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Good Job, Wal-Mart:

Wal-Mart Stores has agreed to provide 400 free bicycles, cash donations to charity and other free products to settle a dispute with a non-profit charity founded by Andre Johnson of the Houston Texans to help needy, inner-city children. According to Hillel Presser, a prominent Fort Lauderdale attorney who negotiated the settlement, problems arose after Johnson paid nearly $26,000 retail for hundreds of children’s bicycles to be given away during an annual Foundation sponsored event featuring food, music, and festivities for under-privileged children in Miami Gardens, Florida. The bicycle purchase was to include free ice and water for the children. Wal-Mart was unable to supply all the various sizes of bicycles ordered and a Wal-Mart employee then revoked the ice and water offer without notice, citing the smaller number of delivered bicycles, even though Wal-Mart was responsible for the shortage. Said attorney Presser: “This settlement is a win-win for the needy children, for my client, Andre Johnson, and for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart values its reputation for supporting local charities and events and Andre is able to help more deserving children get bicycles.” In addition to the 400, free bicycles and cash, Wal-Mart will supply free ice, water, and food to the next event for 1500 children.

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• Tiger Direct buys CompUSA brand and 16 stores - news - www.pcretailmag.com http://tinyurl.com/3xdkal - wow. interesting news! #
• “‘We know CompUSA did some things wrong, but we are fixing what was broken about CompUSA,’ said Fiorentino … #
• … acknowledging that CompUSA’s reputation had been tarnished by poor customer service and staffing problems.” #
• CompUSA’s has problems with customer service, but Tiger’s gonna fix them? What a laugh! Tiger’s customer service is 10 times worse! #

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Interesting article on Consumerist.com on how Warranties: Best Buy Overlaps Their Product Service Plans With Manufacturer’s Warranty:

Wiliam writes in to point out something he noticed in the fine print of Best Buy’s Product Service Plan: it begins as soon as you purchase the item, and doesn’t cover anything covered by the manufacturer’s warranty. If you have a one-year manufacturer’s warranty and a two-year PSP, you effectively get only one year of coverage out of the PSP.

what amazes me is what they offer warranties on nowadays. $20 remote control cars. $50 cell phones. I fully expect to be offered a warranty on my Snickers bar soon!

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So I’m browsing The Consumerist looking for rip-off alerts and I come across these two excellent posts that prove that 2008 is going to be a bang up year:

Woman Asked To Leave After Shopping At Walmart For 72 Hours

Police escorted a woman home after she was shopping, eating, and sleeping in a Georgia Walmart for three days straight. She blended in with the general Christmas madness and sustained herself by eating at the on-site Blimpie. When asked by employees at the end why she stayed for so long, she said, “I’m shopping.”

Woman Stays At Gwinnett Wal-Mart For Three Days [WSBTV2 via BoingBoing]

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Chuck Norris: “I Can’t Do All That Stuff”

Chuck Norris is suing publisher Penguin and author Ian Spector over the book “The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 facts about the World’s Greatest Human”. Among other claims, the suit states that the “book’s title would mislead readers into thinking the facts were true.” This means that apparently Chuck Norris cannot cure your cancer with his tears, he did not create a giraffe by uppercutting a horse, and he cannot speak braille. If only Kevin Trudeau could be so honest.

“Chuck Norris sues, says his tears no cancer cure” [Reuters]

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Look who’s the newest aspiring cartoonist.

You can find this and other great toons over at Planet Joon.

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Looks like Wal-Mart has jumped the shark. Surprise surprise. According to the NYT - they’ve squeezed all they can out of the American consumers and foreign consumers don’t want what they’re selling. I’m guessing the leaking lead paint from the toy section won’t help the situation going forward.

Using a combination of low prices and relentless expansion, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. emerged from rural Arkansas in the 1970s to reshape the world’s largest economy. Its co-founder, Sam Walton, taught Americans to demand ever-lower prices and instructed businesses on running a lean company. His company helped boost America’s overall productivity, lowered the inflation rate, and strengthened the buying power for millions of people. Over time, it also accelerated the drive to manufacture products in Asia, drove countless small shops out of business, and sped the decline of Main Street. Those changes are permanent.

Today, though, Wal-Mart’s influence over the retail universe is slipping. In fact, the industry’s titan is scrambling to keep up with swifter rivals that are redefining the business all around it. It can still disrupt prices, as it did last year by cutting some generic prescriptions to $4. But success is no longer guaranteed.

Rival retailers lured Americans away from Wal-Mart’s low-price promise by offering greater convenience, more selection, higher quality, or better service. Amid the country’s growing affluence, Wal-Mart has struggled to overhaul its down-market, politically incorrect image while other discounters pitched themselves as more upscale and more palatable alternatives. The Internet has changed shoppers’ preferences and eroded the commanding influence Wal-Mart had over its suppliers.

As a result, American shoppers are increasingly looking for qualities that Wal-Mart has trouble providing. “For the first time in a long time, quality has a chance to gain on price,” says Lee Peterson, a vice president at Dublin, Ohio-based brand consulting firm WD Partners Inc.

Now, the big-name brands that fueled Wal-Mart’s climb to the top are forging exclusive distribution deals with other retailers, or working to reduce their reliance on its stores. PepsiCo Inc., which favored mass-market campaigns a decade ago, recently skipped Wal-Mart when launching a new energy drink in favor of Whole Foods Market Inc. Consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble Co. gets 15% of its revenue from Wal-Mart, down three percentage points from 2003.

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Getting caught up on all my Tech reading:

This I can’t wait to see. Apple has really been innovating in the past decade and have influenced so much in consumer electronics as well as personal computers. This slim notebook rumor is virtually guaranteed to come true (as Apple can’t hide it’s stuff anymore) but what I really want is a new Apple Newton!

Sure, you’ve had the space of a few minutes without Apple rumors, but be honest with us: it felt lonely, didn’t it? Well don’t worry, because the rumors are back… with a vengeance. According to 9to5mac (who recently nailed news on the iPod nano), Apple is readying a new line of black and silver aluminum laptops, which might be the slimmer MacBook Pros mentioned previously. Details are, of course, totally speculative and entirely unconfirmed, but it sounds like the systems will be considerably thinner and lighter than current models, will have screens that reach further to the edges (which apparently suggests a smaller footprint), have keyboards in the vein of the new Apple Bluetooth models, and are set to be priced “extremely aggressively.” In addition, the report says that there is “something strange about the touchpad,” which could mean we’ll be seeing some sort of multi-touch functionality, or it could mean nothing at all. We’ll keep you posted on what the mill has to say.

Check out the new form factor of UMPC coming out now. It looks like a souped up PSP!

We caught a peek of Asus‘ R3 UMPC / MID yesterday, but it got shown off in a little more detail today during a presentation on Adobe’s AIR platform. No word on which variation of Intel’s Menlow platform it’ll be sporting, but it looks like the device will have a 4.8-inch screen with 1024 x 600 resolution, a fingerprint reader, webcam, and built-in GPS.

Online web apps are getting smarter. This one lets you convert audio and video file formats online.

YouconvertIt is a new web-based file conversion service. Like Zamzar, YouconvertIt lets you upload audio, video, image, or document files and convert from one format to another. Just select the file from your computer to upload, select your target format, and the web service will send you an e-mail when your new file is ready to download. Unlike Zamzar, YouconvertIt doesn’t appear to have a file size limit (although that may change), and currently has no advertising (which will definitely change). Oh yeah, and you can convert units like miles, kilometers, inches, and feet.

Learn a new language with the new Mango Beta.

The first Free enterprise language learning course available on the Internet. Eleven of our courses are now available in our beta release. Each course has 100 lessons available.

Free iTunes downloads at Starbucks? Time to get a coffee.

Beginning October 2, when you order your double latte, you can get a free “song of the day” iTunes download card at Starbucks. The coffee giant is giving away 50 million downloads to promote its new “Now Playing” service which displays the name of the song playing in the Starbucks store at that moment, and allows customers to buy and download songs or albums directly to their device.

More free iTunes goodness - this time from Fox.

Apparently it’s free internet TV week. First NBC announced it would be launching a free video download service. Then ABC announced it would stream free episodes through AOL. And now Fox is offering free downloads of series/season premieres of 7 shows. You’ll be able to download the episodes from Apple’s iTunes store. The episodes are commercial free, and the goal is to build buzz for the Fox programs.

Uh oh. Here comes the beginning of the end of something big - like consumer choice. That’s why I roll my own PVR.

EchoStar Communications, the company behind the Dish Network satellite service has agreed to buy Sling Media for $380 million. Sling Media is the maker of the popular Slingbox place-shifting device.

UPDATE: See what I mean? The monopoly returns - and it only means that the cool innovative native slingbox innovation will no doubt be eroded into a one-size-fits-all offering that limits choice.

And finally the ultimate birthday gift - a toy tank. Adult tank!

If you are ready to reenact Rommel’s campaign in North Africa, vandalize any wall in sight or look like Atom Ant, here’s the Paintball Panzer. At 3.4 x 4 x 6-foot it’s not comparable with the 17-tonne FV432 paintball tank after the jump, but I would love to have this mini-me version anyway.

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