The USDA and Health and Human Services (HHS) today unveiled a new website focused on food safety at foodsafety.gov. It’s got lots of info on how to keep food from spoiling, but better still it’s a good launching pad for filing complaints, or keeping track of what’s going on in your state (check the “state agency” widget in the bottom right column).
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By 9.2.09
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Here’s an affordable, non-piratey way to round out your music collection for half (or less) of what you’d pay to Amazon or iTunes. Pitchfok has published their selection of the top 500 tracks of the 2000s. Online music service Lala is offering most of them for 50 cents each for a limited time.
Shut Out The Worst Ad Offenders With These Firefox Tricks
By 8.31.09
If advertisers and websites would play fair with their readers, we wouldn’t need to apply various filters and blocks to them. But when you’re trying to read an article and every sixth word is hotlinked with a pop-up ad, while the FavIcon in the browser window blinks at you like a traffic light, while loud video clips start auto-playing when the page loads—well, it’s time to shut it all down. Lifehacker has put together a great list of all the ways to reclaim your sanity when you’re online.
How Useless Are Diploma Mills? This Cat Got One
By 8.14.09
If you’re looking for a cheap and fast way to get a diploma, try Jefferson High School Online, where for $200 you can be taken as seriously as Oreo the cat. Oreo the cat with a GED, we mean.
Verizon Offering $20 Naked DSL
By 8.3.09
Verizon is sad that so many of you are jumping ship, so they’re hauling out the bargain naked DSL offer again. (“Naked” means no home phone line is required to take advantage of it.) The deal is $20/mo with a 1 year commitment, and they’re throwing in a free router—although DSLReports says a Verizon rep told them the router freebie will go away at some point. Also, it’s available online only.
Free Wifi For All At Barnes & Noble Stores
By 7.28.09
The new ebook offering from Barnes & Noble may not be that compelling–it’s all the DRM badness of Amazon, but not always the lower prices–and yet something awesome has come out of it. Starting immediately, all customers can access free Wi-Fi in any B&N store.
Buy Safely Online With Virtual Credit Cards
By 7.27.09
Before buying from potentially unscrupulous merchants, call up your credit card company and ask for a virtual credit card number. The disposable numbers expire after a single use, preventing merchants from signing you up for added or recurring charges. Virtual numbers are available to Citi, Discover, PayPal, and Bank of America customers.
Want To Experience Retail Crack? Try Swoopo
By 7.20.09
Just in case that headline doesn’t make it clear: we do not recommend you try Swoopo, because you do not want to experience retail crack. Stay far, far away from Swoopo. Swoopo will feed into every gambling and spending impulse buried in the irrational parts of your brain, and suck up your money. There’s a reason the site describes itself as “entertainment shopping.”
Why Is Spam Around? Because 12% Of Readers Actually Try To Buy The Stuff
By 7.17.09
Why, in a rational world, does spam continue to exist? Because someone you know—or maybe it’s you—has actually tried to buy something from it, a new study finds. Find that person and beat him (or yourself) with a stapler.
Splurge Of The Day: $7,500 Shirt On "Sale" At Ted Baker
By 7.2.09
James Bond-outfitter Ted Baker has a 50% sale going on right now. And at these ‘sale’ prices you’d pretty much have to steal from an international criminal to afford this one…
Scammers Also Use Dating Services To Look For Easy Marks
By 6.26.09
A reader received a weird message from a fellow Match.com member last night—it was a fairly transparent attempt by someone to establish contact with her via a false identity.
Facebook Encourages Open Marriages—Just Ask Dan's Wife
By 6.24.09
One thing I personally hate about Facebook is how the ads co-opt my friends’ pictures and use them to try to sell me stupid stuff. Dan received one of those types of ads yesterday, only the combination of text and photo selection was a little… um, let’s say “open minded.”
EECB Finally Gets Someone At Bank Of America To Listen, Admit Responsibility
By 6.22.09
Bank of America messed up Andy’s credit score by failing to send him credit card statements or giving him online access to an old account he only recently started using again. They also refused to work with him over the phone, telling him each time he called that they had no record of his previous conversations with customer service and therefore no reason to believe him.
Beanbag Chair Website May Actually Be Run By Beanbag Chairs
By 6.18.09
Eric and his girlfriend are trying to acquire a beanbag chair from sumolounge.com, but there have been some hiccups. Eric is a former retail manager, so he’s actually pretty understanding about how things can go wrong with fulfillment. Now that Mindy is just flat out ignoring him, however, he may have lost his patience. Update: The founder of sumolounge.com has responded in the comments below.
By 6.5.09
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The next time you’re looking at hotels online, try www.biddingfortravel.com and www.betterbidding.com. Our readers recommend both sites for helping you figure out which hotels you’re being offered on Priceline or Hotwire. (Thanks to bohemian and picantel!)
Sears Settles With FTC Over Spyware Charge
By 6.5.09
In 2007 and 2008, Sears invited select customers to join the exclusive “My SHC Community,” which involved installing an app that would monitor online browsing in exchange for $10. The app was called spyware by researchers and the FTC, because the data it collected on customers included “details from their online shopping, bank statements, drug-prescription records, video rentals, library-borrowing histories, even the names and addresses of their e-mail correspondents,” as well as “data about the users’ computers, printers, and other devices.”
Mystery Solved? Using OpenDNS Results In Glacial YouTube Downloads For Qwest Customers
By 5.8.09
Earlier this week, we posted an email from a frustrated Qwest customer who said he couldn’t download YouTube and other online videos at a speed equivalent to the Qwest service he was paying for. Qwest wrote to us, and spoke to the customer, and swore they were not interfering with any download rates. Instead, it looks like the problem is with OpenDNS, a free service that usually speeds up downloading, but that seems to have an issue when it comes to certain video streams.
Tips For Buying A Suit Online
By 4.30.09
You can save a lot of money if you buy your next suit online, but you can also end up with an ill-fitting suit that makes you look like an idiot. Dealnews spoke with a fashion writer for AskMen.com and put together a short list of tips on how to make it worth your while.
