uGoogle Wants To Get Into Fresh Grocery Delivery Gamer

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  (Bill Binns)
  

  After years of running its Google Express service — which offers same-day delivery on merchandise and packaged foods from a variety of retailers to customers in a handful of markets around the country — the Internet giant is now reportedly confident enough to try its hand at bringing fresh food and groceries to consumers’ doors.

  Google’s approach for this test — which will start in San Francisco and one other city — appears to be in direct competition with services like Instacart that charge a fee for gathering groceries at participating retailers, like Whole Foods and Costco, and delivering them to customers. These stores are already part of the Express service, but have only been making a limited number of products available.

  “For a lot of our merchants that have been successful with this, we’re not representing the whole store today,” the general manager of Google Express tells Bloomberg. “It’s in our incentive, as well as the merchant’s incentive, for us to help customers get the full store delivered to them.”

  Grocery delivery services like Peapod and FreshDirect often gather their items from warehouses rather than store shelves. Google believes that by focusing on pulling from partner stores’ existing inventory, it can cut out the cost of having to house and track all of its own products.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uCarnival Cruise Ship Liberty Stuck In St. Thomas After Engine Firer

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  (dszpiro)

  Are there worse things than not being on schedule? Yes, but at least the more than 3,000 passengers aboard the Carnival cruise ship Liberty have access to working toilets: after an engine fire broke out Monday morning, the 10-year-old vessel has remained docked in St. Thomas instead of continuing on its journey.

  No one was injured in the Monday morning blaze, which was put out by the ship’s automated suppression system, Carnival says. But instead of departing St. Thomas on Monday afternoon as part of the seven-day cruise that began on Sunday, Liberty remained tied to the pier as of Tuesday morning, reports USAToday.

  But again, it sounds like passengers can be grateful they aren’t adrift at sea, doing their bathroom business in garbage bags: the ship was evacuated on Monday and passengers weren’t allowed on the ship until Monday night, but Carnival says all hotel services are functional — air conditioning, elevators, galleys and yes, yes yes, the toilets.

  “A team of experts is in the process of conducting a deeper technical assessment of the affected engine area,” Carnival said in a statement. “We apologize to our guests for the inconvenience and appreciate their patience.”

  Carnival ship stuck in St. Thomas after fire [USA Today]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uYet Another Shopper Finds Black Widow Spider In Grapes, This Time From Walmartr

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  (franieleon)

  A Michigan woman’s scary run-in with a creepy, crawly spider serves as a great reminder of the importance of washing your fresh produce when you bring it home, because there could be a black widow spider just hanging out in that bunch of grapes, you know, just waiting for you.

  WXYZ-TV in Detroit reports that the woman had started washing the grapes she’d just purchased at Walmart when a black widow crawled out.

  “I’ve never seen one before in person and then here it is, ‘Hi!’” she said.

  After meeting her new friend, the woman wasn’t sure what to do, so she called 9-1-1.

  “When I called them, I said ‘This isn’t really an emergency, but I have a black widow spider’ and he’s like ‘Just kill it’ and I’m like ‘Me? You want me to kill it?’”

  Her brother and her boyfriend took the spider outside and sprayed it with insect killer until it was dead, CBS Detroit reports.

  While the woman tells WXYZ that she’s glad the spider was found before anyone was hurt, she doesn’t think she’ll be buying grapes anytime soon.

  The Troy-area Walmart where the woman bought the fruit says they are investigating the unwelcome critter.

  “When it comes to food safety, we take all allegations seriously,” the company says in statement. “We are working to investigate all aspects of this allegation and taking appropriate measures to fully understand what may have happened. Our stores have procedures in place to help ensure products meet our high expectations for fresh, quality food.”

  Produce is routinely checked by U.S. Customs, but from time to time insects and other things slip through. That’s certainly been the case lately when it comes to black widow spiders and grapes.

  Black widow spiders like to build webs in vineyards, where they snack on insects and are generally helpful.

  While they don’t want to end up in a colander in a suburban home, it’s a good idea to check your fruit before eating it, especially red grapes, which provide spiders with more cover. Remove grapes from the package before washing. Look for any insects. Don’t reach into the middle of the bag.

  Just this year, Consumerist has reported on two incidents of the spiders found in the bunches of fruit, including one that resulted in a woman hospitalized with a bite.

  In that case, which happened in May, the woman had purchased grapes from a Shaw’s supermarket in Massachusetts. The woman was reportedly hospitalized after she reached her hand into the bag of fruit and the spider crawled up her arm and took a bite.

  People bitten by black widows might experience some muscle pain, experts say, requiring treatment at the hospital to have the situation monitored. Severe cases can require anti-venom, and most people are back to normal after a few days.

   

  Woman finds black widow spider in bag of grapes from Troy Walmart [WXYZ ABC 7]
  Troy Woman Says Black Widow Found In Grapes Bought At Walmart [CBS Detroit]

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  Whole Foods Organic Grapes: Now With Free Black Widow Spiders

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uThe American Egg Board Wanted To Take Down Eggless Just Mayor

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• Food companies work together under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create promotional campaigns that promote whole categories of products. You’ve seen their broadcast and print ads: campaigns for pork (“The Other White Meat”) and liquid milk (“Got Milk?”) really captured the public imagination, sometimes to the point Yet it’s the American Egg Board that’s behind both the “incredible, edible egg” campaigns) and an effort to keep vegan mayonnaise out of stores.

  The product, Just Mayo, has been in the news recently because of a warning letter sent by a different government food-regulating agency, the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA’s concern is that the company is calling its product “mayo,” when the official FDA definition of “mayonnaise” is that it must contain eggs. The agency also objected to some health claims about the product.

  The company behind Just Mayo, Hampton Creek Foods, filed a Freedom of Information Act request and received copies of e-mails sent by the National Egg Board, where the board’s CEO discussed with an outside PR consultant making a phone call to keep the vegan product, Just Mayo, out of Whole Foods stores. The consultant later explained to the Associated Press that he offered to make this phone call because he thought the Just Mayo label is misleading.

  From eggs to trees, USDA promotional programs controversial [AP]
  Eggless Mayo Causes Heartache [AP]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uUber Reportedly Wants To Deliver Same-Day E-Commerce Ordersr

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  (afagen)

  Uber wants to become more than a ride-hailing service: the company wants to use its army of drivers, who are definitely not employees, to deliver food, stuff, and people. While its experiments so far with food delivery and luxury merchandise delivery haven’t been very impressive, the company plans to keep trying. Next up: same-day delivery from large and small retailers in New York City and in San Francisco.

  This information comes courtesy of Re/Code, who cite as their source “two people familiar with the rollout.” The first brands included will be “flashy” luxury brands, which the source didn’t name. Those brands will be identified when the company announces the service, which will be in late September or early October.

  The New York rollout will happen first, and then the company will set a date for San Francisco. While they will begin with luxury brands that have a built-in following of people who need express delivery for some reason.

  Instead of shopping for shoes and watches through Uber’s app, which is how the food delivery works, the partnership will instead make super-express delivery by Uber a delivery option when shopping on the retailer’s own site. The company is also working with companies that provide e-commerce sites to small, local retailers, which hints at an instant-delivery collaboration with small retailers as well.

  Uber will still have the same problems reported back in June: both New York and San Francisco are cities where parking is in short supply: that’s fine if you’re a pseudo-cab constantly on the move, but problematic if your job is to knock on someone’s door to deliver a sandwich or a suit.

  Uber to Unveil Big E-Commerce Delivery Program With Retailers in the Fall [Re/Code]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uWith Ad-Blockers Coming To iPhone, Ad Industry Poised For A Fightr

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  (Prime Number)

  According to one estimate, some $22 billion in online ad revenue was lost last year because so many people use ad-blocking plugins on their web browsers. And that number is set to soar with an upcoming tweak to Apple iOS that will allow ad-blocking on the iPhone and iPad’s Safari browser. The ad industry is looking at a number of ways to stem this tide, including the legal route.

  AdAge reports that the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) — a trade group whose members are responsible for nearly 9-in-10 of the ads you see online in the U.S.– to discuss the implications of the impending iOS change and what could be done about the increasing popularity of ad-blocking technology.

  There were the let’s-play-nice ideas like “give consumers better ads to look at and they won’t want to block them,” and the more hard-nosed suggestion that the top websites should block editorial content for anyone blocking ads.

  Then there’s the legal option. Supporters of this tactic contend that ad-blockers may be illegally interfering with someone else’s content. Just because an ad isn’t a news story or a photo gallery doesn’t mean it’s not part of the editorial makeup of the web page, they claim.

  It’s not that different from the case that broadcasters have tried to make against DirecTV’s Autohop service that automatically removed all the ads from users’ recordings of prime-time network shows. But while that battle was initially waged in the courtrooms, it appears to have ultimately been decided in boardrooms, with Dish making various tweaks to appease networks.

  Without any definitive legal precedent on ad-blocking, the various IAB member companies have their legal teams mulling things over, reports AdAge.

  “We’re keeping a good temperature gauge around finding out what could be done,” says the group’s senior VP in charge of the IAB Technology Lab, while admitting that any decision about litigation is far away.

  “To say the IAB is going to mount a legal challenge at this time is not true because there’s not been enough work done to assess whether that’s a viable option,” says the chairman of the IAB Tech Lab’s board of directors.

  The industry hasn’t given up on the more congenial options that won’t result in expensive and potentially unpopular litigation.

  If IAB can make online ads load more efficiently so that they don’t bog down pages as they load, maybe fewer consumers will seek out ad-blockers in the hope that they will speed up load times. But will that do anything to win back people who have already started using blockers?

  The other option is to just keep playing being the mole in the whack-a-mole game played by ad-blockers. The industry knows that most blocking tech all looks for the same type of code to determine if something is an ad or if it’s legitimate content. So if you switch that up, the ads could — at least temporarily — avoid being blocked.

  This is one of the reasons that a growing number of content producers and ad agencies have jumped on the “native advertising” bandwagon with “sponsored” content that looks nearly identical to editorial content.

  While there are plugins that try to detect this advertorial content, these ads-in-editorial-clothing don’t get caught by traditional ad-blocking tech. And if blockers were able to block these not-exactly-stories from loading, the websites and advertisers might have a viable copyright claim if they chose to go the legal route.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uNissan Versa And Micra Pedal Interference Problem Upgraded To Recall, Includes 300,000 Carsr

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  A photo provided by NHTSA shows the area in which drivers’ feet have become stuck. The arrow shows the actuator flap that interferes with the movement between the accelerator and brake.

  Nissan plans to recall 300,000 vehicles in the United States from its Versa and Micra models due to problem with a console panel. That sounds harmless enough until you learn that the problem is that the driver’s shoe may catch on the panel, trapping that foot on the gas pedal and potentially causing an accident.

  The actual phrasing is “potentially impede smooth pedal operation,” but as the National Highway Safety and Traffic Administration points out in its recall report, “A delay in the application of the brake pedal would lengthen the distance needed to stop the vehicle and increase the risk of a crash.” Yes. The console issue has already been blamed for one accident that resulted in an injury.

  This is the same problem that was subject to an engineering analysis back in April, when investigators said that there were eleven reports of the pedal problem. The NHTSA has been researching this specific issue since June 2014. Now the analysis has been upgraded to a full recall.

  Affected models are:

  Versa sedan, model years 2012 through 2015
  Versa Note, model years 2014 and 2015
  Micra, 2014 and 2015

  Drivers will receive a recall notice sometime in October, and a Nissan dealership will fix the panel. Nissan didn’t specify what type of shoe, if any, might be more likely to catch on the console panel, so drive carefully if you own one of the affected models.

  Nissan to recall about 300,000 vehicles in U.S. to fix console panel [Reuters]

  PREVIOUSLY:
  NHTSA Advances Investigation Into Pedal Interference In Nissan Versa & Note, Adds Model Years

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist