Reality Bites
![Click here to read Bing Maps' "Street Slide" Shows a Continuous Image of City Blocks, Is Actually Better Than Google Street View](http://fastcache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2011/05/small_ktdhov8e5lo.jpg "Click here to read Bing Maps' "Street Slide" Shows a Continuous Image of City Blocks, Is Actually Better Than Google Street View")
Microsoft has taken a big step forward and introduced a new version of its street view feature in Bing Maps, called Street Slide, and boy, is it awesome. Instead of getting periodic, fisheye-lensed images of the street, you get a continuous view of city blocks for easy landmark-spotting. More »
Toshiba announces Oak Trail-based WT310/C Windows tablet for Japan originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 18:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Posted by Maciek Nowakowski, Associate Product Manager
Today we’re excited to graduate three more features from the experimental testing ground of Gmail Labs. Superstars, Nested Labels, and Advanced IMAP Controls are now first-class citizens in the Gmail world, thanks largely to your feedback. We’re also retiring the Google Search box lab which was redundant with the “Search the Web” button that’s already in Gmail.
Superstars
Superstars, one of the most popular Labs features, provides different types of stars in addition to Gmail’s basic one. You can assign a certain star to special conversations and use another as a visual reminder that you need to follow-up on a message later. You can now choose your own set of stars from Settings:
While fans in Winnipeg are celebrating the return of the National Hockey League to their city, the work is not done – not by a long shot.
Windows 7 has been out for almost two years now, and it doesn’t come as a surprise to many that it is now running on one in every three computers in the world, according to stats from StatCounter.com.
Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, where it was…
Despite our commander-in-chief’s seemingly undying allegiance to BlackBerry, it looks like the federal government could be ready to make a break from RIM. According to a Washington Post article published yesterday, a number of agencies within the federal government are questioning their attachment to the standard-issue BlackBerry devices, and allowing government employees to bring in their own preferred methods of communication — among other things, Congress now allows the use of iPads and iPhones on the House floor and use of BlackBerrys at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has dropped from 1,000 to 700 in the past year. What’s more, the General Services Administration is currently shifting 17,000 employees to Gmail, a move it says could reduce expenses by 50 percent in the next five years. Likewise, the USDA will also move its email services to the cloud with Microsoft’s services, claiming $6 million in annual savings. Now, we doubt Obama’s going to turn a blind eye to RIM entirely, but he has been getting awfully cozy with that iPad.
BlackBerry finally sees competition within US government originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 16:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
Apple Headlines | 
Washington Post | Email this | Comments
While fans in Winnipeg are celebrating the return of the National Hockey League to their city, the work is not done – not by a long shot.
Android: GrooVe IP is a a simple app that lets you use your Android phone’s Wi-Fi or 3G/4G connection with Google Voice to make unlimited calls in the US or Canada (or cheap international calls) without using voice minutes. It can be very useful overseas. More »
A web of rumor and suggestion has been spun in recent weeks about a new tablet-oriented version of Windows. But when major players like Acer start moanin’ and complainin’ about how they’re going to make hardware to run the new OS, that’s when you know something has to be afoot. According to Bloomberg, Acer CEO J. T. Wang spoke up at Computex to berate Microsoft for being too restrictive in what processors it will permit to carry its new baby, saying it is “really controlling the whole thing, the whole process.” And he wasn’t just speaking for Acer either, because he added that chip suppliers and PC makers “all feel it’s very troublesome.” It begs the question, if Steve Ballmer is borrowing Apple’s approach and becoming a control freak, why doesn’t he just go whole hog and build a Microsoft Tablet from start to finish?
[Thanks, Tiago]
Acer says Microsoft is too ‘controlling’ of Windows tablets, restrictions ‘troublesome’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 15:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Bloomberg | Email this | Comments
Everybody’s talking about George Lucas having already filmed his mysterious live action Star Wars TV show today. Just a reminder, we debunked this rumor last week. Sorry, there’s no huge stash of never-before-seen live-action Star Wars in the Lucas Bunker. More »
Well, the Pentagon is finally fed up with hackers picking on its buddies and foreign intelligence taking shots at its computer systems, and has decided that such cyber attacks can constitute an act of war. Of course, the powers that be won’t be bombing you for simply sending them some spyware, but attempts to sabotage US infrastructure (power grids, public transit, and the like) may be met with heavy artillery. It’s unclear how our government will identify the origin of an attack or decide when it’s serious enough to start shooting, but Uncle Sam is looking to its allies to help create a consensus answer for those questions. The retaliatory revelation is a part of the Pentagon’s new cyber strategy that’ll be made public in June — so saboteurs beware, your next internet incursion might get you an ICBM in your backyard.
Pentagon says cyber attacks are acts of war: send us a worm, get a missle in return? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 14:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Simple webapp Friends to Gmail converts your Facebook friends list into a Gmail-compatible CSV file complete with birthdays, location, bios, work history, and hometown. What’s the point? As the developer points out: More »
A mediatator has been appointed in Saskatchewan’s teacher contract dispute, and as a result all job action is suspended, the province says.
As far as publicity stunts go, this is pretty great: a giganto-sized orange Hot Wheels set. And unlike the ones you played with as a tyke, the car didn’t go crashing into a wall, but broke a distance world record. More »
As far as publicity stunts go, this is pretty great: a giganto-sized orange Hot Wheels set. And unlike the ones you played with as a tyke, the car didn’t go crashing into a wall, but broke a distance world record. More »
The Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles from Microsoft has been promoted by the company as a game console first and foremost. However, Microsoft has announced that the console is being used more and more for things other than gaming. In a new post on Microsoft’s official blog site. the company’s…
Generally, shouting commands at the internet isn’t going to get you very far but, if you’re just yelling a few destinations and search terms, Chrome extension Chaufr can take you where you need to go. A previous add-on, Speechify, let you speak to fill input fields, but couldn’t help you actually navigate the web. Chaufr, on the other hand, lets you simply say the magic word — “Engadget” — and it drops you right at our online doorstep. You can also use it to perform searches by saying Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, YouTube, or Yahoo followed by whatever it is you’re looking for. It worked well enough in our brief hands-on, but we do have one nit to pick — activating voice input requires you click on an icon in the tool bar then click on a microphone in the drop down menu. (Can’t a brother get a keyboard shortcut?) You can try it out for yourself by clicking on the source link.
Chaufr lets you shout searches, yell URLs at Chrome originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 10:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Chaufr | Email this | Comments
A night of fireworks, lightning, and a comet hanging on the sky separating them. It’s like a painting of Heaven, Earth and Hell by Hieronymus Bosch. But it’s not a painting. It’s a real sky. It happened in Perth, Australia. More »
We’ve been holding out hope for Pixel Qi devices for years, ever since we first heard that the OLPC spin-off would begin manufacturing its displays for use by any OEM looking for a battery-sipping LCD. Unfortunately, Mary Lou’s LCDs, capable of switching between a sunlight-readable reflective mode and full-color transmissive state, have had limited uptake by some less than desirable partners. Still, the team has returned to Computex with the 7-inch (1024 x 600) panel that was teased in December last year and a new higher resolution 10-inch (1280 x 800) panels offering an 80 percent power savings over conventional LCDs, according to Pixel Qi. In fact, the 10-inch panel consumes just 2.7W in color mode or 0.4W in reflective “eReader” mode.
We had the chance to see the new displays up close here at Computex and were immediately struck by the improvement in pixel density on the 10-inch panel. Making the leap to WVGA has been a major boon, as identical images looked sharper and better-defined than on the 1024 x 600 current-gen Pixel Qi display. The brightness on the new screen is lower than on its predecessor, but that’s because the company still hasn’t finalized things — we’re promised significantly better readability with the backlight off in the final product and brighter pictures when it’s on. The 7-incher, originally intended for mass production in the second quarter will now sample in Q3, to be followed by the more pixel-dense 10-inch model, which will hit production in Q4. Scope out the newness in the gallery below or jump past the break for video.
Pixel Qi takes aim at Android tablets with higher-res 10-inch and 7-inch reflective LCDs (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 06:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
At a time when ARM and Android are dominating the mobile computing world, Intel’s only just starting to catch up with some green robot-friendly prototypes, like these Oak Trail-based 10-inch tablets at Computex 2011. Starting from the left we have the Intel Green Ridge, Foxconn F150, Quanta QXZI, an unnamed Compal device, Intel Marco Polo 2, and Intel Carrot. Sadly, Intel wouldn’t give the names of the ODMs behind its own reference tablets, so your guess is just as good as ours.
With the exception of the Gingerbread-powered Foxconn slate, these were all running on Honeycomb 3.0.1 OS — well, we say running, but just barely. As you’ll see in our hands-on video after the break, most of the devices were struggling to keep up with the launcher animation, and needless to say, Intel wasn’t keen on letting us test video playback on them. We also noticed that Android Market was missing on the prototypes, but Intel assured us that it’ll be available on the final products, and that current Android apps are already supported by Oak Trail. In terms of build quality it left much to be desired, though this is forgivable at a trade show; it’s the software that we’re concerned with. From what we’ve seen here at Computex, Android on Oak Trail is far from ready, so it’ll be interesting to see if Acer can actually pull off a July launch for its rumored Oak Trail Honeycomb tablet.
Update: OK, our in-depth hands-on video is finally working. Check it out after the break.
Intel shows off Oak Trail-based Android Honeycomb tablets, confirms Android Market support originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 03:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
