Geekly Update - 19 October 2011

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Barnes & Noble was so perturbed that DC Comics is giving 100 graphic novel titles exclusively to the Kindle fire that they pulled their own supply off store shelves (but you can still get them delivered via catalogue and online.)

Apple released its iOS 5 update for download, but not without many users becoming frustrated at the efforts it took to do so.

Good news for Netflix users. In an unusual turnabout, the company says there will be no Qwikster, and will reunite the online video streaming and DVD-by-mail services under one umbrella. Oh, but the 60 percent price increase? That one stays.

What if there was an iPad/iPhone/touch app that read all your Tweets for you so you could move on to something that matters? Surprise, Tweet Speaker reads them to you and can play news, sports and other audio for $2.99.

Acer has finally unveiled its Ultrabook, Intel's version of the MacBook Air due out this holiday season. At a price of $899, the Aspire S3 offers a 2nd generation Intel Core processor, a 20GB solid-state drive, a 320GB hard drive, 6 hour usage per charge and super thin appearance.

A study done by the Texas Transportation Institute proves that texting while driving is definitely a bad thing. Asked to stop when they saw a flashing yellow light, regular drivers would take a second or two, but texters took 3 - 4 seconds and were 11 times more likely to miss it altogether.

There is finally a Facebook app for iPad, available on iTunes, that can be maneuverable by tapping, sliding or pinching. You can do pretty much everything, including larger photos, game playing and simplified navigation.

Apple released its iCloud, to be built into future products. The service allows videos, images, music, books and data to be wirelessly stored in 5GB of online storage for constant availability to iDevices with iOS 5, without the need to sync.

At the IDC Conference in San Francisco, eBay introduced X.Commerce, a teaming with other companies to make online shopping easier. Among the highlights was the introduction of PayPal access, a way to purchase online with the service using only name and password.

Sony's PlayStation Network had another security breach this week as about 93,000 user accounts were compromised. The latest attack only affected about one tenth of one percent and those have been notified to reset passwords.