Geekly Update October 13

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Oh the irony... on the very same day President Obama was awarded a dubious Nobel Peace Prize, the United States bombed the moon! NASA fired an LCross into the moon last Friday, resulting in more of a whimper than the promised bang. The LCROSS impact failed to produce any evidence that water exists on or under the lunar surface.

Creative Sony has combined a photo frame with built-in printer. The DPP-F700 has a 7-inch screen (800x400 res,) 1GB memory and 21 templates with editing. Using TruFast technology, it will create 4 x 6" prints with up to a 300x300 dpi that will be water, discoloration and fingerprint resistant. Out next month, it will carry a $290 price tag. Nifty, but for that price, I could hire a kid to ride his bike to Walgreens and pick up my prints about 29 times.

AT&T has launched the first smartphone with both standard and satellite connectivity. The TerreStar Genus will be out in Q1 2010 for business and government users, with one for consumers out later. The phone runs GSM/EDGE/WCDMA/HSDPA, has 100MB memory, Windows 6.5, WiFi and Bluetooth capability and GPS, of course. Aimed at the US, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, it connects to the TerreStar network when out of AT&T range.

Neowin reports that about 20,000 email accounts and passwords from hotmail.com, msn.com and live.com were posted online October 1 on the site pastebin.com. On the list were mostly names beginning with the letters A and B and originating in Europe. Although the list has been removed, Microsoft suggests you change your password if you suspect you were on the list. Ummm, if you were on the list, you probably can't even login, because someone phished your password and posted it on a public bulletin board...

Netbooks may be inexpensive but they certainly can't do what a full PC can. To this end, look for light notebooks with an Intel CULV (consumer ultra-low voltage) such as the Toshiba Satellite T100 series at prices starting at $449.00 and due out this month.

All you need to do is look around your grocery store to know that all those pink labels mean that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. SonyStyle is offering a Pink W Series Mini Notebook and Rose Reader Pocket Edition for the cause. All told, they will donate over $100,0000 from sales of the pink gadgets.

Amazon dropped the price of their Kindle this week to $259.00, $40.00 off the current price. They also have introduced an International Kindle so that you can read on the go when you get tired of sightseeing.

If that still seems a bit pricey, display maker AUO claims that the price of ebook readers should drop to $150.00 next year and to $100.00 by 2011. In an interview with the Financial Times, they claim that both Amazon and Sony will get some of their displays from the company, making the Kindle and Reader less expensive as well.

According to an international study, text messaging may be able to help smokers quit. Txt2Quit sends a couple of messages each day before their quit date and for a month after. Participants can also text "crave" or "slip up" to a special number and receive an immediate text message reply with tips for staying on track. Unfortunately, this service is only available to people living in New Zealand.