Wayne Schulz

In the last few days I’ve noticed a regular spam problem from Facebook.

My notifications bar shows links from people I don’t know and am not friends with. They are inviting me to like a spam page – in this case “iPhone 5 testing” which leads to a multitude of pop-up windows and eventually pulls me off-site to another spam page which I’ve not bothered to click onto any further for fear of contracting malware-itis.

The issue with Facebook is:

• Non-Friends  should not be able to randomly send you notifications – if there’s an easy way to shut this off I’ve not found it
• On the incoming notifications there should be a way to flag a USER as sending SPAM – the current default action if you try to click on the user icon is to actually send you to the spam the user sent

In order to block/report the user you must know to click “See All Notifications” and from there you can click the users link and block/report them.

For a short while I used the Taskforce App for Gmail. I was relatively happy with it until I tried synchronizing to Google Tasks and it kept disconnecting. Rather than spend an endless game of debugging an application that might never work properly (the developers last blog post was August 2011), I decided to cancel the auto renewal.

Auto renewal is in my opinion one of those tricky sales gimmicks employed by companies that hope you’ll forget the day after your auto-renewal goes into place. Then even though they miraculously could charge your credit card in milliseconds to get your signup – they have extreme difficulty reversing that charge.

Rather than take a chance that I would forget to cancel a service that I no longer felt was worth the money I decided to cancel online (which thankfully Taskforce allows).

However they immediately cancel your account in full and back you down to a free account — despite my having paid in advance for a full year.

In my opinion extremely poor business.

Interested in watching the festivities in New York City’s Times Square on December 31, 2011 – but not all that thrilled to fight the crowds. Well you’re in luck because for the last several years there has been a way to watch all the activity live from your computer via the power of the streaming webcams hosted by Earthlink.

These high definition streaming cameras offer a large number of viewing angles to choose from and new for 2011 is the Earthcam 3D which will allow those with special 3D televisions to connect (instructions here)  and view the action in full depth.

Watch the Times Square action from the Earthcam dedicated New Years Eve site here or view the every day Time Square Webcam here.

Did you know that consumers have a free way to change the name that displays when you make a call on your Verizon Wireless Smartphone? This works for any type of cell phone on Verizon and you can make the change yourself for free (business users must pay $1.99 per month). Verizon calls this Share Name ID which enables you to customize the name that others see when they receive your call on a device enabled with Caller ID. It is a free service (except for business lines). Here is how to set it up on your account.

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Big fan of NBC’s the office?
Ever wanted to buy actual Dunder Mifflin paper?

Now you can at Quill.com (owned by Staples). At $34.99 per carton (10 reams), it’s not a killer deal but is decent, especially when you add in the coolness factor.

Coupon code: JYC – Free USB Hub w/clock ($9.99 Value) with $45 order.

All orders over $45 ship free so if you want free shipping and a badass (sarcasm) USB hub/clock, you’ll need a filler item. While I was typing this up, I ran across a code for $20 off $100 dollar purchase (was going to use it with 3 cartons) but expired while I was checking out. Also, in case you want to get a few cartons and want something a little more useful than a USB clock there’s this code:

Coupon code: VKB – Free Wireless Mouse with $85 Purchase

Via: FatWallet