An Arizona mom and developmental psychologist has spent the past few months visiting and videotaping indoor fast-food restaurant play areas across the country and sending swabs from the windows and slides for microbial testing.

Erin Carr-Jordan has been in the news for co-spearheading an effort that could urge legislators to put regulations in place that require certain industry-wide standards for cleaning and sanitizing these playlands.

During Tuesday’s live online chat, area consumers discussed policies surrounding keeping these indoor playgrounds clean for kids. What steps should restaurants, the government and parents take to ensure these indoor play areas are as sanitary as possible for those that use them?

To view the entire chat transcript, including answers to your other retail and restaurant questions, go to www.southbendtribune.com/chats.

Robin: I saw a young child in one a couple of weeks ago who had a very runny nose. Read full article…

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO- Halliburton Co , the world’s second-largest oilfield services company, reported a forecast-topping 54 percent jump in profit on Monday as a U.S. onshore drilling boom showed no sign of cooling off.

The second-quarter results clearly demonstrate how Halliburton has benefited from its North American leadership in the pressure pumping technology that enables oil and gas producers to tap in to shale rock.

High oil prices have prompted those producers to plunge billions of dollars into developing fields such as the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, creating a tighter market for equipment that allowed Halliburton to push through price rises.

“It was both top and bottom lines, and a significant component was pricing,” said Roger Read, an analyst with Morgan Keegan & Co.

The North American boom was likely to last through 2012, helped by the move to more developments that benefit from high oil prices as natural gas drilling slows.

“What we are seeing in North America, plus the continued international recovery, will lead to even a more favorable earnings picture as we go through 2011 and beyond,” Chief Executive Dave Lesar told analysts on a conference call.

Second-quarter net profit climbed to $739 million, or 80 cents per share, from $480 million, or 53 cents per share, a year earlier. Read full article…

After writing about how to write newsletters that people will actually read for this blog, it struck me that one of the big problems with newsletters is that they are deathly boring due to a complete lack of personality.

In Part 1 of How to Inject Personality Into Your Newsletter, I introduced you to FreshBooks Supper Club, a really fun newsletter from a Canadian company that provides an easy-to-use online invoicing platform.  Part 2 covers a newsletter from Bizzy, a mobile app that allows you to share mini-reviews of restaurants, bars, and clubs on the go and get recommendations for new places to try.

The reason I wanted to highlight these newsletters is simple: Both have great style, a lot of personality, and are fun to read.   Let’s take a look at Bizzy:

Title of newsletter: Bizzy

Tagline: Discover the best places to eat, shop, & play!

Email subject line: Search and Check Outs and Facebook!  Yeehaw!

Images: None other than the banner heading.

Articles:

Just one that provides an update on Bizzy news.  Topics covered:

• Personalized search now available from Bizzy on the Web
• Winners of the first Bizzy Check Out event announced
• Reminder to share Check Outs on Facebook and Twitter

Sample text: Greetings from rainy California!  It ma

Read full article…

Aussies hoping to reduce the interest they pay on their plastic might want to consider going online to compare credit cards.

This is the advice of YourMortgage, which explained that there are sometimes promotional balance transfer rates offered by providers.

This can help people to reduce the amount spent on interest and could enable Australians to pay off their debts faster.

Individuals struggling to avoid maxing out their plastic might also want to consider changing to a lower limit to reduce the amount they are capable of spending.

Another method of ensuring that repayments are as low as possible is to opt for cards with low-interest rates, rather than to select one with rewards or loyalty schemes attached to them.

Earlier this week, figures published by the Reserve Bank of Australia suggested that families throughout the country seem to be taking steps to consolidate their debt and save money, the AAP reported.

The social networking scene has already gone through a dramatic upheaval this month, after the launch of Google+ and the introduction of free video chat on Facebook. According to Fusible, even more big news could be on the way as indications suggest Microsoft could be designing a social search site.

Fusible discovered this past Wednesday that socl.com appeared to host the intro page to a site called Tulalip designed to integrate social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The site was quickly taken down and replaced with a message attributing the project to a Microsoft Research team, explaining the site had been posted by mistake.

The slip takes a more interesting turn when combined with Fusible’s prior report on the major purchase of the domain name social.com for as much as $2.6 million. Read full article…