• Happy Valentine’s Day, pizza fan! Perhaps your great idea of getting a heart-shaped pizza in lieu of flowers or candy sounded good, but as proven by these photos of a “heart-shaped” pizza, it was perhaps misguided. Who loves you? Not Papa John’s. source

• four number of hamsters Cepia, Inc. sold last Christmas, when they were a super-hot toy
• 40+ number of hamsters the company will sell starting this summer; way to milk a fad, guys source

• 8,000 Tacomas recalled due to drive shafts source

• What a convoluted system. For a week, we told you about our trials and travails regarding Newsday’s subscription advertising. We got bored of making fun of them admittedly (and tired of the useless “news alerts” that felt like vectors to send ads to us more than actual news alerts), but now they’ve actually given us some ammo.

• Shoddy service Today, they finally sent us an e-mail, two and a half weeks after we signed up, asking for money, with full details of the process. Nobody ever called us or asked us about it. If Newsday wanted our service, they would call us first.
• pay all at once? We definitely don’t like the $40/every two months setup, instead of just subscribing for a week just to try it. So yeah, we’re not signing up for this. It’s seemingly designed to discourage you from subscribing to Newsday.
• Our advice to newsday Paywalls can work, but your all-or-nothing paywall system seems broken. There’s no online component at all. Also, people outside of Long Island are interested in what happens in Long Island. Consider that, guys.

A final tally of our Newsday adventures

• 17 days it took for Newsday to decide to charge us

• 17 number of text-message updates we got from Newsday; nearly all of them had ads as long as the news itself
• six of the updates said “Officials: 5 killed, 12 injured in Conn. power plant blast” (spread out over two days)
• 4-5 number of e-mail updates we’ve been getting from Newsday each day, and they’re kinda annoying

• 30% increase in Lego’s sales during a recession source

• 7 weeks without the Associated Press on Google; nobody noticed source

• $2 million made yearly on claims for singing “Happy Birthday” source

• 400,000 cars added to the recall, mostly Priuses, due to brake problems
• 8 million cars have been recalled total, a fairly unbelievable number source

• I think we should see this Toyota problem from a broader viewpoint. If customers start to harbor doubts about [quality and safety], that would be problem for the whole industry.
• Honda CFO Yoichi Hojo • Regarding the danger the Toyota recalls pose for the auto industry as a whole. He notes that, for this reason, his company isn’t offering incentives to Toyota customers who trade in their cars, like GM and Ford are. He sees that policy as just a little foolish. Wonder why. source

• 9,908 the Dow’s closing level today, due to troubles abroad and possible regulation at home
• 11/04/09 the last time the Dow closed this low, which was just a couple of months ago, by the way source