The UpStream (Page 293)

Two years ago we heard from Verizon that they were going to slow installs of FiOS nationwide, followed by the announcement last year that any installs not currently active would not be continued. This week, Verizon has decided that their marketing might actually be doing the trick, and has decided to reactive a dark market - Tampa, Florida.

They will be adding an additional 17,700 new households to the availability footprint for the fiber optic Internet and television service. This will bring the market total accessibility to more than 1.1 million households. Considering this is one of the original Road Runner cable Internet test markets, it is a little more than surprising that the service isn't already available in the entire market.

Want to know who will be affected? Hit the break for the full breakdown.

This has been a tough week in the cosplay space with a lot of negative attention brought in from a particularly negative individual. Because I do not want to give him any more press, however, I have a positive story from the cosplay world this week, and it involves the police and Batman.

7-year-old Kye, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, is living with leukemia, and his one wish is to have an adventure with Batman. Well, thanks to the help of the organization "A Wish with Wings," the Arlington Police Department and the Arlington Fire Department, he had just that. Arlington police setup a series of fake crimes, perpetrated by Batman villains, including The Joker and The Riddler, all to be foiled by Batman and his little assistant, dressed as a mini-Batman.

First, the pair got to stop a bank robbery in which The Joker trips and falls and, in proper character, tells some pretty terrible jokes. Eventually the pair wins and takes him to jail. Then The Riddler plants a car bomb, again to be foiled by the pair of Bats. It is really cool that the police and fire departments got together and were willing to put this on. It is a great way to make a kid's dream come true.

I know you just have to see the video, so I have good news. It is available after the break!

Electronic Arts might not be doing well, even with the added revenue from their Season Ticket from their EA Sports titles. After completing a handful of major games last year, like Star Wars and Battlefield 3, the studio is going to be laying off 500 to 1,000 employees, which is roughly between 5 to 10 percent of the entire workforce.

How will this affect the company and is it a bad thing? The full story is after the break.

It's very rare that we simply come across a "feel good" story in the tech space. Somebody's always up to something mischievous or a company is under scrutiny for unethical practices. Seldom do we have an organization that is doing something good for the environment. This week, I am proud to say that we have some good news.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) annually produces the International Consumer Electronics Show, which is the largest show in its space by a lot. As you would imagine, a lot goes into producing the show, especially a lot of materials. Tons of paper, loads of vinyl for the badges, light fixtures and other material are all used to make the show the best it can be. Every year the CEA works on trying to neutralize its carbon footprint and recycle as much of the material as possible.

This year we were told all of our badge material was recycled from last year's banners and we knew that there were more materials that were recycled but we didn't expect it to be on this sort of scale.

How far did the CEA go this year? We'll tell you after the break, complete with the press release.

Since the Blockbuster auction last year, there was a lot of speculation on what the buyer, Dish Network, would do with all of the stores, employees and product. Back in July, Dish closed and liquidated almost half of the Blockbuster locations in order to consolidate their efforts. From there, we saw the company bring in the Blockbuster streaming service, which was specific to Dish Network customers only.

Now, after 500 more store closures two months ago we are seeing the next phase in what Dish is trying to do here. Blockbuster stores will now have "guaranteed rentals" in their stores.

At the beginning of the month, Netflix came out of the shadows and decided to buy DVD.com. This comes after a long quiet period that followed what I have been dubbing The Great Netflix Debacle of Late 2011, where even though 800,000 customers left the company who at the last minute lost its backbone because of Facebook, it wasn't too concerned that it couldn't move forward and prosper.

What's in store for Big Red? A whole lot of good show! We have the details after the break.