EDITORIAL
FOR ISSUE 103:
SWITCHED ON
BY
EDITOR AND PUBLISHER C.
A. PASSINAULT
Are
we really back?
Welcome
to the second coming of Frontier Pop.
After years of neglect and few updates, I have spent months making
improvements to Frontier Pop, as well as some updates, as we work
toward resuming a regular monthly publishing schedule and in filling
the gaps (I sound like a scientist from Jurassic Park) of past missing
and incomplete issues.
That said, it almost did not happen.
Frontier Pop was behind. Way behind. We keep the issue and volume
count as the months and years ticked by, as issues were published,
sometimes left unfinished, every now and then.
It was disgusting.
During the last year, research into a successor to Frontier Pop
was underway, a successor which would be cost-effective to maintain
and regularly publish issues on. The catch was that we were also
looking at a fresh start with fresh branding; a site which would
be entirely new and which we would not have to expend resources
and several years to catch up.
We looked at some branding such as Horizons Pop, going to far as
to buy domain names.
In the end, however, it was decided to not only keep Frontier Pop,
a brand which was a legend more in our minds and hearts than in
reality, and to use the fruits of that research to fix Frontier
Pop and to not only respect a brand that we had built and which
we loved, but meet, and then exceed, the potential of what we set
out to do in 1998.
1998? Didn’t Frontier Pop launch in the Summer of 2010? Are
we adding 12 years in an attempt at revisionist history?
Well, no. Actually, what was to become Frontier Pop actually started
in 1998 as Colony Alpha, my very first web site, just like what
is now the Cypher Society started out as the Frontier Society in
1993. They are all the same things, they just have different branding,
and what is now Frontier Pop started out in 1998 and changed web
sites and branding over the years as we developed it into something
both marketable and viable.
Colony Alpha, the proto Frontier Pop, started out as a web site
in the Fall of 1998. It was an online “colony”, or community,
of artists. We had a staff of writers, models, painters, and even
a sculptor, and before social media existed, these talented people
had their own profiles on Colony Alpha and made contributions to
the web site, kind of like Nolan Canova would do with Nolan’s
Newstand, which started out as an AOL profile in 2000 and evolved
to the PCR (Pop Culture Review) and Crazed Fanboy. While we were
first, Nolan took it farther.... A lot farther, and his volume of
work, along with the work of his contributors, deserves respect.
The Crazed Fanboy site has a lot of excellent, high quality information
on it.
In 2003, I owned the Frontier Society .Com domain name (and I still
maintain the rights to the branding), which started in 1993, but
its web site was going to be the next version of Colony Alpha.
Until I screwed up.
I was new to the domain name game back then, nothing like the things
that I manage today, and screwed up transferring the domain name
from one Registrar to another. The result was a lapse in ownership,
and cybersquatters came long and took it, holding it hostage for
$1,500.00 . I wouldn’t pay it. It got worse. They bought every
other variant of that domain name, blocking me from going around
them, and I had to resort to getting the domain name with a hyphen
in it, which made it useless for marketing with.
I learned a lesson the hard way.
Today, 14 years later, I still can’t get that domain name
back, or the other incarnations.
In 2008, with the news media covering me for consumer electronics
stories and other things, I attempted to use the Frontier Society domain
name with the hyphen as the reference site, but it was still not
the optimal domain name for that branding, as most people omit the
hyphen.
That led to Frontier Pop being established and launched in 2010.
Of course, there was a learning curve with such as web site, and
it went from a weekly format to a monthly one, and I never quite
got it to where it needed to be. It needed more development.
After a couple of false starts in recent years, I went back to the
drawing board, and finally figured out all of the angles.
I fixed the Frontier Society branding issue, too, as the Frontier
Society was always supposed to tie into Frontier Pop.
Retaining ownership of the Frontier Society branding, I simply rebranded
the underground cyber subculture the Cypher Society, investing in
four domain names to cover other iterations and spelling of the
branding to deter brand hijacking by the squatters (I have become
very good at this. I have a portfolio of excellent domain names,
and some of them have the potential to be worth a lot of money).
The slogan of the Frontier Society, “Society has Evolved”,
which is also own the rights to, was retained.
The new web site for the Cypher Society, which will be based on
the revised web site for Frontier Pop, will be online within the
week.
So, we come full circle. This time, everything has fallen into place,
and we have a plan. This journey that Frontier Pop will resume,
and then continue, will be an epic one.
I am glad that you are all along for the ride.
Oh, and one final note as we begin this journey, and journey of
learning and knowing things, together. As I worked on Frontier Pop,
I could not help but notice that Frontier Pop looks like a video
game web site. I really do not want anyone to get the wrong idea,
here. While video games are a major part of my life, and a lot of
issues on Frontier Pop will be about them, as well as other types
of entertainment, Frontier Pop is NOT a video game web site. We
just happen to cover them a lot. Frontier Pop will be covering an
extremely diverse range of topics, and you can hold me to that.
I also have a confession to make. As I write and put this issue
together in the dark early morning hours in the middle of July,
knowing full well that I have to start on the August issue a week
from now (with the head start of already completing the support
images and graphics for that issue), I am sitting back and jamming
to Fat Boy Slim CD’s and am actually having fun, despite knowing
that I have to update the web site design AND add more content this
issue by next weekend while writing and building the brand new web
site for the Cypher Society; deadlines after deadlines. What am
I feeling? That this is what my life is all about, and there is
nothing better than that.
I am happy, and this is happiness.
I really do have this all figured out down to a science.
I am also happy to share Frontier Pop with the world; from my mind,
to yours.
Enjoy!
BONUS SECRET:
These are the main subjects of upcoming issues of Frontier Pop,
as planned right now. Other than the August issue, which is locked,
the others are tentative, and may change. Still, notice that they
are not about video games.
August issue: The fiasco about the cancellation of the Space Shuttle
program.
September issue: Going Nuclear. A potential nuclear conflict with
North Korea and an online wargame where you can play as the President
of the United States where you can take on the issues and explore
the consequences.
October issue: Living or leaving. Is there an afterlife?
November issue: Decent of the Raptor: The diminishing returns of
stealth technology and how to defeat it.
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