Geekly Update May 4

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

No more campfires and knot tying for Boy Scouts, it seems. The organization has announced a new Video Games belt loop and pin. Among the requirements for Cub Scouts to win the award are teaching a parent how to play a game and setting up a family tournament.

It appears that HP will be buying Palm as the deal has met approval with both company boards. HP will be shelling out $1.2 billion, about $5.70 a share. HP hopes the acquisition will accelerate their growth in the mobile device market. I'm not sure if this is why Palm killed the "freaky ballerina" last month, but it still sounds like a win-win to me.

While Flash support has not yet come to Android phones, Skyfire has an app to fill the gap. The Skyfire 2.0 beta will soon also stream Silverlight. When a broken flash video is detected, it "magically" transforms it into HTML 5 video.

The Supreme Court will decide soon if California can ban the sale or rental of violent video games to anyone under 18. California should worry less about violent games and more about obscene budget deficits, IMHO.

Yahoo has teamed with Samsung to provide Yahoo Mail, Messenger, Search, Calendar and other services on Samsung mobile devices, including those that run on Android platforms. Huh... people still use Yahoo?

It has been three years since the BlackBerry Pearl's release, so it's about time for an update. The Pearl 3G will have GPS, WiFi, a new display, media keys, a 3.2 MP cam and an optical track pad.

Barnes & Noble has released update 1.3 for its Nook e-reader that includes a web browser, games, and performance enhancements. Don't get too excited about the browser... it's monochrome on the upper screen, and links are only clickable via the lower touch screen, which displays a slice of the upper screen.

In a reader survey, Consumerist gave their second annual Golden Poo award to Comcast. The worst company in America was so dubbed because of its high prices, poor service, limited Net access and plan to acquire NBC/Universal.

Apple's WWDC10 developer conference will take place June 7 - 11. There may be info on the next generation iPhone, MacBook updated news and a "unity release" of iPhone OS 4.1 for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad later this year.

Gamers and overclockers rejoice! Patriot has a new gaming kit that they claim is the world's fastest DDR3 RAM. Operating at 2500 MHz, the Viper II Series Sector 5 Edition is designed for Core i7 machines running Intel P55.

Sony, the company that handles 70% of the floppy disk market, officially announced that it will end sales of them in March 2011. Maybe if they had stopped calling them floppies about ten years ago, sales would be better.