Geekly Update January 5

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Duracell used pedal power again at their Smart Power Lab to illuminate this year's NY Times Square 2010 sign by allowing participants to hop on Power Rovers, create energy and store it in the Duracell Battery Center. Next, let's strap all our federal legislators into these things, and make them pedal until the national debt comes down a few trillion.

For the first time ever, Kindle ebook sales last month season have exceeded those of physical books. December 14th was Amazon's peak day of sales, with customers ordering over 9.5 million items worldwide, 110 items per second. And is anyone surprised that the Oster Electric Wine-Bottle Opener was the third most popular item in Amazon's Home & Garden department?

The free Clean Drive utility allows you to wipe out old files from drives or directories automatically. After finding those older than a specified amount of days (up to one year,) you are given the option of deleting them.

Are you the type that can never remember important numbers and data? The QwicKey USB card swiper can be used to automatically fill credit card forms. With custom software and security protection, the $49.95 card reader includes a year's subscription to their online service.

The clever District Attorney of Montgomery County, Texas, Brett Ligon, has published names of those caught DWI on their Twitter page during this holiday season. Fine, but do these drunk drivers even know what Twitter is?

McAfee Labs predicts that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook will become the focus of cyber-criminals during 2010. Their latest report claims the Chrome OS, Acrobat Reader and Flash will also be used as attack vectors.

Craig "Lazie" Lynch escaped from Hollesley Bay Prison in southern England 3 months ago and is still at large and bragging about it, according to USA Today. Lynch regularly updates his Facebook fan page, letting his 40,000 fans know that he is having a great time, thank you very much.

In a letter to the FCC, AT&T's CEO John deButts has decided that it is time for the landline, aka POTS, (Plain Old Telephone Service) to say goodbye. The gist of his message was "the question is when, not if, POTS service and the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) over which it is provided will become obsolete." How about as soon as you can have a cell phone call without getting dropped or missing every third word?

Lake Superior State University released its 35th annual list of banished words, those that they feel are grossly misused. Included on the list were "czar," "bromance," "chillaxin'," "sexting" and "unfriend", a word that was named as the Oxford English Dictionary's word of 2009.