Category: GReader

A late-night vote on an NDP motion to delay back-to-work legislation for Canada Post for six months failed to pass the House, meaning debate on the bill would continue into the weekend.

Yorkton RCMP have arrested and charged a 20-year-old man with first-degree murder in connection with the killing of a gas station attendant.

I can agree with this one.

Winnipeg’s NHL team will be called the Winnipeg Jets.

Remember that Withings blood pressure monitor for iOS that we went hands-on with last week? It integrated with Google Health. The search giant’s health management portal also paired with dozens of other services (a heaping handful can be seen in the image above) to aggregate and track all of your data, and share it with family members, friends, and doctors. The service didn’t have the widespread impact that Google expected, however, so it’s taking Health offline after the clock strikes midnight on January 1, 2012. You’ll have another year to download your info, or send it directly to competing services.

Also on the chopping block is PowerMeter, a free energy monitoring tool that pairs with smart power meters and other energy monitoring devices to help users better understand consumption habits and ultimately reduce costs. That project will get the boot from Mountain View on September 16th, but you’ll be able to log in to your account to download a CSV file. We imagine Health and PowerMeter are already plotting their trip down south, to get in a few thousand rounds of golf with Video Store at Pebble Beach. Perhaps to be joined by Buzz and Wave, in the not-so-distant future?

Google ‘retires’ Health and PowerMeter, lets you save your vitals through 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Striking Saskatchewan crop insurance workers have reached a deal that will end their four-day old strike before the government can legislate them back on the job.

In this week’s app roundup: Cut the Rope, finally on Android; videos, edited with different sources; coding, done on the iPad; grills, made; calls, filtered; cars, unlocked; Wacom, iPadified; and much, much more. More »

Asustek is apparently the largest, non-iOS tablet vendor – with shipments totaling a fairly healthy 400,000 units during the first half of 2011. 



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Like something out of a Sam Raimi movie or a really dark version of Tom Sawyer, a Russian woman who was declared dead after collapsing with chest pains awoke at her own funeral and promptly died of a heart attack caused by the shock of waking up at her own funeral. Comically tragic or tragically comical? [Daily Mail] More »

Filed under: Dwayne Johnson, Hot Bodies, The Facts Behind The Funny!

The Rock is afraid of no drop … even one that leads into a briar patch.

Dwayne Johnson posted this pic on his Facebook page after a recent trip to Disneyland.

Apparently, the guy riding in the back of the log wasn’t feeling quite as tough that day.

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ZeptoLab has a candy-filled treat for owners of Android devices: its hit puzzler, Cut the Rope, has launched for the mobile platform and will be available free of charge for one week. The game is debuting exclusively on the GetJar app store but, according to its developer, will be made available through the Android Market and other branded e-storefronts eventually.

Cut the Rope for Android will be ad supported during this initial period, so those who eventually pay for it will be getting something extra — or, rather, something less, in terms of advertising.

Continue reading Cut the Rope debuts on Android, free for one week

Cut the Rope debuts on Android, free for one week originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 24 Jun 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It has been revealed that Facebook are once again testing a new homepage design which makes many of the page’s elements stationary, while making the news feed scrollable. This in turns allows the user to scroll through a long news feed while still having navigation easily available.

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Develop has posted an interview with Team Fortress 2 developer Robin Walker in which he says that the company has decided to make the popular class-based shooter completely free-to-play, supported only by microtransactions. Walker says the game has experimented with multiple price points over its long history (including allowing players to play for free during temporary periods) and that making this transition now “feels like a fairly straightforward next step along the ‘Games as Services’ path we’ve been walking down for a while now.”

Walker also says that this is a model that specifically fits the multiplayer game at this moment in the product’s life, when Valve is trying to reach as many players as it possibly can. The permanent price drop won’t affect development on the game at all, but monetization will only go through the game’s item shop. You can read more in the interview, live now over at Develop.

There’s no official word on any of this from Valve yet, on either the Steam blog or the official Team Fortress 2 site. We are scheduled to hear about the next update today (and even see a “Meet the Medic” video) and the game was set to go free for just a week, but this is obviously a more permanent direction. We’ve contacted Valve and will post more here when we get it.

Update: Valve’s Doug Lombardi has responded to us with a simple confirmation: “Yep.” Enjoy your free TF2, kids!

Update: The site has been updated as well. The game’s completely free to play, forever!

Valve relaunching Team Fortress 2 as free-to-play title originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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