Reality Bites
Facebook’s just rolled out a number of new privacy features, including the ability to approve photo tags of you, edit the visibility of profile categories inline, and more. More »
A string of earthquakes has just struck the United States of America. Our offices just shook—as did many in states across the country. Check here for the latest. More »
Philiana Ng
Syfy’s “Sanctuary” opens its fourth season Friday, Oct. 7 and Keira Knightley’s “Neverland” airs Dec. 4 and 5.
$300,000 is a lot of fitness memberships! The CRTC has thrown down the hammer on GoodLife Fitness and slapped them with a fine of $300,000 for violating the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) list. According to their press release the CRTC said that “GoodLife Fitness Centres has paid a penalty of $300,000 to the Receiver General for Canada as part of a settlement over its telemarketing practices. The CRTC issued a notice of violation after its investigation found that GoodLife had used automated calling devices (robocalls) to solicit its members without obtaining their prior express consent.”
Not such as GoodLife today. Without the consent of its members/potential members, the fitness company used automated calling devices to inform them of new club openings and grand opening events. Now, GoodLife has agreed to immediately stop this way of business and will also hold an educational seminar, which nobody will attend, at the upcoming Can-Fit-Pro Consumer and Wellness Show. In addition, GoodLife will also advertise corrective notices in various newspapers and on its website.
In total, the CRTC has fined over $2.1 million in penalties to companies who disobeyed the DNCL. Bell recently was hit with a $1.3 million penalty and Rogers for $275,000.
Source: CNW
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Windows has a few good desktop calendars, but we think Google Calendar is without a doubt the best calendar around, so though it may not be a desktop app in the truest sense, it still wins our pick for best calendar on Windows. More »
Regina's proposed $1 billion, inner-city facelift is one step closer to happening — although the specific sources of money are still yet to be revealed.
Shep McAllister is a rising senior at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, and editor of the popular student blog HackCollege. For the past several years, he has done his college coursework exclusively on Google Docs, and today he shares his five favorite uses for the platform in the classroom.
When I started out at Trinity University, I didn’t know much about Google Docs and relied heavily on desktop word processors. As I became increasingly frustrated with these programs crashing mid-sentence, I thought I’d give Google Docs a try. But what started as an experiment to test Google Docs for group projects and class notes quickly became a permanent solution for all of my schoolwork, and I haven’t looked back once. Here are a few of my favorite uses of Google Docs in college:
1. Work together on group projects
Before I started using Google Docs, group projects were a nightmare. A co-authored paper would fragment into a dozen different documents. Group presentations became last minute scrambles to get combine slides. Any information sharing about our project took place in splintered email threads. With Google Docs, my class groups are able work together on the same presentation or paper simultaneously while sharing links and ideas in a separate doc. The discussions feature released earlier this year made collaboration even simpler.
2. Take notes collaboratively
My classmates and I always get together near exam time to combine our notes and share ideas, so why not do it in real time? I work with friends to take in-class notes on a single Google doc, allowing everyone to come away with a more thorough set of notes than they could have written individually. I discuss this concept in more detail on my blog, HackCollege.
3. Convert PDFs and handouts to searchable text with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
As a student, I get a lot of assigned reading as PDF files. Unfortunately, most of them are low-quality scans from the library, which makes it hard to search through them for keywords or make annotations. With Google Docs’ OCR capabilities, I’m able to upload a low-quality PDF and receive an editable text document in return. This also works well for any important handouts professors give out in class — I just scan the handout and upload to Google Docs, keeping all of my class material in one place.
4. Save major assignments in the cloud
Writing important papers in Google Docs allows me to access my assignments and papers from any computer, anywhere. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stuck in the library without my laptop, or only have my smartphone handy. With Google Docs, it doesn’t matter, because all of my assignments are stored in the cloud, meaning I don’t have to be tethered to my laptop to get work done. This saved my sanity (and GPA) during finals last semester, when my computer crashed and was out of commission for over a week. Luckily, there was no need to panic, because I knew my final papers and study guides were tucked safely in the Google Docs cloud, instead of my dying hard drive.
5. Collect information from a group with forms
Before I started using Google Docs, organizing my classmates for a group dinner or campus event was a nightmare. Now, I use Google Docs to create web forms to send to my friends and classmates. My friends have gotten involved too, using it for keeping track of club participation, voting on housing for their fraternity’s beach weekend, and even conducting surveys for major research projects.
Posted by: Shep McAllister, HackCollege.com Blogger & Trinity University Student
Not sure what’s happening here. While The Source and Staples have the Android-powered Samsung 16GB Galaxy Tab 10.1 with Wi-Fi for sale, Best Buy and Future Shop have again pushed back their availability to Friday, September 9th ($499.99). Perplexing really, Best Buy and Future Shop would probably sell more tablets than both of those other retailers combined. Perhaps they’ll release the 4G versions on that date too.
Source: Best Buy and Future Shop
(Thanks Benoit!)
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Amy Winehouse's family says toxicology tests show there were no illegal drugs in her system when she died.
While one consumer electronics giant is unceremoniously exiting the tablet wars, after many teaser trailers we’re hearing Sony is finally ready to reveal its entry. We uncovered the S1 PlayStation Tablet ahead of its official reveal earlier this year, and after getting our hands all over it we’ve got more details to report before it launches. The official name of the S1 is the Sony Tablet S, which is currently projected to bring its 9.4-inch (1280×768) screen to market in the first two weeks of September. It will ship with Android 3.1 with an eye towards upgrading to Ice Cream Sandwich once that’s available, and just as the company said many of the key features will revolve around using it to control all devices in the home, via the network or the integrated IR blaster, as well as having the ability to “Throw” media to other DLNA-compatible hardware, whether it’s made by Sony or someone else. The slate’s dual cameras come in at 3.0MP res up front and 5.0MP around the back, while it’s also expected to bring along accessories our source indicates are very similar to those for the iPad. In the images below you can check out a wireless keyboard and dock setup and micro-USB to USB host dongle, details on the “TruBlack” screen technology that’s supposed to provide better colors with less glare, and of course all of Sony’s preinstalled software bringing PlayStation Certified gaming plus its music, movie and book services. What we don’t know yet is its final price — we’d heard $599 previously — but there should be more to say about that and the clamshell S2 tablet soon.
Update: Eagle-eyed Daniel wrote in to let us know that it looks like Sony is rebranding its video service as “Video Unlimited,” which will make it a much nicer match for Music Unlimited.
Gallery: Sony Tablet S details
Gallery: Sony S1 hands-on!
[Thanks, J]
Sony’s S1 Android Tablet is the Tablet S, due to arrive in early September originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Well, this is kinda profound. It’s a commercial for Duck Tape that pretends the tape rolls are lightcycles. I did not see that coming. What’s more, it ends with a pretty amazing reference to some classic Tron cosplay. You have to see it to believe it.
Chrome: Google’s Talk web interface is nice, but annoyingly confined to your Gmail tab. Gtalklet puts a little Gtalk box on any site you want, so you don’t have to switch back and forth between tabs just to chat. More »
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet now available for order, priced at $500 and up originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Family, friends and colleagues are mourning the death of NDP Leader Jack Layton, who died Monday morning after a second battle with cancer.
I’d buy that for a dollar.
"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world," Jack Layton writes just days before his death.
Microsoft filed a patent back on May 4th, 2010 called “Visual Motion Feedback for User Interface”, this is the “Metro UI” that’s on their Windows Phone 7 devices. Almost a year and a half later the USPTO has approved this patent and has granted them rights, ultimately giving Microsoft the protection it needs against any lawsuits or anyone who decides to copy the design. Eventually this UI will be in everything Microsoft does, phones, Xbox, computers, cars…
In the official description in the patent the UI claim is described as “In a computer system, a method comprising: receiving gesture information corresponding to a gesture on a touch input device; calculating simulated inertia motion for a movable user interface element based at least in part on the gesture information; based at least in part on the gesture information and on the simulated inertia motion, calculating a post-gesture position of the movable user interface element; determining that the post-gesture position exceeds a gesture boundary of the movable user interface element; and calculating a distortion effect in the movable user interface element to indicate that the gesture boundary has been exceeded.”
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It’s finally here XOOM owners! For months Motorola had the OS 3.1 Honeycomb update in testing but users are now reporting that it’s now live and available all to download. Check it out for yourself, grab the Xoom and hit Main System Settings > About Tablets > System Updates.
Source: Facebook
(Thanks Chris!)
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The Earth was a very different place 3.5 billion years ago. In the absence of oxygen, many scientists believe Earth’s earliest ecosystems survived on sulphur, but researchers have long been unable to find any proof of this hypothesis, in the form of fossilized microbial life. More »
Ford of course knows a lot about trucks, and Toyota has a couple decades of hybrid knowledge in its back pocket. So, if you were looking to make a hybrid truck, wouldn’t you want to bring these corporate titans together? Shockingly that’s actually coming to pass, with the two companies announcing a “memorandum of understanding” today that will see them acting as “equal partners” to create a new rear-wheel drive hybrid platform intended for light trucks and SUVs — but sadly not sports cars. That platform is expected to be completed by sometime next year, but the two will also be sharing data to advance infotainment and in-car technology systems, meaning someday your Entune might talk to your Sync and the whole telematics world could be a better place.
Ford partners with Toyota to share technology, create new hybrid system for trucks and SUVs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Aug 2011 10:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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