CLOSING TIME...

...on 2010. This will be the 2nd-to-last update of the year here on the blog. I'll post one more sometime in the next few days about some of my personal favorite songs of the year. But in its current form, this will be it for the year. The regular staff that updates the Robbie Mack blog will be taking some time off for the holidays.

BUT!!!
I will post lots of links to fun and interesting things for sure...on my FB page!
http://www.facebook.com/robbiemackpage
Follow, if you don't yet!
Just a few stories today...check 'em out





SUNK!
If your car breaks down on the way to Christmas and you call Triple-A to come help you...I hope you're ready to be patient. Because it looks like they're going to be BUSY.

According to Triple-A, they plan on helping 1.4 MILLION stranded drivers in the U.S. in the next few weeks.
They're predicting about 320,000 dead batteries, 200,000 sets of keys locked in cars, 175,000 flat tires, 60,000 cars stuck in snow...plus hundreds of thousands of random other problems.







SOME OF THE BEST SHOPPING? RIGHT HERE IN OHIO!
If you want to do some hardcore shopping, you might as well go to a state where they laugh at you if you build a mall that's any smaller than 15 football fields.

"Forbes" just put out a list of America's top 10 cities for shopping, and the home of the Buckeyes made the list!

It isn't based on how fancy or stylish or hip a city's stores are...it's based on options, ease, and price.

#1.) Houston, Texas
#2.) Dallas, Texas
#3.) Baltimore, Maryland
#4.) Columbus, Ohio
#5.) Indianapolis, Indiana
#6.) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
#7.) Phoenix, Arizona
#8.) San Antonio, Texas
#9.) Jacksonville, Florida
#10.) San Diego, California







MORE NEW STUFF ON FACEBOOK...
Every time Facebook launches a new feature on its site, it ALWAYS walks the line between "Wow, that's really cool" and "Oh my God, that kind of freaks me out." Their newest product is yet another example.

Facebook has announced that it's about to roll out facial recognition on your photos.

So when you upload a photo, instead of having to manually tag your friends, Facebook will analyze the faces in the photo, compare them to their billions of other photos, figure out who's in your photo, and automatically tag them.

CREEPY, right?

On the plus side, that will save you a ton of time...tagging people takes a while.

On the negative side...it's pretty scary that Facebook knows what we all look like...and this, naturally, raises privacy issues.

Plus, as someone at CNBC said...you won't love this when the cops upload a photo of you breaking the law...and have it auto-tagged to lead them right to you.

Of course, the people at Facebook don't see it that way. Their VP of Product, Chris Cox, says this is actually GOOD for privacy. Quote, "Every time a tag is created, it means that [you know about] a photo of you on the Internet."

There's no word exactly when this is going to go live on Facebook...for now, they're just saying "soon."







WHAT ARE YOU DOING ONLINE...
The Pew Internet and American Life Project just released the results of a massive survey to figure out what people from different age groups are doing online. Here are four of their most interesting findings.

#1.) Social media is growing. People 18 to 33 are most likely to use social networking sites...but their popularity is growing the fastest with people 74 and older. In the past two years, social networking is up 400% for people 74-plus.

#2.) Blogging is dying. Almost every online activity just keeps getting more popular...EXCEPT blogging. Only half as many teenagers have a blog as they did in 2006. And it's falling for all other age groups, too.

Blogging is mostly being replaced by...you got it, social networking...instead of having a blog, people post status updates and photos on Facebook and Twitter now.

#3.) Online video and music are going way up. The number of people watching video online has gone up from 52% in 2008 to 66% today. For music, it's up to 51% today...back in 2004, it was 34%.

#4.) The top three activities online are the same across all age groups. For everyone 18 years and up, email is the most common activity...searching is second-most common...and looking for health info is third.







YOGURT THAT MAKES YOU POO ISN'T HEALTHY!
Remember a few years ago, when all of those new yogurts came out...and promised to make you healthier by MOVING YOUR BOWELS? Dannon's Activia was the biggest one.

They hired JAMIE LEE CURTIS as a spokeswoman and, basically, told us that if we ate this yogurt, besides getting our poopin' regulated, our digestion would be smoother and we'd be less likely to get sick.

WELL...it turns out that wasn't really true. The Federal Trade Commission has been looking into it and determined that Dannon was seriously exaggerating what the "probiotic" bacteria in Activia could do.

Under both state and federal law, products can only advertise themselves as health cures if they're actual drugs...you can't advertise a food as a cure. The FTC also couldn't find legitimate scientific research or proof of Dannon's claims.

SO...they sued Dannon. Dannon settled, and will pay $21 MILLION to 39 states.

They're also banned from claiming that any yogurt or any other product can keep you from getting sick, cure digestive problems, or give you any other health benefits.