Cablevision and ABC 7’s parent company, Disney have been duking it out over contract pricing.  It’s been a total mud slinging fest on both sides.  Cablevision currently pays 200 Million annually for ABC’s programming and, according to Cablevision, Disney is asking for an additional 40 Million on top of that per year.  Cablevision’s argument is that is a hefty increase when ABC is offering no new programming or functionality, and that the price is too high not to have to increase rates for Cablevision’s subscribers.  They also go on to say that ABC is trying to cover lost ad revenue due to a bad economy.  Disney, on the other hand, says Cablevision “pockets” fees from customers and that Cablevision is more concerned with profits than their customers.

In all honesty, the whole thing oozes with corporate greed on both sides but I have to say that Cablevision’s point rings truer with me.  ABC Disney is able to broadcast for free, and you can view ABC live without a cable provider with a digital antennae.  So, ad revenue is down because companies aren’t spending as much.  Unemployment is at an all-time high since the Depression, meaning consumers have less extra to spend.  In this model, ABC would demand 40 million more per year to that lost revenue, which was lost largely because of a terrible economic downturn and rather than suck it up like the rest of us, ABC Disney would have the consumer pay.

To Disney’s argument that Cablevision is pocketing customer’s fees, I have two points:

• Coporate structures are designed to make a profit, and Disney isn’t fooling anyone that they aren’t doing the same thing.  Disney is a powerhouse in the entertainment industry, owning ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel, Theme Parks, etc…  They are rolling in profits.
• Since creating its Optimum Triple Play 7 years ago, Cablevision hasn’t raised fees on it’s digital phone service or internet.  Their claim is that it doesn’t cost them anything programmatically and they value their customers.  True or not, they’re saying the right things to me.

The waging war came to an ugly head yesterday when ABC Disney made good on its promise to pull ABC off the air at midnight 3/7/10 if the conflict was not resolved.  When I woke up yesterday morning, we had a looping message from Cablevision where ABC 7 would normally be.  Fo 3 million customers in the New York City area that meant no Red Carpet, no Oscars.  In efforts to console customers, Cablevision made an offer to subscribers - go to the On Demand store and order any movie on 3/7/10 only for free.

Sure enough come Oscar time (8pm EST) ABC 7 was still off the air and the drama lingered.  However, service was restored at 8:55pm EST, just in time for the first award to be handed out.  Just like a knight in shining armor, ABC Disney came to the rescue of 3 million subscribers that were being deprived of the glitz and glamor of the Acamemy Awards.  Yeah, not how I see it…  ABC Disney used Cablevision customers as pawns in a game of chess against Cablevision in order to meet a ranson demand.  They even urged customers to switch providers just to stick it to Cablevision.  I for one don’t appreciate being toyed with in such a way, and in an act of defiance didn’t turn the TV on at all last night.  I know I’m only one viewer and can’t change ratings, but I did what little I could to voice my displeasure in an outrageous battle.

Question now is, how far can I really take my protest when Disney is everywhere?

I had the distinct pleasure of being at the Muse show at MSG last night.  It’s the second time I’ve seen them there, and just like the first show, they amazed me.  The sheer explosion of music and technology was an assault on the senses, bringing out the best of my deeply geeky appreciation for both.  Before taking the stage, there was a guest appearance by Matt Pinfield looking to get the crowd amped up while cautioning audience members to be sure not to miss the moment when they took the stage.  Let me tell you, he wasn’t kidding. Playing the waiting game before a show always has a bit of excitement and anxiety as you just want to see the band come out as you get swept away in the moment.  As we waited for Muse to take the stage we were left looking at a stage with 3 floor-to-ceiling columns covered with a fabric scrim.  Not too visually appealing in the state they were in, but you couldn’t help wonder what part they would play come show time…Matt Bellamy is a rock god, and it couldn’t be more fitting that once the lights dimmed, the columns turned into three buildings with staircases with the band members coming down the steps, as if from heaven.  The aha moment came when the screens fell and revealed the band members on separate raised square platforms, suspended mid-arena with large columns projecting each of them on all four sides while they opened with “Uprising” from their latest album.  There wasn’t a bad seat in the house.

Hands down, this was the most technologically advanced show I’ve ever seen, (and I’ve been to many) incorporating a rotating platform for the drums, laser light shows, a piano designed to display lighted patterns based on the notes played, and steamy chutes of colored smoke, to name a few aspects.  Always the showmen, Muse puts on the best rock show money can buy today.   The only thing better than the amazing visual displays, was the music itself.  The live stuff from them is even better than what you get on the album.  By the time they played “Hysteria”, the crowd was losing their voices from screaming, ” ‘CAUSE I WANT IT NOW!!” and after 17 songs ending with “Unnatural Selection” you were left wondering where did the time go?  It seemingly flew by and suddenly it was 10:45pm in NYC.  They returned for a 3-song encore, bringing the house down with a thrashing finale of “Knights of Cydonia”.

Perhaps the most impressive part of all though, was the audience itself.  I can’t tell you how many shows I’ve been to where half the people were rabid fans and the other half were just there to have a night on the town.  Everyone in attendance last night was totally and undeniably a massive fan of Muse.  Between the glitz of Matt Bellamy’s silver sparkle suit and shoes (and his Flobee haircut), his amazing musicality, stunning visuals and a totally awesome audience Muse rocked the house at MSG last night and I had an amazing time.

Three Google executives were convicted this week in Milan of privacy violations surrounding a video that was posted to Google Video in 2006 showing an Italian boy with Down syndrome being bullied.  While it is a shame that the internet is often used to debase others, are these executives really to blame?  They had no knowledge of this video being uploaded, and they weren’t the ones to upload it.  It is an interesting and powerful notion though that one case of internet public ridicule possesses potential to open the floodgates on internet policing.  To date, the internet has been able to exist on a Free Speech basis.  Problems arise however when countries outside the US don’t share the same notions of the freedoms we sometimes take for granted.  It seems though that there are two main problems with the scenario posed by this case:

• How do you police the internet?
• Why aren’t the individuals that uploaded the video (or performed the bullying) being held accountable?

So, how do you police the internet?  Is there someone that scans every piece of material before it’s posted?  Are there bots that periodically scan and remove undesirable content?  Who sets the laws that govern the policing?  The answer is simple - without radically changing how we use the internet, you don’t.  Google even pulled the video as soon as they were notified to do so, fully cooperating with the Italian authorities.  What more could they have done, really?In reality, the focus should be less on Google, who was only a vehicle for some bullies to continue ridiculing a poor kid with Down syndrome and more on  the actual kids who were involved from start to finish.Seems that this whole matter is mostly a witch hunt on Google, and other sites like it, by an angry mob who feels they’ve been wronged.  This kid was definitely wronged, but Google’s not responsible for what happened to him.  Let’s hope that this case proves to be an isolated incident and not a gateway to similar court cases.

A few months back we were all surprised by the news that Disney had swooped in and bought Marvel Comics in one of those deals in which phrases like “corporate synergy” and “leveraging assets” get thrown around a whole lot.  Supposedly the idea would be that Disney would benefit from exploiting, I mean leveraging, the Marvel properties through their innumerable media channels, and Marvel would benefit by becoming another cog in a mulitnational media conglomerate.  At worst, we could hope that Marvel would get the Pixar treatment and would be left mostly along to do what they do best (which right now is to make comics and some pretty decent movies).

Upon further review, it really wasn’t that surprising at all, considering that Marvel’s chief rival, DC Comics, has been operating under a similar arrangement, being part of the Time Warner empire for some 40+ years.  What is a bit surprising, though, is that DC themselves have decided to follow Marvel’s blueprint, at least pre-Disney, for best utilizing their own creative resources in order to produce both comics and movies that are of top quality and are somewhat synchronized with each other.  The details were announced last week and you can read more about it in this New York Times article.  The short of it is that they’re handing the creative keys over to Dan DiDio, Jim Lee and Geoff Johns in promoting all of them to executive-level positions, in a move that similar to Marvel Comics setup with Dan Buckley (Publisher) and Joe Quesada (Editor-In-Chief) that seems to work pretty well.

The thing is, this makes a great deal of sense, to let the people who know the most about the characters and the comics themselves, and what they mean to the world at large, run the show.  But see, that isn’t how most corporations work, the creative folks are often viewed suspiciously, and the assumptions is that they don’t know the first thing about business (although it is true that a fair amount of them don’t).

The other thing it seems that DC has learned from Marvel is that they themselves own a huge library of properties, many of which could be made into lucrative movies (the holy grail in the comic book world).  Not every character is a Batman or a Superman or a Spiderman, but as the Iron Man movie recently taught everyone, it’s possible to start up a successful franchise with a (slightly) lesser-known character, at least to non-comic book readers.  And so it seems that DC is hoping to emulate Iron Man’s success with the Green Lantern.

Personally, I’m a much bigger Marvel fan (even after spending 5 years working there) than a DC fan, but I think, in the end, only good things can happen if both companies emulate the success of the other (and hopefully avoid their mistakes as well).

The term Social Media is really odd to me.  The notion of socializing (ie: Social Event, Ice Cream Social, Pot Luck Social, etc) has always carried to notion of face to face time.  So I find it funny that we’ve dubbed sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Linked In as “social networks”.  Personally I feel the need to connect with people face to face even less if I am online and up to date on who is sick, who has a new job or whose kid is potty training.  Social Media has taken something away from the actual socializing part of networking and friendship.  Where I’m thrilled to have to opportunity to connect with past classmates, past coworkers, like minded individuals and new customers (and find value in it), I do think it’s important to get out of the house and shake a hand in person once in a while too.

Last night I was able to marry my “Social Networking” with my “Socializing” efforts by attending a Webgrrls International networking event.  Webgrrls International is an organization that connects women who are focused on augmenting their career through the use of technology.  Remarkably, Webgrrls has made a name for itself by using both an online community and face time events to connect.  I was impressed with the variety of women in attendance as well as the opportunities that presented themselves.  Of course, an added benefit to attending an event focused mainly on career minded women, is that there was an overwhelming sense of gears grinding in effort  to help everyone find solutions to their unique problems.  In all honesty, this event was very different from other networking events I’ve attended and it really exceeded my expectations.  The Webgrrls team does a fabulous job of breaking down the barriers of shyness and virtually eliminates the awkward conversations that are an inevitable result of networking.  How, you ask?  Well, I guess you’ll just have to find a local chapter and find out for yourself: http://webgrrls.com/

Get yourselves out there!  Find the mix of social media and socializing that fits you, and make sure you leverage it to be the best you that you can be!

With the ever-so-handy-dandy internet, access to others’ personal information is easy, making the protection your own identity all the more difficult and all the more important.  Everything can go from handy-dandy to nightmare pretty quickly if you’ve ever been a victim of identity theft.  I was recently the victim of credit card fraud, and by a relative no less.  She decided it would be a fun joke to sign us up for an additional subscription to Netflix as well as a subscription to an adult content website.  Needless to say, we didn’t see the humor.  With relatives like that, who needs enemies, right?

Protecting your own identity aside, running an e-commerce site puts you in the driver seat of protecting the identity of every person that uses your site.  That’s a lot of personal and financial data and it’s a big responsibility when you think about it like that.  Geek Bouteek recently encountered an incident where we had to come to the rescue of some poor unsuspecting individuals whose ID’s were stolen in attempt to purchase our merchandise.  Now, we’re flattered that someone likes our shirts enough to try to place a few big orders, but we’re not flattered enough to let anyone do it at the expense of others.

We here at Geek Bouteek value our customers and our Rogue Nation readers and want you to know that we’re being vigilant in the battle against identity theft.   If you, or someone you know, have been a victim of Identity Theft, please read through the Federal Trade Commission’s instructions on how to recover and what steps to take:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/consumers/defend.html

I was laid off at the end of last year, yet even without a paycheck, I’m still busy as ever.  The company I was employed by hit rough times as a result of the bad economy and laid off their entire staff.  I’m not complaining though, there are several silver linings in this cloud.  For starters, I’ll be able to devote a lot more time to Geek Bouteek and the Rogue Nation!

As part of the big downsizing I was a part of, we had to give up our office space.  They say growing pains are hard, but shrinking pains may be harder.  We went from 30 employees to 0 in about 2.5 years.  Throughout the 12 years of existing, the company had amassed a ton of equipment and infastrucure to run operations.  We had several Terabites of data to backup and about 2 years ago we took a financial plunge and bought a tape drive backup system with a tape autoloader.  This thing not only backs up massive amounts of data, the device itself is massive, and at this point totally unnessessary.

Downsizing pains were able to bring us into the new technological era.  The company is still running without employees, in a spare bedroom office on the UWS, and the few of us who stuck it through are working on a project to project freelance basis.  Equipment-wise, we gave away and dontated some 25 computers, even more monitors and are in the process of selling that monster backup system.  We’ve gone serverless and for the most part, wireless.

Our backup, our server hosting and our day to day to file storage has all been moved to cloud hosting and storage.  For little to no money, you can store a ton of data (securely too) our there in virtuality.  It gives you ease of access as well, because the data is no longer location specific.  For companies going virtual, cloud storage gives you the option to work anywhere you’ve got computer access.  The new lack of machinery and space to put machinery is kind of awesome.  I’m loving the cloud storage so much, I’ve signed up for a service called Zumo Drive which gives up to 2G of free storage.  You install a plugin that creates a virtual drive on any machine you install it, and through your login you have instant access to anything you store there!  There are many other similar services, but this is the one I’ve been using for my personal information, and we upgraded the storage with a paid subscription for our new virtual office.  Check them out at http://www.zumodrive.com/

After all the hard work we put in to downsize, I can’t see us ever going back to the old way of storing data.  Cloud storage rocks!

In general, I think that most of what’s currently on Broadway is over dramatized drivel.  Yes, there’s some oldie-but-goodies too, but there’s just not a lot out there that appeals to me.

My gut reaction to Green Day’s American Idiot, the musical was, “Great, another sellout band” but then I logically thought it through and it makes perfect sense.  I had to put my (somewhat) unnatural distaste of all things Broadway aside to be able to appreciate that the American Idiot album was tailor made for the Great White Way.  The one act, through-sung show features all of the tracks from the American Idiot album, as well as some b-sides and tracks from the 21st Century Breadown album.  Back in the mid 90’s, The Who’s Tommy was on Broadway and I went to go see it with my fellow High School Drama Club members (yeah, I know - poke fun all you want) and I was mesmerized.  I even started playing Pinball because I was inspired by Pinball Wizard.

In reading a synopsis of the plot of American Idiot, the Musical, I don’t think it will disappoint.  The story -like quality of the songs, and the subtext naturally lend themselves to a n entertaining show full of sex, drugs and rock and roll.  Much to my 10 year son’s disappointment, I don’t think it will be a kid-friendly show, being that the story IS full of drugs, sex and rock and roll.  At this point in life, he hasn’t delved into the deeper meaning of lyrics.  He just thinks Green Day sounds cool…

American Idiot starts in previews March 24, 2010 and officially opens April 20th.  Check out their website for more details : http://www.americanidiotonbroadway.com/?gclid=CPi91bSq6J8CFdx05QodJDzrGQ

OK, first of all, I apologize for this post being a few days late, we were actually floating around on a boat in the Caribbean without Internet access (seriously) and in the rush of the holiday didn’t have the foresight to write this beforehand.

So we survived another year, another decade (barely), and it’s time to take a very quick look back, take stock, and let you know what’s in store going forward for the Geek Bouteek.

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who made 2009 the most succussful year in the admittedly short history of the Bouteek, we made great strives in both the number of shirts we offer and the size of the audience we reach, and we feel that we can only go up from here.  It won’t be easy, but as I’ve always said, nothing worth doing ever is.

Looking to 2010, starting immediately we will be looking to add even more designs to our site, while at the same time looking at a possible overhaul of geekbouteek.com.  From a technical standpoint there a some limitations to our current platform that will restrict our ability to easily scale our operations.

On the conventions front, we are currently looking to expand our presence out in the field, looking at all possibilities within the Northeast in order to get ourselves in front of more people.  We’ve had great success at the New York ComicCon the last two years and we hoping that can translate to a wider audience.

So thanks again to all involved and we hope everyone has a healthy and successful 2010 (and beyond)!

Naughty or nice?  Santa’s not the only one who’s watching!  If you were good and geeky, hopefully there’s a Geek Bouteek shirt wrapped with your name on it under the tree…

Merry Christmas Rogue Nation readers and Geek Bouteek fans!  We hope you arrive safely to and from your destinations, and that Jolly Old St. Nick brings you everything on your wish list.

We’ll be taking a holiday break until the New Year, so Happy New Year too!  Expect tales of our holiday adventures when we are back in January.