uCompletion Of $1.6B Orbitz, Expedia Merger Further Whittles Down Online Travel Agency Optionsr

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• Despite the protests from the leading hotel industry group that a merger between Expedia and Orbitz would concentrate too much of the travel-booking market in one company’s hands – leading to fewer choices for consumers – the two companies have received regulatory approval and completed their $1.6 billion marriage today.

  Orbitz announced today that Expedia had officially completed its acquisition of the smaller booking site and its related brands.

  The transaction, which is valued at $12 a share, brings brands such as CheapTickets, ebookers and HotelClub under the Expedia umbrella, which already includes brands Hotels.com, Hotwire, Travelocity and Trivago.

  “We are pleased to welcome Orbitz Worldwide to our family of leading travel brands,” Dara Khosrowshahi, Expedia, Inc. Chief Executive Officer said in a statement. “Our mission is to revolutionize travel through the power of technology.”

  The now completed transaction essentially leaves only Priceline – which not only runs its namesake site, but also Kayak.com, Booking.com, and others — as a major competitor in the online travel agency (OTA) field.

  Back in January, Washington-based Expedia purchased Travelocity for $280 million. The two companies had worked together since 2013.

  The now slimmed down OTA field was a major point of concern for the American Hotel & Lodging Association which earlier this year warned that the deal between Expedia and Orbitz would create a duopoly that controls 95% of the market.

  “We believe this transaction and the resulting consolidation of the online travel marketplace will result in significant negative consequences,” says Katherine Lugar, president and CEO of AH&LA, in a statement, “particularly for consumers, but also for the large number of our members who are small business owners and franchised properties.”

  In spite of those concerns, regulators granted Expedia and Orbitz permission to merge on Wednesday.

  Expedia’s Khosrowshahi says now that the marriage is complete, the new company will work to “accelerate the pace of innovation to deliver even better customer experiences” to customers.

  [via Reuters]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uSecurity Vulnerability In New Kardashian Websites Coughs Up User Info For 600K Subscribersr

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  (Pixteca | Len & Pix【ツ】)

  If you’re not up to date on all your reality TV star news, perhaps you aren’t aware that the Kardashian/Jenner sisters recently launched new mobile apps and redesigned websites to stay even more connected with their adoring hordes than before. But while the family’s popularity has seen hundreds of thousands of people signing up for those sites, a new report says the personal information for many of those subscribers was available — albeit briefly — to anyone with the know-how to get it.

  TechCrunch cites a blog post by a 19-year-old developer on Medium (which has now been taken down) detailing how he was able to access the full names and email addresses of more than 600,000 users who signed up for Kylie Jenner’s website, as well as get similar user data from the other sisters’ sites. It doesn’t appear that any payment information was vulnerable, however.

  He also claimed he could create and destroy users’ accounts, photos, videos and other content, though it seems he didn’t actually try to do so.

  He stumbled upon a misconfiguration in the site after he’d become curious about what was powering the sites, admitting that he’d downloaded Kylie’s app “just to check it out,” and then started digging around on the websites.

  He found an open, unsecured API, that allowed him to view a web page with the first and last names and email addresses of the 663,270 people who had signed up for the site, he said in the now-deleted blog post, and then repeated the trick on the other sisters’ sites.

  All of this raises questions about the security of users’ personal information, something we’re all too familiar with at a time when it seems a new data breach is revealed every day.

  The company behind the sites and apps, Whalerock Industries, confirmed to TechCrunch that user data was briefly available, but the issue was addressed quickly:

  “Shortly after launch we were alerted that there was an open Api. It was promptly closed. Our logs indicate that the author of the blog post was able to access only a limited set of names and email addresses. Our logs further indicate no one else had access and that no passwords nor payment data of any kind was exposed. Our highest priority is the security of our customers’ data.”

  TechCrunch notes that most of the payments tied to the sisters’ new tech ventures go through the app stores and not on the websites, and that Whalerock is using a third-party e-commerce provider to deal with online payments. That would mean no payment information is hosted on Whalerock’s servers, likely, keeping it safe despite this kind of security issue.

  Kardashian Website Security Issue Exposes Names, Emails Of Over Half A Million Subscribers, Payment Info Safe [TechCrunch]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uBill Would Restore Pell Grant Eligibility For Students Who Attended Defunct For-Profit Collegesr

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  (MeneerDijk)

  The Federal Pell Grant Program provides need-based grants to low-income students to help pay for college, but the funds come with limitations: They are only available for six years or 12 semesters, and when that time is up the funding is gone. So when now-bankrupt Corinthian Colleges Inc. abruptly closed its Wyotech, Heald College and Everest University campuses in April, thousands of students who relied on Pell money were left with few options for continuing their education elsewhere. A new piece of legislation aims to help these stranded students get back on track.

  On Wednesday both the Senate and the House took steps to ensure students have the opportunity to continue their education by introducing companion bills that would restore Pell Grant eligibility under certain circumstances.

  The Pell Grant Restoration Act of 2015 [PDF] would restore benefits for students who attended an institution of higher education that closed due to misconduct, which would obviously include the former Corinthian schools.

  While the Higher Education Act provides for the discharge of students’ federal loans if a school closes before students complete their programs, it does not reset the clock on a student’s eligibility for Pell Grants, and students may not have enough Pell Grant eligibility left to complete a program at another school.

  Under the measure, students would be eligible for restored benefits if their federal student loans were discharged through either compromise and settlement authority, defenses to repayment or statutory charges.

  Additionally, students would be eligible if they qualified for a loan discharge, but did not take out federal student loans.

  Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who joined Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia in introducing the bills, said the Act came to the forefront as a way to address the thousands of students who attended now defunct Corinthian College’s Everest University, Wyotech and Heald College campuses.

  “In spite of the warning signs, the federal government did not step in soon enough to prevent Pell Grant funding from being wasted on the failed Corinthian Colleges system,” Durbin said in a statement. “It is only fair that the students who were misled into failing programs have their Pell Grant eligibility restored. We shouldn’t be punishing students for the bad actions of for-profit college CEOs.”

  In the case of Corinthian College’s abrupt closure, students were immediately facing difficult circumstances, having to figure out whether they could afford to continue their education, which school they could transfer to, what credits would count and how they would pay for it.

  “Forgiving the debt of students defrauded by for-profit colleges and restoring their eligibility for Pell Grants not only is fair but also smart policy, providing an opportunity for motivated, capable students to pursue the higher education they deserve,” said California Rep. Janice Hahn said in a statement.

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uFacebook Trying To Assure Advertisers That Their Ads Are Actually (Maybe, Possibly) Being Seenr

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  Facebook will now offer an option for advertisers where they only pay for an ad impression of 100% of an advertisement shows up in a user’s newsfeed.

  Will you do something for us? Take a quick, 10-second look at just about any site that isn’t Consumerist and then come back here. Done? Now see if you can remember all — or any — of the ads on that page. You probably can’t because (A) we’ve trained ourselves to ignore ad units and (B) you probably skimmed past or didn’t even get to a lot of the ads on that page. Advertisers know this, which is why Facebook is offering an option that only charges them when someone sees 100% of their ad.

  The way it works, according to an announcement from Facebook, is that advertisers who choose the “100% In-View” option will only pay for an ad impression if all of the ad shows up in the reader’s Facebook newsfeed.

  So if I’m scrolling through my newsfeed on my phone and only half of an ad unit shows up before I bail on the app and go check on my fantasy curling team, the advertiser won’t be paying for an ad I didn’t really see.

  “While it remains our belief that value is created for an advertiser as soon as an ad is in view, we also believe in offering advertisers control and flexibility over how they run their ads,” explains the company.

  The catch, notes AdAge, is that there is no time requirement before an ad counts as 100% displayed. So if a user is racing through their newsfeed too quickly to actually notice the content of the ad, it doesn’t matter; 100% of the ad has been displayed, so it counts as an impression.

  Given that more than half of online ads are never even seen by visitors to websites — a number that’s likely to grow with Apple’s decision to allow ad-blockers on its iPhone and iPad Safari browser — any sort of assurance that their ad was seen in its entirety, however briefly, is enough for some of the world’s biggest advertisers.

  Unilever — the company responsible for everything from Ben & Jerry’s and Country Crock to Q-tips and Vaseline — has been critical of paying for partially viewed or unseen ads, but came out in support of today’s Facebook news.

  “Our hope is that these steps will lead ultimately to 100% viewability through third party verification across the industry,” says the company’s chief marketing officer in a statement.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uFilene’s Basement Rises From Retail Graveyard As Zombie Brandr

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• When a company declares bankruptcy and goes out of business, sometimes its brands don’t settle into a dignified death. Sometimes they’re resurrected days or decades later, roaming the earth as zombie retailers. The latest brand to be raised from the dead is off-price retailer Filene’s basement, which closed in 2011. The brand’s owners have been waiting for the right time to reopen, and closeout retailers are super-hot right now.

  While Macy’s has opened its first off-price Macy’s Backstage store in NeW York, the revived Filene’s Basement will live online only, at least at first. The company has promised to revive its annual “Running of the Brides” one-day bridal gown sale, but hasn’t said whether that will be online somehow or held in person as a pop-up shop.

  While remaining Filene’s stores became Macy’s stores, the Filene’s Basement chain of off-price shopping destinations was spun off into its own business and had different ownership from its former parent company.

  It’s hard to replicate the experience of digging through bins and dodging fellow shoppers standing around in their underwear on a website, but the people behind the revived Filene’s say that they’re trying to capture the serendipity of shopping in an old Filene’s store using recommendation engines an with a wide variety of merchandise that wouldn’t be practical if they were an online-only outfit.

  Filene’s Basement is coming back from the dead [Washington Post]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uBurger King Teams With Denny’s, Krystal & Others To Create Peace Day Hybrid Burgerr

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• Two weeks after McDonald’s rejected Burger King’s cross-marketing olive branch offer to put aside their metaphorical beef in the name of peace and create a burger marrying the two fast food chains, the King has decided to officially move forward with offers of collaboration from Denny’s, Wayback Burger, Krystal and Giraffas, unveiling a mismashed sandwich that includes bacon, ham, a square patty, egg, cheese and other ingredients.

  Burger King announced Wednesday that the five companies will come together to offer 1,500 free Peace Burgers made with one key ingredient from each of their signature sandwiches from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Peace Day – Sept. 21 – at a pop-up store in Atlanta.

  5 companies. 1 location. 1 burger. A little bit of #peace is coming to Atlanta. #21Sept. #PeaceDayBurger http://pic.twitter.com/jBEPLfL1ky

  — Burger King (@BurgerKing) September 15, 2015

  A photo of the upcoming burger collaboration shows the sandwich will include ingredients from Denny’s Bacon Slamburger, Wayback’s Wayback Classic, Krystal’s Cheese Krystal, Giraffas’ Brutus and Burger King’s Whopper sandwiches.

  In addition to adding to the special limited-edition burger, each of the restaurants participating in the collaboration will donate ind to Peace Day One, a nonprofit organization devoted to raising awareness and encouraging action on Peace Day.

  The debut of the Peace Day burger comes nearly three weeks after Burger King first proposed the idea to create a McWhopper with McDonald’s.

  The Golden Arches unceremoniously shot down the offer, leading to an onslaught of other chains stepping up.

  “Since the beginning, the main objective of this initiative was to raise awareness of Peace Day,” Fernando Machado, senior vice president for global brand management at Burger King, tells Bloomberg. “We were overwhelmed by the goodwill of our fellow restaurateurs, and believe that working with them to create this once-in-a-lifetime burger is a beautiful twist of fate.”

  [via Bloomberg]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uAmazon Selling New 7″ Fire Tablets In A $250 Six-Packr

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• Would you pay $50 for a 7″ Amazon Fire? If not, Amazon thinks you might be down to pay $41 for one if its new tablets — if you’ve got six people you want to give one to. The company is announcing a new lineup of Fire tablets today, including six-packs of the 7″ tablets — which usually go for $49.99 each — for $250.

  Unlike the new iPad Pro, which is aimed at the business sector, the new Fire tablets are all about entertainment, as David Limp, a senior vice president for Amazon devices, tells USAToday the devices are aimed at the “sweet spot, the consumption of media.”

  The new tablets are more tumble resistant than before, Amazon says, and feature a quad-core processor, front- and rear-facing cameras and up to 128 gb of expandable storage.

  There are also two new fire HD tablets in the Amazon store, one at 8″ ($149.99) and one 10.1″ ($229.99). Both are 7.7 millimeters thick and made for watching video content, with the aspect ratio of a wide-screen movie and speakers that Amazon says are twice as powerful as before.

  Amazon also announced new iterations of its Amazon Fire TV that comes with a voice remote that allows users to search and play media by speaking. That TV costs $99.99, with a gaming edition that comes with a game controller, more memory and two free games for $139.99. You can get the Fire TV stick with voice remote for $49.99 as well. Those systems will begin shipping on Oct. 5.

  Amazon selling six-packs of its $50 tablet computers [USAToday]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist