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Skechers has agreed to pay $40 million to consumers who purchased its  rocker-bottom shoes under the mistaken belief that the shoes would help give them Kim Kardashian's booty or Joe Montana's stamina. So how do you get your piece of the payout if you purchased the shoes months, if not years ago, and don't have a receipt? No problem. This refund relies largely on the honor system. Anyone who purchased the company's line of Shape-Up shoes -- or its Resistance Runners, Tone-ups or Toners -- is entitled to a partial refund whether they have proof of purchase or not, officials said Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO - It may be too soon to call Facebook Home a flop. But it's clearly not the breakout hit that some expected. One month after its splashy debut, fewer and fewer people are downloading Facebook's new mobile software. It took weeks for Facebook Home to hit 1 million downloads - less than 0.1% of its 1.1-billion monthly active user base. QUIZ: How much do you know about Facebook? And many who have loaded it onto their smartphones don't like it. Home has a two-star rating in the Google Play store, with more than half of the 17,000-plus reviews giving Home just one star, the lowest possible rating.

You just got your new iPhone 5 and the thought of losing it is far from your mind. But statistics show that a lot of people lose their iPhones or or get it stolen as more thieves eye the popular device. You can take steps right now that can help you quickly recover your smartphone if you were ever to misplace it or someone makes off with it. First, set up a passcode for your iPhone. It can be inconvenient but it can also help your chances of recovering your phone. And make sure "location services" is turned on. You can find that in "Settings," and then at the top of "Privacy.

SAN FRANCISCO - WhatsApp is one of Silicon Valley's most buzzed-about companies, yet it actively avoids the spotlight, operating out of a small office in Mountain View, Calif., with no sign on the building entrance or on the office door. Unlike most start-ups eager for media attention, WhatsApp Inc. says it doesn't want or need it. Its popular mobile messaging app has spread so quickly by word of mouth that in just four years it has amassed hundreds of millions of users who collectively send as many as 18 billion messages a day. WhatsApp belongs to a new generation of messaging services that are revolutionizing 20-year-old text messaging technology and escalating the mobile messaging wars.

Obsession of the moment: Hasami porcelain plates and bowls released in a new matte black finish by the Japanese design importer TGS, or Tortoise General Store, in Venice. The Hasami porcelain is beautiful in its spare simplicity and smart function. The pieces nest nicely for storage. Optional oak lids pair well with the stone bowls and can be used separately as serving trays. TGS co-owner Keiko Shinomoto says  the collection has a nice back story too: It's part of a project in the southern Japanese town of Hasami, where a pottery tradition that dates to 1599 is ailing because of -- can you guess?

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

In these troubled economic times, it's not hard to understand why people might want to protect their life savings by purchasing a hard asset like gold or silver. At least, that's the pitch of Monex, the big Newport Beach investment firm, which bills itself as "America's trusted name in precious metals investments" and assures clients that it's "committed to customer service. " So let's take a look at the experiences of some customers who say their trust in Monex was misplaced.

"The Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan is usually focused on rehabbing canines -- but he's now revealing some work he had to do on himself following a suicide attempt in 2010. In February of that year, he lost his top dog, Daddy, to cancer after 16 years as a team. A month later, Millan's wife told him she wanted a divorce after 16 years of marriage. The combined blow knocked him for a loop, he shares in "Cesar Millan: The Real Story," a documentary on Nat Geo Wild. In May 2010, he attempted suicide via drug overdose, winding up unconscious and hospitalized, he said.

You can do a lot with smartphones these days, but unless you're downloading the best apps for your device, you aren't really using it to its full potential. So if you aren't sure what to download, just make sure you have these 10 apps on your iPhone or Android device. Google Maps This app comes preinstalled on Android devices and should be the first app downloaded on iPhones. Besides top-notch design, the app is the best free voice navigation app for driving directions.

It's back. Megabus , which offered low-cost bus service to Las Vegas from L.A. in 2007 and then withdrew from the market, will begin service between the two cities on Dec. 12, it announced Wednesday. Like Greyhound , which also has recently introduced low-cost service to Las Vegas from L.A., Megabus hopes to lure Vegas-bound Angelenos out of their cars and onto modern coaches with one-way fares starting at just $1. “We've seen impressive growth throughout North America and are confident that our 21st century double-decker buses with Wi-Fi and power outlets combined with our outstanding prices will be a success among California and Nevada residents,” said Mike Alvich, Megabus.com's vice president of marketing and public relations.

SACRAMENTO - Social network sites such as Facebook would be required to remove personal information about minors when asked to do so by their parents under a measure approved by state senators Thursday. Separately, the lawmakers voted to allow misdemeanor rather than felony charges in cases of simple possession of heroin, cocaine and other hard drugs. The two bills were among several sent to the Assembly for consideration. The Internet measure was approved despite opposition from firms including Google, Facebook, Zynga and Tumblr, which called the proposed rules unnecessary, unworkable and in violation of teenagers' free-speech rights.

SAN FRANCISCO - Mark Zuckerberg is the public face of one of the world's most prominent companies. But now it's his actions as a private citizen that are making him - and Facebook Inc. - a target of environmentalists and progressive activists, highlighting the pitfalls of political involvement at a level rarely attempted in Silicon Valley. The 28-year-old billionaire co-founder and chief executive of Facebook has funded a political advocacy group called Fwd.us that has come under fire for spending millions on television ads that support expansion of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

A little over a week after being released, Facebook's new interface for Android smartphones, Facebook Home, has crossed the 500,000 mark for downloads on Google Play. The interface, installed the same way as smartphone apps, gives users' home screens a new look that focuses on their Facebook friends rather than their apps. Facebook Home removes users' lock and menu screens and replaces them with status updates and photos posted by their friends. Facebook Home was released on April 12 alongside the HTC First, the so-called Facebook phone, and it gained its 500,000th download on Google Play over the weekend.

A high school teacher is set to be arraigned Friday in Newport Beach on charges he used a fake girl's Facebook profile to lure teenage boys to send him sexually explicit photos and videos of themselves. Zachary Joshua Reeder, 30, of Orange, is to be charged with about 60 felonies. He could face up to 44 years in prison if convicted. He taught at Servite High School and previously worked as a teacher and coach in Irvine. He allegedly established online relationships with at least 106 boys, some of them students he knew through teaching and coaching, prosecutors said.  While teaching at the all-male private school in Anaheim, authorities said, Reeder created a Facebook page designed to win over teenage boys and coax them into posting sexually provocative photos and videos of themselves.

Facebook has begun expanding the free voice calling feature on its Messenger app to Android users. Earlier this year, the company introduced free voice calling for iPhone users, letting them use the Messenger app to call other Facebook members. The app uses smartphones' Internet connections to make the call, either through a Wi-Fi network or over 3G or 4G networks. Now, three months after introducing the feature for iPhone users, Facebook started rolling it out to some U.S. Android users Thursday afternoon and says more users will get the feature throughout Friday.

With cellular service in Boston jammed in the aftermath of the marathon explosions this week, many people were left scrambling for ways to let loved ones know they were safe and to search for information on family and friends. Social networks and other websites became the go-to solutions in many cases, as scores of people posted updates saying they were unharmed and offering firsthand accounts and photographs from the scene. Because the Internet wasn't affected, Boston residents used Facebook and Twitter to reach out to large numbers of people at once; they also turned to Apple Inc.'s iMessage, Skype and Google Inc.'s Voice.

In our connected world, you can't hide unless you run. On Tuesday, a good friend of mine got an email from the chairman of the Washington state Democratic Party informing her that county records showed her mail-in ballot for the primary election had not yet been received. Clearly, turning out the vote is no longer just a generalized effort of making phone calls or walking door-to-door. Now, each one of us is a virtual GPS point on a political grid and the decision to vote is not a private affair.

Thanks to Bitly, the popular link-shortening service, we can add another tool to our arsenal of tricks to get noticed on social media. Timing our tweets, and Facebook and Tumblr posts right. Researchers at Bitly have put together data that show that for each of the top three social media networks -- Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr -- there are optimal times for posting links to maximize click-through, and times when you might as well be posting into a vacuum. They also found that the optimal time differs, depending on the social media site.

An Orange County high school history teacher and former baseball coach has been charged with allegedly creating a fake Facebook account and posing as a blond girl to get underage boys to send him sexually explicit photos and videos of themselves. Zachary Joshua Reeder, 30, allegedly established online relationships with at least 106 boys, some of them students he knew through teaching and coaching.  Reeder, an instructor at Servite High School and previously a teacher and coach in Irvine, is set to be arraigned Friday on more than 60 felony charges, according to the Orange County district attorney's office.

Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of Will Smith, is addressing those open-marriage rumors again - less than two weeks after chatting about it on HuffPost Live. Now, the Ministry heard a "no" the first time around when Pinkett Smith was asked flat-out, "Is it true?" but we appear to have been in the minority. So much so that Jada took to Facebook over the weekend to try to explain herself, framing her comments as a discussion of trust and love. Or, as she put it, TRUST and LOVE. Can you hear her now?