Don’t forget, the first ever Consumerist meetup is tomorrow night. And it’s coming at a perfect time: This month is Consumerist’s four-year birthday!
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Standard Time Starts, Set Your Clocks Back An Hour
By 11.1.09
Daylight savings time ends today. It’s the “good” one, so you get to set your clocks back an hour and go back to sleep. If you’re reading this at eight, for instance, set your clock back to 7. Your cellphone, and if it’s set to automatically adjust for daylight savings changes, your computer most likely has already changed to adjust so if you’re confused just go off that. Today is also a good day to do this twice-yearly change of the batteries in your fire and smoke alarms, and change your windshield wipers. How do you plan on spending your extra hour?
First Consumerist Meetup 11/4!
By 10.21.09
I just got done setting up our equipment rental to show the Internets Celebrities movies from Rooftop Films, which means that our first Consumerist meetup must be very close indeed…
Update Your Consumerist RSS Feed
By 10.21.09
No new posts will appear after this one on the old RSS feed. Thank you!
Consumerist Videodrome #1
By 10.15.09
It’s Consumerist Videodrome #1! Wherein I make several important announcements about new changes coming to the site and show off my new cat.
If You Do Not Add A Working Email To Your Profile By Sunday You Will Lose Your Account
By 10.15.09
Update: The deadline for adding an email address to your commenter ID is this Sunday, October 18th, at midnight EST. If your account doesn’t include an email address by then, you will have to register again when we move the site, and you may not get the same username. If you’ve already added an email address, thanks! We’ll see you on the other side!
Consumerist Meetup NYC: 11/4 6-9pm Botanica Bar
By 10.8.09
Woo! We’ve locked down the first Consumerist Meetup for Wed, Nov 4th, 6-9pm at Botanica Bar, 47 E Houston St, New York, NY.
Announcing The First Consumerist Meetup
By 10.7.09
We’re planning on having a Consumerist meetup in early November. Currently locking down a location in Manhattan, more details to come. Nothing fancy, just a chance to meet other readers and hang out with the writers from the site and have some drinks on us!
Consumerist Gets Awards, Makes Remarks
By 10.2.09
This week Meg and I received the National Consumers League’s Consumer Education and Leadership Award for our work on Consumerist. The award was given during the Everett C. Parker Ethics in Telecommunications Lecture. The annual event commemorates the work of pioneering media activist Everett C. Parker, notable for his work in getting a racist TV station’s FCC license revoked in 1971. We’d like to share the video and the remarks we gave:
Sorry About Those Survey Problems Yesterday
By 10.1.09
Apologies to those who experienced errors with our survey yesterday. Our survey team was surprised by how many readers wanted to join the panel. The volume was so great that by the time they saw that we were approaching the cut-off mark and took down the one year offer, a bunch of readers were already in the pipe. The readers who joined that got error codes and were unable to get the annual sub will be recontacted and provided a link to sign up for the one year trial.
Take Our Survey, Get Free Month Pass To ConsumerReports.org
By 9.30.09
UPDATE: Thank you very much for your input. The survey is now closed for the time being. We apologize for the unexpected technical glitches and will be figuring out how best to address those who didn’t get redemption codes.
Consumerist To Receive Consumer Education Leadership Award
By 9.28.09
This Wednesday Meghann Marco and myself Ben Popken will accept the National Consumers League Consumer Education Leadership Award. We are honored and thankful.
Join Us At The Consumers Union Annual Meeting
By 9.28.09
Want to meet Ben and Meg, get a preview of our new design, tour the Consumer Reports labs, and have a chance to take home a brand new Consumerist t-shirt? You can do all of that and more at the Consumers Union annual meeting, on October 17th. Admission is free, but space is limited, so if you’d like to join us, read on.
Read My "Google Power Reader" Feed
By 9.17.09
Google selected me to be one of their “Power Readers,” which means you can easily subscribe to an RSS feed with some of the blogs I recommend reading. I encourage checking out The Red Tape Chronicles, Bankrate, Credit Slips, Elliot.org, and Frugal for Life, as well as the other blogs recommended by my fellow “Power Readers.” Yes, we all got issued special laser rings.
Danish Government Promotes Unwanted Pregnancies, Tourism
By 9.16.09
Here’s another one for the apology pile: the Danish government is apparently very, very sorry for creating one of the most bizarre tourism campaigns ever. VisitDenmark, which promotes tourism, created a fake website for a pretty young mom who got drunk one night, had sex with a stranger, ended up with a baby, then made an internet video to find the father. The story was purely a hoax—the young woman, an actor; the baby, not hers—and many people sucked in by the sad tale are now pissed off.
Happy Labor Day!
By 9.7.09
Your Consumerist editorial team wishes you a Happy Labor Day! We’re giving everyone the day off, but we’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, we hope our Cape Cod readers will watch out for Great White Sharks, and wish them luck finding a bigger boat.
Like Your Commenter Name? Feed Us Your Email Address
If you want to keep access to your Consumerist commenter login, it’s a good idea to update your profile with a valid email address. Sometime this fall we will transition to a new blogging platform and we will need to email everyone new passwords to migrate them over. So go into your Consumerist profile and make sure there’s a working email in there. Just click “profile” at the top right of the page, then “edit my profile,” plug your email address in, hit update, and you’re done.