Author: Terren

There are two kinds of failures: Those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

    —   Laurence Peter

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Saskatchewan’s highest court rules that marriage commissioners who are public servants cannot refuse to marry same-sex couples.

A cross-border kerfuffle over a popular chocolate treat nearly cost a Winnipeg woman a $300 fine and saddled her with a bureaucratic headache.

Police in the Yorkton, Sask., area have made 16 arrests in connection with an alleged prescription drug trafficking ring.

Between slagging each other off with cartoons like the one above and taking each other to court over chipset licenses, there’s been no love lost between NVIDIA and Intel over the past few years — but it looks like the war is over. The two companies just announced a new six-year cross-licensing deal that will see Intel paying NVIDIA a total of $1.5b over the next five years for access to NVIDIA’s technology, while also giving NVIDIA a license to some of Intel’s patents. The two companies have also agreed to drop all pending litigation, because you know, they’re now friends who just exchanged a billion and half dollars. Crucially, Intel won’t give up rights to x86, flash memory or “certain chipsets,” so we don’t really know if this agreement allows NVIDIA to produce integrated graphics for Sandy Bridge — although most manufacturers are going with an Optimus-style discrete / integrated switchable arrangement that pairs Intel’s on-die graphics with a discrete NVIDIA chip anyway, so we’re not so sure it actually matters. We would love to see NVIDIA support Intel’s Wireless Display 2.0 and the new Insider 1080p movie service, though — and if these two coming closer together results in better Intel on-board graphics that can rival AMD Fusion, well, things will get very interesting indeed. Oh, the possibilities of peace.

P.S.- And seriously, what a turnaround for NVIDIA at CES: it’s gone from being the company that was going nowhere with Tegra to completely dominating the Android landscape with Tegra 2, finding its way into all sorts of cars, and upending the desktop processor space with Project Denver — all while pocketing $1.5b of Intel’s cash. Not bad work for one Mr. Jen-Hsun Huang.

Update: NVIDIA just said on its press call that it has “no intentions to build chipsets for Intel processors,” and that Intel will be able to use NVIDIA’s technology in Sandy Bridge, so we suppose that answers that question.

Continue reading Intel agrees to pay NVIDIA $1.5b in patent license fees, signs cross-license

Intel agrees to pay NVIDIA $1.5b in patent license fees, signs cross-license originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posted by Lisa Conquergood, Photos Team Marketing

We are starting off the year with a few new features in Picasa Web Albums. From metadata, to security, to a new way to zoom, there is a little bit for everyone.

More metadata
For those of you who can’t get enough of the technical side, we expanded the EXIF metadata (information stored inside of your image file) you can view for each photo. You can now get over 200 EXIF tags that are available from your photos including Metering Mode, White Space and Color Balance. From the individual photo page — where you currently view ‘Photo Information’ like Camera, ISO, Aperture and Exposure — click on “full details page” to view this new metadata information.

More security
Picasa Web Albums now supports https access. The https protocol encrypts your data as it travels between your web browser and our servers. Using https helps protect data from being snooped by third parties, such as in public wifi hotspots like a library or a coffee shop. We are working to make https the default but for now, to access Picasa Web Albums using this secure protocol, type “https” into your browser instead of “http,” so “https://picasaweb.google.com instead of “http://picasaweb.google.com.”

More oohs and ahhs
Now, you can view images in their full resolution splendor by clicking on the magnifying glass on the photos page. This will bring up your image in a lightbox view, from which you can zoom into the image, up to its full resolution. You will need flash to take advantage of this new feature. This works great for panoramas too.

Thank you to Mike Wiacek for this beautiful image.

Today is our final day in NYC and we are currently in the studio shooting the next Fstoppers Original on Sam Yocum. I have just a second as the model gets makeup ready for the second look. I just stumbled upon this fantastic NYC timelapse by Josh Owens.

King's College Dental Institute's Professor Brian Millar thinks that his invention—a noise cancellation device that eliminates the unnerving sound of dental drills—will make people not fear the dentist. Really, Professor Brian Millar? Really? More »

Yet another Google service frees its users from the tyranny of browse-and-select file picking. YouTube offers drag-and-drop video uploading on modern, HTML5-happy browsers like Chrome and Firefox. More »

Lucy van Pelt is not to be trifled with.

President Obama has signaled that he will give the United States Commerce Department the authority over a proposed national cybersecurity measure that would involve giving each American a unique online identity. Other candidates mentioned previously to head up the new system have included the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security, but the announcement that the Commerce Department will take the job should please groups that have raised concerns over security agencies doing double duty in police and intelligence work. So anyway, what about this unique ID we’ll all be getting? Well, though details are still pretty scant, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, speaking at an event at the Stanford Institute, stressed that the new system would not be akin to a national ID card, or a government controlled system, but that it would enhance security and reduce the need for people to memorize dozens of passwords online. Sorry, Locke, sounds like a national ID system to us. Anyway, the Obama administration is currently drafting what it’s dubbed the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which is expected at the Department of Commerce in a few months. We’ll keep you posted if anything terrifying or cool happens.

Obama administration moves forward with unique internet ID for all Americans, Commerce Department to head system up originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SARCAN Recycling, the major operator of bottle depots in Saskatchewan, will soon refuse to accept containers that have caps attached.

We didn’t think much of Haier’s mention in Microsoft’s Windows 7 Media Center embedded press release, but on the show floor today we ran across this HDTV which was actually a full-blown Media Center including tuners and a harddrive. The details were very skimpy beyond that, with no mention of specific specs, prices or if the product would really make it to market. But the idea of an all-in-one TV and DVR running our favorite software certainly is something to get us excited about. What we didn’t like ws the motion remote used for the demo which was almost impossible to navigate and had us seriously longing for our favorite Green Button.

Windows 7 Media Center embedded TV hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 18:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been raining tablets here at CES 2011. No seriously, it as if the sky has opened up in Vegas and dropped touchscreen slabs with Android and Windows 7 operating systems on our heads. It’s been nearly impossible to keep track of the number of tablets released and the details we’ve learned about them… until now, that is. After the break you will find a complete list of all the tablets we have heard about as well as a few key details about ’em. You’ll notice that most of the tablets listed plan to run Android 3.0 — if you’re looking for more on Google’s not-yet-released tablet OS, you’ll want to check out our guided tour and our interview with Google’s Matias Duarte. The show isn’t over yet so expect us to add more tablets over the next couple of days, but without further ado, we give you the official Engadget tablet chart of CES 2011.

You’ll also note that we’ve denoted our favorites in bold, so pay closer attention to those and make sure to click through to hear why they’ve impressed us so much. Enjoy!

Continue reading Tablets at CES 2011: Honeycomb, Windows 7, and all the rest

Tablets at CES 2011: Honeycomb, Windows 7, and all the rest originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft and Samsung unveiled the next generation of the Microsoft Surface at CES this week. In Canada both Wind Mobile and Videotron use this technology to give their customers a great experience. They give the ability to check rate plans, device features and also compare devices against each other. This new version is called the […]

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