Geekly Update April 5

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

Facebook has proposed a change to its privacy policy, permitting them to send your name, image and friends list to 3rd party companies. They claim this will to "make way for some exciting new products." And you'll have to opt out if you don't like it. What's next Facebook? Randomly turning on our webcams and selling the "exciting" footage to the highest bidder?

ClearPlay is a DVD player that removes questionable content such as nudity or profanity based on customizable filters that you download. The player will skip or mute scenes that parents don't want their kids to see. Fine, fine... but will it warn parents when Erykah Badu is nearby?

Yelp is being sued by some small businesses that say they have been pressured to advertise on the site in exchange for removal of negative reviews. California Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital owner Gregory Perrault claims that a sales rep promised to remove 2 negative comments if he invested in a one-year $300-a-month ad buy. And for a limited time, it's still free to add bogus POSITIVE comments.

AdMob tracked smartphone usage from February 2009 to 2010 and found that there was a 193% overall increase. The iPhone grabbed 50% of that traffic while Android phones had 24% and Symbian devices had 18% usage.

LookTel software lets smartphones recognize and identify objects and landmarks audibly. As an aide for the visually impaired, it can be taught to scan and identify such things as money, DVDs, medicine bottles and packaged goods.

McDonald's Japan is developing a Nintendo DS program for employees that should cut training time in half.

McAfee cautions that there is a new scam involving Facebook that can access your computer's user name and password as well. Beware of bogus emails claiming to be from the social networking site that says that they reset your password, and asks you to open an attachment.

Amazon now has a free Kindle application for Mac users. The download is fairly simple and will go into your Apps folder.

Google has added some extra security to Gmail that alerts the user if it suspects suspicious activity. For example, if you always check your email from the same location and it notices activity from the other side of the planet, it will let you know the geographic location.

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group did a recent spam survey with the results showing that half of them admitted to opening spam, or clicking links in unsolicited emails. Even more disturbing, almost half of those who have opened spam did so intentionally – either out of curiosity, or because they were interested in the spammers' product or service. I keep saying it... we need that electric shock feature on household PCs.

Asuswill be incorporating USB 3.0 in its entire product line, including their Eee PC, Eee Box and notebooks. The company claims that the technology is about 75% faster than USB 2.0.

CERN has reported that their Large Hadron Collider has emitted 3.5 trillion electron volts, three times the most amount of energy ever achieved. They plan to start colliding the bZYd739 d83Hh6lKf8 #4~Fc`V #@u-D*z$zzzz....