After a suspect shoplifter was arrested, police seized his cellphone and made a startling discovery, FOX 41 reports. Reviewing the entries on the phone, the found orders and special requests from people, who sent him shoplifting selections via text message. However, his method of secreting the merchandise was decidedly lo-tech: he was caught allegedly stuffing shoes down his pants and trying to walk out of the store without paying. [More]
BLOGS
How To Pick A Preschool: Hang Out In It For A Few Hours
By 5.23.11
Just because it says “Montessori” on the front door doesn’t mean it’s a good preschool. Over at the Science-Based Parenting blog they learned that the hard way after putting their kid in a place that called itself a Montessori school and he was miserable. It was only after going there and watching for a few hours that they saw diapers weren’t changed frequently, there was a layer of grime on everything, and the teachers spoke to the children in admonishments. So now they’ve learned their lesson: [More]
Chatting With Porno Scambot Reveals Dark Truths About Nature Of Human Consciousness
By 5.20.11
What does it mean to be human? What defines our humanity? Writer Clive Thompson pondered these questions one night recently as he was being solicited by an online chatbot over AIM trying to get him to go to her sexy webcam site. [More]
4 Magical Words Debt Collectors Use To Open Your Pockets
By 5.18.11
Debt collection is all about mind games. NotSoDeepSouth blogged about the four magical words that he used to use as a debt collector that acted like a crowbar on people’s wallets, getting formerly relcacitrant people to empty out their pockets. [More]
San Francisco On Track To Ban Yellow Pages
By 5.17.11
San Francisco, the city that likes to ban everything that makes this country great, like plastic bags and Happy Meals, is just one more round of voting to do away with another American staple. No longer will its citizens be able to depend on their annual free doorstop upgrade in the form of a Yellow Pages phone book plopped in front of their abode. If the bill, read it here (PDF) passes, the company will have to confirm that the residents actually want one first. That should only cut down their market share in the city by roughly… most people. [More]
Man Skips Around Dell Hell And Gets Free Repair
By 5.17.11
One of our reader’s Dell laptop had a defective NVIDIA chip and wouldn’t you know it, it was out of warranty and he had missed the window for getting it replaced as provided by a class action lawsuit by a month. It was dying for exactly the same reasons as defined in the lawsuit, but he just barely didn’t make the deadline. He didn’t let that stop him. [More]
Brands, This Is Not How You Do Twitter
By 5.17.11
After getting annoyed at how internet provider RCN kept tweeting about a Chicago-based promotion that he didn’t feel was relevant to people like himself who are outside Chicago, Mark sent a grumpy tweet to RCN. It was replied to with a robotic response that makes it look like the person didn’t even read his tweet, they just wanted him to take the conversation off Twitter. This is in the vein of what I talked about with “Twitter Company Reps Who Talk Big But Can’t Actually Do Anything” and it is a total Twitter fail. [More]
Jim And Pam Get A Money Makeover
By 5.10.11
Jim and Pam Halpert, the beloved and relatable couple from The Office, could be in financial trouble. Not because DeAngelo Vickers decided to make them head janitors — what wacky office dynamic upset will that guy think of next?? — but because they got married, had a baby, bought a house, and changed their job descriptions, they are in need of a serious money makeover. Over at Bankrate, a certified financial planner takes on the profile of these two fictional characters and gives them real money-saving advice. [More]
College Kid Is Pro At Taking Companies To Small Claims Court
By 5.10.11
Most of us have trouble scratching a simple customer service call off our to-do list, but The Red Tape Chronicles profiles a college kid who has turned taking companies to small claims court into a bit of a hobby. And he’s won 10 out of 12 times. [More]
What If You Actually Lived Inside IKEA?
By 5.9.11
Christian went on a trip to IKEA with his buddies and began to imagine, as many have upon seeing the different “sets” around the store recreating rooms in a house fully furnished by IKEA furniture, what would it be like if you actually lived inside the IKEA store? Since he’s a really good photographer, he and his pals then staged a series of delightful photos bringing this concept to life. Very fun way of bringing IKEA’s marketing metaphor to its literal conclusion. It also reminds me of this short sitcom about a family that lives in IKEA that came out last year. [More]
Ways To Avoid Hitting AT&T's New Bandwidth Caps
By 5.3.11
Like suddenly cool again hypercolor shirts, AT&T has brought back another retro trend back from the dead – metered bandwidth with charges for overages. The ISP yesterday imposed a 150 GB a month cap on all DSL customers. If you go over it more than three times in your account lifetime, you will get a $10 charge for every 50 GB in excess. U-verse customers will have a 250 GB cap. Ah, nostalgia, it feels just like Compuserve all over again! So how do you go on a bandwidth diet? [More]
Twitter Company Reps Who Talk Big But Can't Actually Do Anything
By 5.2.11
After a few bad experiences by their writers, TechCrunch is calling out this “scandal of toothless social media representatives” and demanding that it ends “now.” Seems some companies have figured out that rather than use Twitter to solve people’s customer service complaints, they can just use it to get you to shut up. Here’s how it works. [More]
Brooklyn Delivery Guy Calls Out Bad Tippers On His Blog
By 4.30.11
Crappy tippers, beware. The delivery guy or gal who you grossly undertip this weekend might have a Tumblr account. Tired of meager tips from customers who clearly have some cash, one delivery guy in Brooklyn–Williamsburg, to be exact–is striking back by calling out lousy tippers on his blog, and gathering tips from readers. Unlike us, he leaves names, addresses, and locations unredacted. Check it out soon, because it probably won’t stay up for long in its current form. [More]
Car Seats Fly Free, So Pack Other Stuff In There To Avoid Bag Fees
By 4.25.11
It’s sort of sneaky, but you can take advantage of the fact that a few items, like strollers, car seats and some medical items, never get a fee for getting checked in order to avoid checked bag fees on your other stuff, writes the Money Crashers blog. [More]
Win $5,000 Scholarship For Wearing Duct Tape To Prom
By 4.22.11
For those of us not lucky enough to be born poor or smart, there are tons of other scholarships out there that reward uniqueness, skills and “just being yourself.” For instance, there’s the $5,000 you and your date could win for wearing an outfit made of Duct Tape to prom. [More]
Regulators Hatch Plan To Pay Back Victims Of Bad And Illegal Foreclosures
By 4.21.11
It’s no secret that foreclosures in America have been a royal mess. Missing paperwork, faked documents, turbo-charged courts that just rubberstamp foreclosure orders, robosigners, the list goes on. Along the way, a number of homeowners have gotten foreclosed on improperly and, in some cases, even illegally. So regulators are putting together a plan for grand-scale recompense. They’ve laid down decrees that servicers have to start following the law, for really reals this time, banks need to hire outside firms to review their foreclosure actions between 2009 and 2010, and then pay back their victims. [More]
Passwords: Why "This Is Fun" Is 10x Safer Than "J4fS!2"
By 4.21.11
We’re told that the strongest kinds of passwords are the ones like look like an alien tap-danced on your keyboard, but people have a hard time remembering them without writing them down (on a post-it sitting on the desk). But baekdal has written an intriguing post that shows how when defending against a cracker trying to break your password via brute force through a web form, not only is “this is fun” actually memorable and usable than “J4sF!2,” it’s 10 times harder to crack. [More]
Make Your Own Dishwashing Detergent At Home
By 4.21.11
The same ingredients you can use to make your own laundry detergent at home can be used to make your own dishwashing detergent, also at home. [More]
