If you, like many, have been using Amazon.com for some of your Christmas shopping, then your account may be vulnerable to a scam using your order number that is genius in its execution, and uncovers some of Amazon’s failings in inventory control. It all comes down to the individual order numbers assigned to your orders. Those order numbers are for sale, along with the corresponding email address (as in your email address), and scam artists are using that information to get duplicates of your orders sent to them.

We all quickly figured out that Apple Maps is a debacle of epic proportions (link), but deadly? Australian authorities are warning motorists to use another mapping option, calling Apple Maps a “potentially life-threatening issue.”

The Wickr self-destructing message app (pronounced “Wicker”) gives you complete messaging security. This is because you can set your messages to self-destruct after a certain time, assuring that your privacy is protected. Wickr works with both email and text messages, and the intention is that the self-destructing Wickr message app will also be able to be used with services like Twitter and Facebook, one day.

The new Facebook “Profiles for Couples” movement is quietly growing on Facebook. If you feel that your shared Snuggie or email address does not make you and your significant other enough of an amorphous couple blob, never fear, there is a group of co-dependant couples aiming to create shared Facebook pages. Because nothing says “healthy relationship” quite as much as a lack of personal identity.

Did you know that you can change the name that Siri calls you? The name Siri uses for you can be anything you want, whether your nickname, or “Overlord of this Phone,” Siri will use it when she addresses you.

Yesterday we featured an article on the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) contest challenging anyone from the public to come up with a way to beat spam phone calls. The reason for expanding their efforts, says the FTC, is because complaints about spam phone calls, or, “robocalls,” more than doubled in April of 2012, from their last high in October 2010 . So what should we do to avoid these nuisance calls until our unknown hero steps forward with the answer?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is responding to what they say is a huge surge in automated phone calls, or, “robocalls,” by offering a cash reward and prizes to the person, or group of people, who can thwart these calls in the “FTC Robocall Challenge.” According to the FTC, complaints about robocalls skyrocketed to a high of 212,000 this past April, compared to the last high of 65,000 complaints in October of 2010.

Uber, the popular iPhone app that allows you to schedule a private car or taxi through your mobile device, is closing the doors on its Uber NYC taxi service, just a month after opening it to beta. Citing too much ride demand for not enough taxi supply, the app makers said that they are hoping they will have better luck in the Big Apple in the coming year.

We can all probably agree that one of the most frustrating things about belonging to so many social networks is managing all of them. Different passwords, profile pictures, and account and privacy settings can be a lot to keep up with in your regular day. Enter BlissControl.com, the website that now allows you to manage the settings on all of your social media accounts with the click of a button.

If you liked Old Spice guy Isaiah Mustafa and his “I’m on a horse” commercial (and hey, who didn’t?), you may like the new interactive video from Old Spice in which you get to make music with new Old Spice guy Terry Crews.

[NOTE: Songza is no longer available, having been borged by – yep – Google]

Would you pay to belong to an ad-free social network? Dalton Caldwell, mastermind behind App.net, akin to an ad-free Facebook or ad-free Twitter, thinks you just might. While he doesn’t presume that App.net will score the huge user-base of Twitter or Facebook, he does think that he will amass enough of a following that the $50 per person annual fee, coupled with the an ad-free and developer-friendly platform, will build a sustainable network that instills trust among both users and developers.

With the rash of deadly tornados recently, not to mention thunderstorms, blizzards, and wind storms, there are plenty of reasons to want to be able to get an urgent or emergency local weather alert – or even a national weather alert – wherever you are. Sure, you could carry a portable weather radio, but it turns out that the best sever weather alarm radio is… your phone! Weather apps turn your iPhone or Android phone into an emergency alert weather radio, and provide you with mobile weather alerts. Instead of an actual weather radio, your ‘weather smartphone’ will be your best weather alert radio; it fits in your pocket, will send you a weather alert text message, and provide you with weather radar and a weather map (unlike a radio). And even if you don’t get a severe weather text alert for weeks or months (and who wouldn’t like that?), it will gives you weather forecasts, weather conditions, and those great weather maps. So, what is the best weather app for the iPhone? Or the best weather application for the Android? Happily, the best iPhone weather app and the best weather phone app for Android are, in our opinion, the same one!

Internet security firm Symantec (proprietors of, among other things, Norton Anti-Virus) have released the results of research that they have dubbed the “Honey Stick Project”. In Project HoneyStick, researchers “lost” a total of 50 cell phones in various cities around North America, including NYC, Washington D.C., LA, San Francisco, and Ottawa, Canada. The aim was to see what the average citizen would do with a found cell phone: would they try to reunite it with its owner, or would they do something more sinister with it? It turns out that the answer is “both”.

Today was the first day that the MyTouch 4G Slide was available to the public from T-Mobile, and so we picked one up so that we could give you our first impressions. The My Touch 4G Slide phone is known primarily for two major features (well, three if you count that it comes with Android Gingerbread 2.3 installed), and those are the incredible 8 megapixel camera, and the blazing fast 1.2 GHz dual-core processors. But it’s the little things that make or break a phone experience, so read on…