The purchase of Lucasfilm by the Walt Disney Company is now complete. Prepare for movies!

Announced on Halloween, the purchase of Lucasfilm by Disney has already received approval from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) faster than you can say “jump to light speed.” Thanks to a higher than expected price for shares of Disney, the purchase price ended up closing out at $4.06 billion, just slightly ahead of the originally announced $4.05 billion.

Disney is wasting no time in trying to earn back that chunk of change. According to a report from Blue Sky Disney, the Star Wars comic books will start coming to Marvel as of 2015. Dark Horse Comics has been publishing titles in the famous universe since 1991, but according to sources, no new contracts will be awarded to them after 2013, and the titles will instead go to Marvel which Disney purchased a few years ago.

Why does this line spoken by Darth Vader in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope come to mind? “The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.”

Normally Moronic Monday is the only day filled with stupid stories, but so many happened today that it felt like a hangover …

(Links by Steven for some of the stories we discuss in this episode)

• BREAKING: New Blackberry features a working phone. – The Inquisitr
• Rdio hits the US and Canada – slick but bargain bin time – The Inquisitr
• Motorola and Verizon team up for TV tablet – Financial Times
• F.B.I., Challenging Use of Seal, Gets Back a Primer on the Law – New York Times
• Google Earth Used To Fine People With Pools, Again – TechCrunch
• FOIA Denial All But Confirms FTC Probe of Apple’s Anti-Adobe Rules – Epicenter

Braindead TechCast Episode #117

A night filled with computer problems for both Steven and I leads to us being a bit snarkier than usual for TechMeme Friday, but is that really a bad thing?

(Links by Steven for some of the stories we discuss in this episode)

• Comscore Says It’ll Fix Search Share Measurement Now That Yahoo And Microsoft Are Gaming It (YHOO, MSFT, GOOG) – Silicon Alley Insider
• Just When He Thought He Was Out, Facebook Pulls Calacanis Back In – TechCrunch
• iPhone 4 at Wal-Mart on June 24 – CNET News
• World Cup Fever: Internet Has Busiest Day Ever as Tabulated by Akamai – Beet.TV
• Google Voice Desktop App Launch Delayed, May Be Scrapped – TechCrunch
• The End Of An Era: Hotmail Ditches The Taglines – TechCrunch
• Apple fears the killer app – Why does everything suck?
• iPad Hackers: Obtaining Emails Not Illegal, We Will Fight If Charges Are Pressed – The Snitch
• ITC to probe Apple for HTC patent infringement – Reuters
• Exclusive: Twitter’s Next Moneymaker-”Promoted Trends” – MediaMemo
• FTC Sets Apple Mobile Software Probe – Wall Street Journal

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It’s Friday, and around the Braindead Techcast, that means it’s TechMeme Friday!  Woo-hoo!  Nothing like making fun of a whole bunch of stories all in one shot!  As always, we just head down the TechMeme page and comment on each story, stopping to comment on the most interesting ones, and mock the others.

(Links by Steven for some of the stories we discuss in this episode)

Search more securely with encrypted Google web search – The Official Google Blog
FTC Closes its Investigation of Google AdMob Deal – Federal Trade Commission
An Open Letter to our Valued Customers – AT&T
Facebook confirms plans for ‘simple’ privacy settings – CNET News
Sayonara, iPhone: Why I’m Switching to Android – Daniel Lyons
Security Issues Could Force Facebook to Slow Down Product Development – Inside Facebook
Y Combinator Closes New $8.25 Million Fund, Sequoia Is Lead Investor – TechCrunch
Apple Officially Ends ‘Get a Mac’ Campaign, Revamps ‘Why You’ll Love a Mac’ Feature – MacRumors
US Court: RapidShare Not Guilty of Copyright Infringement – TorrentFreak
iPad Sold Out at Many Apple Stores – Digital Daily

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As someone who works as a professional blogger, I hear endlessly about how print media is blaming all of its woes on “new media.”  Well, I’ve got a news flash for you, if you just stop whining and work at it, you can save yourselves.

Earlier this week, Peter Kafka at Media Memo reported that magazine publisher Condé Nast sold 6,614 copies of the Dec. issue of GQ via iTunes, and some 12,000 copies of the Jan. issue.  At $2.99 each, that comes out to $55655.86, minus the 30 percent Apple keeps from app sales means they grossed $389595.10.  Of course this doesn’t count in conversion from print, paying writers and so on, but it does show that an experiment can work, and there is money to be made on the iPod Touch and iPhone for print media.

Of course it isn’t just Apple products where print media is pulling itself up by the proverbial boot straps.  I recently interviewed Paul Greenberg, Executive Vice President & General Manager of TVGuide.com, for TechnoBuffalo.  You would think of all the publications from the old days of ‘print as king’ that should have died off, TV Guide should be fairly high on that list due to the nature of on-screen guides from your cable company and satellite providers.  Instead the company is thriving in the digital age with a Web site that is drawing in users in droves.  Here are just some of its statistics:

• Four years ago the site averaged four million unique visitors a month, it is now at 21 million a month with 45 percent year-over-year growth
• Each user averages a session time of 18 minutes, 36 page views per visit and five visits per month
• 50 percent are under the age of 35 (25 percent four years ago), and 29 percent have an annual household income of over $100K
• iPhone app has over 400K installs

If you aren’t familiar with Web statistics, 18 minute user sessions is a huge number.  Most sites are happy in the single digits, but TVGuide.com is not just pulling them in through search engine optimization, they are keeping them there once they arrive.  This is a huge selling point for advertisers that want to by ad inventory on the site.

So here you have two stalwarts of the old guard print media that have quietly been working on ways to keep up with technology, and making it work for them.  On the flip side you have Rupert Murdoch of News Corp whining and moaning incessantly about the evils of new media.  His solution to all of this is to pull his company’s content from the Web as much as possible.  He is trying to get other publishers to agree with him to cut off Google from being able to index their stories because they feel they are nothing more than thieves.  In addition to casting out these scoundrels, they also want to begin charging for their content.

Of course what they don’t understand is that by cutting off indexing of their sites, it won’t matter if they charge for their stories, no one will be able to find them.

Just as the music industry has tried to blame all of its woes on piracy, the majority of print media is trying to find a scapegoat for their own short comings.  At the FTC’s How Will Journalism Survive The Internet Age? conference back in Dec., Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post spent the majority of her 25 minute speaking session attacking these ideas according to paidContent.

Apparently, some in the old media have decided that it is, in fact, an either/or game and that the best way to save, if not journalism, at least themselves, is by pointing fingers and calling names.  In most industries, if your customers were leaving in droves, you would try to figure out what to do to get them back.

And that brings us back to the start.  There are at least two companies that have stopped their finger pointing (not that they ever did any actual finger pointing to the best of my knowledge) and done things to get their customers back.  One has gone a paid route, the other has remained free, so it is evidence that both methods do work, but it is still evidence that print media can survive in the digital age as opposed to hunting it down like Frankenstein’s monster, torches in hand.

One of the things Mr. Greenberg from TVGuide.com said to me repeatedly, and it really stuck with me, was that the site was successful because it was “immersive.”  When you visit their site, the wealth of information you find relating to any television property is impressive by any measure.  He also said one of the keys to the TV networks surviving the onslaught of online media was that “they have to evolve quickly.”  Well, yes, they do, and so do their print counterparts.

It is a law of nature that if a species doesn’t evolve to new surroundings, it dies off.  Print media has to evolve, and it has to do it as soon as possible.  If they are busy using their fingers to point to the evil new media as opposed to typing out code on keyboards, guess what’s going to happen to them.

Welcome to another week of the daily edition of CobWEBs, the flagship podcast of The Cynical Bastards!

For those who don’t remember from the other episodes, this is a new format for the show as we are going to try giving you daily bite sized chunks of our patented brand of cynicism over everything in the tech universe. The show will have a rotating host schedule between Steven Hodson, Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins and myself. You’ll always get two of us, you just never know which two!

In this episode, Steven and I discuss how the FTC can’t make up its mind about how much it is going to enforce its disclosure rules … and then we somehow end up talking about the evils of the entertainment industry and its war on copyright laws.  We do tend to wander. (links by Steven)

FTC Not Sure How to Enforce Blogger Disclosure Rules – Wall Street Journal
Net Neutrality is a good thing as long as it screws with copyrights – The Inquisitr

Push the big green button and have a listen in!

After two weeks of adding blogs, one is gone this week (SitePoint), and all the rest remain.  Hopefully this will be my list for some time to come … unless I go insane and add more.  And, for those keeping score, the total number of posts for this week is 54.

FunJug.com

• Dangerous Wands
• Jack Bauer Interrogates Santa
• Lady Gaga’s Christmas Album

iPhoneTouch.BLORGE.com

• Top 10 best free iPhone and Touch talk radio apps

Photo.BLORGE.com

• Samsung ST550 offers up Wi-Fi connectivity
• Photobucket and Ontela announce merger

RememberingChristmas.com

• Christmas Light Hero

SeanPAune.com

• Bribing An Ethical Journalist Only Gets You Mocked
• CobWEBs The Roundtable podcast: Nexus One, 2010, our thoughts and predictions
• Paramount To Launch Small Film Division Based Off Of Success Of Paranormal Activity
• CobWEBs Daily Edition: TechCrunch, content & retweets stacked like McDonald fries
• Golden Globe Nominations 2010
• Second Alice In Wonderland Trailer Released
• Iron Man 2 Trailer Released
• CobWEBs Daily Edition: Dipping our toes into the murky depths of 2010
• CobWEBs Daily Edition: Doing it until we get bit on the ass
• Scattercast Episode 74: By The Seat Of His Pants!
• CobWEBs Daily Edition: Where we wonder what all the yelping is about
• Blogging Goals For 2010

SiliconANGLE.com

• Mobile Monday: Mobile App News for Week of December 6th
• Details of the NexusOne keep leaking out all over the place
• Android Market hits 20,000 Apps Milestone
• Morgan Stanley Says Apple May Have The Most Disruptive Technology Launch Ever
• 10.1 Million BlackBerry Phones Shipped Last Quarter

StarterTech.com

• Google’s Nexus One Could Change The Way We Buy Cell Phones
• FCC Info Shows The NexusOne To Be Real
• Google Launches Goo.gl URL Shortener
• Google Helps You Clean Up Your Contacts
• Battery Backups Are An Essential Part Of Your Computer Set Up
• WordPress 2.9 Officially Released
• What Kids Searched For In 2009

Tech.BLORGE.com

• Google Phone becomes the Nexus One and gets real
• Los Angeles adopts Google for IT services
• BlackBerry could be the big winner in iPhone Vs Droid fight
• Google adds Twitter notifications to FeedBurner
• Justin.tv testifies before the United States Congress over copyrights
• FTC suing Intel over unfair business tactics
• Capital Records suing Vimeo over lip dub videos
• Rumor: Google looking to build its own netbook for Chrome OS
• BlackBerry e-mail not working for all major U.S. carriers today
• Iraqi insurgents hack U.S. drone video feeds
• Rumor: Google close to acquiring Yelp
• Verizon preps its network for the iPhone
• Rumor: Google in talks to acquire Trulia

TechnoBuffalo.com

• Skype 4.2 Beta Is a Road Warriors Dream
• Why Did Modern Warfare 2 Trounce Halo 3: ODST?
• Apple Gives Away Free Sample Of Its New LP Format
• Seagate Momentus is World’s Thinnest 2.5-inch Hard Drive
• Are URL Shorteners Really This Important?
• Will America’s Speed Deficit Lead To Lost Users?
• Who Needs a Computer To Get Social Anymore?
• What Subjects Kept Twitter Talking All Year?
• Gadget and Computer Theft On The Rise
• Can Anyone Figure Out What Record Labels Think of Music Streaming?

Welcome to another week of the daily edition of CobWEBs, the flagship podcast of The Cynical Bastards!

For those who don’t remember from the other episodes, this is a new format for the show as we are going to try giving you daily bite sized chunks of our patented brand of cynicism over everything in the tech universe. The show will have a rotating host schedule between Steven Hodson, Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins and myself. You’ll always get two of us, you just never know which two!

Steven and I take a look at the hair pulling over Facebook privacy, the plan to attack AT&T as led by Fake Steve Jobs and the whole Microsoft/Plurk debacle … in other words a whole load of stuff that annoyed us today. (links by Steven)

Privacy group files FTC complaint against Facebook for new privacy settings – The Inquisitr
Some thoughts on Fake Steve Jobs’ Operation Chokehold & AT&T FUD – The Inquisitr

Push the big green button and have a listen in!

I am not sure I have ever been as insulted as I was  last night.

At 5:48 p.m. last night I received the following e-mail:  (emphasis theirs)

Hi Sean, I am with [redacted site name].  I have a question regarding your [redacted article link] article.  I’m sure you get requests for this all the time, but we would love to be considered for placement in the article as we are a community of independent artists and offer many mp3 downloads, free and legal.  I believe we are an excellent resourse and are a very relevant site to the article.  I know, since the article was already completed a while back, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to go back and change something, so we would love to compensate you for your troubles.  And to make sure you know our site is legit, by all means, check it our for yourself.  Here is our main [redacted link] page, which is sub-categorized by genre.  Please let me know if this might be possible.  Thank you for your consideration.

Yes folks, someone offered me a bribe to get placement in a list I did about 18 months ago.

I replied with:

For future reference, no legitimate journalist would ever accept compensation for such an act.  You need to learn how to approach writers before you do yourself any more damage.

Believe me, I had more to say, and most of it wouldn’t have been re-printable if I hadn’t edited myself.

The idea that I would ever accept ‘compensation’ from a third-party for inclusion into a piece of my work disgusts me to my very core.  As I have said many times before, I never attended any form of journalism school, but I think just about any one with half a brain cell knows that you do not make an offer such as this.  And hopefully every journalist would know not to accept it.

I have no delusions about being a serious journalist, but I at least attempt to be an ethical one.  This is part of the reason the whole FTC disclosure guidelines thing annoyed me so much as I am already ethical without being threatened into it.

All that being said, I cannot believe someone would actually attempt this.  Who in their right mind just out and out offers what amounts to a bribe to a journalist?  Perhaps they are new, hence why I have opted to conceal their name and site address, but you would think common sense might kick in and say, “Hey, maybe this isn’t a good idea.”  Whatever the case may be, offering ‘compensation’ to a journalist of any type is reprehensible.

Some have said tech journalists being given gadgets to review is a form of bribe, and to those people I would ask, “How do you expect us to review the product if we have never seen or used it?”  Do you want us to write reviews strictly from the biased press releases and professionally shot photography?  Isn’t a move reviewer getting to see a movie early and free the same?  ”Well, I watched the trailer and this movie looks amazing, go see it.”

However, I digress, don’t try bribing me, it won’t end well for you.

And, just a note to anyone else who ever ponders doing this: If you try to bribe me to be added to an article, I will publish your name and mock you publicly.  This serves as the one and only warning anyone will ever receive on this matter.

45 articles this week as I added FunJug.com and RememberingChristmas.com to the mix.

FunJug.com

• My Mom’s On Facebook
• The Lip Sync Kid
• James Cameron Joneses for Effects
• Star Trek Klingon Hamlet taH pagh taHbe’ (To be or not to be)
• Pink Glove Dance
• At My Wedding Twitterring and Facebooking at the Altar

iPhoneTouch.BLORGE.com

• Top 10 best free iPhone and Touch shopping apps

Photo.BLORGE.com

• Former editor-in-chief of JPG Magazine launches Pictory online magazine
• Epson launches 2-in-1 digital photo frame and printer

RememberingChristmas.com

• Christmas TV Special 2009 Schedule
• Watch The 1935 Version Of Scrooge For Free

SeanPAune.com

• Black Friday 2010 Won’t Go Smoothly
• New Moon Is Still #1 At The Box Office; World Ending
• CobWEBs Daily Edition: It’s FTC Eve, have you put out milk, cookies & disclosures?
• Iron Man 2 Teaser Poster Released
• CobWEBs Daily Edition: Comcast & NBC now confirmed lovers – consumers screwed
• Introducing RememberingChristmas.com and FunJug.com
• CobWEBs Daily Edition: The Pollyanna landscape of blogs and brand protection
• LG Takes A Tongue-In-Cheek Approach To Educating Teens About Sexting
• CobWEBs Daily Edition: $31 billion equals a dead network plus a date with Congress
• Scattercast Episode 72: Affairs Of The Heart
• 2010 World Cup First Round Schedule
• CobWEBs Daily Edition: The FTC Disclosure Fiasco – It’s all over but for the crying
• Clean The Clutter Out Of Your Life

SiliconANGLE.com

• Mobile Monday: Mobile App News for Week of November 22nd

SitePoint.com

• 12 Top Notch Online Presentation Tools

StarterTech.com

• Cyber Monday Set To Be A Lackluster Black Friday
• Windows Systems Suffering Black Screens After Security Update
• FTC Guidelines For Bloggers Take Effect Today
• Thermal Roof Tiles Change With The Temperature
• Windows Systems Suffering Black Screens After Security Update Turns Out To Be Bunk
• Lack Of FTC Guideline Answers, Bloggers Make Their Own Disclosure Rules
• Reports Indicate Apple Has Purchased Lala

Tech.BLORGE.com

• Android phones get an app store for porn
• As Barnes & Noble starts shipping the Nook, Amazon boasts of Kindle sales
• The CrunchPad has officially been killed off
• Blockbuster entering the DVD kiosk rental business
• Comcast releases usage meter to aid customers with understanding their bandwidth cap
• Spring Design denied injunction against sales of the Barnes & Noble Nook
• Diggnation cohost claims Apple Tablet will be “shockingly” inexpensive
• Redbox looking into video game rentals as the movie studios cut them off at every turn
• Chinese sales of iPhone becoming a huge disappointment
• Microsoft’s Bing went down for a half hour
• Rumor: Apple in talks to buy Lala
• Windows 7 Family Packs appear to be no more

Welcome to another week of the daily edition of CobWEBs, the flagship podcast of The Cynical Bastards!

For those who don’t remember from the other episodes, this is a new format for the show as we are going to try giving you daily bite sized chunks of our patented brand of cynicism over everything in the tech universe. The show will have a rotating host schedule between Steven Hodson, Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins and myself. You’ll always get two of us, you just never know which two!

Mark and I take yet another look at the whole FTC disclosure debacle in the wake of the fact that it has now turned into a joke meme in the blogosphere.  Maybe the FTC will some day decide to clarify itself, until then, let the humor commence.

Push the big green button and have a listen in!

Welcome to another week of the daily edition of CobWEBs, the flagship podcast of The Cynical Bastards!

For those who don’t remember from the other episodes, this is a new format for the show as we are going to try giving you daily bite sized chunks of our patented brand of cynicism over everything in the tech universe. The show will have a rotating host schedule between Steven Hodson, Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins and myself. You’ll always get two of us, you just never know which two!

Steven and I discuss the FTC guidelines taking effect on Dec. 1st.  Are you preparing your disclosures?  Checking them twice?  We also spend some time discussing the death of the CrunchPad … and laughing about it.

The primary focus is on how the FTC has left so many questions about all of the new rules we are supposed to follow, but yet they remain silent, not answering blogger’s questions.  Do we have to go back and add them to old posts?  What about using the “Like” feature on some sites?  It’s a mess.  (Links thanks to Steven)

Get Ready for Blogger Shameless Tuesday (And Help Us, Too) – Valleywag
Disclose This: I Can’t Disclose Everything Everywhere! – Louis Gray
Why the CrunchPad mattered – CrunchGear

Push the big green button and have a listen in!