Geekly Update - 07 Mar 2011

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Apparently Chinese hackers have hacked the free Steamy Windows for Android, added a backdoor Trojan horse to infect smartphones, and placed it in a third party app store. Symantec says that the download can result in huge texting bills.

AT&T plans to use a phone's location-sensing ability to send coupons and ads to users in New York, Los Angeles San Francisco and Chicago. ShopAlerts target those who are close to retailers, like Kmart, to send mobile greetings and offer discounts for those stores.

If you happen to hang in China, it will be good to know that you can now Groupon there. Teaming with Tencent, customers can sign up on Gaopeng.com to receive discounts from local merchants.

A survey by Kaplan Test Prep reveals that 82% of college admissions offices use Facebook to recruit students according to All Facebook. So delete those embarrassing pictures and off the wall comments if you are planning to go collegiate soon.

As if you don't have enough late night cravings for Tiramisu when Internet surfing, you can now get images of prepared food with Google's Recipe Search. You get access to recipes and ingredients while it weeds out non-useful information.

SortPrice has been helping big business solicit via Facebook. They have helped at least 1,000 retailers, including those from Fortune 500 companies, let users search through catalogues, build a wishlist and share likes with friends.

Lest you forget about them, Angry Birds are being reinvented in a St. Patrick's Day version as well as the soon to be released multi-colored, animated "Rio" movie. Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka promises the new version will have lots of green, perhaps even a shamrock or two.

The ailing Steve Jobs showed up at the "Apple Event" touting the new iPad 2, to be released March 11. Available in black or white, it will run iOS 4.3, sports two cams, has 2x faster CPU and 9x faster graphics.

After the announcement, Apple decided to throw a bone to the little people by lowering the cost of the first iPad by $100.00. The 16GB model can now be acquired for $399.00 on their clearance page.

Former RealNetwork CEO Rob Glaser has found a way to combine Facebook with Skyping and Apple FaceTime to make group video chats. SocialEyes includes "video email" and group conferences to introduce a users friends to others in his/her world.