We thought it would be fun to go with a pink theme for Breast Cancer awareness month to help raise awareness. Now the debate is whether or not to fill the front page with BOOB FLASH, but I guess we shouldn't get carried away.

Halloween theme will be next...

So there's an interesting opportunity here in Glenside! The Newgrounds office happens to be near the Glenside commercial district on Easton road, an area that was designated many years ago as a destination for in-town shopping but hasn't ended up that way. Yeah, there are two good bars and a pizza shop on the main strip, but there are also multiple thrift stores, an exterminator and a place that sells motorized wheelchairs. While I don't want to downplay the contributions of any local businesses, as a resident of Glenside I would like to see this area thrive as it was intended to.

The big news is that two store fronts have recently become available, one having been an eyeglass shop and the other a thrift store. The eyeglass shop has already been occupied by a florist, who has done a great job at making it feel like a ritzy neighborhood flower shop. This sort of thing gives me hope for the rest of the street. Word has it, a dollar store has expressed interest in the remaining space. That sounds rather... blah.

The space is available for $1,100 per month and that includes heat. So the question is... Should Newgrounds open a store? We have a growing pool of merchandise, with more on the way, not to mention all the potential merchandise we COULD stock from our friends here on the web. It would be a totally unique store, unlike anything in the world, that directly represents all the cool stuff we're doing here on the web. It's hard to say how much interest we could generate from local foot traffic, but I like to think a Newgrounds store would be "hip" enough to push the Glenside commercial district towards a tipping point, where other new businesses give the location a shot. The flower shop gave me hope, so maybe we can help give hope to the next person.

Still, $1,100 a month isn't chump change (although it's much cheaper than I expected a store front to be). We would hopefully make it back in sales, but the location could totally flop. The real thing holding me back is the staffing issue. Would the NG staff take turns staffing the store, or would we hire someone new to staff it? Would sales be enough to warrant the additional salary? Whoever staffs the store could double as an administrator, essentially working for the website when no customers are visiting. Still, I've gotten pretty militant with the budget lately (for the sake of minimizing ads), so I don't want to be frivolous.

Benefits of having a store:

1) Gives us the opportunity to connect directly with fans (and potential fans), creating a sort of year-round Comic-Con here in Glenside.

2) Forces us to have a greater focus on what merchandise we are producing and what kind of feedback it is getting from the people who come and see it.

3) Creates a public meeting space for NG fans to visit and possibly test upcoming stuff before it goes public. I thought the office would be the place for that, but we realized that we come here to WORK and don't actually want people stopping in at random and hanging over our work spaces.

4) Expands the prestige of Newgrounds by giving us a more tangible presence in the world.

5) Benefits the Glenside commercial district (in my opinion) and hopefully attracts other new businesses.

Downsides to having a store:

1) We're already a small team that is spread too thin. This is just more work and more distractions.

2) It could end up being a money pit that no one shops at...

a) Rent - $13,200 per year.

b) Insurance - roughly $500 per year.

c) Staff - assume we're open six days, 48 hours per week, at $8-9 per hour... Add in payroll taxes and NG's health plan... Looking at over $25,000 per year.

d) Utilities - will it have internet? We would need a phone line for credit card processing. Heat is included, but still need electric... Could add up to $5k or more per year.

d) Repairs - we might need to fix stuff, but wouldn't own the space.

We're looking at roughly $50k per year to run a store, and that's being conservative. If the store is open 312 days of the year and we marked up every item by $10, we would need to sell 5,000 items per year, or 16 items per day. You can see why boutique shops charge so much!

It's fun to dream, though.

On a whim, we removed a row from the FEATURED WEB CONTENT and added a row to GAMES... So now more games are getting front page space.

In the near future we'll be introducing some new game categories to the GAMES section. I'm wondering what category Ocean Explorer belongs in... Something new? Gadgets? If there were a new category, are there other submissions that fit with it?

So uh... Ross relaunched the review mod tools today and I was going through, dealing with flagged reviews. I kept noticing really angry reviews for the same submission over and over again, so I wondered what all the fuss was about.

Discuss.

Something that I've always been nervous about, is whether or not Bytesize is a turnoff to the general public. Namely, the fact that it plays by default when you visit the front page.

The player is programmed to remember your settings, so if you hit the STOP button and leave, the player will no longer auto-play. A lot of general internet users probably never figure that out, though.

So it makes me wonder... Are there a lot of people who come to the NG front page, get bombarded with audio, and simply leave rather than stick around? Does anyone know of any examples of this happening to people? Please share... I'm looking for some real serious feedback, since the result could be dramatic for bytesize - defaulting to OFF means a lot of people will never enjoy all the cartoons there. Also, maybe some people take MORE interest in NG after being forced to watch a sample of what goes on here. It's hard to get feedback here on NG, because everyone who posts here is obviously a fan of the site, and not someone who left. :)

Thoughts?

Abner came by last night for a progress-check on the upcoming NG store overhaul. Oldschool NG fans may remember Abner as the guy who created the original Shotgun Man sketch for Assassin.

Funny side story... Back in college, Abner and I had started work on a Shotgun Man cartoon, which was to become a series on NG. Each episode revolved around Shotgun Man getting angry in routine everyday situations, the result being a massive bloodbath. Abner drew characters and backgrounds on paper and I "inked and colored" (yeah, traced) them in Flash. We never finished an episode, though. It's a shame, it would have been great.

Since the days when we were college roommates, Abner took an interest in programming, namely, the same sort of programming Ross and liljim do. We figured that since a store system wouldn't tie in much with the rest of NG, it would be a good opportunity to throw a third programmer into the mix.

Progress is coming along well! It's hard to say how far we are from launch (just assume it will never launch - then we can't disappoint you), but I'm excited with how far it has already come.

I'm scrambling to get Castle Crashers done, so that's pretty much gonna be my life story for the coming months. What can I say, console games are BIG projects... Too big.

General team status check...

Ross - finishing up the new system for viewing individual user reviews, as well as new review mod tools.

liljim - working on the post-redesign multi-author system.

Jeff - in the final stretch (?) of Tankmen 2.

Stamper - prepping product shots for the store and a million other oppressive odd jobs

MindChamber - working on Pixel Puncher art and starting an epic cartoon

Tim - setting up secure server for store, trying to solve our AOL problem for <= $2000 a month

Mike - working on Castle Crashers on-line multiplayer (with Josh from Team Behemoth) and BSP code

The AOL problem is that AOL isn't giving Cogent (our bandwidth provider) proper access to their users... So NG runs INSANELY SLOW for AOL users. I wish I could tell everyone to just STOP USING AOL because it's a piece of shit scam of an ISP, but unfortunately a lot of people want to keep using it, so we have to pay a ton of money to set up an alternate high bandwidth route for AOL users.

Ok back to work.

This past weekend was the first weekend in a while that April and I were able to just hang out without going to weddings or without me going away on some trip. To honor the occasion, I decided to make a CD to listen to in the car! It's really a CD for April to listen to in her car, but it hasn't left my car yet. The mix features:

1. Interpol - Pioneer to the Falls

2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Down Boy

3. Spoon - Don't You Evah

4. Mark ROnson featuring Lily Allen - Oh My God (remake of a Kaiser Chiefs song)

5. M.I.A. - Boyz

6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Rockers to Swallow

7. Lily Allen - Alfie (CSS Remix)

8. Devo - Watch Us Work It (new Devo song!)

9. The Futureheads - Hounds of Love (New Mix)

10. The Shins - Sea Legs

11. Beck - Girl

12. Interpol - The Lighthouse

Now due to the beautiful weather and good vibes, the two Interpol songs and "Down Boy" felt a bit too glum for the general mood. Also, as much as I love The Shins, Sea Legs wasn't quite fitting in. I don't know if it's the song, or because I've had it for a few months and it wasn't feeling as fresh. The Beck song wasn't new either, but it was new to my MP3 collection, so that made it fun for me. The rest of the songs were perfect for the weekend... If you want to re-create my weekend of driving around, burn that list to disc and give it a try. Today it was raining, so the Interpol songs fit the mood better. I need to reconfigure the mix a bit but I doubt I'll get around to it.

I value the importance of mixing good songs with good times, because then you can hear the songs later and remember the good times you had. I was pretty happy with the CD I put together for our wedding cocktail hour. For the reception, it's important to play familiar songs and not be all pretentious, but cocktail hour is a great opportunity to play stuff people may be less familiar with and just set a general vibe. This was my cocktail hour mix:

1. Norah Jones & Wax Poetic - Angels (Thievery Corporation remix)

2. The Clash - Rock the Casbah

3. New Order - Age of Consent

4. Goldfrapp (Ooh La La)

5. Gang of Four - At Home He's a Tourist

6. Liars - Mr Your on Fire Mr.

7. Pete Bjorn and John - Young Folks

8. Stigmato Inc - Reality Check

9. DJ Cam - Success (Thievery Corporation Remix)

10. GOldfrapp - Fly Me Away (The Naughty Remix)

11. New Order - Ceremony

12. Federico Aubele - Postales

13. Willie Bob - Spanish Grease (Dorfmeister Con Madrid De Los Austrias Muga Reserve Mix)

14. New Order - Temptation (7" Edit)

15. Bloc Party - Banquet

16. Goldfrapp - Number 1

17. Klaxons - Golden Skans

18. DJ Krush - On the Dub-ble

For our first dance, we picked "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack - Single Mix", by Liars. The single mix is more "peppy" than the regular version.

If you haven't heard some of these, you should be able to buy most of them on iTunes. Check 'em out. :)

I can't believe I never saw this before. At least, I don't remember ever seeing it.

This time of the year always seems to be hectic...

July 17th - Launched the site redesign.

July 22nd - Flew to San Diego for Comic-Con

July 30th - Flew back to Philly

July 31st - August 2nd - Caught up on over 2,000 emails and PMs.

August 3rd - Flew to Las Vegas for best friend Andy's bachelor party

August 6th - Flew back.

August 7th - 10th: Built three area levels for VS mode in Castle Crashers, as well as an arena battle menu system, with an expanded character roster and arena select.

I need to have the VS mode arenas ready and "well tested" before I fly out to Seattle on August 23rd for the Penny Arcade Expo, where we will be running some VS battle competitions and giving out prizes!

Tonight is Andy's rehearsal dinner and tomorrow is the wedding.

Everything is on track, EXCEPT for prizes! I have yet to announce the Best of July (expect that on Monday), and we still haven't sent out prize packs for the Best of June, Rock out winners (for best songs) and the Transformers Collab. I have a feeling we aren't getting the prizes they had offered to supply us with (I blame Stamper), but we'll probably go out and buy a bunch of TF toys. We can get better ones anyway, and I doubt anyone really wanted the soundtrack that much.

The Castle Crashers arenas should be a lot of fun. The first features standard fighting, but the second and third mix things up. In the second arena, you only have a bow and arrow and a bunch of pillars to hind behind. Players run around and collect power-ups, which make them run faster while shooting arrows further and faster as well. It becomes a crazy shootout as players get more and more powerful.

In the third arena, players only have shovels, and must dig around looking for a special power up that allows them to pummel and terrorize their opponents. I might change this to a treasure hunt with gems, and make a fourth arena that deals with defenseless players seeking ultimate power, I haven't decided yet.

I gotta head out to that rehearsal dinner! And I'm behind on PMs again. :(

I'm completely disgusted with Sirius Satellite Radio at the moment.

So several (many?) months ago, I stopped getting reception in my car. Weeks later, the same happened with April's car. It turns out, the Sirius antenna is a total piece of crap that tends to break within the first year (as noted in the reviews on Amazon, where it has a one star rating).

To make matters more annoying, Best Buy says they haven't had the antenna in stock for months. I finally gave in and ordered the antennas on-line from Amazon, but a month later, I have received notice that they are unable to obtain the antennas and have cancelled the order.

Meanwhile, April and I continue to pay a monthly subscription, which I really need to get refunded. To think I still own stock in this company. :(