (many of you actually don’t), we’re in the processing of a complete make-over for Ningin. Perhaps it’s more fitting to say Ningin will experience a major upgrade in both design and features. Every single area of Ningin will look different. Every single application (social news, blog, forums, profiles) will have new features. Plus, we’re adding one new application! The tentative date for all of this is in about 2-3 weeks. Some site downtime will happen (it’s also an infrastructure upgrade). Most likely this will happen in phases, so the whole upgrade might last as long as a month.

While this upgrade will have many different focuses, the main one is something I’ve stressed about a lot on Ningin, Community. There will be a lot more things you can do to interact with the users on Ningin. There will be a lot more interactions with other Asian media websites. Probably most importantly, there will a lot more interactions in the offline world as well with event happenings and charity organizations. The latter isn’t going to happen right away, but it is a major goal of ours.

Looking back, it’s hard to believe that Ningin has only been on this path since March of this year. The amount of growth in users and content has definitely been great! Who knows where we’ll be if we continue at this pace.

Tags: Design, downtime, features, new, ningin, upgrade

You know that hikko guy that has watched every episode of Lucky Star at least 10 times? Yea, that’s me. That all-too-spirited guy in 1st year Japanese that knows words like kakushigo but still can’t order cold soba from the joshikousei waitress? That’s me too. That 7′6″ dude on the Rockets who routinely puts up 20 and 10? Naw, that’s Yao, but hanging out with T-Mac on Jimmy Kimmel sounds pretty fun.

What’s up Ningin, I’m Jerry Chen, the new blogger from San Francisco. I’m big on anime and games and basketball and jpop, most to an obsessive degree. I think last night I had a dream where I was just chillin at the neighborhood shouten, then some girl cradling a bag of taiyaki ran into me then dragged me into some restau… wait… never mind. I tell ya, too much anime and you start wishing those anime eye contacts would come standard with every girl~
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Tags: anime, basketball, blogger, games, japan, jerry chen, jpop, manga, new, ningin, san fransico

Hello everybody! I’m Erik, a new blogger here! Introductions have never been my thing, so I’ll make this short. I live in New England, in Connecticut. I’ve been into Asian media for quite a few years and I’ve come across only a few people who were familiar with Asian entertainment until just recently. I feel like it’s getting a bit more recognition in other parts of the world, and hopefully by being a part of this site I can take part in it, no matter how big or small! I started out with Japanese music, where I liked the typical popular artists such as Ayumi Hamasaki, Utada Hikaru, Namie Amuro, and Olivia Lufkin, etc, but that was it. I began to venture into other types of Asian media such as dramas and other forms of entertainment, my obsession as of late being K-pop, with groups and singers like The Wonder Girls, Brown Eyed Girls, Lee Hyori, SHINee, and others.
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Tags: Asian culture, Ayumi Hamasaki, blogger, brown eyed girls, kpop, lee hyori, namie amuro, new, ningin, olivia lufkin, shinee, utada hikaru, wonder girls, Youtube

Thank you to those that entered the Ningin-NY Anime Festival Cosplay Photo Contest. We were amazed by your costumes and enthusiasm. Galleries from all three days of New York Anime Festival are online now. We divided the galleries by Day 1 (Friday), Day 2, and Day 3 to make it a bit easier for you to find yourself. Don’t forget to check out other photos from the event.

We’ve gone through over 500 contest entries and chosen 50 finalists. It was quite a debate about who should make the top 50. We gave preference to those that made their own outfits and those that posed well. Well that’s done and now it’s time for you to vote for the winners! Voting will be open until 12pm (EST), Sunday, October 5, 2008 for all registered Ningin users. Each Ningin user can vote for one favorite costume so make sure you check them all out before voting! The winners will be announced 12pm (EST), Monday, October 6, 2008.

The top three cosplayers will be profiled and interviewed by our Ningin bloggers. The overall best cosplayer will also receive two super exclusive tickets to the private premiere of the Megaman Movie and two tickets to Comic Con next February.

Good luck and thank you for stopping by the Ningin.com booth at the New York Anime Festival!
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Tags: comic con, contest, cosplay, gallery, megaman movie, new york anime festival, ningin, nyaf, photoshoot, prizes, winner

It makes me so sad to write this as it is the last day of the New York Anime Festival. It was my very first time at an anime convention and it was an overall great experience. I can’t wait to attend another.

Recapping on today, it was easier than the previous 2 days as it was more relaxed (thank God) which left a lot of room to socialize with fellow attendees. I met a lot of new people in addition to running into friends from the anime community. I want to give a shout out to “Saka”, our booth neighbor TM Revolution, John and Jayelle from Otakuden, Zlade from Anime Meetup, Ichi-P and old friends from Cosplay Day at Kinokuniya; it was great meeting you guys.

About the Cosplay Photoshoot Contest, we did take a ton of photos again which are all uploaded to the galleries. I want to thank all the participants; you guys are amazing and I wish you luck! Details of the contest voting and winner will be posted later. Also, I will be posting coverage later on about individual cosplayers.

So, I hope you guys enjoyed yourself as much as I did. Here’s some photos from Day 3:

View Full Galleries: NYAF 2008 - Cosplay Photoshoot Contest Day 1 - Cosplay Photoshoot Contest Day 2 - Cosplay Photoshoot Contest Day 3
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Tags: anime, anime meetup, convention, cosplay, cosplay day, cosplay photoshoot contest, ichi-p, jacob javits, kinokuniya, manga, new york anime festival, ningin, otakuden, saka