Author: Chris Walters

In a little less than 12 hours, over 300 skeptics throughout the U.K. will protest the homeopathic medicine industry there by deliberately overdosing on full bottles of homeopathic pills, which technically don’t contain any molecules of the active ingredient. The group’s goal is to highlight the fact that homeopathic cures are about as scientifically valid as your horoscope. I’m all for stunts, but don’t they know that they’ll likely suffer from the memory of an OD? That’s how this stuff works, you know.

1023.org.uk
“Homoeopathy sceptics plan mass ‘overdose’” [The Independent via Metafilter]

If you’ve got a complaint about an airline, or you want to find out more about whether your complaint is valid, oh boy is there a treat in store for you! Earlier this month, the DOT launched a redesigned consumer aviation website at airconsumer.dot.gov. The goal of the site is “to make it as easy as possible for consumers to find the information they need to make their air travel experience as smooth and hassle-free as possible.”

It may not win any design awards, but it’s got front-page links to a complaint section, monthly reports on airlines, and information on consumer rules. It might be worth checking out before you take your next flight.

airconsumer.dot.gov
“DOT Unveils Improved Aviation Consumer and Enforcement Website” [dot.gov]

Laura has a pretty good description of what an anxiety attack feels like to her: “First, your chest starts to feel tight, like you are wearing a corset. You can’t breathe properly, your heart rate starts to skyrocket, causing a pounding feeling. It’s very out-of-body. You can’t figure out what’s going on. It’s like being trapped by your brain into a tight corner.” If the skeptical gate agent for Continental had ever experienced this–or had just been given adequate training for dealing with passengers with disabilities–maybe she wouldn’t have told Laura her doctor’s note looked fake, or asked her to stay put when Laura said she needed to get her meds.

Here’s Laura’s full story:

I wish to share a story with you about my recent experience with Continental Airlines. I feel that I was prejudiced against due to my lack of a “physical” disability. I was wondering what I can do in my situation to get results from Continental.

Last week, I moved from beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii, where I’ve been living the past three years, to Albany, NY. My boyfriend, whom I lived with in Hawaii, is traveling to Costa Rica for a few months to do some volunteer work – build orphanages, kiss babies, stuff like that.

Unfortunately, I have a terrible anxiety disorder which has landed me in the hospital twice and in the insane asylum once. My boyfriend is one of the few people who can calm me down when I start to “freak out” and with his absence, I decided to move to Albany to be with my parents, who can be of assistance if I need it. I traveled with my psychiatric assistance animal, my cat Sushi. She helps me relax and calm down in the event of an anxiety attack. She has been “prescribed” by my psychiatrist.

Before I left Hawaii, I faxed Continental a letter from my doctor, on her letterhead, stating my disability and my need for my cat to travel with me. The letter was faxed a few days before Christmas. Around January 15 or so (my flight left January 20), I called Continental to confirm that my cat was cleared to fly with me as a psychiatric assist pet. The gentleman from Continental’s disability reservation desk confirmed everything.

My flight went from Honolulu (HNL) to Los Angeles (LAX) to Newark (EWR) and finally a commuter plane into Albany (ALB).

My cat was cleared through agriculture in HNL. I had with me: her agriculture forms, her vet forms and my doctor note. HNL informed me to double check with the gate agent in each city. LAX was fine – small hiccup when they couldn’t locate my disability records, but the gate agent finally did, and I continued on my merry way to Newark. Up until this point, the only anxiety I had was while leaving HNL. My cat was with me, so all was well.

I get to Newark and I’m fine until I show my papers to the gate agent. The agent, a Ms. C. _____, asked me for a boarding pass for my cat. I explained that I never received one – she went through HNL and LAX without needing a boarding pass. Ms. _____ looked over my papers and called the regular reservation desk. I informed her that the disability reservation desk were the people who gave me the OK to travel with my cat. Ms. _____ ignored me.

She gets on the phone with reservations and looks at my papers – and then has the audacity to say that my doctor’s note looks like a fake and, since it was dated in December, it must be an old note and, therefore, not applicable anymore. She asks me what my disability is, since it’s not apparent to her, which, according to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), she can not technically ask. She mentions to the reservations desk, in a low voice that I was not suppose to hear, that she doubts my disability.

At this point, I feel a full-fledged anxiety attack starting, so I ask her to excuse me so that I can retrieve my medications. She asks me to stay there for a second while she figures out how I – get this – “snuck” my cat onto the plane. She suggests that I buy a boarding pass right then and there for my cat – only issue is that I am 24 years old and had a grand total of $8 to my name – not nearly the amount needed to buy a $100 ticket for my cat. Finally someone says something over the phone and she looks at me and laughs.

If you have never experienced an anxiety attack, allow me to educate you: first, your chest starts to feel tight, like you are wearing a corset. You can’t breathe properly, your heart rate starts to skyrocket, causing a pounding feeling. It’s very out-of-body. Then the actual attack starts and you are rudely pulled right back into your body, breathing hard, sometimes crying, sometimes not. Anything anyone says goes in one ear – and out the other. You start to sweat, but you are cold. You can’t figure out what’s going on. You can’t make sense of anything – it’s like everything is in fast forward and you are in slow motion, trying so hard to catch up with everyone but not making sense of what you are seeing. It’s a horrible feeling. It’s like being trapped by your brain into a tight corner. To have someone laugh at you makes it worse.

Ms. _____ finally approves me to fly with my cat, but not before inducing an anxiety attack and preventing me from retrieving my meds by using her authority to keep me rooted in place. She also informs me that my return trip, in may, is still valid, but no longer with my cat, as my doctor note is no longer valid and since I won’t be flying back to HNL, but instead, moving to LA with the boyfriend, who has plans to attend UC Irvine for his PhD pending acceptance. This entire confrontation lasted roughly 20-30 minutes, during which, Ms. _____ scattered her conversation with curses – not aimed at me, specifically, but at the aggravation that my disability was bringing her.

Luckily, I had befriended a lady in the waiting area and she made sure I was ok, made sure I got my meds and, fortunately, had the seat in front of me and kept an eye on me until my drugs knocked me out for the brief hour plane ride.

It’s been a week and I wrote to Continental. I received a typical response, which is below:

Dear Ms. Ferreri:

Thank you for contacting us regarding your recent Continental flights. We understand you are disappointed in the service you received, and we appreciate the opportunity to address your concerns.

Due to the nature of your e-mail, we have forwarded your concerns to our disability specialist for investigation and handling. The investigation process can take up to 30 days. You can expect future correspondence from us through U.S. mail.

Thank you for your patience. Your comments are important to us, and we want to ensure they are properly addressed by our specialized staff.

Regards,
Jane
Complaint Resolution Official (CRO)
Disability Specialist – Corporate Customer Care

Laura adds, “I believe that, in thirty days, the severity of my situation will diminish. I wish for action to be taken now and soon.”

Don’t sit around waiting for Continental to respond. You should immediately file a formal complaint against the gate agent and Continental–but not under the ADA. Airlines must follow the Air Carrier Access Act when it comes to customers, and it forbids them from discriminating against passengers with disabilities. You can read the general regulations here, but below is the actual text of the relevant section (49 U.S.C. § 41705):

The DBTAC Southwest ADA Center at Baylor College of Medicine says you can file a complaint by filling out this form (PDF) and mailing it to the address below. You can also call the aviation consumer disability hotline at 1-800-778-4838 (voice) or 1-800-455-9880 (TTY).

RELATED
“Aviation Consumer Protection and Enforcement” [Department of Transportation]
“Air Carrier Access Act” [Accessible Journeys]

What constitutes adequate security for a bank? PlainsCapital Bank in Lubbock, Texas says what it currently has is enough, and if after all that some crooks still manage to steal your money, it’s not the bank’s fault. The bank has preemptively sued a business customer, Hillary Machinery, to absolve itself from any liability on what it couldn’t get back from the more than $800,000 that was stolen by foreign hackers last November.

PlainsCapital argues that it uses every reasonable security method to protect its customers’ assets, and it points out that the attackers used valid login credentials. In fact, in the lawsuit the bank argues that it “accepted the wire transfer orders in good faith,” shifting the responsibility entirely over to Hillary Machinery. But nobody seems to know how the attackers got the credentials, and I’d hope any bank I loan my money to would employ multiple security protocols in the event a particular wall is breached, as in this case. Things like, I don’t know, looking for suspicious transaction patterns. Or noticing when a customer’s newly authorized computer has an IP address located in Romania instead of Plano, TX.

That’s basically what Hillary Machinery thinks, too. Troy Owen, a vice president at the company, says the transactions were different enough from the company’s regular activity that they should have raised multiple red flags at the bank They all happened in rapid succession, the payments were being sent overseas to payees Hillary had never done business with, and some of them were for amounts much large than Hillary usually made. And then there’s that IP address problem:

According to Owen, the thefts were enabled by the weak authentication measures employed by the bank. In addition to usernames and passwords, the only other authentication the bank required was for users to register the systems they used for online banking transactions. However, that measure was clearly not strong enough, because in this case, the cyber thieves were able to log into Hillary’s account using systems that were based in Romania and Italy, he said.

A memo supplied by the bank to Hillary shows that the bank received two requests to register computers on the company’s behalf just before the attacks. Though the requests appeared to come from a Hillary e-mail address, the computers from which they were sent had IP addresses based in Italy and Romania, Owen said.

“They never challenged whoever logged in with a different computer. There was never any red flag,” Owen said. Though PlainsCapital has claimed that registering the computer represents a second form of authentication, the thefts show that it wasn’t a strong enough measure, he contended.

“Bank sues victim of $800,000 cybertheft” [ComputerWorld]
“Who’s to Blame for Breaches?” [InsuranceNetworking.com]

Motorola told its investors today that it’s working on building an Android phone for Google to sell directly to consumers alongside the HTC-built Nexus One. There are no other details yet, other than that it should be released in 2010, according to Motorola’s co-CEO Sanjay Jha.

“Motorola Building a Google-Only Phone” [TheStreet.com]

A man in Sandusky, Ohio, grew so angry at the price of some crab cakes that he punched the store manager “five or six times,” head butted him, and spit in his face. According to the Associated Press article, there was a pricing error in the customer’s favor, and the manager had offered to give the customer the first crab cake at the incorrect price but wanted to charge full price for the rest.

“Police: Crabby customer slugs Sandusky grocery clerk” (Thanks to Justin!)

The UK website Scam Detectives has published a two-part interview with a self-described former Nigerian 419 scammer. Take all of this a healthy dose of skepticism–the author admits he has no way of verifying if anything the guy says is true. Oh, and the reason I call it a short interview is because halfway through the second call, the author tells the scammer he doesn’t like him and wants to hang up. Before that happens, though, you get to read about foot soldiers, something called a wash wash, and the response rate on scam email blasts.

“Interview With A Scammer, Part 1”[Scam-Detectives.co.uk via Slashdot]

J.J. Luna, a former security consultant turned author, released a guide ten years ago that showed readers how get rid of paper and digital trails. The subject matter is probably a little too paranoid for most of our readers, but it overlaps with issues we talk about all the time here, like identity theft and online security. He’s just released a revised version, so he’s giving away the 2000 edition in PDF format for free. Well, in exchange for your email address.

Obviously there’s something absurd about having to provide personal contact information in order to grab a copy, but you can always set up a single use Gmail account.

On his page, Luna writes, “Although the chapter on air travel had to be changed, and the computer section was updated in the revised edition, most of the information is as valid today as when the book was first released.”

“How To Be Invisible by J.J. Luna” [Dealzon]

An anonymous reader wrote to us to ask what he should do about unexpected bills from a medical clinic. He chose the clinic precisely because he can’t afford hospital bills in the hundreds of dollars, and was led to believe that there’d be no out-of-pocket cost. It turns out there was.

Some time ago, I don’t have the exact date, I went to my local low-income clinic because I had a serious nosebleed problem. Frequent nosebleeds, often several times a day kind of problem. They referred me to the Ear, Nose & Throat Center at St. Elizabeth Hospital, faxed them a voucher, and assured me (verbally, my mistake!) that I would not have an out-of-pocket cost. I set up an appointment.

In October, making good on the appointment, I visited the center. I met an ENT doctor, he gave me a quick consultation and then treated an exposed blood vessel in my nose with a mild topical anesthetic, followed by silver nitrate. I’ve since looked; I don’t have exact numbers, but the anesthetic and silver nitrate couldn’t have cost more than about $20 for this visit. More on that later.

Fast forward to November. I get a completely unexpected bill from Affinity Medical Group (who owns St. E’s), for a whopping $430. I don’t think I even had that much in my checking account at the time. I called the clinic and asked, “wasn’t this supposed to be free?”. They told me that they pay a certain amount and the hospital is supposed to waive the rest (wtf?), and to bring them the bill and they’ll take care of it. That I did, but they didn’t fix the problem.

Earlier this week. I got another bill, for $300. Again I call the clinic and they tell me the same thing, and I bring them the bill. Problem solved, right? Wrong. Later that day, I get a call from the clinic, and they tell me the hospital will waive the visit, but not the treatment (you know, the few minutes with sticks and substances that really should’ve cost about $20), which is what that $300 charge is for.

I try talking to the hospital. First I get customer service, and they basically reiterate the same thing–the visit is covered, but they won’t pay for the “procedure.” Then they transfer me to patient relations. She says they can’t waive the charge, but there may be financial assistance given that I’m a decent distance below the poverty line, and she’ll call me in a week or two with what she finds. She also told me that the due date on the bill isn’t a hard date, but just a friendly suggestion (wtf?). I’ll hear them out on the financial assistance thing, but if that doesn’t work out, where should I go next?

I asked someone who works in the patient accounting department at a different hospital what she thought of this guy’s story. Here’s her advice.

For this man:

1. He needs to go to the hospital’s financial assistance office and set his own appointment. They will give him paperwork to fill out and tell him what documents he needs. They may even see him while he is there. Do not sit around waiting for some patient relations person to call him back. They are undertrained and overworked, and he’ll probably never hear from them again.
2. If they can’t work out any assistance for him, he needs to call the Patient Accounting Department or whatever they call it. Ask to speak to the rep who handles his account. (They usually divide them up alphabetically.) He needs to tell them quite forcefully that he can not and will not pay this bill in full. If he is worried about it being on his credit he can ask for a 40 to 60% discount of the bill. We give those all the time.

He should have made a copy of the voucher and maybe called back to St El after the appointment to discuss exactly what expenses would be waived. The sad thing is most people would not even think to do that. Unless you are sick a lot or deal with hospitals and insurance you wouldn’t think to doublecheck everything!

For everyone else:

Any time you are scheduled for a visit and/or a procedure, talk to the actual financial office. Ask for exact amounts of co-pay or out of pocket expense. Have them fax to you a paper stating what you are expected to pay.

Every time my mother has to go somewhere different, I call that office. I verify her insurance and ask exactly what they need her to pay. I then call her insurance company and tell them where she is going and what they said she had to pay, and then I ask if that is correct. The insurance companies almost always have a contract with the providers and know exactly what they allow them to claim.

Gonzalo went in to buy some replacement earbuds for his iPhone, and recieved some pretty amazing customer service from an anonymous Best Buy employee.

Given the terrible life expectancy of iPhone headphones, I recently went to my local Best Buy to purchased a standard set of replacement headphones.

I look around the cell phone area, had trouble finding them, and asked a customer service rep where they were. He quickly pointed them out and walked back to where he had been milling about. I looked at the packaging, noticed that it was the older iPhone headphones (the ones that don’t have buttons for volume control), and I didn’t see the newer ones anywhere near the old ones. Nor did I see a sticker price indicating where they once were or should be.

I went back to the same customer service rep and told him which ones I needed. “Oh yeah, these are the old school ones. Let’s see what we have,” was his reply. He then walked to a mobile phone display and unlocked the bottom drawer of the display. As he rummaged through boxes, I assumed he was looking for a box of headphones. I was a little confused when he pulled out an iPhone 3GS box, and was further confused when he opened the box and I noted an iphone with a cracked screen inside. He then pulled out the iPhone, grabbed the headphones that had came with it, and gave them to me!

“Free of charge?” I asked. “Yes, no charge,” came his reply.

I guess this makes sense… this phone arrived broken and was being returned… I guess they don’t need to supply the headphones for a full refund from Apple. Why not make a nice gesture to a customer who wants a product that is overpriced and sold out? I was very impressed!

In 2008, eHarmony responded to complaints that it wasn’t serving gay and lesbian customers by setting up a second website, Compatible Partners, and keeping those customers separate from the official site. Some users sued the company, saying anyone with bisexual interests were being forced to pay twice for the same service. Now eHarmony has settled the class action and will allow members of either site to participate on the other one without having to pay a second time.

As with pretty much every class action that’s settled, the bulk of the settlement amount goes to legal fees. Only $500,000 will be set aside for claims by the class, but because the class is fairly small that should work out to about $4,000 per person, says the Los Angeles Times.

My dating advice: whether you’re on eHarmony or Compatible Partners, start looking for people who express an interest in litigation and bisexuality. If the settlement is approved, chances are those people are going to have a little extra spending cash pretty soon.

“Sued Into Submission, eHarmony Now Swings Both Ways” [LA Weekly]
“eHarmony settles lawsuit over same-sex matching” [Reuters]

David Friedman, a photographer and blogger of cool ideas, was at JFK airport in New York City earlier today and realized he’d forgotten his sunglasses at the security gate. He mentioned it in a tweet, and to his surprise someont at JetBlue saw it and investigated for him.

The sad news is the JetBlue employee didn’t find the sunglasses. On the other hand, JetBlue did go look for them, then sent someone to Friedman’s gate to give him an update. On American, that would have easily cost $25, probably more to actually have the sunglasses returned.

United has also been active on Twitter recently, although not as happily. The airline just apologized to Twitter CEO Evan Williams via Twitter this morning after failing to get Williams’ luggage to its destination.

ironicsans [Twitter]

A week after issuing a recall on over 2 million vehicles due to faulty acceleration pedals, Toyota has announced it will stop selling 8 popular models in the U.S., as well as shut down 6 U.S. factories, while it deals with the problem. The faulty pedals were made by a U.S. manufacturer but have also been installed in cars sold in Europe, although Toyota hasn’t said what it plans to do outside the U.S. for now. Update: SafetyResearch.net says Toyota was required by law to stop selling the models after it announced the recall last week, so it’s actually kind of strange that it waited five days.

This video clip from My Fox NY has a short interview with a woman in New York who crashed into a cement planter because her pedal got stuck. (Thanks to GitEmSteveDave!)

“Toyota US Sales Halt Deals Blow to Image, Earnings” [Associated Press] (Thanks to Carlos!)

Kevin Robinson at the blog Chicagoist was curious about a commenter who sounded suspiciously on-message on some recent Walmart posts. Walmart wants to come into Chicago, and Walmart’s opponents are fighting the retailer at the community level to prevent that. In return, a pro-Walmart community group has formed called “Our Community, Your Choice” that argues, “Everyone else but Chatham and the South Side are making the decisions – It’s OUR CHOICE, NOT THEIRS.”

Robinson wanted to know who was behind “Our Community, Your Choice.” After all, with a name like that you’d expect it to be an authentic representation of local residents. What he found was that it was connected to a PR firm working for Walmart.

Robinson also spoke with someone who represents the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, which is connected to “Our Community, Your Choice.”. The man he spoke with confirmed that Walmart was a member of the trade group, but otherwise wouldn’t comment on the misleading way that “Our Community, Your Choice” was pretending to represent local interests. In fact, Robinson couldn’t even get a straight answer out of the Chamber of Commerce guy on whether or not he was actually in Chicago:

Because I got to Mr. Mini through Our Community, Our Choice, I asked what his involvement in the site was. “It’s part of our advocacy effort to gain support,” and that “we set that up as a way to communicate with people. We were expecting this to come up for a vote before the council sooner, but obviously it’s been stalled.” I asked him if he was familiar with [consulting firm and PR agency] Serafin and Associates. “Yes, we have worked with them in our strategy sessions. We’ve worked with [Thomas] Serafin and his team.” When I told him that our site had gotten comments from the email address that led me to him and asked if he knew that it was being used to comment on blogs, he said “no, not that I’m aware of.” Are you surprised that an IP address from Serafin was being used that way? “No, not in particular.” Why not? “I really can’t comment without looking into it further.”

Given that Wal-Mart supporters (and the website run by the Chicagoland Chamber) claim that opponents to Wal-Mart are outsiders that don’t live in the neighborhood, I thought I should find out if Mike Mini lived in Chatham. “Uh, no.” What part of Chicago you live in? “No comment.” Do you even live in Chicago at all? “No comment.”

“Wal-Mart Using Fake Community Group to Manufacture Support” [Chicagoist]

Frustrated at the number of marijuana dispensaries that have sprouted up since voters allowed its legal medical use in 1996, the L.A. City Council today voted to shut down the majority of them and relocate the rest to the industrial zones. Mayor Villaraigosa will have to sign the ordinance before it goes into effect.

“Los Angeles City Council approves medical marijuana ordinance that will shut down hundreds of dispensaries” [Los Angeles Times]

In the wide world of scams, this combination of a phone call and computer malware is sort of a novel twist. Jay likes to string phone scammers along to waste their time, so he managed to get quite a few details about how this particular scam works. If you’ve got naive family members with access to computers, either take away their computers or tell them never to download software from a stranger on the phone.

Every couple of months, a boiler-room phone scammer catches me at home. I’ve learned not to immediately ask skeptical questions, as that only causes them to rudely hang up and move on to another victim. Instead, I now play along and try to waste as much of their time as possible. I thought I’d seen most of the popular scam schemes, but today I was called by a scammer that was using an entirely new tactic.

The call came in as “Unknown caller” on my Caller-ID. The caller announced that this was a “technical support” call from my Internet Service Provider (never specifying an ISP name), and emphasized that it was not a sales call. Following his script, he’d asked me if my computer had been running slow lately, if I’d seen “404 or 403 errors” when surfing the web, etc. I went along and said, yeah, my computer had been running slow.

To ensure that I was really talking to a scammer — and to waste their time — I started to rant about my (ficitious) ISP. And the caller agreed that my (fictitious) ISP had told him to call me.

Then, he went straight for the close: “Can you turn on your computer, and bring up a web browser? It’s already up? Good. Now go to www.f1compstepuk.com … let me spell that for you. You’re there? Good. Now click on the ‘Remote Assistance’ icon.” Since the “Remote Assistance” icon was a link to a file called “TeamViewer_Setup.exe”, I thought it might be a really good idea not to run it, so I quit playing along at that point.

The web site also has PayPal payment options for a $300/year for “unlimited tech support” subscription. Not sure if that’s just to make the site look more plausible, or if that’s another facet of their scam.

I can see how this scam could seem credible to a fairly large segment of the population; I’m hoping that Consumers Union gives it a little mass-market exposure so that someone’s grandma doesn’t get taken in by these guys.

Apple made it clear last year that Google Voice is not welcome on the App Store or your iPhone. “Fine,” said Google. “We’ll go through the browser!” Today the search engine revealed a new mobile web interface that uses some fancy HTML5 magic to provide voicemail, calling, and text message functionality. If you don’t already know, you can turn any page in Mobile Safari into an App icon on your home screen (click the “+” icon in Safari), meaning now you can have a legitimate Google Voice “app.” Below is a video tour.

“Google Voice Rolls out IPhone Web App” [PCWorld]

Ideally, companies choose to lessen their environmental impact because it makes financial sense, not because it makes them feel good–which is a good thing, since companies don’t have feelings. Today, FastCompany published a slideshow that looks at 12 ways the mega-retailer is trying out various green initiatives. Some of them are more about selling the concept of green to consumers, which is dumb, but the ones that deal with shipping, energy consumption, and market creation are pretty impressive.

“Walmart Goes Green?” [FastCompany]

I’ve been thinking lately that my sneakers are too stupid. They don’t do anything, at least not anything video game related, which is where it matters. Adidas has recognized this problem and has announced a new “augmented reality” sneaker that you have to hold in front of your webcam in order to play special online games.

According to the shoe’s YouTube page,

[Each shoe will come] printed with an AR code on the tongue. When you hold the code in front of your webcam, you’ll gain access to a virtual version of the adidas Originals Neighborhood. Each month between February and April, we’ll launch a new interactive game within the Neighborhood and your shoe will be the game controller.

I’d include the video, but it’s just a shot of a shoe spinning around all Transformers style over and over, meh.

I managed to talk with an anonymous source very close to the project, by which I mean someone imaginary, and he told me all about the Apple Tablet Adidas Original games that are in the works. Here are three concepts:

• Scrape virtual dog poop off your shoe! Scrape faster! Another Adidas Original owner is sitting in front of his computer somewhere and he’s already got six pounds of poop scraped off!
   
• Shake those spiders out of your shoe! You can see by the picture of the Sydney Opera House that you’re clearly in Australia, so those spiders can’t be good for you! Shake! Oh good lord look at all the spiders!
   
• Not so much a game as a “fun” way to Skype. Hold your shoe up to your face and speak into the hole. You’re talking into a phone! No wait it’s a shoe! Now talking to your friends can smell like your feet! Crazy!

Sorry Adidas, I’m gonna have to pass on this one. If you ever invent augmented reality underwear, I’ll reconsider.

Augmented Reality Teaser [Adidas via Cnet News Video]