We know Apple has a strangle hold on which apps make it to the App Store. That’s why Google is preferred by many developers since their apps have more of chance to see the light of day on Android Market. But this freedom appears to have helped malware makers as well. According to Symantec, millions of Android devices have been infected by malicious chunks of code called Android.Counterclank.

Calling it the largest Android malware infection ever, Security software vendor Symantec has discovered 13 apps from three developers (iApps7, Ogre Games and redmicapps) which are carrying the Android.Counterclank spyware which is technically a trojan and is a minor modification of Android.Tonclank. Some of these apps have been available on Android Market for at least a month.

The malware is capable of receiving remote commands without your knowledge and can steal information from your device. According to Symantec, it has infected between 1 million and 5 million Android devices so far.

The list of apps (posted below) which carry the bug includes games such as Counter Elite Force and CounterStrike Hit Enemy, and naughty titles such as Pretty women lingerie puzzle.

If you have a doubt whether an application, which is not in the above list, is infected with the trojan, you can check by seeing whether a service with the same name is running at once when you open the app. It can also be detected by looking for an added Search icon above your home screen. According to one user who installed Deal & Be Millionaire, “the game is decent … but every time you run this game, a search icon gets added randomly to one of your screens. I keep deleting the icon, but it always reappears. If you tap the icon you get a page that looks suspiciously like the Google search page“.

If there is an infected app on your device, we encourage you to uninstall it and/or reboot your device entirely back to stock.

Some of the malicious apps have already been removed from the Android Market but we are waiting for an official comment from Google.  In the meantime, we have contacted the developers for a response.

*** Grain of salt alert ***

Remember that Lytro point-and-shoot box camera we talked about back in October? Well, it appears like Steve Jobs was “interested” in that technology, so that’s enough for people to “speculate” that the sensor might make its way into an iPhone sometime in the future.

The new info comes to us courtesy of the folks over at 9to5Mac who went through a new book by Fortune Magazine’s Adam Lashinsky titled, Inside Apple. According to the book, Jobs met with Lytro inventor and CEO Ren Ng to discuss about the possibilities of using Lytro technology in an iPhone.

Just in case you are wondering what this new tech is all about, the Lytro “whole light field” camera, which contains an f/2 aperture and an 8x optical zoom lens, captures all the light rays flowing in its direction instead of fixed focus pixels. This will allow you to take photos whenever you want and you can focus on anything from the scene at a later point in time.  Yeah I know, sounds wild. Although the first Lytro camera captures just 1MP photos, the technology allows the manipulation of the pictures in many ways: such as changing the depth of field and focus. You can simply forget about getting that shot in focus, and just take it.

The possibilities are endless if this type of technology reaches an iPhone sometime in the future, it will be even better when combined with specialized apps. But there are problems; the big size of the sensor and the picture quality, but that can always be improved in time. And manufacturers will also get a chance to incorporate fixed-focus lenses into the devices instead of the thicker autofocus ones.

But we are not expecting Apple to start playing with the new tech until it matures. It seems unlikely that it will be available on the next-generation iPhone. But we believe it will be just awesome when it finally arrives.

The iTunes App Store is filled with a lot of apps that allow the managing, editing or sharing of photos. Although most of the apps are quite helpful, it’s very rare that we find something that can be called impressive. But the newly launched GroupShot app is pretty special.

If you love taking photos, you should know that it is quite difficult to keep people still while taking snaps. Some tend to blink with perfect timing while some people look away or do something else. Whatever they do, the photo won’t turn out to be what you wanted. That’s where GroupShot comes in.

The new photo editing app, from Israeli-based startup Macadamia Apps, is coming with face-swapping. With the new app, you will be able to select two or more photos from your iPhone’s camera reel, iCloud’s PhotoStream, or from the photos you clicked directly with the cam.

If you want to replace a face on a photo, you just have to rub over the face and the app will automatically swap out the face with a better-looking one from the other photos. The result will be a perfect picture with everyone on it facing the cam and smiling. The app can also select good photos for you to work on.

And while using the app you won’t have to know anything about the complex work that it is doing which includes checking the alignment of different photos, background, where the hair is and more.

The company is planning to launch more image processing apps, including Android ones, in the future. From the looks of things, the upcoming apps are going to be pretty good. You can download GroupShot from here.

iOS Hackers Steve Troughton-Smith and @TheMudKip have been working hard to bring some iOS magic to Apple TV, specifically in bringing iOS Apps to your large screen without the sanctioned support of Apple.  So far their progress is very promising, they have managed not only to install iOS Apps on the Apple TV, but also get apps to appear full screen. In the video below, the hack by @TheMudKip showed iOS Apps like Facebook, YouTube & Maps running in 720p fullscreen.

All this is made possible by MobileX, it’s just like a SpringBoard on the iPhone but this one is coded just for Apple TV. It will be from here where you would be able to launch iOS Apps.

@TheMudKip said that he “rewrote SpringBoard from scratch using only QuartzCore.”

Next comes the question of controlling your iOS Apps on the Apple TV. As we all know, iOS is a touch based OS and not a hardware controlled one. In its early stages the hackers used VNC to control the apps, but Steve confirmed that he had cooked up a hack to control the apps via Apple TV’s IR remote control.

“The built-in menu controlled by the remote allows you to quit apps, launch Safari, connect to Wi-Fi, or show multiple apps side by side,” he said. “Audio and video work well too so many games and media apps just work, like YouTube.”

While rumors are around about a secret Apple TV perhaps emerging officially from Apple, we are not sure if and when Apple may reveal their own television, regardless, with this hack it looks like we might be able to taste a bit of iTV a little sooner once MobileX is ready for primetime.

Will this make you get an Apple TV?

(MobileX Running on Apple TV)

We know that many of you are fans of the visual voicemail app YouMail, which has been downloaded millions of times so far. But it appears like some are not at all happy about the success of the app. The popular app has been yanked from the Android Market by Google just because, it seems, T-Mobile asked that it be removed.

According to an email that YouMail received from Android Market support:

“It has come to our attention that this application could be used in a way that is harmful to devices, networks, or users. Specifically, we have received a complaint from T-Mobile that this application is causing adverse network disruption“.

YouMail says that T-Mobile never reached out to them earlier and that no other carrier has ever expressed concerns regarding the app.

Just in case you didn’t know, regional carrier Viaero has YouMail as their partner to handle visual voicemail on the Android handsets on their network. YouMail is also the default voicemail service for Blue Wireless.

It’s not known why T-Mobile didn’t politely contact YouMail first. The carrier is yet to comment on the matter.

Maybe this is the way T-Mobile has planned to deal with competition. As you might know, T-Mobile customers enjoy the carrier’s own visual voicemail service. The carrier also sells voice-to-text transcription.

And it’s surprising that Google pulled the plug on an app with so many downloads without investigating into the matter thoroughly.

But this isn’t the first time that the search giant has taken action against apps after request from carriers. Earlier, they blocked Android tethering apps from being downloaded on AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile phones. This came after complaints from carriers.

We are expecting both T-Mobile and Google to come out with an explanation soon. We will let you know when that happens, so stayed tuned.

Google already dominates a significant part of my life, but it hasn’t really infiltrated my living room just yet. The search engine giant wants to do that and that’s why it has just launched the all-new Google TV 2.0. This follows in the footsteps of the original Google TV launched last year, but it comes with some new hotness in the form of apps, Honeycomb, Discovery, and more.

Google TV is still meant to function as a supplement to your usual cable subscription, but they’ve expanded the scope to include more goods. For instance, you will notice that Google TV runs on the tablet-friendly Honeycomb Android operating system. This cleans up the UI and makes it a little more familiar. This also lets it run a whole whack of applications.

To be fair, most of the apps aren’t going to play friendly on your TV, but they have about 20 or so right now that have the proper resolution and formatting. This makes it easier for content providers like Pandora and Netflix to get to you through the Google TV framework. Google plans on creating a sub-section in Android Market for Google TV apps.

One thing that I think is pretty cool is that when you look up a TV show, it won’t just show you when it’ll be airing next on regular TV; it also gives you the other options to watch that show, including YouTube rentals and Amazon purchases. That’s flexibility. It’s also cool how YouTube automatically plays a related video when your chosen video ends, instead of just sitting there blankly waiting for you to choose the next clip.

The Google TV 2.0 update is set to hit compatible Sony devices on Sunday with the Logitech Revue update following “shortly after.”

The “free” section on Android Market only takes you so far. There are plenty of gems out there that aren’t necessarily listed through that marketplace. If you want free apps on your Droid or iPhone, you now have another choice, AppAggie.

It’s not really a conventional app store, per se, because AppAggie is better described as a “free apps aggregator.” It looks for free apps around the web and gives you an opportunity to download them. For now, there is support for both iOS and Android, but it’s unclear if they’re going to expand to other platforms too.

The biggest difference is that every app in AppAggie is free. There’s likely some in-app advertisements, micro-transactions, or some other form of monetization, but the app itself is free. The apps are reasonably varied, ranging from social networking to weather, including a bunch of games. Remember that AppAggie isn’t providing the apps themselves; the links simply redirect you to the original source, be it iTunes, Android Market, or whatever else.

“I’d rather developers sell fewer than a million downloads and get to a million dollars,” said Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s director of developer experience for Windows Phone, at a press conference in Helsinki.

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has suggested this. Microsoft encouraged higher prices for apps back in 2009, for the Windows Mobile 6.5. The idea here is to encourage big developers frustrated with the App Store’s low price point to migrate over to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile instead. The App Store tends to prioritize the most popular and free apps, and many users will simply browse through those two categories to determine what to download. Developers who want to take advantage of the system simply price their apps at 99 cents, which increases the number of downloads and gives the app a longer shelf life.

Critics of the App Store’s system claim that the low price encourages mediocre apps instead of quality software, as higher-priced apps must sell a large amount to return the investment, which is difficult when an app’s low price tends to drive its popularity. Microsoft hopes to come out on top with the help of more than just a high-quality app store. In the first quarter of 2011, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 came last in smartphone sales with just 3.6 per cent of the market. The upcoming Mango updates, which will add some 500 new elements to the Windows Phone 7, will be released this fall.

Some of the new Mango features include Local Scout, which provides location awareness and allows users to find restaurants, attractions and activities nearby, multitasking that allows an easy switch between apps and games in use, and the ability to group contacts into personalized live tiles where the user can quickly send a text, email or IM to the whole group. Microsoft hopes their partnership with Nokia, and their new partnerships with Acer Inc., Fujitsu Ltd. and ZTE Corp., will further expand and strengthen the Windows Phone.

The Chumby8, as its name implies, features an eight-inch display with a resolution of 800×600 pixels. It’s much more than a picture frame, of course, as it’s meant to be the “world’s first stand-alone app player.” You could say it’s almost like a tablet device, except it’s not really a tablet at all. It does come with a touchscreen and over 1,500 free apps and runs on Android 2.2 though.

In case you missed it during CES, the Chumby8 also comes with a new web browser, two USB ports, CF/SD slots, Internet radio (with Pandora, Napster, NYT, etc.), and task scheduler. A Flash Lite 4 update is coming soon with AS3 support too.

As our homes become increasingly connected, more web-enabled devices like the Chumby8 will surely rise to the surface. Get ready to get your Chumby on starting April 5th for $199. Pre-orders are being taken now… or you could spend some more and get a tablet instead.

[Chumby]

PlugShare is an app that lets electric vehicle users find potential fill-up spots. The app gives the addresses of not only public charging stations but also the private garages of other users. PlugShare was released by Xatori, a company that creates software for electric vehicles.

If someone wants to do their part but are too attached to their gass-guzzler, they can still offer a charge to someone in need. Besides specifying the type of outlets people have available for EV users, the app also lists users’ phone numbers and addresses. Users can type an address or zip code to search for nearby charging stations.

Some people might be concerned about privacy issues, but according to Xantori’s website, users can choose how much information they share and can opt out at anytime.

For people not sure how offering a helping hand to EV drivers will affect their energy bill, Xatori’s website said that charging a car on a standard outlet costs about 15 cents an hour.

While fully charging an EV can take up to six hours or more, depending on the type of outlet, home owners shouldn’t have to worry about people staying overnight in their garage. It’s not like CouchSurfing – no one’s going to sleep in the garage overnight, refueling their dying battery to take a cross country trip. Well, hopefully not. Xatori’s intent is for users who miscalculated how much energy they needed to get somewhere and need a quick boost.

The PlugShare app works with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

[Smart Planet via PlugShare]