Geekly Update - 28 November 2012

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

"Hey, my lenses are up here, buddy!" Creepy, spying dummies are not confined to airport security checkpoints. The EyeSee is a mannequin with embedded video camera and face-recognition software that captures the apparent age, gender, and ethnicity of passing customers. Manufacturer Almax SpA says it helps stores optimize merchandise displays and get to know their customers better.

Right on time for the holiday season, Amazon is offering its Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch Tablet. Pick one up at Amazon.com, or at your local Best Buy, Staples or Radio Shack for $299.

“Oh, bother!” Finnish police confiscated a 9 year-old girl’s Winnie the Pooh laptop while investigating a complaint about illegal downloading of music files. Her parents said the girl didn’t know what she was doing, then bought her a legal copy of the album. Bottom line, the girl does know how to get music for free!

Think someone is stealing your WiFi? Catch and block them with WhoIsOnMyWiFi. There’s lots of complex and/or expensive network monitoring software out there, but this utility is dead simple and costs only $29.95 after a 30-day trial.

Verdict: Disappointing. Computer usability expert Jakob Nielsen has reported the results of his Windows 8 user tests. Nielsen claims that both novices and power users will struggle with hidden features, extra cognitive overhead from dual environments, the new single-window paradigm, and other deficiencies in the design of the Win8 interface.

Have your friends been posting copyright claims on their Facebook pages, in order to fend off alleged data or privacy grabs by Facebook? It's a hoax, and these postings are useless. The only news is that Facebook is ending their practice of allowing member voting on changes to its terms of service. The company says its current site governance process “incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality.” (But isn't "quantity over quality" what made Facebook so successful? Oh well...)

MasterCard is testing a more secure credit card with a built-in numeric keypad and LCD display called the Display Card. Users enter a PIN each time they use the card, trading convenience for extra protection against unauthorized use.

This is why competition matters. Two analysts went to Kansas City to see how Google Fiber is coming along. Perhaps the biggest benefit they noted is that “Time Warner Cable is literally going from house to house to check Internet speeds and make sure customers are happy. If all Google Fiber does is make cable companies start caring more about customer service, it will be a big win for the country.”

Struggling to decipher distorted characters to prove you’re human may be replaced with simple games that computers can’t play. Are You A Human replaces frustrating CAPTCHA tests with animated objects and simple challenges like “Make lemonade.” Humans easily move lemons and ice into a pitcher, but bots are stymied.

Only $480 for a 3D printer? That's a heckuva bargain, as most others start above $2,000. The Portabee is a portable, basic 3D printer that prints objects as big as a coffee mug using ABS or PLA plastic. Finally, I can make that Snow Gun, and rule the world!

Text messaging declined in the third quarter of 2012; the average American sent “only” 676 SMS messages per month. (OMG RLY?) Perhaps IP-based apps such as iMessage for iOS and WhatsApp for Android are cutting into telcos’ lucrative SMS business.