Those who use those popular social networking sites, beware. Your prospective employer may check up on you by contacting your Facebook friends.
Some human resource personnel say they go to a person's social networking site and send an applicant's friends an e-mail, looking for recommendations – or dirt. And the practice isn't illegal or unethical, they say, because you've put your connections out in a public domain.
Experts recommend you list people you'd rather not have contacted on your private list and limit the number of recommendations you display.
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Less bells and whistles, but more money -- that's the case for cell phone manufacturers who are selling fewer instruments on cell phones but charging more for them. A market research group reports that 28 million cell phones were sold in the second quarter. That is down 13 percent from last year. But don't shed a tear for those cell phone makers. That's because the phones they're selling are more expensive, and sales in dollars are only down 2 percent.
Motorola phones were the most popular, with 21 percent of the market. That's mainly because Motorola makes more phones than its competitors.
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And finally -- the Wii continues to hold onto its No. 1 spot in video game system sales. The Nintendo Wii outsold its competitors Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for the tenth straight month, according to the NPD group. Nintendo sold 555,000 Wiis in July, outpacing PlayStation 3s 224,900 units and Xbox's 204,800. Some 11.4 million Wiis have been sold in total so far.