IKEA Recalls 23 Million Wall-Mounted Lamps Following Death Of Toddler

The SMILA lamps, available in 8 models, were primarily marketed for use in kids’ rooms.

IKEA has issued a global recall of 23 million lamps (more than 3 million in the U.S. and Canada alone) after the death of a 16-month-old child who became entangled in the lamp’s cord while in their crib, and another incident involving a 15-month-old who nearly strangled on the lamp’s cord.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, both incidents involved the children pulling the lamp cord into their cribs.

The recall covers multiple iterations of the SMILA-series wall-mounted lamps, primarily marketed for use in kids’ rooms.

The SMILA STÄRNA is the model in the shape of a blue star. The product’s article numbers are 501.944.49 or 500.108.79.

The SMILA MÅNE is the one with the yellow moon. Its article numbers are 701.944.48 or 700.108.40.

The SMILA BLOMMA looks like a pink or white flower. Its article numbers for the pink flower are 901.944.47 or 000.979.50. The white flower number is 300-746-50.

The SMILA HJÄRTA lamp is a red heart, with article numbers 202.256.59 or 801.993.13.

The SMILA BAGGE is a green bug with article numbers 101.944.46 or 700.728.71.

The SMILA SNÄCKA model is a blue seashell with article number 400-982-50.

The SMILA SJÖHÄST lamp is an orange seahorse with article number 900-982-43.

The article number is printed on the lamp’s packaging.

IKEA and CPSC say consumers should immediately stop using the recalled lamps and contact IKEA for a free repair kit that contains self-adhesive fasteners for attaching the lamp’s cord to the wall as well as safety instructions.

You can contact IKEA toll-free at (888) 966-4532 anytime for more information.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

George Takei Seems To Be Beating Newt Gingrich In The Famous Amazon Reviewers Battle

(DJHeini)

There is a war raging in reviewer land, and it’s one you might not have noticed. BUT IT IS VERY REAL. Or at least it is to anyone taking note of which famous faces are taking the time to review things on Amazon. Because while everyone knows that George Takei is very adroit at making funnies on the Internet, Newt Gingrich is also in the reviewing ring.

Though we know in our brains that there is no actual celebrity reviewing war going on, if there was then Takei would be riding roughshod all over the competition, points out Kottke.org: He’s a top-1000 reviewer at Amazon for his humorous reviews of things like squirrel underpants (that means underpants for squirrels, not featuring them) and inflatable remote control sharks.

Takei is ranked at 584 overall on Amazon for his 25 reviews, with 99% of votes on his reviews getting a “helpful” rating. That’s 99% of the total 129,524 votes his reviews have gotten. And also his birthday is April 20, in case you were wondering.

A sample snippet from a Takei review on unicorn horns for cats, which he strapped onto three alley cats:

Soon things began to happen. Inexplicable things. The neighbor’s dog was found immobilized, trussed-up with some indeterminate golden binding, a warning sign scrawled above him, “Do not crosses the THREE.” A heretofore undiscovered hotspring bubbled up from beneath our yard and now transverses our property. Our clothes began to emerge from the dryer already pressed and folded, and the vet’s office mysteriously called to confirm we had intended to cancel their next appointments. But we had not.

On the other end of the famous people spectrum, Newt “What Should We Call This Internet Phone?” Gingrich has far more reviews, but his ranking is nowhere near Takei’s dazzling achievement. With a reviewer ranking of 416,549 for his 156 total reviews, only 83% of the votes on his reviews were helpful. And only 5,913 people have even voted on his stuff. As for his birthday, it does not say on Amazon.

For comparison’s sake, an excerpt from one of Gingrich’s reviews, this one for The Battle Of The Wilderness, May 5-6, 1864 :

The Wilderness Campaign is particularly worth studying for two reasons. First, it is one of the most complex and frustrating battles ever fought on American soil. Second, it is the first encounter between Grant and Lee.

Enough learning for me for the moment! Back to rodent undergarments!

Maybe that’s the difference, Newt. George is willing to share his birthday in his profile and you are not, which makes him perhaps more approachable. Or he just has funnier stuff to say about not-so-serious things. So if you want unicorn horns for cats, Takei is your man. Important historic battles? Gingrich’s got it.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

You’re Not Alone In Binge Watching: Half Of Netflix Users Finished Shows Within One Week

Like heroin. Or meth, I suppose.

It’s not just you and your friends exchanging stories of That One Time I Spent Three Straight Days Watching An Entire Season Of Breaking Bad To Catch Up Before The Finale. Everyone does it, or at least, about half of the users Netflix studied are binge watching as well.

Netflix announced today that it found the same pattern of binge watching over and over again: About half of the viewers watching stuff on Netflix finished an entire season within one week. That’s up to 22 episodes.

“Our viewing data shows that the majority of streamers would actually prefer to have a whole season of a show available to watch at their own pace,” said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer of Netflix in a statement (via the Wall Street Journal).

As if you didn’t already realize it while chatting with friends about how Orange Is The New Black is too good to watch and then turn off, this information shows that maybe bingeing is just how we do things now. Why hold yourself back from the next episode when it’s just waiting for you to click play? It’s not like you’re doing anything else tonight.

Being a show binger is cool now anyway, as viewers called themselves bingers whether they were watching three episodes in a row or 13.

For its bit of research, Netflix said it looked at subscribers who watched “currently popular” shows available on Netflix. That means not just say, Netflix original series like House of Cards, but broadcast and cable series. It’s not saying which ones, but did add that at least one of its own series was included.

But there’s only so much content we can handle — Netflix also found that most of the viewers only vanished completely into one show at a time, instead of several at the same time. A brain can get full, you know. Not that that’s keeping any of us from trying to fill it with tasty, tasty entertainment.

Netflix Says Binge Viewing is No ‘House of Cards’ [The Wall Street Journal]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Amazon Going After Costco, Sam’s Club With ‘Pantry’ Bulk-Buying Service

(Zach Egolf)

For years, Amazon has been selling certain household goods, like toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and cereal, that are the bread-and-butter for warehouse clubs like Costco and Sam’s Club, but the online retailer has had trouble competing because of the shipping costs. That may change next year with the reported launch of something called Pantry.

USA Today has the goods on Pantry, which Amazon has not announced but which looks to be slated for a 2014 launch.

In spite of the fact that Costco and Amazon attract similar customers — people who want low prices, large selection and reasonably decent customer service — shipping has hampered Amazon’s ability to sell these everyday purchases in two ways. First, the cost of shipping these sorts of items is often inordinately high compared to the sale price. If Amazon eats that shipping cost, it may lose money. If it charges shipping costs to the customer, any value goes out the window.

Second, while many Costco and Sam’s Club shoppers have no problem loading up their carts with everything from computers to cream cheese, the idea of buying household staples and having to wait days for these purchases to arrive — or to have them come in separate shipments (not to mention all the cardboard boxes!) — is disconcerting.

While Pantry, which USA Today says will be marketed to Amazon Prime subscribers, can’t do anything about the time delay between ordering and receiving, it does deal with some of the other shipping-related issues.

From the USA Today story:

It will launch with about 2,000 products typically found in the center of grocery stores, such as cleaning supplies, kitchen paper rolls, canned goods like pet food, dry grocery items like cereal and some beverages.

Amazon will let Prime shoppers put as many of these items into a set sized box, up to a specific weight limit. If the products fit and they don’t exceed the maximum weight, Amazon will ship the box for a small fee.

So Amazon cuts down on its shipping costs by grouping as many items as possible into one box, especially if all those boxes are the same size and about the same weight.

The customer will get all his orders at once and without the cardboard apocalypse that would have occurred if items had shipped separately. It certainly won’t be a Costco-killer, but it could give Amazon a bigger slice of the $850 billion/year packaged goods market.

Of course, much remains to be seen about Pantry. Will the prices be comparable to what you get at warehouse clubs? Will Pantry be selling the same super-sized mayonnaise jars and triple packs of ketchup, or will the items for sale be more what you’d find in a typical grocery store? For customers purchasing multiple Pantry boxes at once, we’ll be curious to see if Amazon optimizes boxes so that customers get the most value out of them, or if the e-tailer will arrange items so as to squeeze the most money from the customer.

We won’t know the answers to any of this until Amazon reveals more info (or if anyone at the company wants to tell us at tips@consumerist.com)

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Knowmad: gestores del conocimiento

via Educación tecnológica http://villaves56.blogspot.com/2013/12/knowmad-gestores-del-conocimiento.html www.bscformacion.com

FCC Mulls Lifting Ban On In-Flight Phones But DOT May Stop You From Gabbing Away On Planes

(stirwise)

Yesterday, the FCC began the onerous process of considering whether to revise the decades-old rules regarding the use of wireless phones in flight. If the Commission eventually changes those rules, the relative quiet of the airplane cabin could eventually be filled with the dulcet tones of one-sided conversations like “I know! Seriously!” and “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Since this seems like a disastrous idea to some people, the Dept. of Transportation is going to consider whether it should allow calls to take place at all.

See, the current ban on using cellphones in flight is an FCC regulation, put in place more than 20 years ago out of concern about possible interference with wireless networks on the ground. The FCC’s new investigation will determine whether or not advances in technology now allow for cellphone chatter without these interference worries. It’s strictly a technological inquiry: Can it be done?

But the Dept. of Transportation still has the right to issue its own ban on in-flight cellphone use if it determines that such behavior is a safety risk. And yesterday, Transportation Secretary Anthony “Redd” Foxx said his people will be considering it.

“Over the past few weeks, we have heard of concerns raised by airlines, travelers, flight attendants, members of Congress and others who are all troubled over the idea of passengers talking on cell phones in flight – and I am concerned about this possibility as well,” said Foxx in a statement.

The concerns are greater than just having to hear someone in the row behind you prattle on about all the souvenirs they bought while visiting Albany. Some flight attendants and pilots worry that passengers may be distracted and miss important announcements, or that their chatter might distract others from hearing these announcements.

There is also the fact that the mood on a plane can already get pretty tense, with stressed-out travelers and cabin crew occasionally lashing out at each other. Having to deal with some loud-talker who JUST WON’T SHUT UP WHY DON’T YOU isn’t going to make things any more calm.

For the airlines, there is also the negative publicity issue that already plagues planes that are grounded for too long — people calling to complain. We can imagine that some passengers will — justifiably or not — take advantage of the ability to make in-flight calls to file real-time complaints with airline customer service.

In some ways, this is very good as it removes some of the passenger-said/employee-said from disputes, but it may also lead to an increase in petty complaints about lukewarm coffee and boring in-flight movies.

“As the FCC has said before, their sole role on this issue is to examine the technical feasibility of the use of mobile devices in flight. We believe USDOT’s role, as part of our Aviation Consumer Protection Authority, is to determine if allowing these calls is fair to consumers.”

Foxx says DOT will now begin looking into whether or not to ban in-flight calls, which means it’s time for all sorts of hearings and public comment periods and other fun regulatory rigamarole.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Price-Matcher Was Actually Banned From Walmart For Threatening To Beat Up Employees

You might remember the national story from earlier this week about a man who went to the media with his tale of woe about how how he was banned from Walmart for life just for bringing other retailers’ ads to price match. We thought there might be more to the story, and there was.

Walmart workers claim that the man was well-known for trying to match prices from expired ads, which goes against both the spirit and the letter of Walmart’s price-matching policy. Some employees would let him have the matches anyway, reports ABC 15, the TV station that originally publicized the story based on just an interview with the shopper and not, say, reading the police report.

That alone wasn’t why he was banned from the store, either. He was banned for threatening the physical safety of Walmart employees. “Never once did I say anything to the gentleman,” he had told the TV reporters. According to the police report, the shopper did say a few things to the gentleman. Specifically, “I’m going to mess this mother f_ _ _ker up,” referring to the cashier, threatening to wait in the parking lot to “do [the cashier] in” and to “beat his ass.”

Arizona Man Doesn’t Have Lifetime Ban From Walmart for Price-Matching [New Times]

Man banned from Walmart: Retailer says Joe Cantrell threatened employee

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds

Here are ten of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool this week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

(#1 – C_Dubyaa)

(#2 – Karen_Chappell)

(#3 – geek_photography)

(#4 – gnuckx)

(#5 – HofmanPhotos)

(#6 – ChrisGoldNY)

(#7 – Steve)

(#8 – Mike Matney Photography)

(#9 – christy.crosson)

(#10 – C x 2)

Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Want to see your pictures on our site? Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

CDC: 221 Sickened By Synthetic Marijuana In Colorado — Where Real Marijuana Is Legal

(cavale)

Did a mysterious forgetfulness sickness descend upon 221 sickened in Colorado by synthetic marijuana, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes happened? Did part of the population suddenly forget that they live in a state where real marijuana is legal? We don’t know but the CDC is not a fan of the fake stuff, which is illegal in the state.

While it’s not like you can (currently) just walk up to any corner store and say hey, can I get some legal pot please, even if the fake stuff is easier to get, it appears to be sending people to the emergency room quite a bit in Colorado, reports the Associated Press.

That increase in ER visits led the CDC to join with state health officials to uncover a monthlong outbreak of people sickened by fake pot. Investigators found two new kinds in the state, ADBICA and ADB-PINACA, the latter which was also involved in a similar outbreak in Georgia.

Fake marijuana is dried plant material sprayed with synthetic cannabinoids so that it looks kind of like the real stuff, but it’s illegal in Colorado and other states, as well as the federal government, have been trying to ban it. It’s a squirrelly issue though, as the chemical makeup of the stuff can change so often.

Out of those 221 probable cases of fake pot sickening in Colorado, officials looked closer at 127 of those. Everyone who fell ill was from either the Denver area and Colorado Springs, were all about 26 and mostly male. Ten of those patients had to go into intensive care as a result. No deaths have been confirmed.

Again, it’s likely easier to get the fake stuff when you can walk into a store and buy it — well, four that were selling synthetic pot have been shut down, so maybe not — but again, it’s better to be safe, and legal, than sorry.

CDC: 221 sickened by synthetic pot in Colorado [USA Today]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Twitter Changes Blocking Policy To Be More Stalker-Friendly, Realizes Maybe That Wasn’t A Good Idea

(Pete Simon)

Yesterday, Twitter announced out of the blue that it was making a change in the way it allows users to “block” followers, effectively turning it into a mute button that allowed stalkers to keep reading and responding to your Tweets — you just wouldn’t see it. After a backlash from users who pointed out this isn’t a great idea, the company canceled that plan.

One of the supposed positives of the policy change was that a blocked Twitter follower would no longer see that he/she is blocked from accessing the feed. Twitter says this is to minimize retaliation from crazy people who would retaliate over being blocked from reading a Twitter feed.

Of course, since Twitter was no longer notifying blocked users of their blocked status, those people were able to continue publicly interacting with the feed — responding to Tweets, re-Tweeting items, directing Tweets at the user who had blocked them, all of which would be available to everyone except the blocker. So it was effectively like dealing with a stalker ranting outside your door by turning the volume on your TV up so you can’t hear him anymore.

Then late last night, in the wake of user disappointment on this change, Twitter announced it was reverting back to the old blocking policy, which means blocked users will once again be notified of their jerk status. This will undoubtedly cause some of them to get upset and do things like create new Twitter profiles to continue their insanity (because stalkers are nothing if not persistent).

We think Twitter should give users the option of choosing which form of blocking they prefer, as stalked users probably have a decent idea of how their stalkers might respond to being blocked. If they expect retaliation, then they could go the mute-button route. If they expect the trolls will just eventually stop, then they can go the old-fashioned “You’re blocked” route.

The only true way to lock out a Twitter stalker is to make your feed private, giving access only to followers that you approve. To some, the idea that the entire world would be prevented from enjoying their 140-character quips on everything from politics to reality shows is unacceptable. But keeping those pronouncements public means they will always be inviting haters and possibly worse.

Twitter Reverts Changes To Blocking Functionality After Strong Negative User Feedback [TechCrunch]

Twitter changes how ‘block’ works, makes it more of a mute button (update: changes reverted after backlash) [Engadget]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist