Friday, May 14, 2010

From the CBS Evening News tonight:

In Washington, financial reform is working its way through Congress. and in a victory for consumers, the Senate voted to reduce the fees banks charge merchants for debit card transactions. Stores could pass those savings on to you.

Now we all know that per run-of-the-mill transaction, that doesn’t amount to anything close to what consumers will expect in the way of cost reduction (remember the fees aren’t going away, they’re just being reduced, per swipe). Cumulatively, however, the savings per monthly merchant statement could be significant, depending on just how large a reduction we’re talking about.

Time will tell…not to mention the fact this is only the Senate. Until both houses pass a bill, then the Oval Office signs it, well…it’s just talk.

Still, it’s good talk, in the right direction. At last.

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Confused by the moving target known as Facebook privacy settings? Join the club. Seems every other week, there’s yet another set of new changes (theoretically) designed to allow users better control over who has access to what on their personal profile pages. The problem, however, is that in spite of the added settings, more of our Facebook info continues to find its way to public eyeballs, including posts that pop up in Google searches, depending on whether or not you’ve discovered the Holy Grail of FB privacy settings.

Which appears to be a fairly short list of folks.

As opposed to the long list of folks who have had it with the confusion.

Earlier this week, Facebook tried to address the problem by breaking down how the myriad of privacy settings work in tandem with one another. [click here to continue…]

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