Geekly Update March 24

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

The FCC visited Congress this week in an effort to convince them that Americans need $350 billion dollars worth of universal broadband. Earth to FCC... Come in FCC... USA has 12 Trillion Dollar Debt...

Google.cn may soon be gone. According to their blog, the company is concerned enough about the hits on themselves, other large companies and Chinese human rights activists to possibly warrant a shut down.

Twitter will now be routing all links through a filter. The announcement came after users were victimized by phishing scams that had been spread in direct messages through links.

Panasonic kicked off its "Touch the Future Tour" this week in selected cities. Participants will be able to see their new 3D Home Theater, Skype enabled VIERA CAST IPTVs and NVDIA's 3D Play.

Not content to merely attack Nokia for patent infringement, Apple is suing HTC over 20 design ideas that they believe are derived from the iPhone. Kind of a cheeky move for a company whose very name was borrowed from a fruit.

TomTom has released the 1.3 version of its iPhone application. Included are new features such as Google Local Search, auto day/night mode, real time traffic, map updates, pinch to zoom and more. The price is $59.99 on iTunes, $10.00 more with Canadian maps and the yearly $19.99 app subscription. In related news, my Droid smartphone comes with an awesome Map/GPS app that does turn-by-turn voice navigation, real-time traffic and other cool stuff for FREE!

The Korean made viliv S10 Blade works as both a netbook and tablet. The 10.23 x 7.28 x 1.02" device has a swivel, multi-touch screen that can be used with fingers or stylus with its handwriting recognition. The pocket PC packs Windows 7, an Intel Atom processor, a 10 hr. battery, WiFi capability and webcam.

Spring Design has begun to take pre-orders for its $399.00 Alex ereader. Due out April 14, it has both a 6 and 3.5" display, is WiFi capable, a microSD card slot and support for EPUB, PDF, TXT and HTML. The Android-based device was voted Best eReader of CES 2010, and can also do Gmail, Twitter and Facebook.

Opera Software has released the final version of Mini 5 and Mobile 10 for smartphones. Head over to their site if you would like to take advantage of their free download that includes speed dial, password manager and tabbed browsing.

At MIX10, the web designer and developer conference, Microsoft introduced their new Windows Phone Marketplace. Available now are games, music and housing apps that will run on phones that have the Windows Mobile operating system.

Dell apparently thinks that projectors are here to stay and came up with one that is 3D capable. The S300w plugs into USB and displays 90" 720p images up to 60" away with 2200 ANSI lumens, a 2,400:1 contrast ratio and a $999 price tag.