Author: Meg Marco

Yesterday’s Google super bowl ad was a cute story about a guy falling in love with a French lady told through his searches. The trouble is, they showed the autocomplete prompts and, as anyone who has ever used Google knows, the autocomplete suggestions can be, uh, kinda weird. So, of course, some the search suggestions have been edited out. Like one about making friends with black people.

From AdFreak:

If you look closely, you’ll notice that some of the search suggestions that appear while the person types (which can be notoriously bizarre) have been edited out. In this ad, for example, they’ve gotten rid of the “making friends with black people” option. Above, you can compare the suggestions from Google.com and from the ad. Hey, what’s wrong with making friends with black people?

Awkward! Oh, before you ask why we even care about this… We just wanted an excuse to point you to Autocomplete Me, which is a collection of awesome autocomplete suggestions. You’re welcome.

Google on fence about making black friends [AdFreak]

If you’re stuck to a computer all day and are getting fat because of it, you might consider making yourself a laptop shelf for your exercise bike. Apparently it’s not that difficult. Whether or not it’ll make you lose weight – that remains to be seen.

Kind of a cute idea, though, and we love DIY crap.

Careful, though. Sweat counts as liquid damage.

ManMade Video How-To: Mount Your Laptop to your Exercise Equipment. [ManMade]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google has plans to make Gmail “more social,” according to an anonymous source. The idea is to make it easier to post links and share status updates. Meanwhile, Facebook is apparently planning a “Gmail killer.”

From Slate:

If the rumors are true, Facebook Mail will be accessible without logging into your Facebook account, and your e-mail address would consist of your Facebook username @facebook.com. According to the post, the product is officially called “Project Titan” within the company, but it’s also been optimistically dubbed a Gmail killer.

The grass is always greener.

Teenagers Could Flock to Facebook Mail [Slate]

…Because that sh*t is stuck. A Gothamist reader took this photo of a postal truck stuck at a crazy angle under an overpass on 10th ave in NYC. Whoopsies!

Postal Truck Lodged Under Overpass [Gothamist]

Reader Terry is annoyed because the Disney Store refused to sell his family $8.50 worth of stuff unless he went out and got his wife’s ID from the car.

I had received an email from Disney about a “Story Time with Mickey” event at 1pm & 4pm in the Disney stores. After church we headed across town and went to the Disney store in the [redacted] mall.

We have Boy/Girl twins that will be 4 in March. We will be at Disneyland for their Birthday. (As usual) We were in the store for around 45 minutes, and during this time had to explain to the kids that we weren’t buying them everything in the place. We did decide they could each get a plush though.

Story time with Mickey was actually just a regular employee who sat with a co-worked at the stuff animal section and read a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Valentines book. No Mickey, but the kids had fun.

After story time they made up little certificates for the kids and we headed to the register to pay for the 2 toys. We talked to the girl at the register about the Princess and the Frog Bluray pre-order and were all in a good mood.

My wife was having back pain yesterday and thinks it is a kidney stone, so she did not bring her purse into the store. She handed the cashier her Visa card which she removed from a paper sleeve. Total = $8.50

The cashier asked my wife for her ID. and my wife said she wasn’t carrying any. She looked at me so I reached for my wallet but recalled that in the rush to leave the house this morning, I had left it at home. (Why MY ID. would be proof of my wife’s identity is not clear)

I stated that I did not have my ID either and the employee said she can’t make the sale without ID. My wife decided she would go to the car and get her purse at which point I told the cashier that she can not ask to see our ID and that were were not required to show ID to complete our purchase. She says our policy is that you have to show ID.

I said the merchant agreement Disney signed with Visa says you can’t ask and I don’t have to show it. Cashier says “You do at our store, It’s our policy”, Me “But your store policy does not trump the AGREEMENT you signed with VISA” “You can not just decided which parts you are not going to follow.” Cashier “Well it is our policy to see your ID and you have to show it!”

At this point I was ready to just leave without the purchase just to vote with my dollar, but the kids wanted their toys and I was NOT about to disappoint them because of the stupid cashier. So I head out of the store to the car. About 15 minutes round trip, and it was pouring rain outside. ARGH

When I got back in the store both kids were saying the had to go potty really bad. I said “We can go in just a minute, we would have been done sooner if Disney knew how to read their agreements” Cashier “We read our agreements sir” Me “Ok, If Disney knew how to FOLLOW their agreements.”

At this point my wife asked for her district managers name and she said “I’m not allowed to give that out” She then gave the generic Customer Service number. (I googled a bit and found the DM is [redacted])

Now We would have showed them our ID if we had it, but as things happened we didn’t. Visa has their member agreements for a reason. I’m sure that if I was a thief and had stole this card, Disney would have still received their $8.50 from Visa. It is just an acceptable level of Risk to Visa. I am going to call Visa and Disney about this issue, but I don’t believe anything will happen, Is Visa really going to revoke the Disney Stores contract? I wont hold my breath.

After leaving the Disney Store, we went to McDonalds and spent $10.50 without being asked for I.D. or Signature. Jack in the Box for $4.20, without being asked for I.D. or Signature. Then to Eegees and spent $13 without being asked for I.D. or Signature.

We LOVE Disney and spend quite a lot of money between Blurays, DVDs, DVD Double Dips, Clothes, Bedding sets, and usually at least 3 trips to Disney Land a year, including staying on property. But now when I see my kids holding those new stuffed animals, All I can think of is the 20 minutes of crap I had to deal with to buy them.

Learn to READ and UNDERSTAND your agreements Disney.

You are correct. It is a violation of their agreement to refuse a sale because you didn’t have ID.

VISA asks that you call the bank that issued your card and report the incident. We’ve never heard of anything actually being done about it, however.

You’re probably going to get the most response from Disney itself, particularly if you are the sort who goes to Disneyland a lot.

After successfully redecorating his office, merging Merrill Lynch with Bank of America, and then getting fired — John Thain is once again a CEO. This time he’ll be heading up a recently-bankrupt commercial and consumer finance company, CIT.

This is a very interesting company to me,” Mr. Thain added. “CIT’s primary business is lending to small and midsize companies, and if the U.S. economy is going to continue to improve, this is where we need to focus.”

He will be paid a $500,000 salary and receive restricted shares that, if available for sale today, would have a value of $5.5 million.

Meanwhile, the NY AG is suing Thain’s merger buddy, Ken Lewis, for fraud.

We wonder if Mr. Thain really will go to IKEA this time.

Merrill’s Ex-Chief Is Back, Atop CIT [WSJ]

Love him or hate him, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), former employee of NBC, made Comcast’s befuddled CEO Brian “Comcatastrophe” Roberts look like a complete tool during yesterday’s hearing on the proposed Comcast/NBC mergepocalypse.

We don’t actually know if Brian “Comcatastrophe” Roberts is generally as confused and awkward as he appeared to be while trying to explain why Comcast would testify that FCC regulations provide adequate safeguards for consumers — after it just argued that the same rules were unconstitutional . Maybe he’s usually pretty sharp. We really don’t know.

Here’s what happened. Sen. Franken said that Comcatastrophe Roberts had met him in his office and said that the FCC rules “will make sure that you always have a wide variety of programs because they forbid [Comcast/NBC] from discriminating against other company’s programs.”

Then Franken pointed to a sign he had printed with a quote from Comcast’s attorneys saying that those same rules were unconstitutional.

“In other words, looking to get approval for this merger, you sat there in my office and told me to my face that these rules would protect consumers but your lawyers had just finished arguing in front of the Commission that it would be unconstitutional to apply these rules,” Franken said.

Comcatasrophe Roberts mumbled something about Comcast’s reputation in response. Then he said he was confused when they’d spoken previously. He barely got a word in before Franken moved on. It really wasn’t a great moment for him.

One might think it would be embarrassing to shill for a non-FDA approved herbal “male enhancement” remedy. Jimmy Johnson doesn’t think so. Is he broke or something?

AdAge says the former Cowboys coach is ” an unabashed user,” though it seem unclear if he was one before they started paying him. Mr. Johnson is scheduled to premier in a new series of ads for the supplement starting Monday.

Apparently ExtenZe is breaking into the grocery store market.

A spokesperson for the brand told AdAge:

“Yes, there was a lot of concern [about potential embarrassment],” Mr. Yallen said. “But I think what we’ve done is legitimized this category that we brought into being 10 years ago.”
…
“Now, we’ve become very mainstream. … We’re in Walmart. And Walmart’s a family store. I think Jimmy realized it’s a legitimate product in a very legitimate category now. He’s probably one of the few people who can pull this off and get gains in his career from this.”

The commercials should be pretty cringe-inducing:

“Most men want to perform the best they can in just about everything,” Mr. Johnson says in one spot. “Isn’t that why we buy the biggest and best of everything?” He signs off with the tagline: “Go long with ExtenZe. I do.”

The reader who sent in this story asked if these were the same penis pill folks who were convicted of mail fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. The answer is no, that was Enzyte. This pill, although similar in that its just a supplement that’s not FDA approved, is made by a company that settled for $300,000 in civil penalties for unfair business practices and false advertising.

Between this and Strahan singing the $5 foot long song, Fox’s pregame show is getting mighty phallic.

ExtenZe Hires Johnson as Pitchman [AdAge] (Thanks, Matt!)

Andrew Cuomo has announced a lawsuit against Bank of America’s former CEO Kenneth D. Lewis, its former CFO Joseph L. Price, and the company itself, for “duping shareholders and the federal government in order to complete a merger with Merrill Lynch.” Uh oh!

According to the lawsuit, the AG alleges that Bank of America intentionally didn’t disclose massive losses at Merrill Lynch so that its shareholders would approve the merger. Once it was approved, the lawsuit alleges that the management tricked the government into “saving the deal with billions in taxpayer funds by falsely claiming that they would back out of the deal without bailout funds.”

“This merger is a classic example of how the actions of our nation’s largest financial institutions led to the near-collapse of our financial system,” said Attorney General Cuomo. “Bank of America, through its top management, engaged in a concerted effort to deceive shareholders and American taxpayers at large. This was an arrogant scheme hatched by the bank’s top executives who believed they could play by their own set of rules. In the end, they committed an enormous fraud and American taxpayers ended up paying billions for Bank of America’s misdeeds.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Bank of America did not disclose that it was going to allow Merrill to pay billions in bonuses — and to pay those bonus in a way that was “inconsistent” with how they’d done it in the past.

The amount, criteria, and timing of the bonus payments were omitted from the proxy. The bonuses were distributed in a manner that was completely inconsistent with Merrill’s prior practice, and in the worst year in Merrill’s history.

And then there’s this about Bank of America’s lawyer, who tried to confront the management about the losses at Merrill.

The bank’s management did not tell the bank’s lawyers about the full extent of Merrill’s losses before the shareholder vote. For example, the bank’s former General Counsel, Timothy Mayopoulos, was intentionally mislead about the size and nature of Merrill’s losses. After the shareholder vote, when Mayopoulos learned of the actual losses, he attempted to confront Price but was summarily terminated.

If you’d like to read the lawsuit, here’s a PDF of it. Gather around the campire, here’s how it starts:

In September 2008, Bank of America agreed to merge with Merrill Lynch. This merger has, in many ways, become a classic example of how the modus operandi of our nation’s largest financial institutions led to the near collapse of our financial system. In order to complete its deal, Bank of America’s management misled its shareholders by not disclosing massive lossesthat were mounting at Merrill Lynch so that the shareholders would vote to approve the deal.

Once the deal was approved, Bank of America’s management manipulated the federal
government into saving the deal with billions in taxpayer funds by falsely claiming that they intended to back out of the deal through a clause in the Merger Agreement. Ultimately, this was an enormous fraud on taxpayers who ended up paying billions for Bank of America’s misdeeds.
Throughout this episode, the conduct of Bank of America, through its top management, was motivated by self-interest, greed, hubris, and a palpable sense that the normal rules of fair play did not apply to them. Bank of America’s management thought of itself as too big to play by the rules and, just as disturbingly, too big to tell the truth.

ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO FILES FRAUD CHARGES AGAINST BANK OF AMERICA, FORMER CEO KENNETH LEWIS, AND FORMER CFO JOSEPH PRICE [NY AG]

The Associated Press is reporting that a top Japanese business newspaper (that we don’t understand because our Japanese reading comprehension really sucks) says that Toyota will recall 270,000 Prius hybrids over complaints about “inconsistent” braking. Consistently being able to brake, of course, is something you tend to want in a car. The braking problem is unrelated to the floor mat and the “sticky pedal” issue.

The AP says that Japan’s top business newspaper, Nihon Keizai, is reporting the imminent recall, but that Toyota has not confirmed it yet.

Takayuki Fujimoto, a transport ministry official, said the government has yet to receive a recall notice from Toyota. Toyota cannot announce a recall in Japan until it notifies the ministry.

Toyota spokeswoman Ririko Takeuchi said Friday that Toyota had not yet decided whether to recall the Prius.

“Nothing has been decided on whether we will recall or not,” Takeuchi said.

We took a look at NHTSA’s complaint database and found these descriptions of the problem. The basic idea is that if you hit a bump your brakes might not work.

Toyota’s spokesperson also told the AP that they are investigating two other vehicles that use the same brakes as the Prius in question — the Lexus HS250h hybrid, which went on sale in September in the U.S. and the Sai which is sold only in Japan. The AP says that another Japanese media outlet has announced that these cars will be recalled as well, but that too has not yet been confirmed.

We took a look at the NHTSA complaint database but there were no similar braking complaints about the Lexus Hybrid. There was, however, one about someone’s cruise control going haywire and refusing to stop accelerating even after it was shut off, which is, you know, comforting.

Toyota to Reportedly Recall Prius Hybrid in U.S., Japan [Fox News]

Comcast has decided to give up and rebrand its cable and internet offerings as “Xfinity,” which to us sounds like a company that would make porn. Sorry, but it does.

Comcast says:

XFINITY represents the future of our company and it’s a promise to customers that we’ll keep innovating. When we launch XFINITY in a market, we’ll rebrand our products: XFINITY TV, XFINITY Voice and XFINITY Internet (our company, of course, remains Comcast). This transition is already well underway across the country. Next week, XFINITY will roll out in 11 markets including: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Hartford, Augusta, Chattanooga, parts of the Bay Area and San Francisco, with more markets to come later this year.

Anyhow, we thought the Xfinity logo didn’t look as porny as the name sounds so we tried to help them out.

We’re sure they’d appreciate it if you guys also helped fix the logo. You can link to your version in the comments, or send your ideas to [email protected]. Perhaps we’ll post the best ones. No nudity please.

Comcast Launches XFINITY [Comcast Blog]

It’s time for the annual round of outrage at the fact that the people who wrecked the economy are getting huge bonuses.

Kenneth Feinberg, the “pay czar” says the bonuses are “outrageous” but unavoidable. Meanwhile Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says that the proposed “bank fee” will stop this sort of thing.

From the WSJ:

“If you join with us in passing this proposed fee on our largest financial institutions, you’ll be able to say as we do, that the American taxpayer will not pay a penny” to reward executives at AIG and others who had a role in the financial crisis, Mr. Geithner said.

Oh, AIG, everyone hates you.

Geithner Says Proposed Bank Fee Is Antidote to AIG Bonuses [WSJ]
‘Outrageous’ AIG bonuses attacked [BBC]

The Comcast/NBC merger probably sucks for consumers, but it sure as hell sucks for other cable companies. Like, for example, WOW!. They are a smallish cable company that competes with Comcast in Chicagoland and in Detroit.

From Reuters:

“This is an unprecedented deal, which, if consummated, would substantially increase the market power of Comcast, threatening consumer and competition in the traditional and the rapidly evolving Internet content and distribution areas,” according to written testimony from Colleen Abdoulah, president of WOW!, which competes with Comcast in Chicago and Detroit.

“Comcast has proven itself particularly adept at weakening or even rendering meaningless any such relief,” according to her testimony.
…
“The deal greatly increases horizontal concentration by effectively combining key content assets from the two firms, as well as important distribution assets,” according to her testimony, prepared for a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Consumerist’s in-house translation service, the Megglefish, translated the this statement from Calculated PR Speech to English for us.

Here’s the result:

“F*CK! F*CK! F*CK! They’re going to own everything! Even Hulu! F*CK! Are they hiring?

Jesus, we’re completely @$#%@#!” Did you see what Fox was doing to Time Warner Cable? Did you see all the sh*t they’re going to own? OH GOD, STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING TO ME.”

Cable rivals: Comcast/NBC deal threatens consumers [Reuters]

But we would like you to stop. Please.

[via BuzzFeed]

Toyota is having a hell of a time lately. According to CNNMoney, “more than 100 complaints alleging poor brake performance have been lodged with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration against the 2010 Prius.” In addition, there have been 14 complaints in Japan. Ouch, if it’s not one pedal it’s another, eh?

The complaints allege that when one is driving a 2010 Prius over a bumpy or frozen surface, the brakes do not respond as expected. Instead the car lurches forward, which is the opposite of what you tend to want when braking.

We seached NHTSA’s complaint database and found several descriptions of the problem.

I own a 2010 Toyota prius ii. I’ve noticed that when I run over a bump or a pothole on the road, the car seems to accelerate or jolt forward. It happens while I brake to a stop sign and run over a bump or pothole. It has also happened while letting go of the gas pedal but not stepping on the brake. Therefore, I have to quickly step on the brake even harder to stop or slow down the car. During one incident, I nearly ran into a pedestrian crossing the street. It was a 4 way stop and I approached slowly. The pedestrian was directly in front of my vehicle and he had the right of way. I slowly approached and as my tire ran over the pained “stop” on the pavement, my vehicle jolted forward. It was a close call and it scared the pedestrian and myself. I went to a Toyota dealership and has asked about the problem. They said they don’t or have not had any complaints. Told me that mine was probably an isolated incident. I went home and googled to see if other prius drivers had the same experience. I was shocked to have read a few incidents of other prius owners experiencing the same thing.

I have a 2010 toyota prius that has often quit braking when i was driving on (a) a bumpy dirt road (2 times), (b) bumpy paved road (bumps caused by compacted snow) (2 times) and (c) a large dip in a road near my house (approx.10 times). The lapse in braking is probably less than a second, but scares me every time. Before my prius, I have always owned all-wheel drive vehicles, and I just attributed the lack of braking on the fact that i no longer have all wheel drive. But now that I think about it. That shouldn’t affect the braking! I can pretty much count on this happening over a bumpy road, or just one big bump, so if someone wants to drive my car and see what it does, that is fine with me.

Going downhill and approaching a stop sign. My foot is steady on the break and i am gradually coming to a stop. Then, I inadvertently go over a bump in the road and the prius lunges forward. I had to immediately slam hard on the breaks in order to keep the car from going into the intersection. Fortunately, there was no car or person in front of me as I was stopping.

I have a 2010 prius. When I am braking and hit some bumps in the road, my car lurches forward with brief spurts of acceleration. This has nothing to do with the gas pedal. It seems that others are having similar issues. This could be dangerous, especially on a wet road. And the roads are so terrible in Los Angeles, that I experience this problem more often than I would like. Hopefully enough people report this problem that Toyota takes action.

I have been careful but on 1/31/10 I was driving at 45mph beginning to decelerate as the light ahead had turned red, and the truck in front of me had to panic stop as a car cut in front of him, at that moment my rear left wheel hit a pothole so I was not able to break and actually accelerated toward the back of this truck. When the breaks reengaged I actually stopped 12 inches from his bumper. The consequences of this are an obvious safety hazard when you need to stop unexpectedly, you might well be endangering other drivers and/or pedestrians.

Well, that’s terrifying. Any 2010 Prius owners out there? Has this happened to you? If so, we recommend that you report it to NHTSA.

Complaints pile up about Prius brakes [CNNMoney]

A viewer recently wrote to Ellen DeGeneres asking if she’d ever tried to open the Cover Girl Simply Ageless foundation that she endorses. The answer, it seems, is no.

We’re going to give her the benefit of the doubt (picking on Ellen seems wrong, somehow) and assume that she has actually used the product before, but it’s still sort of odd that she can’t open it. Also, apparently the container is so hard to open that there are actually instructions on Cover Girl’s website, and an 800 number to call if you still can’t get it open.

It probably hasn’t occurred to you that each year there are nearly 26,000 people treated in emergency rooms for injuries sustained by tipping furniture and TVs. It certainly hadn’t occurred to us. Our sister-publication, Consumer Reports, put together a video demonstration showing how your kid can get crushed climbing up a dresser towards your TV.

Yes, this actually happens. In recent years 87 kids have died from falling televisions. The fix? Secure your furniture to the wall.

In a stunning display of bipartisanship the entire state of Louisiana has successfully told the NFL where to stick its attempts to prevent local merchants from selling t-shirts with the phrase “Who Dat” (a popular Saints cheer) and the fleur-de-lis .

Last week the WSJ reported that the NFL had issued cease-and-desist orders against vendors in New Orleans who were selling products with the wording.

The league claimed that using the phrase is likely to “confuse the purchasing public into believing that your items” are sponsored by the NFL.

The phrase (and the fleur-de-lis, naturally) predates the NFL. Louisiana Senator, David Vitter (R), wrote a letter to Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, informing the organization that he intended to print up a batch of “Who Dat” shirts and invited the league to sue him.

“This letter will also serve as formal legal notice that I am having t-shirts printed that say “WHO DAT say we can’t print Who Dat!” for widespread sale in commerce. Please either drop your present ridiculous position or sue me.”

The governor, the state legislature and the Louisiana AG also got into the fray, forcing the NFL to give up.

“People can use Who Dat all they want if it doesn’t include NFL and Saints trademarks,” said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, to the AP. “We explained that we would contact merchants only if a Who Dat item also contained NFL or Saints trademarks or if it is falsely claimed that an unauthorized item is affiliated with the Saints or NFL.”

Good work, NFL. We thought that because you stopped threatening churches who projected the game on a large screen that we wouldn’t have anything Superbowl-themed to write this year. Phew.

Who Dat Owns ‘Who Dat’? Dat’s Us, Sez da NFL [WSJ]
Halftime: Who dat who’s greedy? The NFL [USAToday]
La. attorney general says ‘Who Dat’ spat with the NFL is cleared up [AP]

Tax Cat here. Reader Jason wants to know what to do when your lazy former employer doesn’t send your W-2 on time.

Jason says:

Hoping you can help answer a question that I think a lot of your readers will find useful: What do I do if I don’t get my W-2 on time?

My girlfriend was laid off last spring, and has not yet received her W-2 from her former employer. I know they have two more days to get it here, but this company has repeatedly demonstrated its ineptitude and we don’t anticipate the form arriving.

Short of calling the employer and complaining, is there any recourse when you don’t get a W-2 by the January 31 deadline?

Oddly, our own Ben Popken had this problem back in 2007. The solution? Tattle to the IRS. The employer will get a nasty letter and maybe a fine.

Ben even got an apology letter.

Here’s who to call:

IRS Telephone Assistance for Individuals:
Toll-Free, 1-800-829-1040
Hours of Operation: Monday – Friday, 7:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m. your local time (Alaska & Hawaii follow Pacific Time).

Tell ’em Tax Cat sent ya.