JapanesePod101.com Blog

Update 10/21/06: Thank you for everyone who participated in the iTunes Podcast Artwork Contest! We were absolutely blown away by the number of entries and by the creative talents of our community. I would like to congratulate the winner, Rioo-san from South Korea, whose submission can be seen below. Click here to see all the entries. We're looking for you, our community members, to put your creative and artistic skills to work in designing a new, original artwork for our podcast. The winning design will become the new official artwork for our podcast page on iTunes, seen by thousands of users every day. Your artwork entry must... be an attractive and original image that represents JapanesePod101.com fit nicely with our website... Show more

Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! The JapanesePod101.com community does it again! Justin Silvestre, a just-turned-fifteen U.S. based listener, used his remarkable artistic skills to breathe life into a JapanesePod101.com story. Justin-san created an audio anime learning tool based on our Brothers, Brothers series to enhance the community's learning experience and turn his anime creation into a unique learning experience! This amazing tool allows the listener to play the line-by-line audio over and over while viewing Justin's amazing and detailed artwork. To study with this amazing piece of art, stop by JapanesePod101.com and click here! Or, cut and paste the following link into your browser: Justin-san, nante sugoi!

JapanesePod101.com was featured in a Newsweek article by Technology Correspondent Brad Stone about learning languages through podcasts. Brad-san and his wife Jennifer Granick, Executive Director at the Center for Internet and Society, came to JapanesePod101.com "headquarters" earlier this month, and we walked - actually ran - them through a usual day at JapanesePod101.com. Meeting Brad-san and Jennifer-san, two extremely down to earth people for all they have accomplished, has been one of the highlights of the entire project. They made our day by sharing stories of using Japanese they learned from our podcasts and how the resulting experiences added to their trip. Brad-san and Jennifer-san, hontō ni arigatō gozaimasu! For anyone... Show more

Update: We have postponed the server upgrade until further notice. We hope to re-schedule it as soon as possible and will post a new maintenance window when it becomes available. In an effort to improve the performance, speed, and reliability of our site and to support our growing community of listeners, we will be upgrading our server environment this weekend. A maintenance window has been scheduled for Sunday, August 27th between 12am and 12pm EST. During this time, the JapanesePod101.com site will be available intermittently. We will do our best to minimize any disruptions or downtime. Please accept our apologies in advance for this inconvenience. Thank you for all your support. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu. Eran ... Show more

Mina-san, Are you from Brazil? Do you listen to JapanesePod101.com? If so, we need your help. Our good friend Filipe-san from the Brazilian newspaper, "O Estado de S.Paulo" is writing a piece on learning languages with podcasts. He would like to interview some Brazilian listeners for his article. Please email us at contatcus@japanesepod101.com if you would like to participate. We’ll forward your information on to Filipe-san. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu. JapanesePod101.com

Mina-san, We have some big news! We - JapanesePod101.com, our subscribers, our community, our listeners, everyone who makes what we do possible - have all been nominated for the 2006 Podcast Awards in the Education category! The 2006 Podcast Awards contest is a second annual event that recognizes the best podcasters in the world by allowing the people (listeners and podcasters) to nominate, and then vote for their favorite podcast. Thank you so much for everyone who nominated JapanesePod101.com and provided all of US with this opportunity! Voting opens at 00:01 HST on Friday, July 28th, 2006 and closes at 23:59 HST on Friday, August 11th, 2006. Each person can vote once a day in each category. Contest award winners will be... Show more

皆さん、in order to improve the level of content in our podcasts, we are switching to a bi-weekly newscast on Saturdays. We feel this move will benefit the content of all our podcasts, as this will allow us to concentrate more on each individual podcast. Thank you again for your understanding. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.

As we mentioned in today's news, we recently received a very interesting email from Jimmy-san in Virginia. Imagine driving down the road, listening to the latest JapanesePod101.com podcast (what else would you be listening to), when all of the sudden you notice something familiar on the license plate in front of you. You squint trying to make it out, and then it hits you - JPOD101. If this were to actually happen, you would be looking at Jimmy-san's car. That's right, he actually got JPOD101 on his license plate! As promised, here is the picture of the license plate! Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!

Hello everyone, just a quick post to let everyone know that the armadillo brigade is on to bigger and more prestigious prey. This time they have decided to bypass us and take down libsyn! While brash and ambitious, the early results seem to indicate libsyn has also underestimated their strength, quickness and the power in numbers factor. We're currently sharing intelligence with libsyn, but at the moment there is no estimated time of libsyn correcting the issue. We're thinking hours here, and we'll keep you posted. Update: It appears that libsyn has rectified their problems. Please let us know if you are still unable to access our media files.