sethgodin.typepad.com: Insist on the coin flip

This is also the way we should settle closely contested elections. We know the error rate for counting ballots is some percentage–say it’s .01%. Whenever the margin is less than the error rate, we should flip. Not waste months and millions in court, we should insist on the flip. Anything else is a waste of time and money.

If our process of collecting ballots and counting them continues to be an error filled process, a flip of a coin in really tight elections seems like a better solution than the expense of recounting it.   

MotherJones.com: Huckabee Hearts Secrecy

Send a public records request seeking documents from his 12-year stint as Arkansas governor, as Mother Jones did recently, and an eyebrow-raising reply will come back: The records are unavailable, and the computer hard drives that once contained them were erased and physically destroyed by the Huckabee administration as the governor prepared to leave office and launch a presidential bid.
…
A former high-ranking Arkansas Republican who was once close to Huckabee and who requested anonymity told Mother Jones that the destruction of the hard drives puzzled him. “I don’t know what that was about, if they had things to hide or not,” he says. But, he adds, the episode fits with Huckabee’s general reticence when it comes to public disclosure. “Huckabee just absolutely doesn’t trust anybody. In my experience, if you don’t trust people, it’s because you’re not trustworthy. We see the world through our own eyes.”

Thinkprogress.org: Bristol Palin’s Nonprofit Paid Her Seven Times What It Spent On Actual Teen Pregnancy Prevention

I normally hate blogging about the Palins because of all the attention they receive, but this ridiculous.

Today, the Associated Press reported that the Candie’s Foundation released its 2009 tax information, revealing that Bristol was paid a salary of $262,500.

But a closer examination of the tax form by ThinkProgress shows that the group disbursed only $35,000 in grants to actual teen pregnancy health and counseling clinics: $25,000 to the Mt. Sinai Adolescent Health Center and $10,000 to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

NYTimes.com: Once a Great Flop, Now Sold for Billions

In the story about Procter & Gamble selling the Pringles line, this interesting tidbit:

Mr. Baur never lost his affection for the Pringles’ can, which he invented. When he died in 2008, his children honored his request to bury his ashes in a Pringles can. In an interview with Time, Mr. Baur’s son, Larry, said he and his siblings stopped at a Walgreen’s to pick up a can of Pringles on the way to the funeral home.

“My siblings and I briefly debated what flavor to use,” Mr. Baur said, in the Time interview. “But I said, ‘Look we need to use the original.’ “

ESPN.com: William Perry gets Super Bowl ring back

It’s a great story, William “The Refrigerator” Perry, down on his luck gets his Super Bowl ring back as a gift from a 10 year old boy, Cliff Forrest.

And how did 10 year old Cliff get the ring?  By buying from a sports bar using $8,500 from his college fund!

Cliff used money he had been saving for college to purchase the ring after seeing it at Mickey Mantle’s restaurant and sports bar in New York City. The establishment also has a sports memorabilia section. Cliff Forrest Sr., who owns Rosebud Mining Company in Pittsburgh, said the ring was purchased for $8,500.

“When Cliff saw the ring, he said he had to have it,” Tracy said. “Once I saw the price, I said, ‘Absolutely not. We’re not buying the ring.’

“He ended up taking money out of his savings account. We told him it was money for college, but he ended up getting the ring.”

ThinkGeek.com: Star Wars Lightsaber Popsicles

Websites that have fake stories for April Fool’s Day are generally pretty lame.  ThinkGeek.com is an exception.  They’ve been creating great geeky fake products that you can’t order.  Sometimes they’re so good they actually end up being made.  Star Wars Lightsaber Popsicles is one that I see being made in the future.

UPDATE: Just watched the video ad on the website.  Pretty funny.

In a close second is the PLAYMOBIL (TM) Apple Store
Check out the Apple Store commercial in the link!

Businessweek.com: Do Not Anger the Alpha Android

Playtime is over in Android Land. Over the last couple of months Google (GOOG) has reached out to the major carriers and device makers backing its mobile operating system with a message: There will be no more willy-nilly tweaks to the software. No more partnerships formed outside of Google’s purview. From now on, companies hoping to receive early access to Google’s most up-to-date software will need approval of their plans. And they will seek that approval from Andy Rubin, the head of Google’s Android group.

So much for so called “open” software.  Google is the new bully on the block.

CNN.com: Google making app that would identify people’s faces

Google plans to introduce a mobile application that would allow users to snap pictures of people’s faces in order to access their personal information, a director for the project said this week.
…

Google acknowledges the nefarious ways someone could leverage facial-recognition technology.
Many people “are rightfully scared of it,” Neven said. “In particular, women say, ‘Oh my God. Imagine this guy takes a picture of me in a bar, and then he knows my address just because somewhere on the Web there is an association of my address with my photo.’ That’s a scary thought. So I think there is merit in finding a good route that makes the power of this technology available in a good way.”

Is there really a “good” way for using this technology?  All the examples they mention in the article are pretty weak uses.

I can see this being useful in two privacy invading areas- law enforcement and advertising.  Law enforcement would love to be able to identify people in a crowd, speeding through red lights, etc.  For advertising, Google could set up a “Minority Report” like world where targeted ads popping up on signs as you walk by.  Both of these uses raise serious privacy issues.

I bought a Livingsocial deal for two Shutterfly Canvas prints a couple of months ago.  With my typical procrastination, I didn’t get around to selecting the photos that I wanted to make into canvas until yesterday, the listed expiration date on the offer.

I logged in at Shutterfly and entered my voucher number and the website promptly returned that the voucher was no longer valid.  I tried several times thinking I had entered it incorrectly and then called Livingsocial.  The agent told me that Shutterfly interpreted the expiration date differently than other vendors and expired them March 23, meaning the last valid day was March 22.  The agent told me that I could call Shutterfly and they might honor it or that Livingsocial could refund the $100 in Livingsocial bucks.  The agent said that it should have been valid on the 23rd and that they were working with vendors to understand that.  I decided that I didn’t want to bother with dealing with Shutterfly as customer and I told the agent that I wasn’t happy receiving $100 Livingsocial bucks.  The agent said she would try to refund my credit card and was able to do so.

A few lessons here: Don’t procrastinate.  Expiration dates aren’t always what they seem.  Don’t settle for in store credit if they’re wrong.