Geekly Update November 9

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

The Droid, a Verizon exclusive, became available this week for $199. With a 3.7-inch 854x480 display, this Android-based phone offers apps, maps and voice. I stumbled into a Droid promo on the Embarcadero in San Francisco last Friday, and got to check out the new iPhone killer. The verdict: I want one. Here's more on the Droid Phone.

Speaking of Android, Sprint made the Samsung Moment available this week. Their second Android phone has a QWERTY keyboard, a 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen display, GPS, an 800MHz processor and auto-focus camera with flash. Get yours for $179 with contract and $100.00 rebate.

Facebook reports that they were awarded $711 million in damages from Sanford Wallace, a spammer who accessed accounts without permission and sent phony posts and messages. He may also be facing jail time as the court in San Jose referred him to the US Attorney for prosecution. Yes, this is the same "Spamford" Wallace who has plagued the world with spam, scams, junk faxes, spyware and phishing attacks since the mid-1990s. He can't go to jail too soon.

While we're on the subject of scammers, Bluebeat is a music service that offers MP3 downloads of various artists for only a quarter. Oh, but these "psycho-acoustic simulations" are not the original songs, claims Bluebeat proprietor Hank Risan, and as such are not subject to the copyright claims of the original artists. Risan says that because he has mathematically recreated the songs from the original tracks, they now belong to him! Lawyers for EMI, who represent the Beatles and other artists, are not amused, and are hauling Risan into court later this month.

Who says that iPhone users are frivolous? Mobile analytics company Flurry claims that book related apps are more plentiful these days than games. Last month, one out of every five new items submitted to the App Store was an ebook. They also determined that the smartphone app "addicts" use them more than 3 times a day per month.

If you dug the original Peek that only does email, then chances are you will jump at the TwitterPeak that, you guessed it, simply tweets and does direct messaging. Opt for a 6 month contract for $99.95 or pay a one time lifetime fee of $199.95.

Best Buy's latest move to keep its business competitive may be by allowing its customers to rent and buy movies online via CinemaNow. According to an article in Variety, software will be included in HDTVs, Blu-ray players, PCs and phones that allows them to download DVDs the same day they are released.

Orb has finally arrived for Macs. The free download is OS X 10.5 and 10.6 compatible and will send media from iTunes over the Net to any electronic device. That would include smartphones, laptops and streaming media players. Add a tuner card to your Mac and it will stream live TV.

A recent In-Stat survey shows that only 43% of those interested in owning a 3D TV would pay an extra $200.00 for it and only 33% would spend $50.00 more for a compatible Blu-ray player. But curiously, 67% would pay an additional $5.00 for 3D discs. Maybe they didn't make the connection that they must also shell out $250 for the hardware required to play them.