Technology – Page 80 – MeisterPlanet

Bissel SpotBot

Bissel Spotbot Now that I’ve got a new puppy that’s not housetrained yet, doggy messes are more common here at the Meister House than ever. In light of that, I picked up one of Bissel’s new SpotBots.

I already have a decent vacuum cleaner and a Hoover Agility Steam Cleaner, but dragging both out to clean a small stain is often overkill.

The SpotBot is designed to be placed over stains and set to one of two automated cleaning cycles. From there, the circular brush and wet-vac nozzles scrub at the mess with a combination of water and steam cleaner chemicals. The longer of the two cycles takes about six minutes to complete and the device can be left unattented during that time.

The unit works well as a specialized cleaning tool, but certainly isn’t a replacement for weekly cleaning with your regular carpet cleaning tools. For those with kids and pets, the ability to quickly tackle stains, spills and messes makes it an easy buy.

CNN Money on Online Crime

CNN Money has an article delving into the world of online credit card theft.Â One of the more interesting portions includes the following:

Gaffan says these credit card numbers and data are almost never obtained by criminals as a result of legitimate online card use. More often the fraudsters get them through offline credit card number thefts in places like restaurants, when computer tapes are stolen or lost, or using “pharming” sites, which mimic a genuine bank site and dupe cardholders into entering precious private information. Another source of credit card data are the very common “phishing” scams, in which an e-mail that looks like it’s from a bank prompts someone to hand over personal data.

I get asked about the safety of online shopping on a daily basis by the clients.Â I generally tell them that if your credit card is stolen from a retail corporation’s database, it really doesn’t matter if the card number got there through a website shopping cart or from the register in a physical store.

Despite all the horror stories, your sensitive information isn’t in danger because of all the new technology available out there, it’s in danger because of the possibility of giving your information to the wrong people in the first place.

Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP

In an effort to join other family members in their recent discovery of Skype‘s free video-conferencing features, I purchased a Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP webcam ($129 – Best Buy).

It’s definitely more expensive than the average $40 webcam that most will use, but I came across a video demonstration of the face-tracking features being used to amusing effect.

I’ve had cheap $30 webcams before and their poor video quality and small angle of view annoyed me enough that the Orbit MP’s 1.3 megapixel, 30 fps video capture ability interested me greatly. The face-tracking feature is also nice for someone like myself who tends to move around often during a conversation. The camera’s software recognizes facial features and will rotate the camera through a full 189Â° horizontal arc and 102Â° vertically.

Image of the Day: Underground Submarine Base

The architecture website Archibase.net has a great series of photographs from an abandoned underground nuclear submarine base in Balaklava, Russia.

McAfee’s Spyware Quiz Fails Most Users

Aviran’s Place has an entry up talking about the results of a spyware quiz created by antivirus maker McAfee.

According to the results of the quiz, nearly 65% of all quiz takers would have been infected by spyware and adware had the tests been real.Â And even those who did better at correctly identifying potential spyware were still likely to visit a potentially dangerous website within thirty days.

Take the SiteAdvisor Spyware Quiz yourself and see how well you’d fare.Â And don’t forget to look into an antispyware program such as Webroot’s Spysweeper.