Expanding our networks, and making your anime logging a more social experience, and not the MAL Updater crap as it is now.
Introduction (quoted from Melative):
melative is a web-application/service which focuses on media (and media contexts). It provides an interface for users to catalog their experiences, interact with titles, and find other users with similar interests. For developers, the API allows a simplistic, RESTful interface to meta-information resources on media-titles, creators, and more.
In short,
Melative is just a great tool to share your experiences (and keep track of them in an awesomely organized list). You can keep track and log whatever you want, from anime, manga, music, games, all the way to events. Plus, it’s easy to use and much more interactive. The “beta” part just means that more features are yet to come, because it’s all stable already and the minor stuff needs to be restored.
Here are some comparisons and how Melative has all the features integrated into one for all your needs.
The Twitter aspect
A picture is worth a thousand words. Since I refuse to text flood again, a visual outlook:
The stream.
For those of you familiar with Twitter, it’s just like it. Forget tweets, here come melas. Only with more features than ever. Still got the stream/replies and the such, settings to modify your profile, but the feature that really grabbed me here was the Ping.FM feature, which lets you integrate with Twitter and post your updates from Melative. Kill two birds with one stone! Neato.
Wait, there’s more.
The sidebar.
Nothing like the sidebar to make it more Twitter-friendly and friendly in general. Friends list, mela’d categories, and most recently mela’d topics. Anime/gaming/manga/events, you name it. A picture for each event too.
The MAL aspect
I don’t even want to say that because it can be much better in its own way.
The experience.
As you can see, I like the list here than on MAL better since it provides a more detailed outlook of your list. Status updates, visual preview, the airing time, and all the anime in a nice list format too. Love it.
The anime details page.
Premiere date, genre, theme, airing schedule, staff cast, OP/ED, and the works. What’s not to like? Plus on the right, you can see the stream which has the latest chat on the topic. Interconnectivity for the win!
So why join?
…Have you even read this? Everything’s all in one neat package. Access new titles, rage about it, log it, and get informed about it. Plus you get a nice season list.
Fine…I’ll join. How?
Easy! Just follow these simple steps.
1. Register here.
2. After that, you can login here.
3. You’ll be brought to the stream. You can access it from the top bar.
4. Start following some people via their profiles, such as Ryan A (creator), mellow_bunny, natsuneko, and me, of course.
5. Here are some simple commands to start you off with:
/watched /an/AnimeNameHere/episode/##(episode number). to log anime.
You can also use /read /ma/MangaName/chapter/##. for manga logging.
Input those commands in the stream and you’re good to go. It’ll show up on your profile. Make sure you leave the period at all times.
Upcoming feature some time this week will have auto parsing of the title; thus, you just need to type in something like Bakemonogatariso it becomes/an/ Bakemonogatari/automatically…so if you type Bakemonotagari 5: , it’ll be parsed as /an/ Bakemonogatari/5. All the more user-friendly. You can always ask for more help/get used to more commands once you register.
Great alternatives besides the web interface:
- The Firefox extension
- The standalone
- twhirl integration (use laconi.ca and input username@melative.com as the username and your password as the password)
So I invite you to join this one of a kind experience. Just try it out for yourself and see how you like it!
Speaking of Melative, it released this great new plugin which parses the titles as a popup with some information on it. You can see this in action with the newly integrated feature on the sidebar, “Fall @ A Glance”. I had in mind as soon as it came out. Basically, it’s a rotating image script which has the fall lineup integrated with the script so you can get some info from there right on the spot. Try this out for yourself! Give credit though.
So that’s my rant there for Melative. Now you may be wondering,
WTF IS THIS TWITTER YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT!?
Some terms I give it:
- Simplistic social stream
- Mini MSN
- A lot of fun.
Not going to delve into this much, but Twitter/Melative helped make the blogging experience better. You can socialize with fellow bloggers and see what’s happening in the otakuscape. You can also share your thoughts, opinions, and likes/dislikes here.
Long story short:
- It’s a great social experience
- It enhances the blogging experience, and
- Once in a while you can find something that will make you ROFLCOPTER.
I think without these great sites, I would be a leeching, non-social, unorganized bum. And much less chance a frequent blogger, either. You can see how to get started on all of this by jusuchin85’s great post/intro on it.
Just register, and start following a lot of people. Eventually, they’ll start following you back! I will. Here’s my page if you’re lost.
You won’t regret joining these recommends. I knew I didn’t. If you still want to hide in your shell and update MAL like a robot, fine. Didn’t say I tried, at least.
Hope I see some of you guys on Melative/Twitter soon.
Ah, thanks for the recommendation on my post, Sei-kun!
Back to the topic of Melative: oh man, this could be even better than MAL! Maybe more of the community side of things and since there’s a Twitter-like function, that is an additional plus too! But how about the quantity of series? I mean, is there a library of series about?
I’ll be joining in to Melative in a while! ^^
.-= jusuchin85´s last blog ..Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 EP 04 =-.
@jusuchin85 That’ll be awesome. Yep, a library of series awaits you. Dates all the way back to the 1900s or something, bro.
There is not even a MAL Updater on a Mac… except the command line crap… but the way MAL is acting lately, Melative could be a promising alternative…
Also, I use Twitter alot and I make alot of updates which also updates my Facebook Status (My Facebook Profile is not viewable to the public)
I’ve been thinking about joining Melative for some time now, and this post was that one push I need to actually do it.
@chikorita157: Then I definitely recommend Melative. One of those solutions should work on a Mac.
@DK_Eternity: Good for you.
huff, registered there at melative just now. kinda lost at first xD
Okay, I’ll bite.
But those commands seem like a hassle to type in… >_>
Note to self:
Add new melative goal “popup instructions to step users through” aka tutorial mode.
The commands can take a little to get used to, for most context I must note that you don’t have to say if it’s an episode or a chapter. For instance with anime the default sub-context is always episode. So you can send a message that just says:
“/watched /an/FLCL/3. Man I loved this episode! It was so much fun!”
I mean it’s up to you if you want to specify a season or just leave the sub-context blank that’s fine too.
Anyway thanks for the post dude ;P! Back to the stream~!
While I admit that I’m rather intrigued, the syntax just hurt my eyes.
New feature being coded as we speak. Soon you just have to type in the name/episode of the anime to have it parsed. You just need the /watched tag then.
SEINIME!!!! Awesome post! Seriously so cheery after reading it! I think you’ve been through it all on melative with the stream function too (remember that first crazy xul app lolol).
Thank you so much! The only way I can show my appreciation is to keep my ears open for what you and everyone like/want to see happen on Melative. We’ll keep progressing, figuring out this micro-expression blogging interaction.
As far as MAL alternative, it’s getting there (lacks the intricate time/episode logging stats), the main advantage is the open API which will allow ppl to build even cooler stuff (someone could probably work stream and meta data to do the per-episode things). Things are possible. It will get better.
Twitter is great for what it does, and the huge load of data it deals with. I’m amazed, and inspired.
The journey continues!
@msdzero @Shin @53RG10 It gets easier once you register. =)
@mellow_bunny No problem! Also guys you can also use the Quick Add function so no need to input all those commands.
@Ryan A Been planning this for a while and just never had time to finish ~_~ It will get better, I can see it. Soon > MAL! Open source ftw.
[...] I’ve heard of this new service named Melative through IRC and did a quick search..the site I found didn’t quite catch my interest, mainly because it didn’t clearly state what it was really for…or I failed to understand exactly what it’s for… To be honest, I left the page a few minutes later. But then I heard about Melative once again through Twitter and asked a bit more from someone who knows how to use it…who directed me to his own post. [...]
Quite informative and melative looks better than MAL already, but I’ll probably get around to setting it all up after my summer school finals. =/
I’ve had a Melative account for months now but only knew a gist of it. Thanks for you post, know I’m actually more informed about Melative. Hehe xD
Well now, I made an account, but I don’t know if I’ve officially bitten just yet.
. Another reason why I still like MAL so far is that you can see a clean-cut list of how many episodes they’ve watched of a series on the list. The anime watched list for Melative is a lot nicer looking and all, but I can’t view what episodes I’ve seen out of how many episodes in the series like MAL. Minor nitpick, but it’s like an itch I can’t scratch.
It’s promising, but I think I’m gonna wait until the place gets a bit more polished before fully choosing it over MAL. The biggest advantage would obviously being able to socialize with the community as you update your lists and whatnot with the twitter-ish device, but I’m not very social as it is no it’s not a big up for me
I don’t know, I just think trying to combine all of these things into one big thing makes it feel too cluttered and stuff. I like having my Twitter, MAL, Backloggery, etc. seperate and whatnot, but maybe I’ll warm up to it after some time.
And yeah, I’ll admit, relaying on tags to make updates for your anime and various things is a hassle.
Quick question though, how would one change the status of a series they’re watching? Say I finished watching Bakemonogatari, then how would I change it from “Current” to “Complete”?
@Reltair @kirapika Can’t wait to see you guys there!
@Tamad Sweet, thanks for the feedback. Just update it and it’ll overwrite. /completed this time.
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