Bruce Horovitz reports that many of the nation's fast food eateries -- not just Taco Bell, as Karlene Lukovitz reported last week -- are offering menus (and the concomitant ad campaigns) with reduced calories for the annual weight-loss season. In fact, 61% of Americans would like to lose 20 pounds, the NPD Group says, and 64% say they are taking steps to improve the "healthiness" of their diets, according to the 2009 Food and Health Survey from the International Food Information Council. Dunkin' Donuts will announce today that customers can order any …

Todd Wasserman takes AT&T to task for having a tin ear regarding customers' complaints about its overtaxed infrastructure. Rather than refusing to sell iPhones in New York City, as was the carrier's brief decision last week in response to the overload, it should "shut up and deal with the responsibilities" of being the exclusive network for Apple's popular phone. AT&T has a history of whining about how hard it is to keep with the demand, Wasserman says. In September, it released a video starring a geeky dude named Seth the Blogger Guy. "Look, we see the discussions on …

Google introduced its new, thin, touch-screen branded mobile phone -- Nexus One -- yesterday and opened a new online phone store where consumers can buy it directly. It runs on the company's Android OS, unlocked and capable of running on any system. Google is lining up operators to offer wireless plans through its site, Jessica E. Vascelaro and Niraj Sheth report. Online sales of cell phones will change the business "just the way Web stores revolutionized how you buy something like a digital camera," says Andy Rubin, a Google vp. Nexus One costs $529 without wireless …

Dan Neil calls ING Direct's new campaign promoting its new ShareBuilder online brokerage division "sunshine-addled" and says it is trying to lure young, inexperienced investors into the market. Have we completely forgotten the crash of, oh, say a little more than a year ago, he asks. "The theme here, obviously, is empowerment," Neil writes. "These hip technocrats are going to game the system, the market, and get their 'share.' There's even a little antidisestablishmentarianism." Are we so gullible? Or are ING's market researchers truly onto something? Such as, perhaps, the gullibility that fuels consumer optimism that …

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist and author of Predictably Irrational tells Kai Ryssdal that it may not make good economic sense to charge consumers a small amount of money for their carbon emissions because, just as we do with chocolate chip cookies, we're likely to be more of a hog if we feel we're getting what we paid for. Say what? Well, here's the analogy. If someone in your office comes in with some delicious home-baked cookies and offers them to co-workers, most of us will take one or two. But if he puts …

Sources tell Yukari Iwatani Kane and Geoffrey A. Fowler that Apple expects that the long-rumored tablet-like device it will announce in San Francisco between Jan. 25 and 27 will change the way consumers interact with a variety of content. "Textbooks and newspapers, for example, could be presented differently through color screens, a touch interface, and the integration of live up-to-the-minute information from multiple sources," they are told. The product reportedly will come with a 10- to 11-inch screen and cost about $1,000 -- about the same price point as a low-end MacBook. But the price could include a …

Taco Bell is mimicking Subway with its "Drive-Thru Diet" ad campaign featuring one Christine Dougherty, who purportedly lost 54 pounds over two years by eating from the chain's Fresco menu and doing some exercising. Bloggers have tended toward "blistering" in their response, Emily Bryson York reports. The volume of online posts in social media about Taco Bell increased 44% after it launched the diet but the tone has become more negative and its Zeta Buzz rating has dropping six points (although comments remain 67% positive overall). "It seems like [the campaign is] backfiring in a big …