Most people know why consumers would oppose supporting Monsanto products; fewer are familiar with objections to the Koch brothers an their brands. Objections against Koch Industries generally are owing to their massive political contributions to help fund opposition to, among other things, the regulation of financial derivatives, and opposition to limits on greenhouse gases. Koch Industries owns, among other things, Georgia-Pacific (responsible for such brands as Brawny, Angel Soft, and Dixie), Lycra, and Stainmaster.

But Buycott doesn’t just have information about the brands they’ve identified as potentially objectionable. They are amassing an enormous database so that you can know the true ownership and funding of any product you put in your shopping cart.

Explains Buycott, “When you use Buycott to scan a product, it will look up the product, determine what brand it belongs to, and figure out what company owns that brand (and who owns that company, ad infinitum). It will then cross-check the product owners against the companies and brands included in the campaigns you’ve joined, in order to tell you if the scanned product conflicts with one of your campaign commitments.”

What if the product you are scanning is not already in the Buycott database? Buycott has an answer for that, as well: “Buycott has a rich, but ultimately limited knowledge base of corporations and products. When you scan a barcode that Buycott has never seen before, it will seek information on what it is and who owns it. If it can’t determine the owner of the product, it will ask you for help in identifying the product name, brand name, and company name.”

According to the Buycott FAQ, “A buycott is the opposite of a boycott. Buycott helps you to organize your everyday consumer spending so that it reflects your principles.”

Moreover, you can use Buycott to create a “campaign”, allowing others who have joined the Buycott revolution to join in your favourite cause.

Says the Buycott site, by way of example, “During the SOPA/PIPA debate in 2012, a number of companies pushed to pass legislation that reduced online freedom of expression, while other companies fought hard to oppose the legislation. With Buycott, a campaign can be quickly created around a cause, with the goal of targeting companies with a boycott unless they change their position, or buycotting a company to show your support.”

You can get the Buycott app for iPhone and iPad here.

Due to some glitches, the Buycott app for Android has been pulled until it can be fixed, but once its back up in the Android Market, you should be able to get the Buycott app for Android here.

Explains Google, “Google Play Music makes it easy to discover, play and share the music you love on Android and the web. With our new All Access service (US), you can play millions of songs on Google Play, listen to radio with no limits, and enjoy playlists handcrafted by our music experts. Keep listening for just $7.99/month when you start your trial before 6/30/2013.”

That’s right, if you download the Google Play Music app (or upgrade it, if you already have it) and sign up for All Access before the end of June, you can get it at a $2.00 per month discount of just $7.99.

The All Access service includes listening to unlimited songs, creating a custom ‘radio station’ as you can with Pandora, Spotify, or Songza (still our favourite, and free!), and what Google calls “smart recommendations”.

In addition you can, says Google:

* Add up to 20,000 of your own songs from your personal music collection
* Access your music anywhere without syncing, and save your favorites for offline playback
* Experience music without ads
* Buy new music on Google Play (18M+ songs)
* Share a free full play of the songs you purchase from Google Play with your friends on Google+.

Presently Google Play Music All Access is only available on the Android platform, and you can get the Google Play Music All Access app here.

One reason for this is because, of course, the cable companies are worried about Internet-based television cutting in to their revenues. This is already happening as more and more television series are showing up on the likes Netflix and Hulu, which at least also require a subscription.

Explains Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney/ABC Television Group, “Watch ABC is a game-changing innovation for the broadcast television industry. This announcement represents a defining moment in technology and distribution, as well as for our advertising and affiliate partners, as we ensure that our high-quality content is available to viewers on a variety of devices.”

Additional locations already lined up to be added this summer include Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Boston, Fresno, and the Raleigh-Durham area.

Below is the text of the press release that was recently sent out regarding the ABC app. You can download the ABC Player app for iPhone and iPad here.

Dedicated to expanding its network and channel brands across multiple platforms and connecting viewers with their favorite shows anytime and anywhere, Disney/ABC Television Group announced today that, beginning the afternoon of Tuesday, May 14, 2013 to coincide with its ABC Network Upfront presentation, its much anticipated “WATCH ABC” authenticated service will be available to all viewers in the New York City area via WABC-TV, the nation’s most watched broadcast station, and WPVI, the #1 local station in Philadelphia, as part of a special open access preview, running through the end of June.

The new WATCH ABC service provides viewers for the first time ever with live access to their favorite ABC shows and local market programming, as well as a variety of on-demand content — in more ways than ever before at home and on the go around town. In addition to allowing live linear streaming of viewers’ local ABC stations, the new authenticated WATCH ABC service will include the great, on-demand full-episode viewing experience that the ABC Full-Episode Player and ABC Player app have offered, respectively, online and via tablets and phones. Viewers can access WATCH ABC online at ABC.com or by downloading the WATCH ABC app on their iOS or Kindle Fire devices. The WATCH ABC app will be available on Samsung Galaxy devices this summer.

Currently Disney/ABC Television Group has agreements in place for its authenticated WATCH products with a variety of Multichannel Video Program Distributors (MVPDs), including Comcast, Cablevision, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Midcontinent Communications and AT&T U-verse.

“WATCH ABC is a game-changing innovation for the broadcast television industry. We’re extremely excited to offer this open access preview to our WABC and WPVI viewers in New York and Philadelphia. This announcement represents a defining moment in technology and distribution, as well as for our advertising and affiliate partners, as we ensure that our high-quality content is available to viewers on a variety of devices,” said Anne Sweeney, co-chair, Disney Media Networks, and president, Disney/ABC Television Group. “Our mission with this special preview is to gather key learnings about the service and the consumers who utilize it in order for our WATCH products to be the gold standard experience of authenticated multiplatform viewing.”

Following the end of the open access preview, the WATCH ABC live streams will continue to be available in NYC and Philadelphia to authenticated users. Additionally, this summer WATCH ABC will roll out in the other six ABC-owned station markets, which include Los Angeles (KABC-TV), Chicago (WLS-TV), San Francisco (KGO-TV), Houston (KTRK-TV), Raleigh-Durham (WTVD-TV) and Fresno (KFSN-TV).

In addition to launching in the eight ABC-owned markets, the network has reached an agreement with Hearst Television to launch the WATCH ABC service in their 13 ABC station markets, which include Boston, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Milwaukee, in the coming months. Agreements with other station groups are expected to be announced prior to the launch of the new Fall Season.

“Hearst Television recognizes that consumers want the ability to view our stations’ programming on any device that has a screen,” said David Barrett, chairman and CEO, Hearst Television, Inc. “Our Hearst ABC affiliates are eager to work with the ABC team to deploy the innovative WATCH app experience in our local markets.”

The launch of WATCH ABC follows the successful rollout of three authenticated WATCH Disney services — WATCH Disney Channel, WATCH Disney XD and WATCH Disney Junior — in June 2012. Downloaded nearly 15 million times since their debut, the three WATCH Disney products provide authenticated users with both access to live, linear network streams as well as an extensive offering of advantaged window “on demand” episodes. In addition to WATCH ABC and the WATCH Disney services, Disney Media Networks offers WatchESPN, an authenticated 24/7 live stream of six networks, including all of ESPN’s sports and studio shows. Plans are also in place to roll out WATCH ABC Family in early 2014.

Over the past several years, the Disney/ABC Television Group has consistently unveiled innovative, award-winning multiplatform services and apps. In addition to the WATCH services, other notable DATG apps include the Disney Junior Appisode app, which offers true interactive viewing, allowing kids ages 2-7 to touch, tap, swipe, tilt, shake and talk their way through various fun-filled activities embedded into episodes of some of their favorite Disney Junior shows; the ABC Player and ABC Family Player apps, which make full ad supported episodes available for viewing; the ABC News app; and the Emmy Award-winning official Oscars app, which provided unique backstage viewing experiences for the 83rd, 84th, and 85th Academy Awards.

The Disney/ABC Television Group is composed of The Walt Disney Company’s (NYSE: DIS) global entertainment and news television properties, owned television stations, as well as radio and publishing businesses. This includes ABC Entertainment Group, ABC News, ABC Owned Television Stations Group, Disney Channels Worldwide, ABC Family and SOAPnet, as well as Disney/ABC Domestic Television and Disney Media Distribution. Publisher Hyperion and the Company’s equity interest in A+E Networks round out the Group’s portfolio of media businesses.

In a piece by Zuckerberg published in the Washington Post (the Post’s Chairman sits on the board of Facebook – nice backscratching), Zuckerberg opined that “We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants. And it’s a policy unfit for today’s world.”

He then goes on to ponder “…why do we kick out the more than 40 percent of math and science graduate students who are not U.S. citizens after educating them? Why do we offer so few H-1B visas for talented specialists that the supply runs out within days of becoming available each year, even though we know each of these jobs will create two or three more American jobs in return? Why don’t we let entrepreneurs move here when they have what it takes to start companies that will create even more jobs?”

Zuckerberg is advocating for, among other things, “Comprehensive immigration reform that begins with effective border security, allows a path to citizenship and lets us attract the most talented and hardest-working people, no matter where they were born.”

The groups calling for the boycott of Facebook are upset that FWD.us is funding ads which support conservative lawmakers, often highlighting the lawmakers’ other positions, such as their positions on oil (pro) and Obamacare (against), instead of discussing the immigration matter head-on.

In particular, the boycotting groups take issue with FWD.us’ television advertisements in support of Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democrat Mark Begich of Alaska, for their support of drilling, and the Keystone XL pipeline. Both Graham and Begich are considered likely to vote in favour of immigration reform.

The boycott is primarily taking the form of pulling and no longer purchasing or paying for ads on Facebook. So far the boycott has been joined by MoveON.org, the Sierra Club, the Daily Kos, 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters, CREDO, and Democracy for America, to name a few.

Said the League of Conservation Voter’s Jeff Gohringer, “We were actually going to launch a big new Facebook campaign that we pulled back on. At the end of the day though, it’s not about the money, it’s about sending Mark Zuckerberg a message.”

When CREDO tried to run an ad on Facebook that bashed FWD.us, the ad was rejected.

Opined former Senator Russ Feingold, who founded boycotter Progressives United, “Leaders in the technology community have every right to talk about how immigration reform will benefit their businesses. But instead, FWD.us has chosen a strategy that’s condescending to voters and counterproductive to the cause of reform.”

For example, perhaps you make more calls when you are depressed or, conversely, perhaps you make more calls when you are happy. Maybe you text more frequently when tired compared to making calls when you are upbeat.

Explains Dr. Jason Rentfrow, one of the principals on the Emotion Sense project, which was developed at Cambridge, “Most other attempts at software like this are coarse-grained in terms of their view of what a feeling is. Many just look at emotions in terms of feeling happy, sad, angry or neutral. The aim here is to use a more flexible approach, to collect data that shows how moods vary between people. That is something which we think is quite unique to the system we have designed.”

To start, the app has you fill out short surveys about your moods based on the time of day. As time goes by, and you add more information, the app integrates your responses with the data that it captures from your phone’s other input data (calls, texts, etc.).

“This helps us understand both how a person perceives things and how they are actually behaving,” says Dr. Neal Lathia, another member of the research and development team.

Adds Lathia, “They may say that they are feeling happy but they may have stopped communicating with friends, for example. This is all about building a bridge between the two sources of data.”

Emotion Sense is currently available only for Android phones. You can download Emotion Sense here.

According to reports, Viagra is the most counterfeited product in Pfizer’s catalogue. In fact, Pfizer conducted a study a couple of years ago, and found that of the top 22 website at the time that came up for a search of “buy Viagra”, at least 17 of them were selling counterfeit Viagra.

Explained Victor Clavelli with Pfizer, “A lot of those patients get diverted into an illegal counterfeit market. Our goal is to just make sure those patients actually get the real Viagra.”

Also, as Vice President of Pfizer Global Security, Matthew Bassiur, points out, Pfizer has found some of the counterfeit products to be made “in filthy and deplorable conditions,” adding that “some people do not realize the risks that this poses to their health and safety, our top priority.”

Some of the counterfeit Viagra that Pfizer has tested in their own labs has contained pesticides, paint, printer ink, and wallboard, to name a few.

Explains Bassiur, “These findings motivate us to continue our aggressive global efforts to stop those who prey on unsuspecting patients.”

Pfizer is currently offering 3 free tablets (fully half of the typical number in a prescription) through the Viagra.com website.

You must have a current prescription to buy Viagra online from the Viagra.com site.

The Face of a Facebook Self Stalker

Nelson’s story of crime, or at least the part that involves the police, started in November of 2011. From then until nearly a year later, in October 2012, she filed at least eight complaints against her former boyfriend, Kevin Haarsma, with the Sheriff’s Department in Kent County, claiming she had been stalked, harassed, and even assaulted. Her allegations were quite specific; she claimed, for instance, that her ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend taped letters on her house which threatened her, a complaint she made several times.

Her allegations, of course, came back to haunt her. The detective who investigated her complaints received a counter-complaint from Haarsma, who claimed that in fact he was the victim of Nelson’s threats and stalking. This led the detective to get a search warrant for the computer equipment in Nelson’s house, which turned up evidence that she was setting up fake Facebook accounts using Haarsma’s personal information. These accounts were used to make it look as if Haarsma’s new girlfriend was sending threatening Facebook messages to Nelson.

The detective said that Nelson admitted to reporting fake crimes because she could not come to terms with her and Haarsma’s split. Nelson has not admitted guilt to the specific charges, however, and she is currently considering entering into a plea deal with prosecutors before the trial commences later this month.

If you are one of the legion of people who has been searching all over the Paypal website, and all over the web, for an explanation of just how to delete old shipping addresses from Paypal, search no further! Here is the definitive answer.

Are you ready? This may blow your mind. That definitive answer is.. you can’t. At least, inexplicably you can’t delete your old shipping addresses yourself. Yes, we agree, that is beyond stupid. But, there it is.

You have to call Paypal and have them do it for you. Which is why we are now going to give you the telephone numbers for Paypal.

But, of course, you can’t just call them directly (or, at least, that’s how they make it seem). They want you to first get a special PIN code, through the Paypal site when you are logged in, that you need to use when you call. At the bottom of this article is the link to the page on Paypal where you can get that code. (You will need to be logged in to Paypal, or to log in when you hit the link.)

Before we give you the numbers, we also need to mention that some of the shipping addresses in your Paypal account may be coming from your eBay account, if you have one.

That’s right, because eBay and Paypal are now essentially the same company, Paypal ‘helpfully’ pulls your shipping addresses from eBay, and adds them to your Paypal account (gee, thanks, Paypal).

In addition, any time you pay a non-eBay merchant through Paypal, that merchant can store the shipping address you’ve given them, and as a Paypal-connected merchant, the address they have for you can also be listed as one of your shipping addresses.

[This in fact may be why you can't just delete them yourself - because those shipping addresses are being displayed in your Paypal list, but aren't actually coming from your own address book.]

So, again, you have to call Paypal to get some of those shipping addresses deleted.

Ok, here are the phone numbers for Paypal customer service (and also for Paypal technical support, just for good measure):

Paypal customer service telephone number for personal accounts:

888-215-5506 (toll-free)

402-935-2050 (direct)

Paypal customer service telephone numbrer for business accounts:

888-221-1161

Paypal technical support telephone number:

800-852-1973

Click here to go to the Paypal site to get your customer service call-in PIN

In fact, the app’s slogan is “Bump the app before you bump in bed.”

The Íslendingabók database is based on more than 1200 years of Icelandic genealogical data.

Explains the NewsOfIceland.com site, “The Icelandic population is very small and all Icelanders are related. But yet, it is big enough so everyone doesn’t know one another. This means that each and every Icelander that is in a relationship, is dating a relative. In most cases those relations are distant. But not always. But how can they know?”

They also point out that such closeness has its perks – such as, everyone in Iceland is related to Björk.

Explains one of the apps’ developers, Arnar Freyr Aðalsteinsson, “We wanted to find new creative uses for the information contained in the database. Our main goal with the app was to implement all existing features of Íslendingabók and also to add some new and exciting features.”

Eygló Svala Arnarsdóttir, an Icelandic writer, observes that the Íslendingabók is “the only genealogy database in the world that covers a whole nation.”

“More than 95 percent of all Icelanders born since 1703, when the first national census was taken, are registered into the database and half of all Icelanders who have lived on the island from the settlement in 874 and until 1703. The registrations in Íslendingabók are based on a whole range of sources, such as censuses, church books, the national registry, ancient scripts, annals, obituaries etc,” says Arnarsdóttir.

At the time of this writing, the app is only available in the Android store, but we’re sure that an iPhone app will be coming along soon.

To block an app from your Facebook home page (not your timelime), go to your FB home page, and in the upper right-hand corner is the area where Facebook alerts you to birthdays, upcoming events, and invitations, including invitations and other messages from Facebook apps:

What’s new is that when you hover over the “One request from {user name}”, you will see a little ‘X’:

Click on the ‘X’ and you will get a little drop-down menu, allowing you to either “remove all requests” or to block the particular app:

Click on the ‘block’ option, and you will see this:

Click on “Confirm” and that app should never bother you again.