Author: Terren

After more than a month of speculation, the Saskatchewan Roughriders may have found their newest head coach in Greg Marshall.

Pardon us if the headline is a little sensational, but this is one that we’ve personally experienced — and it’s not pretty. For at least the last couple versions, Android has been plagued with a couple extremely serious bugs in its text messaging subsystem that can ultimately end up causing you to text the wrong contact — even contacts that you’ve never texted before. There appear to be a few failure modes; the one we definitely experience on the Gingerbread-powered Nexus S involves being routed to the wrong thread when you tap it either in the Notifications list or the master thread list in the Messaging application, so if you don’t notice, you’ll end up firing a message to the wrong person.

More seriously, though, there’s also an open issue in Android’s bug tracking system — inexplicably marked “medium” priority — where sent text messages can appear to be in the correct thread and still end up being sent to another contact altogether. In other words, unless you pull up the Message Details screen after the fact, you might not even know the grievous act you’ve committed until your boss, significant other, or best friend — make that former best friend — texts you back. There seem to have been some attempts on Google’s part over the year to fix it; we can’t confirm that it still happens in 2.3, but for what it’s worth, the issue hasn’t been marked resolved in Google Code… and it was opened some six months ago.

This is akin to an alarm clock that occasionally won’t go off (we’ve been there) or a car that randomly won’t let you turn the steering wheel — you simply cannot have a phone that you can’t trust to communicate with the right people. It’s a deal-breaker. We’re pretty shocked that these issues weren’t tied up and blasted to all affected phones as an over-the-air patch months ago, but whatever the reason, we’d like to see Google, manufacturers, and carriers drop every other Android update they’re working on and make sure this is completely resolved immediately.

Want to see this fixed as much as we do? Scroll to the bottom of the Google Code page and hit “Vote for this issue and get email change notifications.”

Android still has horrible text messaging bugs that’ll get you fired, busted, or otherwise embarrassed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Canadian Google users have long been frustrated by having to wait for new online toys they can’t try but the company vows that’s going to change.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall promised to hold a province-wide referendum on the controversial topic at the same time as the next provincial election, scheduled for Nov. 7, 2011.

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In October, Amazon announced that it would begin allowing Kindle owners to lend books to friends and family, so long as they use a Kindle (or the Kindle app), too. The company promised the feature would arrive before the end of the year and, while Amazon is cutting it pretty close with a December 30th launch date, it stayed true to its word. Users can now lend e-books for up to 14 days, although they won’t be able to read the books while they’re out on loan, and publishers will ultimately decide whether to allow their books to be lent out at all. The total number of loanable books is unclear, but Amazon has said that it includes over half of the currently available library. Instructions for how to loan out books can be found here.

Amazon Finally Lets You Lend Kindle E-Books originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Owners of 2010 and 2011 Ford Sync-capable whips can now send direction and traffic info to their cars from their Androids and iPhones with Ford’s free Sync Destinations app. Hey, it’s better than fiddling with the car’s GPS controls. [Sync] More »

Android: If you’re tired of manually adding new bookmarks to both your PC and your phone, ChromeMarks will sync all your bookmarks between Android and Chrome with minimal setup. More »

If you’ve been keeping an ear to the techie ground, you’ll probably have heard some analyst chatter suggesting RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook may be delayed due to issues relating to its supposedly poor battery life. That scuttlebutt has now turned out to be mostly unfounded, with RIM clarifying the situation through a communiqué sent to Erictric:

“Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented. RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook’s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life.”

To be sure, it’s not an outright denial that there may be PlayBooks floating about with disappointing battery performance, but the immaturity of the software on them is clearly such as to invalidate any conclusions drawn. Perhaps more important than the imprecise discussion of battery longevity (what does “comparable” even mean in this context?) is the note that the company is still on track to complete its software optimizations and deliver its first tablet on schedule. Guess we can all quit worrying now.

RIM: BlackBerry PlayBook battery life is still being optimized, won’t cause delays originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Dec 2010 04:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It's hard to believe how much the world has transformed in the past decade — but our handy infographic tells the whole story. Click to enlarge! More »

You may have already seen it: a warning in the upper right hand corner of the Facebook home page declaring that your account protection is low — or, even worse, very low! The warnings are a little overzealous, and don’t come with much of an explanation. It’s no wonder, then, that some folks have thought that it was part of some scam or a piece of Facebook scareware. But it’s actually Facebook’s way of getting you to beef up your account security… sort of. Clicking to increase your protection asks you to complete a couple of simple tasks that don’t necessarily make your account more secure, but will make it easier to regain access to your account should it be compromised. You’ll be asked to give an alternate e-mail address (should your primary e-mail account be hacked), to answer a “secret question,” and to confirm your mobile phone number — presumably for use with Facebook’s temporary password feature.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but Facebook never really makes clear why it needs this information from you. You’ll have to be comfortable adding your cell phone number and another e-mail address to the social network’s vast user database. Graham Cluley at the Sophos blog Naked Security points out that, if Facebook were really concerned with improving your security, the site would likely instruct you to: create hard-to-crack passwords, not answer secret questions honestly, and use different passwords for your Facebook and e-mail account (and different passwords on your primary and alternate e-mail accounts). There’s nothing wrong with offering options for recovering your account in case it gets hacked, but there is certainly a more honest way to approach the topic that doesn’t involve scare tactics.

Facebook Uses Scare Tactics to Get You to Improve ‘Account Protection’ originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the Archos 70 internet tablet is probably lovely, its main selling point—aside from the fact that it runs Android—appears to be that it's thin and light despite containing a 250GB HDD. It's $350 and available now. [Archos] More »

Three months after Netflix invaded Canada with a bizarre combination of paid actors and $8 instant streaming plans, CEO Reed Hastings the company has declared the move a success and says it will expand its service to other countries in 2011. “Based on the early success of Netflix.ca we’re going to continue our international expansion next year and we’re going to allocate significant dollars to it,” spokesman Steve Swasey told The Canadian Press, without specifying which territories or how many might be blanketed with Albanian soldiers next. However, Canadians and others hoping to get an experience completely on par with the original US service shouldn’t hold their breath, as Swasey says there are no plans to establish a movie queue for the streaming-only service, calling it a “strategic decision.”

Update: The above quotes were attributed to Netflix’s Steve Swasey, not CEO Reed Hastings. Our bad.

Netflix: ‘we’re going to continue our international expansion next year’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chrome only: Got a microphone? Got a knack for talking faster than you type? Even if you don’t, you might enjoy trying out Voice Search, an experimental Chrome add-on that uses your voice as text input, just like on Android. More »

Darryl Sutter stepped down as executive vice-president and general manager of Calgary Flames on Tuesday. He will be replaced by assistant GM Jay Feaster, who will take on the role of acting general manager. Sutter was named GM in April of 2003, just months after taking over as coach.

Canadians rank among the most enthusiastic users of the web and all its various offshoots.