Remember the days of hotel keys? Not the flimsy cards they give you nowadays, but the actual metal keys that you picked up from the front desk clerk. Seems like forever ago, right? Well pretty soon those little cards will be a thing of the past as well. This week Hilton Hotels announced that they are going to be launching an app that will let you select room preferences and check in and out all from your phone. By early next year you will be able to unlock your hotel room door straight from the app. Once that is implemented, there will be virtually no reason to visit the check-in desk. This is exciting news for frequent travelers who have to deal with front desk hassles often. Hilton isn’t the originator of the hotel app; Starwood hotels and resorts came out with their app earlier this year. If that name doesn’t sound familiar, Starwood owns the fancy “W” hotels along with chains like the Westin and the Sheraton. With these two heavy hitters offering this service, imitation will surely follow with smaller hotels.

As if the narcissistic “selfie” craze that’s so popular right now isn’t embarrassing enough, Microsoft announced this week that they are set to release their new Lumia “Superman” phone with one unique feature: a forward facing camera. Looks like Microsoft has decided to cash in on the trend of people shamelessly taking photos of themselves, and is hoping this feature will set their Windows phone apart from the competition. The reality of this phone is that it will save selfie fanatics the approximate 2 seconds that it takes to switch your phone’s camera from normal to forward facing. Then consider that you might want to take a photograph of something other than your own face? There is a time delay for that, hopefully it’s not an action shot.

Naturally the phone will come with the egomaniac’s guide to the Internet; preloaded with all the necessities such as Instagram, Photoshop and Vine. This way you can Photoshop and post your selfie right away! Just remember to filter out all those flaws first; after all no one likes an unedited selfie! The Superman is slated for a late summer release. It’s guaranteed that there will be a lot of people that are into this idea; but whether that percentage will be higher than the group that finds this concept completely ridiculous is still unknown.

Beware: If you are using a Samsung phone with a 3^rd party battery; your phone just might implode in flames. This week it was reported that a 13-year-old girl in Texas fell asleep with her Samsung Galaxy under her pillow, where it caught fire while she was sleeping. Luckily the smell of fumes woke the girl woke middle of the night, and the flames were extinguished.

Samsung’s owner’s manual does state that 3^rd party batteries are not supported, but that is information for the consumers that actually read the fine print, whomever they may be. Perhaps they should consider putting that warning in a much larger print, considering what dangerous situations this could put a user in.

Samsung offered to replace the phone and the burned bedding, although they are sticking to the excuse that the warning is listed in the manual. Hopefully this little girl’s experience will help bring awareness to this possible danger, and will keep it from happening to someone else.

The uber popular dating app Tinder is burning up with more than love and lust this week. It looks like the app has encountered some problems with annoying malware and bots attacking their site. These bots have started creating fake profiles of attractive potential suitors in hopes of luring unsuspecting love seekers to porn and prostitution sites. Tinder has wised up to these antics and is working to block these pests, but now spammers are asking that you leave the website for a 3^rd party site, so if you use Tinder be aware. Once you get directed to those sites it will tell you that your age must be verified, and will ask you to enter your credit card. We all think that no one could be naïve enough to actually enter their personal information in these situations, but you would be surprised. Stay on your toes and make sure you are not getting hooked up with a virus-infested bot. Just swipe left. ♥

Our Facebook pages will outlive some of us. And now our profiles are all set for that to happen. Facebook announced this week that they have tweaked their privacy settings in the event that a user passes on and their profile becomes a “memorialized” page. This way a users page will still be active, even in the event that the user is not. They are also implementing something called a “Look Back” video for user’s that have passed on. These videos became popular when Facebook generated them for their tenth anniversary. They will include a user’s top posts, important moments and most liked pictures. Sounds a little morbid, but perhaps this will be a helpful tool to grieving loved ones. Time will only tell.

Google announced this week that they are giving their Google maps a little make-over by adding 3-D feature. This will allow you to simulate flying over the city, without the blurriness that comes with normal Google maps. This sounds familiar to Google Earth, but is supposed to give a life-like experience of feeling like you are really in the city itself. London is the fifth city in the U.K. thus far that has been given the 3-D treatment, but hopefully we can expect a U.S. city to be next. Although this is news for Google, Apple has had a 3-D mapping option for about a year. Google mapping is much more popular than Apple however, and Google states that they hope to map the world. Sounds pretty ambitious to the rest of us, but nothing’s impossible.

Bitcoins can be confusing. They have been around for awhile now, and this week in New York a plan was proposed to protect consumer rights where Bitcoins are concerned. There’s still a lot of mystery surrounding this new currency, or faux currency as some see it. Bitcoins are basically virtual currency. They are not backed by any federal bank, so they are seen as risky. Bitcoins are the first invention in what is known as cryptocurrency: the exchanging of money online through a secure information economy. Some retailers are already accepting bitcoins as a way to pay for goods, and it sounds like the technology is on the verge of breaking through to the more general public. If the New York Department of Financial Services gets their way, there will be consumer protection when using Bitcoins. This would be a big step in the digital money world. Now the rest of us just need to figure out what it all means.

Home Depot came out with the news this week that they are featuring 12 brand-new 3-D printers in selected stores around California, New York and Chicago. They will have a whole staff dedicated to teaching customers on how to use the printer, and will even help you create little mementos to keep. This is seen by some as a risky venture for Home Depot, as it doesn’t seem to be the correct market for such an expensive technology. On the other hand this might draw a big crowd, curious to see how the new printers work. These will be available for sale both in the selected stores and online. There will be about four MakerBot models to choose from retailing from$1,300 to $2,900.

About two years ago a mini computer about the size of a credit card was unleashed on the market. It’s able to connect to computer monitor or a TV and it can handle most things that a regular sized computer can. You can play computer games with it, create spreadsheets, surf the interwebz, watch high resolution videos and it even has a camera to take pictures or videos. The Raspberry Pi was developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and was originally designed to teach kids the ins and outs of computer programming in a super affordable way.

They started with two models; the first is called “model A” and retails for $25, the “model B” version for $35. This week the company released an upgraded version of Model B, aptly named “Model B+” and it is already on shelves ready for purchase. The computer will have some upgrades and will still be the low price of $35. There were two USB ports added, for a grand total of four ports. They also lowered the power consumption level, and added a micro SD slot. The B+ also has kept with the same ARM-based BCM2835 processor plus an HDMI port and it still comes with the same 512MB of RAM.

This is great news for anyone who wants to pick one up for their child or even themselves to play around with and learn some cool new computer tricks. The possibilities are endless with this little pocket sized computer.