Several times each year, the nation faces a widespread, food borne illness crisis. But there’s an easy, cheap technological solution that could stop scares and outbreaks in their tracks.

A relatively simple system of QR codes – those funny-looking, two-dimensional barcodes you see everywhere today — could instantaneously link a product sold on store shelves back to the farm where it was grown or raised with a snap of a smartphone camera. It would no longer take days or weeks to determine what food is safe and what isn’t.

The system could even prevent the contaminated food from reaching store shelves in the first place.

IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) has developed a technology called the InfoSphere Traceability Server, which assigns unique barcodes to every step of the food distribution chain.

The farms, slaughterhouses, food palates, shipping containers, trucks, grocery stores and individual products that are using InfoSphere are all affixed with QR codes and tracked. Even specific animals are being tagged and scanned, so you could find out which specific cow your milk came from or which pig became your pork.

To read the full story: CNN Money

Between being kicked out of Zuccotti Park, barred from touching the Wall Street Bull statue, and arrested for lying down, it isn’t hard to see why the protesters of Occupy Wall Street have had a hard time finding their feet in 2012. But on Sunday and Monday, the movement will take to the streets again to honor one of America’s most famous protesters: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The events will begin with a Sunday night vigil at New York’s Riverside Church, to be followed the next day by a baker’s dozen protests across the nation against the Federal Reserve Bank.

For those who wonder how OWS — which has largely focused on economic inequality — can find a legitimate link between its causes and those of the slain civil rights leader, OWS press representative Kanene Holder makes the connection clearly.

While King is best known for his efforts to curb racism, she explains, his social justice efforts were actually far more extensive. “Everyone is familiar with Rev. King’s ‘I Have a Dream Speech,’ ” Holder notes, “But most people aren’t aware of how much he embodied an anti-war and anti-poverty stance, as well as an anti-racism stance.”

Hulu Plus, the online video subscription service owned by major broadcast networks ABC, Fox and NBC, reached a new milestone at the end of the year with 1.5 million paying subscribers a little more than a year after its formal launch.

Its CEO, Jason Kilar, also brought in the new year with a comment Hulu’s broadcast TV owners might not want to hear: that he believes online viewing will ultimately surpass TV as the main way people watch their shows.

“We have conviction that digital ultimately becomes the primary way that consumers across the globe choose to access content,” he said in a blog post Thursday.

Hulu Plus lets subscribers stream a range of current shows that have already run on TV such as Community,Grimm and The Colbert Report plus a large catalog of full seasons of back episodes of many other shows for $8 a month. It has begun spending more money on original programming as well, including a documentary series from filmmaker Morgan Spurlock that debuted in August called A Day in the Life.

Kilar said in the blog post that Hulu Plus plans to spend about a half-billion dollars on content in 2012.

The episodes on Hulu Plus and its free counterpart, Hulu.com, come with advertising, but less than on regular TV. Hulu Plus can be viewed on smartphones, tablets, computers and game consoles as well as Internet-connected TVs. Hulu.com can be viewed only using a computer.

To read the full story: USA Today

Last October, President Obama announced a broad initiative to provide relief for college graduates struggling to repay student loans. In a speech at the University of Colorado in Denver, Obama said the plan will lower monthly payments for 1.6 million borrowers.

Jessica Fernandez won’t be one of them.

Fernandez, 29, of Bridgewater, N.J., was laid off from her full-time job two years ago. She only recently found a job with a temp agency that pays less than half what she had been earning. She and her 8-year-old daughter had to move in with her parents because she could no longer pay the bills, which include student loan payments of more than $1,000 a month.

That would appear to make Fernandez a prime candidate for the president’s loan relief program. However, more than $35,000 of her student loans are private. Those loans, which aren’t issued or guaranteed by the federal government, have few of the protections provided for borrowers with federal student loans.

The sluggish economy has made the differences between federal and private loans even more pronounced.

To read the full story: USA Today

Oh, no! It’s Friday the 13th!

Superstitious investors may remember the mini-stock market crash of Oct. 13, 1989, when a megabillion-dollar leveraged buyout of struggling airline carrier United Airlines hit the skids and contributed to the Dow plummeting nearly 7% on that fateful day.

And who can forget the massive 6.8 earthquake in northeastern Turkey on March 13, 1992, which resulted in more than 500 deaths and widespread damage to property, giving investors in insurance companies some reason to pause.

Friday the 13th fears have been around for eons, in part attributed to the ancient belief that 13 is an unlucky number. Friday also happens to be considered an unlucky day, according to a National Geographic report. Smash the two together and it’s double trouble.

Pushing People Over the Edge

Fears about Friday the 13th can cause folks to take steps they may not otherwise take, say psychologists. Those steps can range from staying home from work to avoiding air travel, says Karen Cassiday, clinical director and owner of the Anxiety & Agoraphobia Treatment Center in Chicago.

After the overspending, overeating, and general overextending of December, it’s hardly surprising that so many people choose to spend January turning over new leaves. But even beyond the month of new diets, new workout programs, and new strategies for resisting the siren song of cheesecake, the beginning of the year is the perfect time to try out new ways to manage your money.

Admittedly, personal finance websites are hardly new: For years, Mint.com and similar sites have offered users a centralized place to view their accounts, manage their money, and — in many cases — even pay their bills. But for many of the new entries to the game, online money management isn’t just about watching accounts and moving money: It’s also about changing the way people look at and manage their finances.

As anyone who has ever tried to quit smoking can attest, changing basic behaviors is hard, and a method that works for one person may be ineffective for another. The three websites below — LearnVest, Payoff.com and Ready for Zero — use very different approaches. In the end, though, they all have the same goal: Helping you take control of your finances.

Target (TGT) may be planning to add something that’s chic but certainly not cheap to some of its stores.

Sources are telling Apple (AAPL) watcher AppleInsider.com that the tech giant will open small stores within 25 of Target’s largest stores later this year.

However, if you already live in a major city that has a stand-alone Apple Store, don’t expect to be camping out at your local Target to snag the iPad 3. Your town’s not on the list. Apple’s plan apparently is to launch these mini-stores in smaller cities where opening its own store concept in the middle of a mall isn’t economically feasible.

Russian Nesting Dolls of Retail

Target is no stranger to the “store-within-a-store” concept. When RadioShack (RSH) was looking for a new partner after its deal with Walmart’s (WMT) Sam’s warehouse clubs expired, Target stepped in; up popped hundreds of RadioShack kiosks inside select stores.

To read the full story: Daily Finance

It has only been a month since the last Ranger rolled off the assembly line at a closing Minnesota plant, but the repercussions are still rolling through Ford.

At least twice during the big auto show in Detroit, Ford executives were called upon to defend their decision to kill the Ranger in the U.S. and Canada. Part of the reason the issue resurfaced is the same executives’ buoyant predictions that a redesigned Ford Ranger for the rest of the world is going to be great success. And this from an automaker that brags at every turn about how it has democratized more of its same cars across all markets. A Ford Fusion in America is now a Ford Mondeo in Europe. Different name. Same car.

Ford’s Ranger danger with reporters began at a swanky dinner where Ford’s Asian chief talked about how excited he is about the new Ranger. But Mark Fields, Ford’s president of the Americas, says the same vehicle can’t succeed in the USA. Too close in size to the Ford F-Series. A shrinking market of small-pickup buyers, only 2% of the market. One Canadian journalist, a Ranger owner, was incensed, saying that even if it isn’t popular in the lower 48, Ranger remains popular in up North.

To read the full story: USA Today

Now, there’s an online movement to get her to attempt what could be her biggest feat yet: going bald to fight cancer.

A Facebook page titled “Beautiful and Bald Barbie! Let’s see if we can get it made” was started a few days before Christmas. By Wednesday afternoon, the page had more than 16,000 fans. The goal is to get toy maker Mattel (MAT) to create a bald Barbie in support of children with cancer.

Friends Rebecca Sypin and Jane Bingham, who live on opposite coasts but have both been affected by the disease, hatched the idea to use Barbie for the movement because she’s such a popular children’s toy.

Bingham has lost her hair due to chemotherapy treatments to treat lymphoma. Sypin’s 12-year-old daughter, Kin Inich, also lost her hair this year in her own battle with leukemia.

Mattel didn’t return calls on Wednesday seeking comment, but the women said they have contacted the company through some general form letters. In return, they said, they’ve received form letters that say Mattel doesn’t accept ideas from outside sources.

To read the full story: USA Today

Twitter lambasted the changes as “bad” for consumers and Web publishers. Meanwhile, a privacy watchdog group is threatening to complain to the Federal Trade Commission.

Google says it’s simply trying to make searches deeper and more personalized for millions of people.

The kerfuffle that began Tuesday, shortly after Google announced new features, underscores growing rivalry between the Web companies. And it comes as Google is facing antitrust scrutiny for favoring its own services in search results.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center said Wednesday that it’s considering a complaint to the FTC that Google’s new search feature raises privacy and antitrust concerns.

Google’s changes blend information such as photos, comments and news posted on its Google+ social network into users’ search results. Google+ members will have the option of seeing Google search results that are customized to their interests and connections. For instance, a photo of the San Francisco 49ers or a friend’s recommendation for a bar could show up.

To read the full story: USA Today