I simply go by the name of jrharbort (no, not Junior) and I’ve been a very happy member of the Vocaloid community for almost 4 years now.

Thanks to rather unusual and funny circumstances, I have been invited by Erik to be a contributor to this site. The details of which can be read in the comments of the previous post.  A surprising twist indeed, but a happy one.

Starting today, I’ll be taking on the responsibility of  a news writer for the site. Thank you very much to the people of Mikufan for the opportunity, and I hope everyone else watching will enjoy what I have to contribute.

Just don’t touch the leeks, and we should all get along just fine. =P

Improving buffering speeds with a Japanese VPN

With the recent changes on the latest version of nicovideo.jp many users might have noticed that response speeds and buffering times seem to have highly increased.

The reason for this is that the videos are now partly buffered/stores on a different server than before. This server has a much worse route (read: connection) with some of the American Tier-3 providers. This means that no matter of your internet connection, the video will load much, much slower than you might be used to from before.

This problem can be bypassed currently by using a Japanese Proxy, or better a Japanese VPN. Most VPNs are commercial services, but are available over at vpntraffic for as low as $10 for three months. Using a Japanese VPN will make it almost as if you were actually browsing websites from Japan. Your IP will be Japanese and all websites will see you as if you were browsing from Japan directly. Of course the data is still being routed back to wherever you are, but the routing paths with a proxy or VPN are much better than the current default Nicovideo servers.

In our testing the buffering speeds on a popular video at primetime have gone up from 40kB/s to up to 1300kB/s.

Using a download tool

For those with more patience, who do not mind watching a video with delays, there is always the option to download a video directly instead of attempting to watch it while buffering. You can use the popular Firefox extension NicoFox to download any video or song from NicoNico to your computer. With NicoFox, you can download videos first and then watch them without interruption from your computer. NicoFox even saves the comments for each video, so you are not missing out on that either.

Summary

• Improve buffering speed directly with a Japanese VPN
• Use NicoFox to permanently store videos on your computer

We hope that these steps help you to enjoy viewing Nico videos without much interruption again. If you know of any other ways to get around the current problems, let us know in the comments below!

For me the year has been a busy one. I regret not having had enough time to actively improve the state of mikufan.com. However, I want give my best this year. The site admin, too, seems to be busy, nevertheless I encourage you to visit the site once in the while in case everything gets running again…

Hello Mikufans!

It has been a long while since this site has been last updated. There is a long story behind this, but let’s make it short! In a nutshell: The original owner of the domain has disappeared and does not seem to be having any plans of returning to this project. Therefore the domain is now under new ownership. Things have been cleaned up, updated and everything is online and running again.

By now Hatsune Miku has grown into such a popular and widespread character that running this site alone can be quite a big task. With the site back online, we are looking to get things running and keep you guys updated about the latest Hatsune Miku news as soon as possible. This is exactly where we need some help. Are you a hardcore Hatsune Miku fan? Do you keep up-to-date with Miku related news and gossip? If you think you got what it takes to write news for us, get in touch!

During the next few weeks we will be opening a Hatsune Miku fan forum. We will be looking for some moderators as well!

If you are interested, please get in touch and send a few lines about who you are and how you can help to the email address shown in the picture above.

Via Canned Dogs (head over there for more infos)

The Hatsune Miku T-Shirt raffle will finally have the results and winners announced soon. I had some technical problems due to the lack of a working printer and had to think of a different but equally fair method of doing the raffle. Regarding the raffle a lot of people had been asking where one can buy the Hatsune Miku shirts. To clear some things up I have added a Hatsune Miku product page, which you can find in the top navigation menu.

Also, we are still looking for help regarding one or more new sister sites! If you interested in the other Vocaloid characters like the Kagamine twins or Kaito and would be willing to write about them in a similar style to Mikufan.com, please contact us directly at info@[nospam]mikufan.com! Obviously remove the [nospam] part.

This one is a pretty high quality series and a really good model, so go ahead and check it out!

The model Nekokosan had already done some previous Hatsune Miku cosplays which we did not cover here yet.

For more high quality cosplay and pictures check out Kirinon’s Blog with new posts every now and then!

Also please take my apologies for the delay with the T-Shirt raffle. I’m having some technical problems with printing the names. The raffle will begin very soon.

For now enjoy the rest of the weekend and don’t stare at Nekokosan for too long!

Are you in love with the twins? Are you totally obsessed about them? You would love to decorate your room with them and stare at plastic figurines 24/7? Great! We need you.

Mikufan.com is looking for someone who is in love with the Kagamine twins and feels like the world should find out more about them.

To keep things short, we are currently looking for one to two dedicated news posters about the Kagamine Rin and Ren twins.

What do you need and what will you do?

You should have a broadband internet connection since your primary task will be downloading videos from NicoNicoDouga and re-uploading them to YouTube. Instructions on how to do so will be provided to the chosen authors.

Besides that there is not much to do, you will have freedom to blog about them on a Mikufan.com sister site dedicated to the twins. You will have freedom to write about whatever you like as long as you keep the video blog posts on a daily to weekly base and have all posts related to Kagamine Rin and/or Ren.

If you are interested and have what it takes please drop us a line at info@[nospam]mikufan.com.

Obviously remove the [nospam] from the e-mail address.

We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Here are some details on the upcoming T-Shirt raffle. Please check the YouTube description for more details.