Quickly becoming as much a Times Square tradition as the Macy’s Parade and New Year’s Eve, the Charmin Times Square public bathrooms are back again this year! Welcoming tourists and locals alike with potty puns aplenty, the restrooms offer cozy lounge chairs, giant Charmin Bear photo ops, and a selection of toilet paper sure to please the most discriminating of bottoms. Public service

Arthur: I stumbled upon this little slice of heaven called the dollar store. Guess how much I paid for this. Carrie: I don’t know, how much? Arthur: A dollar! … I’m telling you, Douglas, the prices there are unbeatable. Doug: Hmm. Unless you go down to the 99 cent store. Arthur: The what? Doug: The

Merriam-Webster’s top 10 words of 2010 have been announced, and the “winner” is … austerity. The publisher compiles the list based on the volume of searches on its website. Users may have been looking up the word to find a nicer, or maybe more accurate, way to say “tight times,” “frugality,” “budget-minded,” and so on–a

Joe Cardamone is a 36-year veteran of JCPenney. Currently the manager of the Manhattan JCPenney, Cardamone has his work cut out for him at this point in the holiday shopping season. It’s crunch time, and Cardamone’s goal is relatively simple: Make it easy for customers to leave with a bag in their hands. Reaching that

Wish lists are a holiday staple. Indeed, many retailers even make it possible to enter your wish lists online–the better to avoid giant Christmas letdowns, my dear. But one wish list, found on the Metro North New York-Connecticut commuter line, is enough to strike fear (or maybe relief that the list maker isn’t their girlfriend/wife)

Last week, in separate incidents, Gawker, McDonald’s, Twitter and Walgreens all reported security incidents. At Walgreens, hackers gained access to a list of customer e-mail addresses. The addresses were used to phish for personal data. McDonald’s said private info was exposed when a subcontractor improperly handled data. Meanwhile, over at Twitter, hackers used ill-gotten passwords

Gift cards have become a staple. In fact, they’re such a commodity that you can get gift cards from, say, iTunes, Chili’s and Barnes and Noble (among many, many others) at your local supermarket. This year, retailers are raising the gift card bar with features such as recorded messages, gingerbread scents, and personal photos. The

Have you ever agonized over what to get that hard-to-buy-for person, only to get it wrong—again? Worry no more. Brooklyn e-tailer Etsy will mine your Facebook friends’ likes to determine the perfect (Etsy-offered) gifts for them. Etsy’s mission is “to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.” Zengage

Whether you are an adult helping your parents with their computers or your own kids help you with yours, the younger generation has long been providing tech support to those who didn’t grow up with computers in their homes (let alone their pockets). Google has seized on this trend and is offering a new site,

Plenty of companies do. He’s going to make half a million dollars next year by acting as a human billboard. Jason Sadler, 28-year old founder of I Wear Your Shirt, may not technically be a celebrity, but he has spent the last two years tweeting, YouTubeing, Facebooking, and generally influencing consumers via social media by