Author: Ben Popken

Last week, Microsoft pulled some ads for the new Kin social media device after our prurient pals over at Consumer Reports pointed out that they seemed to promote sexting (In one of the shots, a teenager puts the gadget under his shirt and takes a picture). “Microsoft takes the issue of sexting very seriously,” said a Microsoft spokesman regarding the yank. Well they certainly must, reports ANIMAL, because that’s exactly the kind of content where they seem to have found Rosa Salazar, the campaign’s main actress. For instance, her starring role in the parodic safe-sext-take on Salt n’ Peppa’s 1991 smash hit, “Let’s Talk About Sex.”

There’s also one where she plays a girl lying on her back in bed while her shirtless boyfriend atop her wishes Windows 7 would make him “last longer.”

Pretty tame all around, and, while I’m not a prude and don’t really think the Kin ads are that bad, except in a “Welcome to the Social”-like way, Microsoft shouldn’t pretend like it didn’t know it was putting off a sexty vibe.

SEXTING SENSITIVE MICROSOFT PICKS BRAND PERSON WITH HISTORY OF SEXTING PARODIES [ANIMAL]
PREVIOUSLY: Microsoft Takes Back Its Naughty Ad For The Kin

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning that Facebook will toss a policy that made developers and partners with access your data to delete it after 24 hours. Now they can just keep it. Turns out the privacy policy hindered growth:
Zuckerberg told Inside Facebook:

Zynga [makers of Mafia Wars and Farmville] has had to download user information 100 million times per day because of our policy. Developers were having to architect entire systems just to do this. There aren’t any other changes in the policies on how developers can use the data,

Coming soon after their announcement that some pieces of your personal information will never be private even if you set your profile to private, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Facebook won’t let a little thing like respect for its users get in the way of its quest for total internet domination. And why should it? Most users won’t hear about the changes, or care.

Facebook Removing 24 Hour Caching Policy on User Data for Developers [Inside Facebook]
Facebook Crushes Privacy with Impunity [Valleywag]

RELATED:
Manifest destiny at Facebook’s F8 confab [Cnet]
Facebook Kills More Of Your Privacy For Cash
Delete Your Facebook Account Forever

Maybe they are sentient after all, just like the commercials suggest, and they’ve decided it’s time for you to move on. A slew of Droid owners are reporting that their cellphones will sometimes randomly delete all of their text messages. That’s every picture of your baby your wife sent you, every hilarious exchange between you and your best friend, and every must-have address you’ve got stored as a text message.

Issue 5669, a Google Code forum thread devoted to the subject, has over 337 comments on the topic, and has been starred by over 230 people. Based on the comments, a number of people have had all their texts deleted more than once. No solutions seem to be forthcoming, and the issue has been going on since at least December, 2009.

Are you a Droid owners? Has this happened to you? Sound off in the comments.

Issue 5669: Droid deleting all Messaging/SMS conversation threads at random or triple sending [Code.Google.com] (Thanks to Chris!)

Tropical Bedding Mattress Sets (fire)
Le Hing Baby Walkers (falling)
Mares Dive Computers (drowning)
Hammary Furniture Chests and Tables (lead)
Oriental Furniture Roman Shades and Roll-Up Blinds (strangulation)

If you have a Logitech customer service issue, warranty repair request or otherwise just need to kick your issue to the top because regular customer service isn’t doing it for you, here is a gal to contact:

Nancy Morrison, VP of Corporate Communications, United States and Worldwide
510-713-4948
[email protected]

Yowza! David’s eyes popped out his head when he saw his $7,865.84 bill from Verizon.

The charges stemmed from a recent trip to Tel Aviv where he used 350,000 kb of data on his Mifi connection. As we’ve extensively documented, Verizon charges 2 cents per kilobyte. Before leaving the states, a Verizon rep told him how much it would cost. Not used to thinking in kilobytes, David asked what his normal data usage was. His response was that David was on the unlimited plan so he was not charged by kilobyte. While a truthful statement, it didn’t exactly answer David’s question.

David is going to pay his bill, which Verizon offered to go hafsies on. He writes that he accepts full responsibility for not doing the math and for not taking advantage of the VZ Manager software that pops up when you tether your phone that can track your kb usage. David just wishes Verizon had been less obtuse in its explanation, and/or had told him about the VZ Manager tool.

I can connect up to 5 of my employees to my Mifi; if I had traveled with a team to Tel Aviv and used my full 5 GB of a lotted monthly usage I would have come to a $100,000 bill- something that usually costs me $50. The thought of that even “accidentally” being allowed to happen makes my head spin.

Word to the wise, don’t use your American cellphone overseas to track your Farmville operation, or really, do anything with it.

Verizon Data Roaming Nightmare [David Snyder’s Snydey Sense]

Whether you’re trying to get a job and worried about snoopy new bosses, sick of maintaining a virtual profile constantly bombarded with increasingly useless updates and pings from people that you decreasingly actually know, fed up with Facebook’s attitude towards their users, disgusted with your addiction to it, or just want you, your personal details and habits, and photos, out, deleting your Facebook profile can be done in a few easy steps:

1. Just go here
2. Hit submit. (See, even in parting Facebook demands your obedience)
3. Follow the instructions. You will see the following screens:

4. Put in your password and enter the words from the security check.

5. Hit okay.

6. You then get bumped to the Facebook login screen.

7. Look outside! It’s a beautiful day. Go enjoy it. Perhaps call up a friend you haven’t seen in a while and catch up on each other’s lives over coffee.

Your account is then “deactivated” for two weeks. Don’t login for those two weeks and then it will be permanently deleted.

Facebook sometimes changes the procedures for exiting the social networking service, but the Facebook group “How to permanently delete your facebook account” should have the most up to date method if the link above goes dead.

(Photo: dlco4)

Hi-fi curious? PC Perspective has posted the second of 6-part series that walks you through every detail of setting up your own ideal home theater setup, from the planning to stage to source materials to speaker configuration. Future installments will cover setting up a home media server as well. And if you need help picking out the components, bro-site Consumer Reports has an interactive home theater system buying guide that can help. DIY! It’s more fun and if you know what you’re doing, can be cheaper as well.

Building a Home Theater [PC Perspective via HardOCP]

After five days of closure, British airspace has been partially reopened. However, the threat of yet another spume of volcanic ash heading for the isles could set off a new wave of disruptions. Millions of passengers have already had their flights delayed or canceled, or been flat-out stranded and left with little recourse but to pray to Vulcan. [Reuters]

Starbucks is going to introduce vegan frappuccinos starting May 5. The soy-based confections contain zero dairy and are already available in a few Los Angeles locations. They, unfortunately, do not taste like vegans, nor are they made from them. Here’s an email from a Starbucks manager quarrygirl.com snagged with more details:

“you can now get soymilk based vegan versions of most frappuccinos at starbucks. It isn’t being nationally announced til may 5, but most LA starbucks had to swap over to the new way of making frappuccinos because our distribution center ran out of the old base.

The old method to make them used a base that contained dairy, but the new way you basically add a thickening syrup to base of milk/ flavour syrups/ coffee depending on the drink, so as long as the drink is made with soy it’s vegan. The coffee and creme frappuccino bases are vegan, however, the light one is not— and all the other inclusions and toppings are vegan except for whip (duh) and caramel drizzle.

If you go in a store and just ask whoever working if they’ve switched to the “new” way of making frappuccino or if you can have a soy frappuccino and the answer is yes, you’re good to go.”

A Quarrygirl commenter identifying themself as a Starbucks employee adds:

I am vegan and work at Starbucks and just wanted to clarify: Today, April 19th, was the soft-launch, so not all stores will have it yet. We have the opportunity to use up the rest of the previous product, but just ask and they will let you know if they are using the new method. May 4th is the official launch date and everyone in the U.S. will be switched over to the new method by then.

The e-mail you received did not completely clarify what is vegan/non-vegan for the inclusions:

Like the other comments said:

There is a new SOY blender pitcher and it is pink and used only for soy milk, the barista
should be using it to make your drink, but it never hurts to ask.
White Mocha and Carmel SAUCE are not vegan (the caramel SYRUP is vegan, just make sure to request, no caramel SAUCE on your soy, no whip, caramel frap)
I am fairly certain that the Java Chips are not vegan, I believe they have non-fat milk powder in them. I will double check at work tonight, and if something has changed I will re-post on here.

As the e-mail from the store manager said the regular frap base and the creme base are vegan, but not the light base. Also, the regular frap base and creme base are gluten free (but not the light base)! I am not sure about all the inclusions but if you are a gluten-intolerate vegan you can also enjoy a coffee or mocha frap!

STARBUCKS VEGAN FRAPPUCCINOS! [QuarryGirl]

DQ something the same: get a second DQ Blizzard for $.25 when you buy one with this printable official coupon (PDF). Be a pal or be a glutton, the choice is yours. [via Ben’s Bargains]

Yesterday, Facebook announced an awesome new feature that lets anyone see your current city, hometown, education, work, likes, and interests, even if you’ve set your profile to private. Will this benefit individual users and their friends? Not unless the only thing you remember about your dear friend is that they enjoy leather-play and you’re willing to scroll through reams of headshots to find them. No, this new privacy erosion is for the real clients of Facebook: advertisers, and the data-mining minions that toil on their behalf. However, there are two ways to be totally private.

The first is to change your age to under 18. Then your interests can only be seen by friends and family and verified networks, as per Facebook’s policy for minors. Whoops, actually, you would have had to make your age under 18 when you signed up for Facebook. Tough noogies, they gotcha!

The second is to delete your profile and get off Facebook. The best safeguard of your online personal information is to never put it there in the first place.

Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information [EFF]
Connecting to Everything You Care About [The Facebook Blog]

RELATED: Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”

It’s here.

Organic food is pesticide-free and saves baby unicorns from exploitation, but darnit if Whole Foods ain’t a pricey pack of provisioners. But there are ways to buy organic and still be frugal.

You can buy your foods raw, not processed, cook from scratch, and friend a farmer. Check out more at WikiHow, with 8 ways to stay organic and not break the bank.

Do you buy organic? What do you use to keep the shopping list under budget? Leave your tips in the comments.

How to Eat Organically on Modest Means [WikiHow]

The “Pasta Bible” is getting pulped because a recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto called for “salt and freshly ground black people.”

“We’re mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don’t know,” Penguin Group Australia’s head of publishing, Bob Sessions, told The Sydney Morning Herald. He added that “if anyone is small-minded enough to complain about this … silly mistake, we will happily replace (the book) for them.”

None of the books already on the shelves will be recalled because it would be “extremely hard,” according to Sessions.

Are they sure they didn’t just confuse it with a recipe for Soylent Black?

Cookbook pulped over ‘ground black people’ typo [AP]

The Augmented Driving iPhone app turns your car into a fighter jet. Mount your iPhone on the dash and launch the program and it starts tracking the cars around you, warning with an annoying voice if you get too close and showing you your lane so you don’t drift. Could come in handy for long road trips, as would staying alert and pulling off to a rest stop and taking a nap if you get tired. Only, don’t get so fascinated by playing with your driving app that you get into an accident. Even though it looks like a video game, there’s no replays. Here’s a demo so you can scoff or fawn for yourself:

Have you ever read the back of a calling card? This one takes the cake. I’ve seen, one and three, but this card billing calls in 5-minute increments. So if your call is five minutes and one second long, they’re going to deduct 10 minutes worth from the card. Yeeks. Better talk fast.

The way many calling cards work is that companies buy bulk minutes from the major telcos and then resell them in these cards. Profit comes from fee arbitrage. Calling cards, operating in a Wild West of regulation, are full of them. It’s neat, too, how they perforate the card to make it easy for you to throw away the part of the package that has the fees on it.

Have you ever used a calling card? I’m not talking about the one your mom gave you so you could call home from summer camp, I’m talking about the straight-up bodega-style card, sold for $2, $3, and $5. Did it have any exciting fees or did you find yourself surprised by how few minutes it had?

15% of current Chase credit card users are going to get the axe, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon announced in a shareholder letter this week. “In light of new regulations,” that forbid sucking in customers with zero-interest introductory rates and then ratcheting up lunatic penalty rates, “we deem them too risky.” Other highlights from the letter (PDF):

• We have substantially reduced very low introductory or promotional balance
transfers. This change alone reduced our outstanding balances by $20 billion.

• In the future, we no longer will be offering credit cards to approximately 15% of the customers to whom we currently offer them. This is mostly because we deem them too risky in light of new regulations restricting our ability to make adjustments over time as the client’s risk profile changes.

• We reduced limits on credit lines, and we canceled credit cards for customers who had not done business with us over an extended period.

This week Chase also announced first-quarter profits rose 55%. And recently, someone left a giant pile of manure inside a Chase ATM vestibule.

[via LowCards.com via Consumer Reports Money Blog]

Your laptop is a craptop, the hold music won’t stop and the call center won’t talk, so you’re looking for a guy at the Toshiba top to get you back on top. Guy Lugo is that guy:

Guy Lugo
949-461-4153

John is in Bolivia. His money is not, thanks to Wells Fargo incompetence that has him making $10 phone calls to executive customer service and his friend wiring him thousands of dollars.

John writes:

I live in Bolivia, S America. I had to close an old Wells Fargo checking account and then open a new one online. Before I opened my new ckg acct your people told me my old debit card would work just fine with this new acct. Well guess what, it didn’t and it took them nearly ten weeks to get a new card and pin to me here in Bolivia.

I couldn’t in the meantime withdraw money from ATMs here or pay any of my monthly US bills like Earth Class Mail, which processes my US mail in Portland and upon whom I depend to scan and email my daily postal mail to me here in Bolivia, because I had no valid debit/ATM card. No debit card for ten weeks! I got nasty emails from my creditors. ECM cut off my acct so I couldn’t retrieve any of my mail online. It was a total mess.

On top of that, I had to spend more than $300 in phone calls from phone booths here in the sweltering heat to Wells exec cust svc (Debbie) arguing about where in the heck that new card was.

She repeatedly promised to call me back so I wouldnt have to pay the long distance charges but she never did. She claimed she “couldn’t get through” even though my family and friends can phone me here in Bolivia anytime they like.

Debbie couldn’t get it thru her thick skull that the card and pin were supposed to be sent to me here and NOT to my US mailing address in Oregon. They sent THREE cards and PINs to Earth Class Mail in Portland. What good were those cards to me in Bolivia when they were sitting in friggin Portland?

My friend Jeff in Chicago had to keep wiring me thousands of dollars via Western Union at my expense until Debbie finally figured out where to send the card and pin. I was and still am livid with Wells Fargo. Absolutely livid.

Now your bank is telling me I need to call them if I want to increase my daily ATM withdrawal limit from $300 to $500, which was my limit on the old card. They won’t increase it via a secure online email request by me at wf.com. So there’s another $10 call.

I want an apology NOW and my $300 back NOW.

John
Tarija, Bolivia

Jeez, that stinks. Maybe start using Skype to make those calls to Wells Fargo?