Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler all deserve to be strung up by their toes.

I am sure by now you have heard that these three CEO’s went to Capital Hill to beg for the bailout money for their car companies on Wednesday.  The “delicious” irony is that these three gentleman arrived in Washington D.C. on private jets instead of flying commercial.  To add even more insult to injury, Mr. Mulally of Ford took one of the eight private jets owned by the company according to the Washington Monthly.

According to Money Central, it is estimated that each roundtrip on the GM plane for Mr. Wagoner costs the company $20,000.  As Mr. Wagoner lives in Seattle, WA, GM ferries him back home every weekend from Detroit on the private plane, meaning they are dumping an estimated $20K a week in to letting him go home.  Lets say that he takes 52 trips a year on the private plane, it is costing the company $1,040,000 a year to move him around the country.  First class averages out to about $1,600 between any two destinations domestically, so even if they flew him first class every where, you are looking at a cost of $83,200 a year, a savings of $956,800.  How about coach?  Approximately $30,000 a year, a savings of over $1 million a year.  (I personally find first class for domestic flights for anyone to be excessive and ridiculous)

This is only a very small slice of the problem with these companies, but if this is any indication of the mismanagement of funds at these companies, then I almost wish they would fail.  Mind you, I have no desire to see factory workers lose their jobs, but this climate of CEOs being treated like messiahs who walk on water has to end.  No CEO is worth a $28 million dollar pay package.  Golden parachute clauses, insane perks, excessive pay packages, no CEO is worth the amounts of money these men receive.

I do have to applaud the Representatives who called them out on this debacle.  From Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), as quoted by the Washington Post:

“I’m going to ask the three executives here to raise their hand if they flew here commercial,” he said. All still at the witness table. “Second,” he continued, “I’m going ask you to raise your hand if you’re planning to sell your jet . . . and fly back commercial.” More stillness. “Let the record show no hands went up,” Sherman grandstanded.

I think “grandstanded” was unnecessary in the article, and I am sure it was a bit of a play, but it was a question that did need to be asked of these men.  The commentary was continued by Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.):

“I’m not an opponent of private flights by any means, but the fact that you flew in on your own private jet at tens of thousands itself dollars of cost just for you to make your way to Washington is a bit arrogant before you ask the taxpayers for money.”

I have mixed feelings about the bailout, and I almost always come back to, “Would the government help my family out if our business was in a similar situation to these companies?”, and the simple answer is ‘no’. I understand the theory that these companies are too big to allow them to fail, with tentacles reaching in to too many other industries, but I have to wonder why my tax dollars have to be involved in cleaning up the poor management of companies.

As I said, this is just one small slice of the problem with the American car industry, but it is an insulting situation to say the least.  If anything good comes out of this whole thing, I hope that every one takes a look at every last one of these CEOs with their horrendous paychecks and perks.  And, as a side note, if you know of one good reason why these men and women are paid these insane amounts of money, please explain it to me.  I have never gotten it, and I’m not sure I ever will.

I think it’s time for a small change in how blogs give credit to one another for where stories come from.

Back in May 2007, I wrote an article about “The most insane trackback ever?“, and how a picture of some storage under stairs had made it’s way from blog to blog without any acknowledgement given to the original site that had posted it.  Here we are a year and a half later, and I have found another situation that seems to follow in the same… vein.  (you’ll get the joke in a moment)

The victim this time is a antique vampire hunter’s kit that sold recently at an auction for $14,850.  I first read the story at The Inquisitr yesterday, it got my interest, and I decided to go to the source they listed to read more about it.  SlipperyBrick was next, and they didn’t have much more info, so I decided to go to their source in hopes of more information.  PopTherapy was next and… yeah, still had to go to their source for more info.  Neatorama failed me also.  FINALLY!  Antiques and the Arts Online seems to be the source!  Not only are the source, but they ran the story five days before The Inquisitr.

So, it took four jumps for me to get back to the source of the image and the story, and that is where I don’t think this is fair.  Now, mind you, I am not specifically saying the four sites involved are bad sites, or that they have done something wrong; this is a common practice on the Web, and that is what I am speaking to.  While I feel credit should be given to the site that brought the story to your attention, I feel it is only right you should also try to give credit to the original also.  So to give credit, you would do something like:

[via SlipperyBrick and Antiques and the Arts Online]

Why is this important?  Well, I think credit should be given to those who deserve it, and I also think that it is only fair from a search engine optimization standpoint.  By giving credit only to someone that is three steps removed, you are giving them the search engine credit, but none to the people who did the real work.

Again, I am not slamming the blogs involved in this bread crumb trail, this happens all over the web, and it has become what we tolerate in this business, but I think it’s time for this to end, and credit should be given properly.  Do I think people will change their policies?  Doubtful, but I think it is worth at least some thought, especially on a niche story like this.    Considering some of the complaints I’ve seen over linking policies, it surprises me that no one else has brught this up yet.

Who’s with me?  Just do a couple clicks on stories like this, find the original source, give them credit when and where possible.

Deutsche Post has announced they will cease domestic shipping inside of the USA.

Good riddance.

Before I go any further, let me state that I am very sorry for the 9500 people losing their jobs.  That is never a good thing, and I hope they can find new work.  As for the company itself, I have never thrilled to their shipping, and I dreaded every time I learned a package was coming to me via their service.

They came to the USA in 2003 and began operations by buying Airborne Express, another service I never liked.  DHL tried to woo me away from UPS a few times, but I just didn’t like their set up, and my experiences with their deliveries didn’t make me want to run to having my customers having to deal with them.

Competition is always good for business, but DHL never was a big enough threat to UPS and Fed Ex to really matter.  They will continue to do international shipping, but they are closing everything down domestically in the USA and I for one couldn’t be happier about it.

Good luck to all those people who will be out looking for work, and I do truly mean that.

You know, it fascinates me how airlines and companies like UPS were so quick to adapt to the higher fuel prices this summer, but where are the cut backs now that fuel prices are dropping?

Over the past few months I received numerous updates from UPS for my shipping software of new fuel surcharges.  We were getting one or two of these weeks, tacking on more expenses to our shipping costs, raising them to unheard of levels.

In a more common every day effect on people, airlines have been doing the same.  Fuel surcharges have been added to tickets, not to mention that some airlines are now charging you for checked luggage, which was also supposedly due to the rising cost of gas.

So, prices have plummeted, oil futures are even lower… where are the cut backs?  All of these companies were extremely quick to raise their prices, but I sure don’t see them doing the reverse.  With the economy dropping, don’t you think you might want to encourage people to travel more and do more online shopping?  Or, could it possibly be that these companies used this as an excuse to raise prices and it had no real connection to what was going on with gas?

Nah, it could NEVER be that… could it?

Yesterday Alex Carnevale over at io9 brought up a story about how some science fiction writers are calling for a boycott of the Borders chain of bookstores overthe fact the store had skipped ordering their book.

As I have dug down deeper into the back story of what was going on, it makes even less sense than it did at first blush.  Going backwards, sci-fi authors such as Tobias Buckell and Pat Cadigan are saying that authors should boycott Borders for their recent trend to skip titles in hardcovers or expensive trades.

The Borders chain has been in financial trouble for a while now and is trying to get itself back on track by tightening their belt.  Add in the recent economic news and you will probably find chain stores in numerous industries trying to find ways to cut back on expenses, and that will mean tighter constraints on orders for new products.

The idea of authors withholding new titles because previous were skipped is just asinine, and also probably impossible.  Is anyone in their right mind going to turn down an order of a few hundred copies of a new book because their previous one was passed over?  Get over yourself and get your ego in check.  Add in do you really think the publisher, who is the ultimate say in things like this is going to say to a bookseller, “Oh no, sorry, we aren’t selling this book to you because you hurt the author’s feelings on their last book, and what they say goes!”

Yeah, that isn’t happening.

Andrew Wheeler, a Marketing Manager for John Wiley & Sons, has an incredibly in-depth blog post about how book ordering works and how “skips” suck, but they are part of the nature of bok selling.  All of this is extremely easy for me to relate to from my comic book selling days, and if comic creators had wanted to boycott me for not ordering their previous works, I would have had nothing to sell.  You only have so much budget to work with, so much shelf space and only so many resources to devote to promoting a given project.  Worst of all, unlike book stores, direct sales comic stores have no return capabalities, so it was always a huge risk for us to order, so every book had to earn its way on to our shelves.

In short, I think I am just awe-struck by the ego and entitlement these authors are showing.  While I realize every author wants to sell copies of their books, they should also remember all those authors who can’t even get their books published.  So you didn’t make it in to Borders, fine, you just work that much harder to help promote the copies ordered by other sellers.  However, to punish a book seller that is already in financial problems is just stupid.  Say they ordered 900 copies of your previous book, skipped the next, you boycott them on the next one, they go out of business in the meantime, just how many copies of the project after that one do you think they will order?  Yeah, that’s right, 0.

Your biggest concern right now should be keeping your industry afloat so you have future work, not your bruised egos.  Pull yourself up by your boot straps, put a smile on, and keep your industry going.  Don’t act like tantrum throwing children.

UPDATE: Okay, okay, I get it, I misread the situation!  The authors did NOT, I repeat, DID NOT call for a boycott.

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) in Washington, D.C. is set to rule on Thursday over a request from the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) to raise the royalty rate paid on digital downloads.

It seems the NMPA has decided it is time for royalties to go up, and seeing as CD sales are on the decline, the record companies have pawned off the request to the digital download market.  The current royalty rate is $.09 a song and they are requesting an increase to $.15, a hike of more than 60%.

Seeing as Apple’s iTunes store currently controls 80% of the digital music market, it is fairly obvious this move is squarely directed at them.

Under the current system, on a $.99 song sale, it is believed Apple already gives away $.70 in royalties and rights.  Of the remaining $.29, very little is actually profit as the majority goes to maintaining the store, paperwork and so on.  This new rate would lower Apple’s share to $.23, and they are saying at that price they would actually be losing money.

As Apple is like any other business, and wishes to make money, iTunes vice president Eddy Cue has made a rather ominous threat via an article on CNN Money.

If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the … royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all,” Cue wrote. “Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.

I personally find it highly unlikely that Apple would actually go that far, but it does seem when one company controls 80% of a market, and is projected to go as high as 85%, that this does seem a rather unfair targeting of them. It does also put them in a position where their threat should be taken very seriously.  Apple does have a counter-proposal on the table of a percentage of wholesale that would work out to an actual reduction of royalties, but somehow I don’t see that flying either.

David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers Association, is saying that everyone should embrace the royalty increase because ultimately everyone involved will prosper. Um… yeah… sure, I see that. -scratches head- There was a more telling quote in the CNN Money story from Mr. Israelite that I think sums up the core of this whole issue.

“Apple may want to sell songs cheaply to sell iPods. We don’t make a penny on the sale of an iPod.”

Ah, yeah, there we go again.  Remember back in 2005 when Edgar Bronfman, CEO of the Warner Music Group, thought record companies should earn a percentage from the sale of each iPod sold as Apple wouldn’t be able to sell their products without music to put on it.  Luckily that idea was quickly squashed, but here it is rearing it’s ugly head again, just in a different form.

So Apple is once again being targeted for basically being profitable.  Well, let me ask the music industry a very simple set of questions: Did you collect payments for sales of record players?  8 Track players?  Tape decks?  CD Players?  On and on and on, why is it now okay to target one hardware manufacturer because they have the most popular version of it?

Once again, here we are with the music industry again trying to get more blood out of a turnip, never mind their greed may end up harming things.  Say this passes and Apple finally gives in to raising their prices, this will inevitably leads to lower sales, and in turn, lower royalties.  Say Apple would shut down iTunes, then there would be no royalties at all.  Gee, are either of these desirable for any party involved.  How would everyone “prosper” again?

Stupid, stupid music companies.

Even though I have been in business for over 22 years now, I will never claim to understand all the trappings of high finance. What I will say is that all of these people involved with some of the stupid mistakes made on behalf of companies like Lehman Brothers and AIG could do with going back to their most basic business classes.

I have sat back watching this whole debacle unfold, and I am just dumbfounded by some of the things I have learned were going on that led to this whole slide into oblivion for these companies.  Apparently there was some form of loan I had never heard of before named “No Income, No Job, (and) no Assets”, or N.I.N.J.A. loans, where, as the name implies, apparently you can get a loan without a blasted thing going for you in the positive corner.

…

What idiot came up with this idea?  How can anyone with a modicum of intelligence even begin to think that making loans to someone with no assets is a bright idea?

As I see it, you had companies who were already incredibly rich and just got greedier for even more money, and how do you make that money in an over saturated market?  Well, you just give money to anyone who walks in!

So, I honestly was just going to let this whole thing pass without much thought, but when I heard the news tonight that the government is loaning $85 billion dollars to bail out AIG, well, it kind of becomes the business of every US citizen doesn’t it?  Now it appears if you’re big enough, and run your company into an iceberg, the government will come and pick you up, dust you off, and say “now you behave”.  However, if you’re a small business, you’re screwed and too bad.

Remember that old saying about “the rich just get richer…”?  Yeah, seems to be true doesn’t it?

Again, I am no economic expert, but this current crisis feels to me like it was all brought on by greed of slap happy executives who thought that the mere fact they were loaning money would keep the good times rollin’, and basic business sense be damned.  Yes, these companies crashing is bad for economies, and I would say it would be worth to let them rot, but then no one ever seems to learn from any company falling apart, so why bother?

I guess I am writing this more out of a bewilderment than having my own conclusion because nothing about this whole mess makes the least bit of sense to me how any group of people could be collectively this stupid.

Edgar Bronfman, Jr is back.

For those unfamiliar with Edgar Bronfman, he is the CEO of Warner Music Group.  Good old Edgar and I have a long history of his amazing comments in that I have written about him numerous times,and I’ll link those as we go.

This time around, the story comes from the Chicago Tribune where Mr. Bronfman was talking about the success of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.  These games are built around playing fake instruments to music, and those songs tend to be well known.  While bands have seen an increase in sales for music included in these games, Mr. Bronfman told the Chicago Tribune the following:

“The amount being paid to the industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content that we own and control, is far too small,” he said during an earnings call this month.

This is shockingly remiscent of what he said in September 2005 when he thought it would be a good idea for Apple to give music companies a cut of iPod sales because he felt the $.99 price for iTunes songs was artificially low, and everyone knew Steve Jobs couldn’t sell iPods without the licensed music.

Bronfman’s solution? Well, if Apple is “artificially” keeping the price of downloads low to promote sales of iPods (you can debate amongst yourselves whether 99 cents is artificially high or artificially low), then as he sees it, the labels should get to share in those [iPod] revenue streams.

However, back in November of 2007, while at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress conference, he said:

“We used to fool ourselves. We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong.

How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.”

Mind you, that was only 10-months ago he said this, so what changed?  What do I mean?  Again from the Chicago Tribune:

Bronfman suggested that he wanted Warner to be less a supplier than a partner.

“If that does not become the case, as far as Warner Music is concerned, we will not license to those games,” he said.

So, here we are again, in the exact same type situation we were in back in 2005 when he thought it was a good idea to mess with Apple.  So it appears his solution is to threaten the video game makers with totally withholding music from them.  Does he not realize this would mean no realized income from this revenue stream?  This is exactly like the article I wrote the other day about how the industry is killing off music discovery methods over greed, and now here is yet another example of them doing the exact same thing.

When is this industry ever going to learn that their greed is doing nothing but angering the consumers, and they keep killing the golden goose that keeps laying eggs for them.  Sure, they’re making money from Pandora, but not ENOUGH.  Yes, they are making money from Rock Band, but not ENOUGH.

Mr. Bronfman said that the music industry wasn’t evolving as fast as the technology and that needs to change.  So here you have two of the biggest promotional tools going right now, and you are realizing revenue from it, but you may kill it off because it just isn’t enough.  I am sick and tired of the music industry being nothing but story after story of greed.  How they are so put upon, and everyone takes advantage of them, boo-hoo, poor them.

Well, apparently history does repeat itself, because Bronfman is sounding like a broken record.  Let him cut off the games from getting music, and your company can continue to lose money.  Oh, did I forget to mention Warner Music Group suffered a net loss of $9 million last quarter?  Yeah, good idea, threaten to cut off even more money to drive those losses even higher, good thinking!

Before I say good-bye to Mr. Bronfman before his next asinine comment calls me to his shores again like the Sirens of myth, let us not forget this is also the man who gave his kids a ‘talking to’ after he learned they were illegally downloading music.  He never did reveal what their punishment was, but I suspect it had something to do with charging them more money.

Hard to believe it, but Splash Page Comics/AnimeUSA turns 22-years-old today.

Since I have gained so many followers over this past year, many of you may not even know about “my other life”.  Besides writing for Mashable, I have a “day job” working on the family business, AnimeUSA.  The store officially opened on August 4th, 1986 as a comic book store, but quickly started morphing over the years.

My mother had a costume shop in an old house on one of the major streets in Kirksville, and only 4 blocks from Truman University.  She didn’t have any use for the old garage, so at the age of 14, I asked if I could convert it into a comic book store.  After some convincing, the parents gave in and Splash Page Comics was born.  (For those who don’t know, a “splash page” is any page of a comic book that consists of only 1 panel taking up the entire page)

In 1993, mom was tiring of the costume business having been involved in it since she was 18, and I was quickly outgrowing the garage.  She opted to close the costume shop and give the bigger portion of the building over to the comic store.  We quickly outgrew that space and expanded into even more of the building.

1999 saw us doing so much business in anime products from Japan, we opened a sub-division named AnimeUSA.  We were traveling to more and more conventions around the country, and showing up at an anime show calling ourselves “Splash Page Comics” just didn’t make much sense.

By 2000, I was getting more involved with ecommerce, and our convention business was picking up so much that I was contemplating closing the retail store as it was holding its own, but was becoming a very small portion of our gross take, but the majority of our headaches.  I talked it over with a good friend of mine while we were flying to Japan together on a buying trip in August 2000, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

We were again on our way to Japan in August 2001, and he was with me again.  Again the subject came up (hey, it’s a 10 and 1/2 hour flight from Los Angeles), and after much hemming and hawing, I called my parents from Tokyo and told them to get ready to do it by the end of the year.

I returned from Tokyo just a little over a week before the events of 9/11, and that extended the time frame as we had other issues to deal with in regards to my dad’s job, and it just not being a priority on our minds.  I finally closed the retail store in December of 2001 after 15 years and 21 weeks of it being open.

We finally sold the building that in late 2002 when the gas station next door offered to buy it to expand their parking lot.  They offered us enough we could build a 3,000 square foot warehouse (the old building was 1,800 square feet and very broken up as it had been a house) on property we already owned, and we moved out in March 2003.

The warehouse is doing a beautiful job of keeping us contained, and it is so nice not going, “Which room is product x in?”  The old building was demolished in 2003, but I still smile every time I drive by it as I spent so much of my life there, but now I actually like the building we’re in as the old one was impossible to heat.

There are a million little facts about the history of the business I’ve left out as you would with any 22 year history, but this is a good general over view of the history.  Still, it’s impossible I’ve been doing this for well over two decades now.  Yikes!

The Dark Knight passed $300 million in ten days, setting a new record for the fastest ever to that mark.  The previous record holder was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest doing it in 16 days.  However, this still does not knock the film into the realm of profitability.

Now, as much as I would like to think M’s and my review of the film on Scattercast last week contributed to the $75 million dollar weekend, I shall act like it didn’t.  In all honesty, it’s a fantastic movie with a stellar performance by several of the actors, not just Heath Ledger, but it unfortunately still does not mean this movie has made a profit.

As I discussed in the first episode of Scattercast (I swear I am not link mining my podcast, just the first two episodes do relate to this!), a movie must make double its budget in domestic box office receipts to be considered profitable.  The Dark Knight had a reported budget of $180 million, meaning that the film needs to do $360 million domestic to be in the black.  This is also discounting marketing budgets, which I easily put around $20 - $25 million, but those numbers are never confirmed.  Analysts are saying they expect the film to hit $400 million on day 18, which would be a new record, beating out the previous “fastest to $400 million” holder, Shrek 2.

There are some who think this film may have the chance of finally knocking Titanic out of the number 1 spot in domestic box office, but $600,788,188 is still a long ways away.  That movie had the benefit of repeat viewings by teenage girls for a very long time and it was an extremely slow build to that level.  That record has held for 10 years now, and it seems unlikely that a movie about a guy in a silly looking bat costume will be the one to do it.

I just find it amazing that anyone is willing to gamble $180 million on any project.  How does anyone sit in an office and go, “You know, I believe in your vision for this project, here, have the equivalent of the gross domestic product of a small nation to go make it.”  Especially in the case of this film, people will always wonder if Ledger’s untimely death contributed to this box office success, and if that is a factor, it makes the executives look even crazier.  Perhaps the secret behing the Joker, he’s actually a film studio executive who decides to gives hundreds of millions of dollars to movies.

Talk about your ultimate gamblers.  Yeesh.

The other night I was watching the ABC 7 New York News, and heard about a business I had no clue existed, Insomnia Cookies.

The premise is simple in that you can have cookies delivered until late at night (general cut-off is 12:00 AM to 2:30 AM, depending on location), satisfying those late night cravings. Healthy? No. Delicious and comforting? Probably.

It started off as one guy in his dorm room in Pennsylvania (probably near the ocean…) and he would bake and deliver the cookies around the campus himself. After five years in business, he has now expanded to twelve university campuses, including the recently opened New York University store. The difference for the NYU location is that they also cover part of the city itself, greatly expanding their customer base, and they plan to open more stores around the city to cover more of the metropolis.

I know I don’t normally cover this sort of thing, but the concept intrigued me. Back when I had my retail comic shop, we were located four blocks from Truman State University, so of course we had heavy patronage from there. For about a year or so, we had an Akita that hung out at the store because his owner, a customer of ours, had no air conditioning in his apartment, so we let the dog stay with us while he went to class so it would be cool. Othello loved everyone, and never caused a problem, and our customers said many times they liked him being there because it made them feel more comfortable, like they were at home.

This is what Insomnia Cookies reminds me of. Going off to school, or moving to a city like New York City, can make you feel isolated, and makes you miss the comforts of home. What is more comforting than freshly baked cookies? Cookies you buy in the store are just… blech, but a freshly baked one with milk (which they will also deliver) is a little slice of Heaven.

I’m kind of glad we don’t have one of these in my town because I’m trying to lose weight, but it would certainly be tempting some nights to have someone bring me cookies. Kudos to them for such an excellent idea.

Well, the party is over.

Microsoft had finally upped their offer to $33 a share from the $31 they initially offered, but it seems Yahoo wanted $37 a share.  Steve Ballmer finally decided it wasn’t worth the games, not the protracted fight it was going to be, so he has opted to move on, leaving Yahoo to their own devices.

Where does either company go from here?  Who knows, probably plodding along on the same paths they already were.  I still can’t quite grasp why Microsoft wanted this deal so bad, but that si for them to know and the rest of us to never learn.  I for one am just glad this is over so it won’t be in the news every five minutes.

In an article on TechCrunch yesterday, Michael Arrington, founder of the site, talked about blogs raising more funding, and one of the problems he listed was the rates bloggers are expecting to be paid working at the big name sites.

Writers suddenly want to be paid market wages, far above the $5 per post that they received two years ago. No, we’re talking a big salary, with benefits, and stock options. There went half your margins at least.

This led to Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb to bring up a subject that has floated around for ages, but been shot down every time it comes around: A union for bloggers.

A bloggers union is an idea that was most recently advanced last month in an issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. “It’s a Wild West out there for bloggers — even though, without them, the Internet’s frontier would not have expanded so broadly or so rapidly. And even though, without them, the Web-derived profits many of these blog sites are starting to rake in simply wouldn’t exist,” wrote Chris Mooney.

Mooney envisions a professional guild for bloggers, not unlike the Writers Guild of America, that would strictly rep professional bloggers. How you weed “professional bloggers” from the hobbyists would be task number one for guild organizers, whom Mooney thinks would initially be the blogosphere’s most successful writers — i.e., people who have sway with management. Unionizing bloggers is something the National Writers Union recently voted to be a priority.

I made no secret of my support for the Writer’s Guild of America strike, but that doesn’t mean I want a union in my backyard.

What I get paid for blogging is confidential, but I will say I have worked for blogs that pay well, and some that haven’t. However, that is the nature of being a freelance writer, but you know before hand what you are going to be paid. I am no longer considered freelance, and have an actual contract in place with Mashable, I accepted those terms and chose to work there. I have set terms as to what is expected of me, and I have a set term in what I expect to be paid, as it should be with any job you accept.

The Internet is a beast unlike any other job out there. A good portion of its appeal is its ability to change on a dime, and if it got regulated to everything having to be run through a union first, it would kill some of the very nature that made the Internet what it is today.

You also have to ponder the international aspects of the Internet. Mashable is technically base out of Scotland as our CEO and founder hails from there, while BLORGE, whom I used to work for, is based out of Australia. Would the union be able to follow the laws of every country on Earth? What if unions are illegal in the country where the blog is out of? Blogs could easily change server locations so they would be served out of that country, then claim that

And let us also not forget something in that blogging is not exactly the hardest job in the world. Yes, it is work, and there are some nights I get so flustered that I want to throw my laptop, but it still not exactly like we’re doing hard labor. Quite often during my weekend shifts I sit in my favorite chair all day, still in my pajamas, sipping coffee, TV on, and a dog laying on my shoulders acting as my headrest. I wouldn’t exactly say my work is harsh.

I am not alone in my feelings about this: Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, one of my co-workers at Mashable, has stated his displeasure at the idea, as has Leslie Poston, a former co-worker at BLORGE. From other bloggers I have talked to today, none of us like this idea, and I’m not quite sure how the National Writer’s Union even thinks they could bring us all together into some form of cohesive group. We are a notoriously independent lot of people, and we don’t take particularly well to “authority”.

I think part of the thought process comes from my time writing for print media.  I sometimes got paid as low as $.05 a word, or $30 for a 600 word article.  Considering the length of a lot of blog articles, $5 isn’t that far off the mark, and considering how much faster I can get an article done, it’s not that bad.  And, to be blunt, where were the unions when I was in print?  Why am I suddenly more worthy of a union because I’m blogging?  Not that I would have joined one back then either, but I still find it odd.

Either way, talk about it all you want, but I think you will find a lot of bloggers not being very receptive to the idea.  Oh, and question… say we went on strike… where would we picket?  Would we sit in front of our computers holding up picket signs?

Time is an odd thing. It’s a man-made concept that keeps everything from happening at once, and is made only so that we had a more convenient way of saying where the Sun was. Would you rather say, “the Sun is at a 45 degeree angle from the horizon”, or “it’s 3 PM”? Kind of an obvious choice.

When you start messing with times zones, it gets tricky. You have to do math, which isn’t all that difficult, but you have to make sure you know which time zone the location your thinking about resides in. I do a lot of business with Tokyo, and I am always aware of what time it is there, and can do the math simply in my head. For some people this isn’t always easy, but there are numerous tools that exist now for you to not even have to think about it.

Then I stumbled across this blog post that was shared in Google Reader by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins, one of my co-workers at Mashable. Mike Elgan suggest in his article that it is time for business to finally follow pilots in adopting Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the universal time zone of the planet. This would mean that if it would be 3 PM everywhere in the world at the same time, regardless if you had sunlight or not.

I think Mr. Elgan’s heart is in the right place, it would save some headaches, and it would be wonderful for business scheduling, but I think that’s where it stops. How would you have an inkling of when people are asleep? I know, for instance, that as I am typing this, it is 11:12 AM CST, which means it is 1:12 AM in Tokyo; this instantly tells me that I should assume everyone I do business with is asleep. Now, say we go to GMT, it is 5:12 PM GMT, which means it is 5:12 PM for me in Missouri, and 5:12 PM for the folks in Tokyo… how can I be assure of them being in their office? What time do they come in to work now, 12:00 AM? Will they know I’m at work? Will they think I’m asleep? Will I have to keep a little chart that tells me Hiroshi is at work from 12:00 AM to 8:00 AM?

Mr. Elgan’s plan would be a wonderful thing for in person meetings, easing scheduling to no end, but I feel it would make life a lot more difficult for those of us who tend to work on our computers full-time. I used to have a screen saver on my computer that showed me a world clock along with a graph of where the Sun is at all times.  I could always reinstall it so I could have a quick look to double check myself, but would everyone now have to do this?

What I could firmly get behind is an end to Daylight Saving Time (DST).  Why we keep this absurd concept is beyond me.  It was started in 1907 to help farmers and to conserve the use of that new fangled technology, “light bulbs”.  Well, now we’re past those concerns for the most part, let’s dump this stupid system of “springing forward” and “falling back”, and just keep one time all year long.  This I would totally get behind and would bring us into line with the majority of the world.

As for Mr. Elgan, I suspect he speaks out of frustration with something in his personal life.  There is nothing confusing about time zones, and just because it works for pilots doesn’t mean it would work for everyday life.  Nice try, but I don’t see this ever going any further than one man’s wishes.

Wow… this could get ugly, and fast.

Yahoo has officially rejected the offer from Microsoft.

“After careful evaluation, the Board believes that Microsoft’s proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo! including our global brand, large worldwide audience, significant recent investments in advertising platforms and future growth prospects, free cash flow and earnings potential, as well as our substantial unconsolidated investments. The Board of Directors is continually evaluating all of its strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolving industry environment and we remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all stockholders.”

Excuse me? Microsoft undervalued Yahoo? THEY OFFERED A 62% PREMIUM ABOVE THE CLOSING PRICE! If any one has “undervalued” Yahoo, it’s the stock market, not Microsoft. I still don’t see the point to this merger, personally, but it’s obvious that Microsoft wants them, and the maker of Windows said some fairly ominous things in their reply.

“It is unfortunate that Yahoo! has not embraced our full and fair proposal to combine our companies. Based on conversations with stakeholders of both companies, we are confident that moving forward promptly to consummate a transaction is in the best interests of all parties.

We are offering shareholders superior value and the opportunity to participate in the upside of the combined company. The combination also offers an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market.

A Microsoft-Yahoo! combination will create a more effective company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. Furthermore, the combination will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising.

The Yahoo! response does not change our belief in the strategic and financial merits of our proposal. As we have said previously, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.”

I think it’s pretty obvious that Microsoft is going to go after Yahoo in any way they can. Why they really want them seems to still be a mystery, but it looks like there is no way they’re giving up until Microhoo! comes to be.

It appears that Yahoo is going to reject the current offer from Microsoft under the grounds that it is too low.  While Microsoft offered them $31 on February 1st, a 62% premium over their closing price on January 31st, the rumor is that Yahoo wants to hold out for $40 a share, or $51.1 billion dollars.

The interesting thing here, if it proves to be true, is that this is the first sign that Yahoo would indeed be willing to sell.   The question then is how Yahoo decided they were worth $51.1 billion, a number that is twice their stock price in January.  Is there some secret in the Yahoo basement we don’t know about, like a perpetual motion machine?  Jimmy Hoffa’s corpse?  OH!  I know!  Yahoo sits on top of the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark!

I am no personal fan of Microsoft, but even I think their offer of $31 a share was more than fair for the current shape of the former search engine king.  January 2006 was the last time their stock was even close to $40, and except for the bump in the wake of the Microsoft news, the stock has been on a steady downward slope.   It’s nice they have ambitions to be big again, but the current corporate atmosphere towards the company just doesn’t seem to reflect what they think they are worth.

Course, what do I know?  I sell toys and write blogs, if I was a financial wizard, I would be doing something considerably more fun.

I haven’t talked much about the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike because there isn’t much going on. There have been talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP), and apparently there has been some movement, but nothing definite as of yet.

The WGA did release the following letter to their members (and reprinted via Deadline Hollywood)

Dear Fellow Members:
I would like to update you on where we stand with bargaining with the AMPTP. While we have made important progress since the companies re-engaged us in serious talks, negotiations continue. Regardless of what you hear or read, there are many significant points that have yet to be worked out.

In order to keep members abreast of the latest developments, informational meetings are being planned by both Guilds for this weekend-details to be announced. Neither the Negotiating Committee, nor the West Board or the East Council, will take action on the contract until after the membership meetings.

As the talks proceed, never forget that during this period it is critical for us to remain on the picket lines united and strong. We are all in this together.

At this point, there is a chance of saving the “back nine” episodes of the season (most shows get an order for 13 episodes, and then for another 9 to finish the season), but as it will take shows 4 - 6 weeks to spin back up, things are looking sketchy.

The interesting thing is that no matter when this ends, it looks like NEXT season is in jeopardy of having any new shows.  This is the time of the year that the networks begin to go in to “pilot season” and start picking their shows for the next season, but nothing is currently in development, so, maybe no new shows next season.  What an idea: Develop what you have!

As a follow-up to my piece about The Music Industry Vs Net Neutrality, it seems that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is following in the footsteps of U2’s manager, Paul McGuinness.

In their Digital Music 2008 Report (PDF link), John Kennedy, the chairman and CEO of the organization, issues a letter of how it is time for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to step-up to the plate and aid in protecting the copyrighted materials of the music and movie industries. He points to the efforts in France of President Nicolas Sarkozy to ban file sharing from ISPs by using filtering software. Mr. Kennedy also goes on to say that helping stem the activity of peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic will benefit the ISPs as there are estimates that 80% of all Internet traffic is copyright infringement-based (no source cited).

As I listed in my article from the other day, this violates net neutrality as it will require deep packet inspections to discern what is legal P2P traffic from illegal. There are companies using P2P to transfer legal files, there is legal music and video circulating on the torrents daily, how will you discern what is legal and what is illegal? How will you address privacy concerns? How will you address the fact that ISPs are supposed to be neutral to the traffic that crosses their systems?

The music industry is trying to make ISPs take on the financial burden of cleaning up their own troubled industry. Yes, as the linked report says, overall sales are down, and, as always, the music industry points to piracy. What about the fact that perhaps you are promoting music of questionable quality? What about the fact there are more ways for consumers to spend their entertainment dollar than ever before? And then there are people like me who have moved from buying multiple new CDs a month to buying 0. I am making an exception for the upcoming Flogging Molly album, but otherwise I buy used CDs or use a legal trading service such as Lala.com.

The likes of the IFPI has driven me to this because I will not support groups such as this that are actively moving to strip consumers of their rights. Let’s not forget that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants to say it is illegal for you to copy music from a CD you legally purchase to your own computer for your own use.

As I wrote back in October of 2006, the music industry has always tried to find a scapegoat for their financial woes. Twenty years ago it was home taping (oh how this image still cracks me up), and now it is the evils of illegal downloading. Yes, I will not deny there is copyright infringement going on and that it is wrong, but I will say that my right to privacy should not be trampled to stop some illegal downloaders.

My favorite comment in all of this was that 80% of all Internet traffic is copyright violations. Back in July of 2007, I wrote a piece for Mahsable.com entitled 50+ Tools For Torrenting, and while researching sources for legal content on torrent networks (it does exist), I could see how many people were using torrents at the time, which were always around 1 million+.  Mind you that this is a worldwide number, not a USA only number, and they are going to try to claim that small a  number is going to account for 80% of copyright violations?  I’m sorry, but I find this hard to believe.

Hopefully ISPs and government officials will stand up to such strong arm tactics of an industry body, but a sinking feeling in my gut says they won’t.

With a day now to digest the Microsoft-Yahoo news, I still can’t exactly figure out what Microsoft thinks they’re going to gain from this. Yesterday, when I had the fun of assembling Microsoft-Yahoo: The Complete Coverage, I read somewhere around a hundred or more opinions on the subject, and no two of them seemed to agree what Microsoft is after.

Is it the search engine business? Even combining their two systems will only give them around a 34% Yahoo is about 23.7% and MSN is 10.3%) share of the search engine market, still well behind Google’s 57%. Is it worth $44.6 billion dollars to get a firm grip on second place? Doubtful.

Yahoo’s advertising sales are nowhere near Google’s, so another case of settling for second.

I honestly can not figure out what Microsoft thinks this will gain them. Neither company has the best track record for progressive management, and both have been languishing as of late in the web. Do they think two idiots will make a brighter Internet star? Just take a look at Gmail, for all of its flaws, it is still light years ahead of Yahoo Mail or Hotmail.

Even when I did find someone who favored the deal, they didn’t totally grasp why it was being done.  If I was too hazard a guess, I would have to say that Microsoft just decided they have too much money laying around.

What’s everyone else think?  Does this deal make any sense to you?