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By TIMES WIRES
Published February 23, 2007

MIAMI

GOLFER TAKES A SWING OVER WIKIPEDIA INFO

Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is suing to track down the author who posted what he considers a defamatory paragraph about him on the Internet reference site Wikipedia. Zoeller's attorney, Scott D. Sheftall, said he filed the lawsuit against a Miami firm last week because the law won't allow him to sue St. Petersburg-based Wikipedia. The suit alleges someone used a computer at Josef Silny & Associates, a Miami education consulting firm, to add the information to Zoeller's Wikipedia profile. Wikipedia, which describes itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," leaves it to a vast user community to catch factual errors and other problems. The paragraph in question, which alleged without verification that Zoeller abused drugs, alcohol and his family, has been removed, but the information has been picked up by other Web sites.

SEATTLE

Buzz brewing over Starbucks' free T's

Starbucks customers are used to lining up for coffee, but some are not taking another wait so well. Shortly after the Seattle coffee chain said last week that it would give away customized T-shirts online, restless fans began to grumble. "Feeling lucky? Go ahead and try to get one of the T-shirts being given away online from Feb. 15 through Feb. 28," wrote Jim Romenesko, webmaster for Starbucksgossip.com, where baristas and customers swap insights, share their successes of scoring one, sometimes more, of the shirts as well as those fretting an their inability to get the freebie. On Wednesday, Romensko wrote that Starbucks is limiting the offer to a total of 10,000 T-shirts. Designed by TV's Project Runway finalist Mychael Knight, the T-shirts feature a Starbucks cup on which customers can "write" their order, like, a "Grande 2-shots Vanilla Lowfat Cafe Latte."

ROCHESTER, N.Y.

Salesman will pay for fake sob story

A salesman was ordered to pay back more than $50,000 to an Atlanta software company that accused him of begging off work for months by falsely claiming his young son was stricken with cancer. Lancope Inc. said in a lawsuit that Michael Ruffalo launched a tale of hardship right after he took a sales job in November 2005 as a regional account manager. He was given paid leave and unmasked as a liar four months later when the firm tried to send flowers after being told the boy had died, the lawsuit said. Ruffalo must return $52,517 in wages, benefits and interest because he failed to answer Lancope's complaints over the past nine months, state Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Fisher ruled in a default judgment this week.

[Last modified February 22, 2007, 23:56:41]