Geekly Update December 22

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The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, made of carbon fiber and with curved wings, took off this week in what looks to be the future of aircraft. The company claims that its new baby uses 20% less fuel and has 45% more cargo space. Less filling! More space! Hey, maybe the guys from Miller Lite could market this thing.

To celebrate the trapping of 1 billion spams, Project Honey Pot, a community sourced project, celebrated by releasing data on the last five years of its work. Project Honey Pot's goal is to track online fraud and abuse. Their statistics help to show where the bad guys are hiding, how they operate, and that there are 956 different ways to spell V1agra.

Twitter fans are sure to have mixed reactions to the coming commercial Twitter accounts. While marketers may be delighted at the ability to get feedback and analytics on their tweets, I hope the trend is not moving from "I went to the bank" to "I went to Chase Bank and they approved my loan!"

If you're on the waiting list for a 27-inch iMac, it may be two weeks before you get your new toy. Apple apologized to its customers via CNET Sunday, but did not mention the cause for the delay. CNET speculates that it might have something to do with flickering displays or hard drive failures.

An analysis of the National Vulnerability Database stats reveals that Firefox had the most reported vulnerabilities, while Adobe came in second place in terms of security holes. Microsoft dropped to number three on the list, but the numbers may be misleading, because they include only the reported security holes. Firefox is open source, so all holes are publicly disclosed. But Adobe and Microsoft tend not to disclose security holes discovered internally.

Nuance has recently cut the price of their Dragon text to speech software to a mere $39.99 in honor of the holidays. They recently came up with a version for iPhone users.

Although Twitter often seems trivial, you can be happy in the knowledge that it is being used for practical purposes as well. The United States Geological Survey’s Paul Earle and Michelle Guy explained at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco that their Twitter Earthquake Detection (TED) helps discover where earthquakes occur.

Look for a new trend in electronics with small appliances that talk to you. Primula Products’ Speak 'n Brew has voice recognition. It will ask you the time to set its clock and when to brew your fave coffee. Get one for $79.99.

First there was TinyURL, then there was Bit.ly, and now bitly.tv has arrived. The URL shortening site plays the most watched videos in very little time and gives you the option to share them on social networking sites as well as offering tweets while you watch to see what others think of them.