Geekly Update - 29 August 2012

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Some parents of students at Louisiana's Moss Bluff Elementary School feel that using a palm scanner to speed up paying for school lunches may be a sneaky way to implant the mark of the beast on their children.

"I'll take Business Analytics for 16 Billion, Alex." IBM is making moves to shrink the Watson supercomputer's brain into a mobile form factor. The goal is for Watson 2.0 to able to analyze and respond to text, spoken words or images, and operate on a smartphone.

Attention geeky gals tired of boring bras... An Etsy vendor is offering geek/tech themed bras (and shoes) for those who want to flaunt their love of technology. Options include the Nintendo Controller Bra, Xbox Power Button Bra, the Calculator Bra, along with Star Trek, Star Wars and Super Mario offerings.

"I thought it was a kitten, then some words came out!" Reviewers on Amazon are poking fun at Bic's new Pens for Her line of pens designed to appeal to women.

Clean freaks with touchscreens now have an alternative to messy fingerprints with Leap, a motion sensing device that interprets natural hand motions. The $70.00 device plugs into a USB port, and enables touch-free click, scroll, pinch, zoom and other gestures.

A special edition Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has been released for students, bundled with a keyboard dock and USB adapter for $249.99. The white tablet comes packed with Polaris Office for typing up reports, a listing of educational apps and is available through September 1, 2012.

South Korean researchers have taken us a step closer to 3D without the nerdy glasses. In a study published in Optics Express, their method uses a frontal projection display with passive polarizing components to achieve their results.

Can't wait for the latest iPhone but don't think you can afford it or do without your current one? Gazelle makes it easy by allowing you to sell it now but not mail it to them until October 11.

T-Mobile will be offering an Unlimited Nationwide Data plan for $20.00 monthly when added to their Value voice and messaging plan or $30.00 to their Classic voice and text plan. The change takes place September 5 and includes no data caps on its 4G coverage.

A new safety program dubbed Safety Pilot Model Deployment has begun testing this week in Ann Arbor, Michigan, developed by UM's TRI, U.S. DOT and a collaboration of eight automakers. After a year of prep time, about 3,000 volunteers have vehicles installed with WiFi that can "talk" to each other as well as be aware of traffic lights and road signals.