Business

Verizon Wireless will look to find another way to extract more revenue from customers now that it's won the Bank of America Tin Ear of the Week Award and retracted its planned $2 fee for people who only wanted to pay their bills online one month at a time.

The Boston Business Journal reports on the end of litigation by residents of one luxury building against a proposed luxury building on the water by North Station.

This started as a long, rambling, ranty exchange between some guy who wants to know where his special game controller is and a guy at a company that took his money for the thing. Then Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade and the Pax East show gets involved. Before you know it, Tom Menino and the MCCA are being name dropped into the fray (anybody remember those T ads a few years back that showed the mayor playing a video game)?

H/t Prairie Rose Clayton.

Karen Cord Taylor interviews the BRA official in charge of getting a supermarket for the Bulfinch Triangle.

Boston Capital, which has been providing financial services since the 1970s, is suing a Quincy resident who's set up a company to provide financial services called Boston Capital Partners.

In a lawsuit filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Boston Capital accuses Ravi Chaudhary of glomming onto its name in a deliberate attempt to confuse people, and that he failed to change his ways after it asked him to back in March. The suit asks a judge to order him to stop using the name, destroy any promotional material emblazoned with the name, hand his Web site over to the Boston firm and, of course, pay lots of money.

Somerville Local First, an amazing and highly respected organization in Somerville, has been bridging the gap between residents and local businesses since May 2008 with such campaigns as Shift Your Shopping and Move Your Money and with events such as Harvest Fest and Somerfun. Love attending SLF events? Keep them and the organization alive by donating to Somerville Local First this year!

A story in the Globe today has the following headline and sub-headline:

Verizon to pay $800,000 settlement
Phone company says cities, towns were overcharged because of software

But as Steve Garfield notes, that's wrong, because as the story itself says, the problem was that employees entered the wrong data into the software:

It's human error. The 'software' doesn't make the error, a human does.

Having newspaper headline writers write captions for stories about software is like having politicians write legislation about the internet.

Envisn, a company that makes software for managing Cognos "business intelligence" systems, yesterday sued its former support manager, charging she spent a couple of hours downloading all of the company's software and customer records and then quit.

In its suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, the Harvard-based company seeks an injunction against Kathleen Davis doing anything with the data she has and $30 million in damages. Envisn charges that with her knowledge of the software, she could easily decompile the code, help a competitor come out with a cheaper version and destroy the company.

The suit alleges that on Nov. 28, starting around 6:04 a.m., Davis downloaded copies of Envisn's products - including a beta that had been given to just two customers - as well as customer records from salesforce.com. At 8:15 a.m., the suit alleges, she e-mailed company President Charles Ryan that she was resigning, effective immediately.

Yet another Downtown Crossing landmark is closing. ArchBoston reports that the 'f.y.e' music store on Washington Street, which was called Strawberries until recently, is closing down and having a clearance sale.

Strawberries joins Filene's, Filene's Basement, Barnes & Noble, and Borders on a dismayingly growing list of major retailers who have left Downtown Crossing without being replaced by anything else.

Two users of Android mobile phones yesterday filed class-action lawsuits against the manufacturer of their phones and a software company that boasts it can track what Android users are doing even when their phones are in airplane mode.

Pazzo Books in West Roxbury now has a window display that features Atlas Shrugged pepper-spraying 1984.

Attorney General Martha Coakley today announced a lawsuit against five large banks and mortgage companies, alleging they falsified documents, seized property they had not right to, lied to borrowers about refinancing programs and attempted to circumvent state property registration laws by using a private clearinghouse - which is also named in the complaint.

The suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, names Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citi, GMAC and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System.

Hank Alexandre is in need of some sole saving.

The Payless store on Centre Street has a big "CLOSING" banner hanging from the front.

Today's the day we're all supposed to go out and buy stuff from local stores to show our support, but Steve Sheinkopf at Yale Appliance explains why that's not a good reason to buy from his store:

If we do not have an unique selling proposition or value (price, delivery, customer service, technical service), then we do not deserve your business. That is the only way to truly compete in the global economy.

We have to earn your trust, then your business. Period.

The Herald reports on last night's BRA meeting on a developer's plan to build a tower with 318 condos and new retail space above the existing Neiman Marcus.

CommonHealth reports on the collapse of contract talks between the hospital and the insurer.

Restaurant owner Joe Cimino asked the Boston Licensing Board today for six to nine more months to get his Saratoga restaurant at 41 Fairfield open, but state Rep. Marty Walz told the board enough's enough and it's time to let somebody else have a crack at the restaurant's license.

Walz said it's unfortunate Cimino has run into a never-ending series of problems related to the building's age, historic nature and simple existence in the Back Bay - from wiring to handicap access to groundwater concerns - but said the six years he's had, coupled with the six years she says the previous owner didn't use the license, has exhausted the neighborhood's and the board's patience.

Welina Farah reviews the weekly Venture Cafe at the Cambridge Innovation Center, which serves as a sort of welcome party for Kendall Square's technopreneurs:

The overall feel of the Café is one that puts a kind of nervous college student walking into a room full of established women and men doing what she one day aspires to do- at ease. I look forward to the next time I have a chance to attend Venture Café.

The Boston Business Journal has put up a Google Map showing every liquor license in the state.

The Greek International Food Market at Washington and Grove streets in West Roxbury goes before the Boston Licensing Board next Wednesday to request a license to sell beer and wine. It's across the street from Dedham Line Liquors.

Also going before the board next week: Sugar in Roslindale, seeking a license to sell beer and wine with its food.

Potentially at issue for both places: Whether the board has any licenses to dole out. The number of liquor licenses in Boston is limited by the state legislature; over the past two years, the board has denied a number of license requests because none were available at the time.

Licensing hearings start at 10 a.m. in Room 801 at City Hall.

Patty Neal reports it was more than just disconcerting to hear Christmas music today at the Mall at Chestnut Hill:

Too soon!

The mall heard Patty and responded not long after:

Sorry, someone must have put it in too soon! It's supposed to start playing just before Black Friday.

Keurig, the Reading-based maker of single-serving coffee machines, is suing a California company that makes knock-off K-cups.

In a lawsuit filed this week in US District Court in Boston, Keurig says the Rogers Family Co.'s OneCups violate two Keurig patents (here and here) for a "brew chamber for a single serve beverage brewer."

Filene's Basement will close all remaining stores and liquidate by the end of January 2012. As will the chain's current parent, Syms (which once had its own store on Summer Street, a block away from Filene's).

The Globe reports that this is the Basement's third bankruptcy filing in little over a decade -- and presumably the last.

It's also the second high-profile liquidation to afflict the Newbry (New England Life) building in Back Bay, which recently saw the closure of Borders Books.

When the guy picked out several bottles of vodka and rum at Bradley's Liquors on Boylston Street and gave manager Steven Steinberg his Pennsylvania driver's license, Steinberg compared the photo to the guy's face, saw it looked just like him, then ran the license through a scanner designed to detect fakes. When the machine said the ID was real, Steinberg took his money and let him walk out - right into a pair of Boston detectives, who quickly determined the guy was not, in fact, 21.

Steinberg's lawyer, Stephen Miller, told the Boston Licensing Board this morning Steinberg was the latest student-ghetto victim of Chinese companies that now churn out fake US driver's licenses so realistic they come with embedded microchips able to fool some of the scanners used by local bars and liquor stores to keep kids from getting their hands on booze. For $200 or so, a student with a longing for liquor can get a license that even has his or her picture - no more relying on older sibling's IDs.

Newer scanners can detect made-in-China IDs, but relatively few places have them yet - and they cost $3,500 apiece.

Pennsylvania licenses seem particularly vulnerable, Miller said.