Eating breakfast before facing the day is important, numerous research has found, making the stories of hungry job interviewees a perfect example of why fueling up is important.

Golden Grahams cereal -- which I'd normally associate as a breakfast cereal for children, but is apparently popular with adults -- is giving away what it calls 75 Golden Grants, which are 12 boxes of its cereal every week for three months, to winners of its contest for the best description of a job hunt experience in 120 characters or less.

The contest started Feb. 3. Two of the best submissions each week will be turned into videos each week with the job hunt advice, such as not to lie or exaggerate on your resume:

Assurance Wireless announced today that it is cutting its per-minute calling option in half in a program aimed at giving poor people cellphones.

Call it a coincidence, but the move comes less than a week after WalletPop pointed out that after the 200 free monthly minutes are used, customers can buy more airtime at 20 cents a minute -- double what the company's sister program, Boost Mobile, was offering at 10 cents a minute.

Its text messages, however, remain extraordinarily high at 15 cents, making messaging more costly than a domestic phone call. Most prepaid plans charge less for texting. Whatever. At least the calling rate drops.

From sweatpants to the Snuggie to footed pajamas, does America really need another piece of clothing to keep it warm while lazing around the house?

Yes, according to the makers of PajamaJeans, which almost seems like a hoax Saturday Night Live commercial on its Web site. A pajama seller calls them "Pajamas to live in. Jeans to sleep in."

The recession must make people willing to spend $40 on a blanket or pair of sweats with pockets to lounge around in, and now these soft blue jeans make going outside in public a comfortable alternative.

Joseph Gliottone has a quick comeback to his former advertising colleagues when they ask him about his new job picking up dog poop.

"It's the same product category, but a different clientele," said Gliottone, 53, who was a senior vice president of print production at an ad agency in Boston, and earned $158,000 a year before being laid off in December 2008.

He's now a professional pooper scooper and franchise owner of DoodyCalls, which charges about $16 a week to clean up after a dog. Since starting his business in Essex County, Mass., in September 2009, Gliottone hasn't made any money yet with the 12 clients he has, and needs about 50 to break even.

Amazon.com's surrender to Macmillan to raise prices on some of the publisher's e-books by as much as $5 should help authors out in the long run, but it isn't welcome news for readers.

Amazon's $9.99 price for new releases and best sellers is already too high for many of its users, who say that such non-physical books that they can't loan to friends or sell at a used-book store are overpriced.

Only days after Macmillan and four other large publishers agreed to provide content for Apple's iPad at prices tied to the same price as the print edition -- $12.99 to $14.99 for most general fiction and nonfiction titles in e-book form -- Amazon caved in to Macmillan's demands to allow it to sell its books on Amazon for the same prices as Apple's digital bookstore.

Just like that, Amazon lost an edge, although not much of one, that it had to the iPad -- cheaper books.

Amazon plans on keeping its new releases and best sellers at $9.99, but any Macmillan books it sells will be more expensive. Amazon briefly stopped selling Macmillan titles on Friday in response to the request, but gave in on Sunday and has started selling Macmillan books again.

One of the first things I did when I was laid off as a newspaper editor a year or so ago was get some business cards printed. Nothing fancy, just my name, e-mail address, Web site and cellphone number so potential employers could find me.

Now, as I continue trying to become New Media savvy, I learn about Poken, a social business card that bills itself as a "bridge between your life online and offline."

It's a small gadget to hang around your neck or keep on a keychain. It holds a USB port and keeps a digital file of whatever information you want to share: e-mail, Web site address, Facebook page, Twitter name, LinkedIn name and info from other social networks.

Update: Assurance Wireless announced on Feb. 3 that it is lowering per minute charges for calls to 10 cents a minute.

Assurance Wireless is offering a cellphone and 200 minutes of calls for free to low-income people -- a noble goal but one that could prove costly if the users stick with the free phone service and buy more minutes after they've used up their 200 free minutes in a month.

The program, which started in December, offers the free prepaid service for people who have incomes 135% below the federal poverty rate -- $14,621 per year for a single person and $29,768 for a family of four, for example -- in New York, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virgina.

If household income isn't that far below the poverty level, people can also qualify by receiving government assistance such as Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, Section 8 housing, the National School Lunch Program's Free Lunch Program, and other government programs.

Need a job? Know how to count? The U.S. Census Bureau needs you.

Areas around the country are reporting that after begging for applicants at the last census in 2000, for this year's count they're seeing the most applicants they've ever seen.

Samantha O'Neil, a Census spokeswoman, told WalletPop that the bureau's Web site has been "swamped with interested people" as has its road tour events. Nationally the census is looking to fill 1.17 million jobs in fiscal 2010.

But things aren't going so well in Ottawa County, Ohio, however, according to a WTOL report:

Conan O'Brien is out of a job now that his last gig on "The Tonight Show" has aired, but like many unemployed people, he'll probably find losing his job to be the best move of his career.

The $32.5 million severance he's getting from NBC is enough to take care of him for life, but that's not the issue. As far as his next career move, getting kicked off the air for Jay Leno gives O'Brien the chance to become bigger and better than he ever could have been at NBC.

"If Conan stays in character as the quirky, weird-haired guy who wants to be in comedy ... he will be a bigger success than anyone can imagine," said Doug Hirschhorn, a peak performance coach to Wall Street's elite who helps them with career advice.

"It for sure could be the best thing that happens to him if he stays in character," said Hirschhorn, author of 8 Ways to Great Peak Performance on the Job and in Your Life.

If O'Brien becomes another pissed-off comedian upset with his former employer, he'll lose a lot of interest from viewers, Hirschhorn said. O'Brien's recent zingers at NBC on how much of the company's money he spent before he left may not sit too well with people in the long run.

As I wrote about recently on WalletPop, O'Brien's new job hunt is hitting a nerve with people who are either out of a job or fearing that they'll soon be out the door. Workers can empathize with someone who has worked hard for years to get where they want to be professionally, only to lose it on a whim after being on the job for a short time.

Unemployment is leading to more men cheating on their wives -- the same women who are returning to work so these men will have a bed to sleep in at night.

Web sites that help people start affairs are seeing an increase in business during the recession as more men who can't find jobs are looking for other ways to fill their time and build up their self-esteem that has been falling since they were laid off.

"In the past six months, we've seen a 25% increase in members versus the previous six months, and it's certainly being driven by the recession," David Rees, founder and director of marriedandlooking.co.uk, which helps facilitate affairs, told theLondon Daily Mail.

LimeLife, a Web site aimed at women, reports that since people with low self-esteem are more likely to cheat on their partners, the recession is leading to more men cheating on their wives.