Geekly Update - 14 October 2015

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Tired of all those annoying tourists showing up in your vacation photos? Adobe has developed software to make them disappear.

“Freevolt” is a new technology that generates free but low-power electricity from ambient RF (radio frequency) signals. It could power pollution monitors or trickle-charge consumer electronics.

Sprint is hiking the price of its unlimited data plan by $10, to $70/month, effective October 16. T-mobile’s unlimited plan is still $80 while AT&T and Verizon don’t offer unlimited data.

Samsung TVs appear to be more energy-efficient in lab tests than they are in real-world use. Apparently, Samsung has been collaborating with Volkswagen.

For one brief, exhilarating moment, former Google employee Sanmay Ved owned the domain google.com. He was able to buy it for $12. The transfer was quickly canceled.

Thirty Days Hath September. But October has 31, and is National Cyber-Security Awareness Month. Once November arrives, everyone can go back to opening email attachments from unknown senders.

Amazon has dropped Apple TV and Chromecast from its Marketplace, eliminating competition for its Fire TV products.

The new Logi Circle home monitoring camera can be unplugged from its power supply and will stream video from anywhere for up to three hours on battery power.

The last cardboard library catalog cards have been printed. Production peaked in 1985 at 131 million cards. The final run was only 1 million.

Amazon Handmade is a new marketplace on the e-commerce giant devoted to 100% handmande items. Etsy.com sellers are looking at Amazon cautiously.

Maybe that guy on the subway isn't crazy. Samsung has filed patent applications for a 3D version of Google Glass that would have users poking and swiping at virtual objects in mid-air.

Over 170,000 Depression-era photos have been made available online for the first time by Yale University. You know what else is depressing? The yearly cost of attending Yale is $62,200.

Skype now offers real-time translation of conversations. This is pretty cool for people with a hearing difficulty, or when speaking to a tier-one tech support guy in Bangalore.

Airline boarding passes have bar codes that can be used by hackers to change passwords on frequent-flyer accounts and retrieve records of past and future flights. So keep those passes tucked into the book you read while waiting in line at security checkpoints.

The North Dakota town of Antler has spent nearly its entire $20,000 budget buying up land to prevent the town’s takeover by a white supremacist. So now the town is turning to crowdfunding to keep itself running.

Google has acquired the entire alphabet, registering the domain name abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com. This move possibly, maybe, perhaps has something to do with the company’s name change to Alphabet, Inc.

Microsoft’s latest Lumia phones will be carried only by AT&T. The other three major carriers have said, “no, thanks.”