Geekly Update - 28 August 2014

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

No really... DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL! The 2015 Corvette sports car has a Valet Mode. At the touch of a button, the glove compartment and center console compartments are locked; the infotainment system is disabled; and a video camera records every movement and sound in the vehicle. Add a shock delivery system to the steering wheel, and it'll be perfect.

Adult female gamers now outnumber teen boy gamers 2:1, according to the Entertainment Software Association’s annual demographics survey – which relies upon the utterly honest and reliable input of teen boys who buy online games.

As if skateboarders don’t make life sufficiently hazardous for ordinary, responsible sidewalk users, the Acton Motorized Roller Skates are set to debut, capable of sending a flailing, off-balance adrenaline junkie slamming into you at 12 mph. Fortunately, they start at $600 so you won’t encounter many outside of Silicon Valley.

Wearable tech I can get into: "The user just needs to move into the desired pose, activate the Chairless Chair and profit from the provided posture support." Handy for anyone who stands behind a counter, at a factory machine, or at bus stops for long periods. And it doesn’t transmit your vital signs, location, or credit card activity to anyone (that we know).

(Insert pun here.) The long-lost first film produced and directed by Orson Welles can now be viewed or downloaded courtesy of the National Film Preservation Society. The unedited, 66-minute farce entitled “Too Much Johnson” was completed three years before Welles’ masterpiece, “Citizen Kane.”

Speaking of film classics, to turn your favorite YouTube clip into a shareable animated GIF image, just insert the letters “gif” between “www.” and “youtube.com” in the clip’s URL, e. g., “http://www.gifyoutube.com/....” You’ll be taken to the GIFYouTube site where your clip will be prepped and you can select frames to GIF-i-fy. I predict Google's lawyers will pounce all over this in 5... 4... 3...

And now we complete our little cinema trifecta! Fans of Clint Eastwood’s early film, “The Eiger Sanction,” will love this panoramic, first-person point of view tour of the famously difficult North Face climb.

Having solved all problems of poverty and collapsing textile factories, researchers in Bangladesh turned their skills to the next most critical question: “Can a keyboard tell what you’re feeling?” They developed a program that guesses a user’s emotional state by the pressure and rhythm of his/her keystrokes with a high degree of accuracy. Perfect for men who aren't even aware of their emotions most of the time.

“Coworking spaces” are popping up worldwide. They are walk-in/walk-out offices for remote workers who can’t stand their real office mates and don’t want to be disturbed by the steam-engine hiss of espresso machines.

This is the ideal way to "go green..." All of the traffic lights you encounter can be green; or you can make them green for everyone, ensuring city-wide mayhem. Researchers in Michigan found that modern wirelessly networked traffic lights are easily hacked and simple to control.

If you die in Delaware, your social media assets including usernames and passwords will pass to your heirs just like any other inheritable property, thanks to newly enacted legislation that addresses this increasingly significant issue. (Note to self: Don't die in Delaware!)

NASA needs your help. The space agency has over 1.8 million photos of places on Earth, taken from the International Space Station and image satellites. Problem is, NASA doesn’t know where on Earth those places are. That’s where you and other Internet sleuths come in; earn your Space Image Detective Badge!