For the longest time my MP3 Player was an iPod which, in all appreciation for how it changed the portable media market, is vastly inferior to some of the lesser known Portable Media Players to come out in recent years. The most significant, in my opinion, being the Cowon A3–the perfect portable media player for an anime lover such as myself. Why you ask? Format support–this thing can play just about -anything-. It can play H264 (unforunately it doesn’t yet support Main Profile) and XviD and most importantly; supports all sorts of container formats like OGM and MKV (Matroska Video). What does that all mean? Well, I’ll let you put two and two together; more than half of fansubbed anime is released in H264 format in an MKV container. Until now those have been unplayable on any form of portable media! That’s just the beginning of the A3’s awesomeness!

Popularity: 24% [?]

Reading around on the internet lately, I have seen a great deal of talk about piracy and how it “negatively effects” the economy and the companies involved. I am strongly of the opinion that such a statement is complete and absolute bogus. If anything, piracy has helped the economy and companies. I myself have downloaded plenty of things that I didn’t own. Why, might you ask, have I pirated things? Well; how else am I going to find out if it’s actually any good?

Popularity: 25% [?]

In the heart of downtown Vancouver, right on Granville St. you can find the Nerd Nirvana known as Golden Age Collectables. These guys carry more manga, anime, graphics novels and figures than you’d ever care to know existed. When I was in Vancouver on business recently I picked up a copy of NextWave here and blogged about how awesome it is. This place is jam-packed full of awesomeness of such magnitude as NextWave. They also had probably everything Neil Gaiman has ever written, including more obscure stuff like the edition of Sandman with art from Yoshitaka Amano. For those that don’t know; Mr. Amano was the concept artist for all the Final Fantasy games up until X. His brilliant artistry and unique style is well known in Otakudom.

Popularity: 10% [?]

I apologize for the lack of updates the last few days, I had business out of town and was too busy to get anything new on the site. I’m back now though, and with lots of cool things to talk about. I had went to a business conference type thing in Vancouver so, while I was there, I stopped by Golden Age Collectibles on Granville St. to peruse their impressive collection of nerd swag when I stumbled upon a copy of NextWave. I had -coughpiratedcough- a copy of this off the internet awhile back and very much enjoyed it, but it’s so hard to find things like these, so I never managed to actually buy a copy. But when I saw it sitting on that shelf there it emanated a holy grail-esque aura that I just couldn’t help but be entranced by–though my credit card balance would disagree at this point. I bought it and decided I would talk about it on here for anyone that might care to know about it.

Popularity: 8% [?]