Geekly Update - 30 April 2013

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

A San Francisco man popped the question, geekly style. While the couple was taking a stroll in Alamo Square, a remote-controlled hexacopter drone arrived, bearing the ring. She said yes. :-)

"Happy Birthday, Web!" Twenty years ago today, the software for the World-Wide Web was officially released. It was invented by physicist Tim Berners-Lee, to help scientists share data, but he couldn't have predicted the popularity of silly cat videos.

Yelp has reviews of State prisons and local jails, in case you ever need that information. Inmates, guards, visitors, attorneys, and pranksters review and rate the facilities, some of which earn five stars.

"If it wasn't for those meddling kids, I would have gotten away with it!" A Dutch hacker arrested in Spain for the biggest cyberattack in history had an awesomely equipped cyberbunker and a mobile cybervan. Identified as “S. K.” by police, he is accused of a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack against spam watchdog Spamhaus.

In Q1 2013, smartphone shipments outnumbered low-end feature phone shipments for the first time, according to analysts at International Data Corp. 216.2 million shipped smartphones accounted for 51.6 per cent of the total.

AT&T Digital Life launched on April 26, 2013. The home-automation service includes options ranging from security systems to remote unlocking of doors, energy control, and carbon monoxide detectors. It’s ISP-agnostic, unlike similar services from Verizon.

Google has reduced the risk of malware spoofs by requiring Android apps that were downloaded from its Google Play store to distribute updates via the same channel. Apps acquired from other sources are not subject to this Google developer requirement.

While all major carriers do well in voice and text, Verizon leads the pack and has a significant edge in data speeds and coverage. So says the latest research from mobile analytics firm RootMetrics in a recent report.

Should Amazon teach you about piranhas or sell bulk toilet paper? A coalition of South American governments is challenging Amazon.com’s application for the .amazon top-level domain, arguing that private companies should not be able to appropriate geographical terms for profit.

T-mobile has agreed to stop misleading ads that imply its new pricing plans are “contract-free,” at least in the State of Washington. You may be able to walk away from the service, but you’re still indebted for the phone.

Facebook has started dishing images in Google’s WebP format to browsers that support it (Chrome and Opera, currently). This saves bandwidth but makes saving and manipulating images difficult.

Your thoughts on these topics are welcome! Post your comment or question below...