AOL tried to squeeze a little over $100 in fees from a customer for upgrades he hadn't asked for, hadn't approved, hadn't used and of which he hadn't even been notified. Unluckily for AOL, that customer is a professional writer.

Current Wall Street Journal writer Jason Zweig used to work for a Time-Warner-owned magazine, and when Time Warner merged with AOL, he and his colleagues all received free AOL email accounts. Zweig gave his to his wife, who used it up until last year.

But recently, Zweig started receiving phone calls from AOL's customer service reps in India, saying he owed $103.60 for an upgrade he knew nothing about. Turns out the terms of agreement he signed years ago may (or may not) have included a section allowing AOL to upgrade his service and charge him for it. Zweig point-blank refused to pay for any ridiculous upgrade that may well not exist, and AOL tried to bargain him down to $85.

The argument devolved into AOL insisting they would attempt to collect through legal channels, and Zweig welcoming them to, as he plans to file a fraud report before they'd be able to do anything of the sort. We guess when you've floundered as much as AOL has in recent years, all you can do is try to extort old customers. It's just bad luck one of their targets happens to write for one of the country's largest news organizations. [Wall Street Journal]

Mike Arrington's CrunchPad web tablet, already several prototypes in, is quickly bubbling to reality reports Bits: There's going to be an announcement in July or August, and it'll be available "as soon as possible."

Arrington's incorporated a separate company, called CrunchPad, and has apparently spent two-thirds of the last six months working on it with his 15-man team from Fusion Garage.

It's been iterated a bunch before, but worth saying again, that the Atom-powered touchscreen CrunchPad is strictly for internet consumption—it boots directly into the WebKit browser and there's no hard drive or keyboard, though you can plug in a keyboard if you want. It does support for Flash, so Arrington's claim that compared to netbooks, "most people will find it works as good as a netbook or better" for getting their internet on sounds pretty reasonable, given its 12-inch screen. Pointedly, it's not meant to compete with Apple's mythical tablet, whenever it graces the world.

I'd take the under $300 CrunchPad over a netbook any day, since it seems like it'll surpass them at the one thing they were supposedly designed to do—eat the internet. And it still blows my mind it took a tech blogger to actually make it happen. [Bits]

Pegasus Team Operations Manager Bruce Mahoney continues his tour of the Open 50 race sailboat, picking up with how they mount the carbon fiber mast, the dagger boards, rigging material and sails. The boat crosses the starting line tomorrow!

Apologies for the shakey camera. The Flip Mino's short mic range, the wind, the size of the boat and the narrowness of the lens made things hard, but I didn't make them any better.

Philippe Kahn founded Borland, invented the Camphone, and decodes human motion. He's also a fellow outdoorsman, splitting time skiing Tahoe and sailing in Santa Cruz. He'll share his Transpac 2009 sailing race with us live from the Pegasus Open 50.
[Previous Pegasus Sailing posts on Gizmodo, Pegasus]

This wooden, yet digital, concept ruler combines "values of a traditional ruler, with advantages of a digital interface." I think it still needs lines, but how cool is it that it sets the zero point wherever you start measuring?

[noquedanblogs via notcot]

A great cover by the Christian Science Monitor. I went back and forth a few times, and ended up being wrong. Which do you think is the meat-based contruction? The answer forthcoming on Monday. [BoingBoingGadgets]

Meizu M8, maybe the most legendary knockoff gadget around, maintains its "inspired" tradition with a refreshed UI that feels faintly of the Palm Pre in terms of graphical styling. I like it, even if I know, really, I'd hate it.

[Meizu via Meizu Me via Engadget

Mobil delivered this rendering of Kiki, a Sony Ericsson phone with a projected display and um, presumably, somewhere, a keypad. I like green. People need to make more green handsets. [Mobil via Engadget]

Mobil's dug up these photos of the XPERIA Racheal, supposedly their first Android phone. Exciting, since I love Sony Ericsson hardware.

These things are kind of all starting to look the same, but it's running the Snapdragon platform, meaning it could be 1GHz, and is rumored to have an 8MP imaging sensor. Let's hope they've got the image processing sorted out, though.

[Mobil via Engadget]

Dance, dance to much booty in the, um, wrists? Your fingers have to dance like they've never danced before to shut off the alarm. Hope you don't suck at Tap Tap Revenge. $16. [Thumbsupuk via OhGizmo via Engadget]

Warning: We haven't tested this because we're playing with fireworks. [Make It Rain via BBG]