She says that the commercial and residential real estate markets are different and there are still opportunities out there for investors... but she doesn't invest in real estate much herself because she knows "what goes into it."

Napoli: And that's the upshot of this report, even though you've titled it "Rough Road Ahead for Investors"?

Smith: I believe so, because there's more difficulty in going out and finding that property that you want to buy or even listing a property and trying to sell it, so in terms of what buyers and sellers were used to over the last ten years and what they're encountering now, it's definitely going to be a rough road, but it's also important to realize that there are opportunities out there for investors. It's just a matter of what your strategy is and I always like to think that real estate investors are optimistic.

Napoli: You also have to have a pretty strong stomach, I'd imagine.

Smith: I think you do, I think you do. People always say to me "well, you're in real estate, I can't believe you don't own so much real estate" and I say I know what goes into it. I know how people react to all the things you have to watch in real estate: what's going on with employment and what's going on with the consumer and to me, there's just too much to focus on that it does... you need a strong stomach and good optimism.

Mixed news for commercial real estate [Marketplace]
(Photo:AngrySicilian)

Kayako makes a pretty awesome support suite that came highly recommended to me from a couple of friends. I will say first off that their support software is top notch and feature packed, and I have no qualms with their product.

Their customer support, however, leaves much to be desired.

Kayako offers a few options for their products- monthly hosted, monthly and yearly leased, owned. We opted for the monthly leased option as we didn't want to plunk down the hefty $499 price for the owned license. Our major problem with all versions of the Kayako software was that it required either the Zend or Ioncube decoders to be installed on our server in order to run their software- all versions have "encoded" files that require the decoder running to use, including the owned license.

The decoders were causing a performance hit that we didn't like. We looked around, found another support suite that did not have encoded code, and installed it. It worked. The owned version of it cost 1/4 the price of Kayako. It didn't require any performance robbing decoders. We decided to go with it and drop Kayako.

This is where the pain began. First, there is no cancel button on their website. The only way to cancel is to contact their support email:

A few days ago, my first email:

I want to cancel this account. Please cancel all renewals of this license immediately.

Their reply:

Can you please let us know the reason for the cancellation of your eSupport License? If you have any issues regarding the product, we will be more than glad to assist you in that.

Waiting for your response.

Ok, you want to know why. I understand that- cool.

My second email:

We have decided to go with a solution that has 100% access to the source code unencoded. We have already made this decision and migrated to the new solution.

Please cancel the account immediately.

The key phrases in this email being "we have already migrated to a new solution" and "cancel the account immediately".

Their second response:

In case of the Owned license, you will get 99% of open source code. You can modify the source code to customize the software as per your requirement. The 1% source code which is not provided includes the license management files and they are not provided to stop the piracy of the software. Please let me know if you are interested in buying the Owned license as we have some special offers for the day or you want us to cancel your eSupport Monthly Leased license.

Awaiting your response.

I'll be the first to admit I snapped a little bit after this one. I already told them twice to cancel the account, I already told them we migrated to another solution. I know that in a couple days I am going to be re-billed for the leased license if they do not cancel my account. Now it just smells like they are trying to draw this out and get another payment from me when I have already removed their software from my server, installed another solution, and just want to move on with my life.

My third email:

I can not believe you badger your customers like this. I don't want to talk about it or see special offers.

CANCEL THE MONTHLY LEASED LICENSE NOW.

If I receive another charge from your company I will file a fraud claim with my bank and perform a charge back. You have guaranteed that I will never be a customer of Kayako in the future, and I will go out of my way to share this experience with others.

Today I was billed again after repeatedly asking them to cancel the account. Kayko has not replied to my previous email or canceled my account.

My final email before I perform a chargeback with my bank:

I was just billed again for this license after I have asked you repeatedly to cancel.

You have 24 hours to refund my payment before I file fraud with Worldpay and my credit card company.

I am waiting for your response.

Screw you Kayako. Take it from someone else who runs a service that does monthly billing- This is not how you treat customers.

You have effectively taken a customer that was pleased with your software but couldn't use it due to a compatibility issue and turned him into someone who is going to badmouth you to everyone he comes in contact with everywhere he goes online. I'll get my money back anyway, and all you will have to show for it is bad press. Keep up the good work jerks.

Rather than contract its manufacturing out to the lowest bidder, Mattel owns the factories that assemble their toys destined for export. The integrity of the supply chain is paramount:

Elisha Chan, the director of product integrity and corporate responsibility, is charged with guarding against dangerous defects like lead-based paint. Suppliers are closely monitored, he says, and sending in fake or tainted supplies is a ticket to losing the contract with Mattel. And some vendors have, says Mr. Chan.

Professor Johnson of Dartmouth visited the Guanyao factory while it was under construction. "I was impressed that they were spending a lot more time and money building dorms," he said, comparing the factory with those of other companies. "Mattel's China partner working to build that factory could not understand why they'd be wasting this money on all these things."

Mattel says that it can control the quality of its toys better because it owns factories like this one. Before the company approves any of its new toys — some 5,000 each year — it produces small batches.

Once full-scale production begins, toys are pulled off the line periodically and supplies are tested as they come in the door.

Mattel's defeat at the hands of the Chinese Poison Train is a significant setback for our confidence in the ability of American companies to vouch for the quality of their imported goods. If Mattel isn't able to protect their goods, even with a system specifically designed to mitigate the risks of manufacturing in China, we're not sure what measures will keep the Chinese Poison Train at bay.

Toymaking in China, Mattel's Way [NYT]

•25% of Free File affiliates improperly calculated eligibility for the earned income tax credit and the dependent care credit;
•Almost 50% of affiliates did not ask users for enough information to determine if they were eligible to claim exemptions for dependents;
•One affiliate allowed improper exemptions for dependents;
•Some affiliates hate kids and would not allow filers to claim more than four dependents.

The Treasury Department wants the IRS to test the accuracy of its affiliates, but it's nice out and the IRS thinks that will take too much work:

Management did not agree with our recommendation to establish a process to test the software used in the Free File Program to ensure common scenarios are being handled accurately. Management stated the IRS already reviews the accuracy of Alliance members' software to ensure it operates within the parameters of the Free File Agreement, and other tests ensure these electronic returns are compatible with IRS system requirements. However, these tests do not assess the accuracy of applying the tax law. Management stated testing of commercial tax preparation software to determine its accuracy in applying the tax law would be a monumental challenge for the IRS.

IRS tax-filing software often problematic [LA Times]
Additional Action Is Needed to Expand the Use and Improve the Administration of the Free File Program (Audit # 200640033) (PDF) [Treasury Inspector General For Tax Administration]
(Photo: numberstumper)

The corn price increases flow like gravy down the food chain, to grocery stores and menus. The cost of rounded cubed steak at local Harris Teeters is up from $4.59 last year to $5.29 this year, according to TheGroceryGame.com, which tracks prices. The Palm restaurant chain recently raised prices as much as $2 for a New York strip. And so on.

(Photo: Eduardo Mueses)

Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise and mustard, the hot dogs and the bologna, the margarine and shortening, the salad dressings and the relishes and even the vitamins. (Yes, it's in the Twinkie, too.) There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn.This goes for the nonfood items as well: Everything from the toothpaste and cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash bags, cleansers, charcoal briquettes, matches, and batteries, right down to the shine on he cover of the magazine that catches your eye by the checkout: corn. Even in Produce on a day when there's ostensibly no corn for sale you'll nevertheless find plenty of corn: in the vegetable wax that gives the cucumbers their sheen, in the pesticide responsible for the produce's perfection, even in the coating on the cardboard it was shipped in. Indeed, the supermarket itself—the wallboard and joint compound, the linoleum and fiberglass and adhesives out of which the building itself has been built—is in no small measure a manifestation of corn.

The Rising Tide of Corn [Washington Post]

The funny thing is that when I made that graphic I was referencing a biker logo and it was only brought up to me later that it was the SS skull.

For an artist who traffics so heavily in appropriating fascist symbolism and iconography, Shep Fairey might be well served by picking up a few history books.

As George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — BEN POPKEN

• Shep Fairey talks about "the politics of aesthetics."

• From Shep Fairey's OBEY manifesto: "The OBEY sticker.... has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker."

• A reader reports eBay pulled his Walmart Totenkopf shirt auctionfor being "Hateful or Discriminatory," no word on the thousands of other auctions of Nazi memorabilia.

• Day 6, shirt still on sale at Walmart.

• A conversation we had with graphic designer Daniel Edelman.

karlhungus: I can tell you want happened with those walmart t-shirts
karlhungus: speaking from experience
karlhungus: working on stuff like that
karlhungus: not nazi stuff
karlhungus: but the (former) popularity of the skull and crossbones type stuff
fakeout: alrighty, spill the beans
karlhungus: did I show you the look book and packages I did for that ralph lauren ivy cologne?
fakeout: yeah
fakeout: i remember there were some skullies in there
karlhungus: well what has to be understood is that alot of the imagery used by skull and bones and the underground secret society aesthetic comes from nazi imagery
karlhungus: because the real skull and bones has long time connections to the 3rd reich
karlhungus: and alot of iconography was translated, carried over
karlhungus: now smart people that we were
karlhungus: stopped from continuing with alot of really nice stuff because when you put it up on the wall on its own it looked like we were calling for racial purity
karlhungus: I could show you hundreds of designs that had that problem
karlhungus: where you are sitting at your computer, grabbing crap off the internet, making something cool and not really thinking about it
karlhungus: but like I said, we had the sense to stop and say "wait a second, hiel hitler"
karlhungus: but it would seem that their "design team" didn't have the piece of mind to think in the same way
fakeout: right
karlhungus: I think that its an amazing logo on its own, all things considered
karlhungus: and its that the average walmart shopper either wouldn't know it if they saw it, or would approve if they knew it
karlhungus: a couple of things happen
karlhungus: one, the link between skull and bones/secret society and the 3rd reich is deep seeded in idea and imagery
karlhungus: and two
karlhungus: you have to be an active filter for it as you work with it
karlhungus: and three
karlhungus: that whole look is over, unless you are ralph lauren and know how to make it look good over and over again
karlhungus: just look it up on google, and you could construct related design in an hour
fakeout: the other thing, SS imagery is royalty free
fakeout: we were thinking someone working from a flash tatoo book
karlhungus: no, you are exactly right
fakeout: there's other items in the "no boundaries" line that have tatoo imagery on them
karlhungus: thats a huge part of it
karlhungus: thats good, you hit a big nail on the head there
karlhungus: alot of ancient ritual text/imagery as well as stuff like that are outside of the realm of copy right
karlhungus: copyright
karlhungus: most of it you can buy in clip art books at the local barnes and noble
karlhungus: or find on internet sites that house high res scans of pages
karlhungus: so, they just clinched their butt-cheeks and hoped that no one would notice
fakeout: or no one had any idea
karlhungus: its both
karlhungus: god that was the most unpleasant project of my life
karlhungus: like, you need to stop every so often and work out what's acceptable and stop it from leaving the sketch stage
karlhungus: and those above simple images are just throwing together a couple of elements from "the bank" as it were, and so it can easily head south
karlhungus: or head hitler
karlhungus: and as I said, its just simple sketching, in five minutes a can create a new symbol for the nazi party

Forcing the government to confirm or deny the transaction would violate laws against divulging state secret, U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly said.

Furthermore, since the activists could not prove that their individual records might be among the supposed records turned over, they had no basis for a lawsuit.

Let's see....

in order to prove their records were compromised, the activists need access to the records. However, the records are state secrets. Whether the records exist in a compromised state is a state secret. Whether or not there is a state secret... is also a state secret.

Ten thousand spoons and all you need is a hole in the head.

You were too good for life in prison, Kenny-boy. God loves you back, so much so that he couldn't wait to look down and see you dancing on the devil's pitchfork!

(Thanks to Chris!)

This entrant satirizes the SUV industry. With their own tools.

Irony, you are mistress most fetching.

View it here quick, before Chevy gets wise and takes it down.

UPDATE: Link is down. Posting screenshots shortly...

UPDATE: Screenshots posted after the jump.

UPDATE: A preserved version of the parody in question made it to YouTube:

(Thanks to KevinQ for the YouTube catch!)

Less than two hours after getting posted here and on CBCNews, a user-generated Chevy Tahoe ad, an entrant in the "Make a Chevy Tahoe Ad and Win a Free Trip" contest, is down. The ad mocked SUVs, gas guzzling, planet raping, and inane car ads. For some reason, Chevy didn't want that on their site.

Whoddathinkit.

Good thing we had the foresight to take screen shots.

Guess Chevy's definition of the American Revolution doesn't include the freedom of speech.

Consumer-Made Ads Backfires for Chevy [CBCnews]

$800 charge. Read again.

Somewhere, heard someone make noises. Like an animal. Read it one more time. Noticed 'reading ESTIMATED.'

Strange.

Who would estimate therms like that? Several times what they were before?

Only one thing could. A stupid gas company. It had to be stopped.

Walked downstairs. Read meter. Meter said 288, not 516. Called Keyspan.

Corrected them.

They said they'd send a new bill right over, sir. Hung up phone. Watched sun set. Shivered. Boiler not working either. Coincidence. Maybe. Rage, she is a warm mistress at your side.

Remember our Starbucks Contest? Remember Gregg Schultz, the winner of the contest, to who we were to send a $500 gift card?

Yeah... I totally forgot to do that. I sent it in with my girlfriend so she could ship it via UPS instead of US Mail (so we could insure it cheaply), and then neglected to ever give her Gregg's address.

So my apologies, Gregg. It went out today.

We were already making you go back to the very place you swore you hated, Gregg. Consider this the sour cherry on top of your bittersweet mocha.