Nokia is recalling up to 14 million phone chargers because they may transmit an electric shock to users. PC World has details:

Nokia says it will replace for free millions of faulty cellphone chargers that pose a shock hazard to its users. Nokia says the plastic casing surrounding the chargers in question could separate, exposing the unit’s internal components, creatinging a shock hazard.

To return your charger unit, go to Nokia’s dedicated charger exchange Website, and enter your charger’s model and identification numbers. The Website will then lead you through the steps required to exchange your charger. If you’re unsure if your charger unit is affected, you can also check your model using the exchange site.

Kraft Foods Inc. formally launched a hostile takeover bid for British candymaker Cadbury today. The Wall Street Journal has more:

Cadbury Sept. 7 rejected Kraft’s initial cash-and-share offer, worth 745 pence per share at the time and at around 722 pence at current values. Cadbury said it could offer its shareholders more value by pursuing its standalone strategy of organic growth and expansion abroad. It accused Kraft of being a “low growth conglomerate” that contrasted with its own strategy of being a pure play confectionary company.

Kraft backed its decision not to sweeten the offer by saying it hasn’t seen any signs of a competing offer for the British company and it therefore offers the best value to Cadbury’s shareholders.

British takeover rules give Kraft 28 days to publish a shareholder prospectus on the offer. After publishing the prospectus, Kraft has up to two months to acquire enough shares to close the deal, according to the article. If and when Kraft does buy Cadbury, it will become the second-largest confectionary in the world, trailing behind Mars Inc, the article says.

If you would, it’s your lucky day. Mobile company Peek has released a device whose sole purpose in life is to send and receive tweets. PC World has more:

Described as the world’s first dedicated Twitter device, the TwitterPeek offers a QWERTY keyboard, color screen, and measures 2.7 x 0.4 x 4 inches. It was introduced on Tuesday and is not unattractive.

Who needs this device? That’s a fair question…Presumably, some people are using Twitter as an e-mail replacement and do not want the monthly expense associated with smartphone use. Peek also makes similar e-mail only devices, which seem to address a much larger market (and support five accounts at a time).

This device sounds really limited. Will somebody who sees a reason to buy this thing speak up and change my mind?

Google is rolling out Onebox (or Google Music), its new music search engine, today. When you google songs, albums, an artist name, or lyrics, Google will generate links to full songs at the top of its search results. You can experiment with Google Music here. MTV has more details:

Not so much a new site as it is a new set of integrated options added to normal search results, Google Music connects people searching for artists, songs or lyrics with free streams of tracks care of MySpace’s iLike and Lala and with links to purchase songs and albums from one of Google Music’s partners.

A cursory test drive yielded pretty excellent results: A search for Beyoncé lead to a streaming version of “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” in seconds, and even digging up Mystikal’s turn-of-the-century hit “Shake Ya Ass” was no trouble at all. Though the demo video shows the music search working directly from the Google homepage, as of press time, it worked only from the Google Music page.

Google’s new music search capabilities give iTunes competitors a new leg up on Apple. Interestingly, it also excludes Amazon from its search results. The LA Times has more on the business behind Google Music:

The move was applauded by the music industry, which has been struggling against piracy that has siphoned off billions of dollars of potential revenue from musicians and recording studios. The industry is hoping the search feature will direct users to legitimate digital music outlets and in turn help them compete with free but often unauthorized sources of music.

But in steering millions of Internet users to its partner sites, Google is indirectly boosting the sites’ abilities to compete with iTunes, which was responsible for 69% of U.S. digital music sales in the first six months of this year, and 35% of all music sales, including physical albums, according to market research firm NPD Group Inc. Amazon, the second-largest player, accounted for 9% of digital music sales and 10% of overall music sales.

Google recently announced plans to launch an app store for Google Wave. From The Next Web:

The most successful app store yet, the iPhone’s, has just blown past the 100,000 approved iPhone app mark and clearly Google have taken notice with their own Android Marketplace. Despite Apple’s success, it is undoubtedly Android who will win on numbers, with developers swayed by Google’s open source values and the openness of the platform as a whole.

Assuming Wave takes off, and people begin to “get it”, expect big things.

Geocities, Yahoo’s free hosting service that divided (mostly tacky) homepages into (perplexing) neighborhoods, was officially put to today. Computerworld (via Gizmodo) has more:

The shuttering of GeoCities has both historical and contemporary importance. In the latter category, GeoCities is currently the 195th most browsed domain, and a highly referenced one, with two million incoming links — a popularity most other hosts could only dream of. More important, GeoCities (which popularized the notion of webrings) currently serves as a vast archive of information. Digital archivist Jason Scott eloquently explained:

Scott and his Archive Team are working to rescue GeoCities by downloading as much of its content as possible — which they estimate to be around ten terabytes. These historians recognize GeoCities as having played a critical role in the development of the Internet. Rather than protesting Yahoo’s financially motivated decision, doing fundraising to “Save GeoCities!”, or signing online petitions, these data hoarders have taken an active role not in preventing the inevitable but in mitigating its damage by preserving GeoCities in a format protected from further corporate terminations.

More.

Disney is offering a DVD upgrade or moneyback guarantee to everyone who purchased a Baby Einstein DVD between June 5, 2004 and September 4, 2009 (the day the notice was put out).

The recall, if you want to call it that, came about after interest groups pressured the company to offer parents a refund. The premise: Time in front of a TV screen is bad for babies. An FTC complaint convinced Disney to rescind an earlier claim that Baby Einstein DVDs were educational.

Since September, interest groups have claimed a further victory in persuading the company to offer consumers a refund. Details of the Baby Einstein recall (from their website, via Slate):

To participate, you must have purchased a Baby Einstein DVD between June 5, 2004 and September 4, 2009.

or you may return it, and we will refund the current retail value of the DVD ($15.99).

Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, an interest group, describes their version of the recall (via Slate):

As a result of our 2006 Federal Trade Commission complaint, Disney stopped claiming that Baby Einstein videos were educational for infants, but the company made no move to compensate parents who purchased them.

The refund offer is a wonderful victory for families and anyone who cares about children. Recent research shows that screen time is not educational for babies. Now parents who purchased Baby Einstein DVDs, mistakenly believing the videos would make their babies smarter, can recoup their money.

How did the Baby Einstein people officially react? By lashing back, and claiming no guilt:

For the past several years, Baby Einstein has been under attack by propaganda groups taking extreme positions that try to dictate what parents should do, say and buy. Our philosophy has always been to focus on creating products that parents and babies love, and to not get sidetracked and pulled down into their street fight.

We strongly believe that, unlike Linn, our consumers find value in our product, and rather than continue to fight with her, we decided it to leave it up to those consumers. That is why we extended a refund policy that was already in place. Although she would like to claim otherwise, there is nothing extraordinary about a company’s willingness to stand behind its product. To the contrary, it is the strongest possible show of confidence in it.

Finally, what’s Susan Linn’s argument? Stop corporations from limiting kids’ imaginations:

Susan Linn, the nation’s leading advocate for protecting children from corporate marketers…argues that while play is crucial to human development and children are born with an innate capacity for make believe, the convergence of ubiquitous technology and unfettered commercialism actually prevents them from playing. In modern day America, nurturing creative play is not only countercultural—it threatens corporate profits.

In an age when toys come from TV shows, dress-up means wearing Disney costumes, and parents believe Baby Einstein is educational, Dr. Linn lays out the inextricable links between play, creativity, and health, showing us why we need to protect our children from corporations that aim to limit their imaginations.

In sum: If you want to heed the study claiming too much screen time inhibits babies’ language development–and perhaps limit corporate brainwashing in the process–Baby Einstein is offering you an alternative to its DVDs.

PCWorld has a nice summation of Windows 7 reviews. Go to the full article to see the details. Some excerpts:

On Wednesday, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue gave Windows 7 the thumbs up as well, despite the fact that “it’s still copy-protected, it still requires antivirus software, and its visuals still aren’t consistent from one corner to another.” His bottom line: “looks like 7 is a lucky number after all.”

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal had an early review on Windows 7 a couple of weeks back, and his bottom line is that “Windows 7 is a very good, versatile operating system that should help Microsoft bury the memory of Vista and make PC users happy.”

In a review released on Thursday, the folk over at IT Pro had a look at whether Windows 7 is fit for business. Their verdict: they are “more than happy to recommend Windows 7 … for business,” especially as “the user interface is attractive and good for productivity.”

Gigi Lee Chang
Founder

Ingram, the founder/CEO of VA-based executive search and IT staffing firm Capital TechSearch, probably sleeps better now. The company’s revenues increased 63% in 2008, earning it a place on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies—the second time the company had been honored.

Yet this successful entrepreneur hasn’t taken his learning curve for granted. “When I was in such a bad spot several years ago, I wish that I had a book like this one to reassure me and help me stave off insomnia.”

He didn’t have the right book, because the market didn’t offer him one. So Ingram proceeded to do what entrepreneurs do best: He created the product. The book, released in late September 2009, presents fifteen real-life business challenges, many from Ingram’s own experience. He covers the story, implications, and resolution of each challenge in every chapter of the book. At the end of each chapter, he presents readers with a short list of questions to help them work out similar challenges in their own companies.

Essentially an advice book, 15 Bedtime Stories covers important lessons that every entrepreneur growing a business from a startup to a platform (self-sustaining) organization should know. Each chapter presents a real-life business challenge, from cash flow to ethics. The human resources-related chapters were especially strong. This is not surprising, given Ingram’s industry focus on people.

One of the book’s most endearing qualities is its frankness. Ingram isn’t afraid to address the thorny stuff. One chapter recounts Ingram’s friend John’s experience of choosing to implement company health benefits after heavy deliberation. Soon afterward, John hired an employee who was diagnosed with cancer the same day the company brought him on. Another chapter tells the story of how a company’s top sales performer brought the rest of the team down, confronting the CEO with a difficult firing decision.

Ingram doesn’t gloss over things, but he doesn’t discourage you, either. In fact, he encourages you to learn from his mistakes rather than making those same mistakes yourself. His detailed descriptions and resolutions of business issues make the book a valuable reference source. Ingram could easily compile a longer book of lessons, for entrepreneurs to keep around as a desk reference.

If you’re curious about entrepreneurship, in the midst of it, and or just looking to improve your general business-running skills, 15 Stories is for you. Even seasoned vets can learn something from this fun and valuable book. Business Pundit recommends it.