In the recent past I’ve done a lot of harping on the security woes of financial institutions (see here, here, and here) so when I saw this announcement I was both extremely happy and a little disappointed at the same time.

PayPal is about to issue SecureID cards to all business clients in order to provide further account security. Now this is what I’m always talking about when I speak of defense in depth! PayPal will combine layers of security, in this case something I have (SecureID password generator), with something I know (my username/password combo) to ensure it’s actually me accessing the site.
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In olden times, that is to say pre-Internet, a businessman’s dream was to one day grow up to lead a company as President or CEO into a new era of growth and profitability. Well, not any more. Now, the dream is simply to become the CEO so that you can have an enormous, unchecked compensation package.

A new study jointly issued by professors at Harvard, Yale and INSEAD demonstrates that CEOs with the most outrageous compensation packages, relative to the other company executives, are associated with companies that under-perform.
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Today the New York Stock Exchange had a record setting day… in a very bad way. Without warning and in a period spanning just one minute, the market lost a combined $60 Billion in just the top 30 blue chip companies. That’s with a “B” folks.

The Associated Press said the following:

Stocks Have Worst Day Since 9/11 Attacks: Dow Down 416, Nasdaq Drop 97 on Global Market Plunge

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks had their worst day of trading since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks Tuesday, hurtling the Dow Jones industrials down more than 400 points on a worldwide tide of concern that the U.S. and Chinese economies are stumbling and that share prices have become overinflated.
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In the past I’ve sent you off to compare your salary with Michael Jordan and Oprah, but now how about using this little site to see how you stack up against the entire population of the planet!

The Global Rich List site will show you how you compare to the rest of the world based on your annual salary. While this is not nearly as important a measurement of your wealth as your net worth, it’ll have to do for now!
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Virtually every retailer now days offers “price match guarantees” and purchase protection after the sale in case you find a lower price within 30 days. But when was the last time you actually kept an eye out on the prices for something after you bought it?

Yeah, that’s what I thought… and the retailers are counting on people making the purchase and never looking back. Well now there is a great little service called Price Protectr that allows you to specify the Web site of the item you purchased as well as the date and price, and it will watch that product for 30 days and notify you via e-mail if it finds a lower price.
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In the past I’ve blogged about sites which allow you to get an idea of what your home is worth, and a site called Redfin.com which is awesome… but only for people in San Francisco. Well, now we’ve got a site that covers the entire US which integrates the full MLS with Google Maps.
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This is an interesting application of Google Maps and mashup technology, which is basically the concept of taking information from multiple sources and blending them together.

So, here they are:
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Smith Barney recently began forcing it’s clients to change their Web login in what is claimed to be a “security enhancement” maneuver. This applies to every client in the US that has a joint account (ie- married couples).

They are forcing this change in conjunction with the requirement of adding challenge questions and answers to each account, but they don’t list the reason for inconveniencing what must be hundreds of thousands, or millions, of clients. In fact, they claim:

Today Smith Barney’s nearly 12,400 Financial Consultants serve more than 7.5 million client accounts representing nearly $900 billion in client assets.

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I don’t know why Citi doesn’t make a bigger deal about publicizing this feature of their credit cards, but they actually have an excellent security option which helps protect customers making online purchases. They mention it only in one paragraph here.

If you have a Citibank credit card, you can use the Virtual Account Number feature to generate temporary “alias” numbers to give out in place of your actual number. Why would you want to do that? Well, there are lots of reasons… read on and I’ll give you a few.

For those of you that read my previous Guide to Free Internet Phone Calls or my horrible issues with Packet8 service, you’ll recall that I have long been a supporter of ATT CallVantage service.

Well, I was upset to learn today that AT&T has quietly lowered the monthly rates on their CallVantage service without notifying existing customers of this fact - or adjusting their billing!
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Man, those guys in the infomercials could sell the proverbial ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves! But the real question is, did she enjoy it after she got it?

Well, InfomercialRatings.com is here to answer that question. Now, you’ve got to use some common sense when evaluating the ratings here and really read through them.

I found that many of the “reviews” seemed so positive and professionally written that they could only have come from the marketing departments of the product manufacturers themselves. The main weakness of their system lies in the fact that there are no user login and ratings functions, like for example eBay or IMDB.
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There seems to be so much confusion out there with regards to the common ritual of tipping that I decided to take the initiative and help clarify the rules when it comes to this long standing practice.

But unlike some other tipping guides I’m not just going to tell you how much to tip, instead we’re going to focus on why people earn the tips you give them, and therefore gain a better understanding as to how much to give.
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