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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