.::REALITYRECALL::.

Tragedy befell the lighthearted game show “Cash Cab” Friday when a producer for the Canadian branch of the show struck and killed an elderly pedestrian in Vancouver.

Google promised that iPhone users would soon be getting a Google+ app of their own, and it’s now here. Not surprisingly, it looks a lot like the Android app, including views of your main stream and nearby users, sharing via Circles, and support for the Huddle group messaging feature. It’s not a universal app, though, so iPad users are still left out for the time being, as are those with an iPod touch, for yet reasons unknown.

Update: Google’s Punit Soni notes that there was a small issue that initially caused a test version of the app to to be served from the App Store. If you grabbed the app as soon as it was available (within the first hour and 40 minutes, specifically), you’ll likely have to re-download it to get the current version (1.0.1.1809).

Google+ app for iPhone now available originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As summer descends upon the world, a young Primal eater’s fancy turns to playful frolicking in the sunshine. And when you’re frolicking, the last thing you want to do is slather a bunch of horrible-smelling, greasy, overpriced sunblock all over your body. It makes you slippery and imbues your countenance with a deathly pallor that is very unbecoming. If you could, you’d love to avoid the nasty practice altogether. You’d love to use more alternative methods. Methods that may not have the support of the medical community, but for which supportive research does exist. Seeing as how a common refrain throughout the newly Primal is that sunburns seem fewer and further between than ever before, I’m guessing that there’s something to it. Dietary? Supplementary?

I’ve noticed the same thing in myself and my family, so I got to wondering: what about going Primal, exactly, might be having this effect? And if something is protecting us from the sun, and it’s not just in everyone’s heads, what else can we do to bolster our natural sunblock? What can we recommend to friends and family who aren’t quite on board with the whole deal but still want protection from the sun? Let’s take a look at some potential supplements and dietary strategies. I’ll reference research as often as possible, but I’ll also draw on anecdotal experience, both personal and from the community at large.

Eat Some Lycopene

Lycopene, that famous carotenoid found in tomatoes, has been shown in a recent in vivo RCT to protect humans against sun damage. Healthy women, aged 21-47, who ate 55 g of tomato paste containing 16 mg of lycopene every day for 12 weeks experienced significant protection against acute – and potentially long term – sun damage. Remember that cooked tomatoes, and tomato products like paste and sauce, offer far more bioavailable lycopene than raw tomatoes. If you’re counting, 55 grams of tomato paste is a hair over 3 tablespoons worth.

Get Some Astaxanthin

The super-antioxidant astaxanthin is found in algae, the organisms that eat it, and the organisms that eat those organisms (like salmon, shrimp, and pink flamingo – the pink/red color gives it away). It has been getting some attention as an “internal sunscreen.” Does it stack up? Well, here’s a study on isolated human skin cells, in which astaxanthin definitely protects against UVA damage. And here’s another study on isolated skin cells showing its protective effects. But those are limited. Does the effect persist in real life settings? In other words, does ingesting astaxanthin supplements or food that contains astaxanthin offer protection from UVA? This hairless mouse study suggests that it might; astaxanthin was more effective than even retinol. I’d say it looks promising, and I’m always interested in an excuse to dine on pink flamingo thigh.

Get Some Vitamin D

A common anecdotal report is that supplementing vitamin D increases sun tolerance and protection against sun damage, and a recent study seems to confirm this. Various forms of the vitamin D prohormone offered various protections against UV damage in a mouse model: reduced sunburn, lowered incidence of tumor development. Huh, imagine that! Getting sun gives you vitamin D, which in turn protects you from too much sun. It’s funny how these things work out. Nature can be very elegant.

Get Your Long-Chain Omega-3s and Ditch the Omega-6s

A recent study out of Australia found that adults with the highest serum concentrations of DHA and EPA had the least “cutaneous p53 expression.” What’s the significance of cutaneous p53 expression? When your skin is in danger of damage from the sun, p53 expression is upregulated to protect it, and high p53 immunoreactivity can lead to melanoma. The fact that high DHA/EPA meant low p53 immunoreactivity suggests that the omega-3s were protecting the skin. And although the study’s authors noted that high serum omega-6 content didn’t seem to correlate with high p53 activity, I think a likelier explanation is this: omega-6 is so prevalent in the modern Australian diet, that even “low” levels are still above the threshold for increased susceptibility to sunburn. Going higher than that threshold won’t make things any worse, and it won’t show up in the statistics. Drop that omega-6 intake to 2% of calories, though, while getting an equal amount of omega-3s? I bet you’d see some incredible UV-resistance.

Eat Plenty of Saturated Fat

This is slightly redundant in light of the last suggestion – after all, if you’re limiting PUFAs, you gotta eat some saturated fat – but I think it’s worth mentioning. I hear about people bumping up their saturated fat intake and improving their UV-resistance all over the place, and I’ve experienced the same thing myself, but I’d never seen it mentioned in the literature. Well, here’s a cool rodent study in which mice were either given a saturated fat-enriched diet or a PUFA-enriched diet. No word on the exact composition of the two diets. When both groups of mice were injected with melanoma cells, “the initiation time required for visible tumor growth in mice receiving the polyunsaturated fat diet was significantly less than that in mice receiving the saturated fat diet.” A higher-saturated fat diet was protective, while a higher-PUFA diet was not. If you’re gonna be out in the sun, better eat your butter, palm oil, and coconut oil, eh?

Drink Tea

Tea, especially green tea, offers a complex arsenal of antioxidant compounds. How it works and what’s doing it isn’t fully understood, but it’s generally accepted that drinking green tea is a smart move and a mainstay of many healthy traditional cultures. Unsurprisingly, there’s also evidence that dietary green tea, specifically its polyphenols, inhibit the development of skin tumors by controlling inflammation and preventing DNA damage. Topical green tea extracts applied directly to the skin also offer photoprotection.

Get Some Proanthocyanidins

Proanthocyanidins, which can be found in wine and grape seeds, berries like blueberries and chokeberries, nuts like hazelnuts and pistachios, and certain niche grains like sorghum and barley, have been efficacious in preventing UV damage in hairless rodents. Whether it works for hairless apes remains to be seen, but drinking wine and eating berries sound like fine ideas regardless of their photoprotective efficacy. Actually, score one for the hairless apes who quaff wine: a recent study found that people who supplemented with grape seed extract (high in anthocyanidins) had a significantly lower risk of skin cancer. It sounds promising.

Consider Resveratrol

Resveratrol gets a lot of publicity for its possible anti-cancer, cardioprotective, and lifespan enhancing qualities, but it’s also gaining steam as a potential photoprotective agent. This study found that once incorporated into skin cells, resveratrol protected them from UV damage. Topical resveratrol seems viable, too, but I can imagine rubbing resveratrol into your sun-exposed skin would get expensive rather quickly.

Well, that’s what I came up with. I think the first four appear to be the most effective, but if you have a real problem with burning, it might be worth checking out all the strategies I mentioned. I’m also interested in what’s worked for you. Have you tried the above methods? Did they work? Fill us in and thanks for reading!

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RIM sure is working fast to bring its 500,000-strong BlackBerry Playbooks up to functional par. The tablet’s been on the market for three short months and is already set to receive its fourth software update. This go ’round, RIM added the ability to save attachments to a removable SD card or your phone’s internal storage, extract zip files from email (although you’ll have to use Bridge and port from your BlackBerry smartphone), a pinch-to-zoom feature for video viewing and — winner of the duh award — portrait viewing for photos. Also, the software now supports 15 additional languages — great news if you speak Galician. If you’re planning on picking up this QNX tab, you’ll receive the v1.0.7 update as part of the setup process. Current owners can wait for an update notification, or just pull it manually. So, what are you waiting for? Get downloading.

Update: And it’s gone. Seems some folks who downloaded the update were having connectivity issues using BlackBerry Bridge. RIM posted on Twitter saying users should expect a fix later this week.

BlackBerry PlayBook update brings zip extraction, more storage options for attachments (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SaskTel has released the Novatel Ovation MC547 Mobile Internet Stick, this is capable of reach download speeds of 42 Mbps, but SaskTel honourably notes they’re not there yet. If you choose to get this you’ll hop onto their 21mbps network until their new Dual Cell HSPA+ launches. If your mobile phone doesn’t come with the capability of creating a Wi-Fi hotspot then getting a internet stick is a good idea, the MC547 is $199.99 outright and ranges down towards a 3-year contract for $59.99.

Source: SaskTel

Related posts:

1. SaskTel to release the Novatel Ovation MC547 Mobile Internet Stick, capable of 42 Mbps download speeds
2. Virgin now selling the 42 Mbps capable Novatel Ovation MC547 Internet Stick
3. Fido launching Prepaid internet stick October 1st, plus HSPA+ internet stick in Q4

Google is now making $3 billion a month in advertising — the majority of which comes from little text ads next to search results.

You might wonder how that’s possible, and who’s spending that much money on search ads.

The answer, according to Larry Kim — the founder of a company that sells software to analyze text ad campaigns — is in industries where a customer is worth a lot of money over the long-term.

Wordstream, Kim’s company, analyzed search terms that advertisers pay the most to have their ads show up next to, and grouped the top 10,000 by industry, using its own software. They multiplied the so-called cost-per-click — what advertisers pay Google for each time someone clicks on their ads — times the number of times people search on that word. They then divided that pie up by keywords that fit different industries.

The top industry? Insurance, where companies eager to outbid their rivals for new customers pay Google more than $54 for a click. Together they make up 24 percent of Google’s revenues from search advertising, according to Wordstream’s calculations. Companies in the business of issuing loans come second, with CPC rates of more than $44 — providing nearly 13 percent of Google’s revenues.

“There are lots of lawyers finding clients,” Kim said. “Even if they have to pay for 50 to 100 clicks to get a client, they can get that back in a court case that last for years, all the while billing $500 an hour. The same thing happens with CRM software, where companies pay a high month fee.”

(For more on how Google prices ads and tries to ensure ads are relevant, check out this great feature story from Wired Magazine about the money-making machine that is Google ad auctions.)

Speaking of lawyers, the mortgage and legal industries show up third and fourth, respectively.

Rounding out the top 20 is an odd entry — Cord Blood.

“I didn’t know what that was,” Kim told Wired.com. “Turns out the industry has to with rich parents preserving their child’s umbilical cord with idea that the stem cells in it will be able to cure diseases in the future. And storage of cord blood has huge upfront cost and substantial ongoing payments.”

Again — an industry that can make lots of money from a customer over a long period of time — making it not unwise to pay $27 per click, even if only one out of 50 of those who click on the ad actually signs up for your service.

The top 20 categories account for about 70 percent of Google’s ad revenues, according to Wordstream’s calculations. Wordstream, which offers some free keyword analysis tools, sells software that lets companies and search engine marketing consultants organize and manage their advertising campaigns.

As for the remaining 30 percent?

About 1000 different categories combine to make up that last 30 percent, each getting thinner and thinner — which Kim refers to as the “Long Tail,” a reference to the Wired magazine article and later book by Chris Anderson. Those categories together “represent a tremendous amount of spend,” Kim said.

Infographic courtesy Wordstream

Perhaps you recall hearing, back at CES, about GM’s aftermarket mirror that would make the OnStar service available to most cars, including those from its most hated rival in Dearborn. No? Don’t worry, here’s the skinny: the OnStar FMV will let you have the company’s popular blue button technology in over 90 million automobiles. Meaning that almost anyone can now reap the benefits of features like automatic crash response, turn-by-turn navigation and hands-free calling. You know… unless you’re cruising in the General Lee, or something. Selling for $299.99, plus a $75 installation charge and $18.95 per month ($199 yearly) subscription, the high tech rear-view mirror will be on shelves at Best Buy starting July 24th and is now available for pre-order. Before you throw down the Benjamins for this automotive security blanket, you might want to double check that your car is compatible — check the full PR to find out how.

Continue reading OnStar FMV available at Best Buy July 24th for $300

OnStar FMV available at Best Buy July 24th for $300 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 06:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Reality-Free, TV News

So, after six seasons we still don’t know who is the mother of Ted’s kids, but now we do know that all will be revealed before the end of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Season 8.

Creator and executive producer Craig Thomas told ‘TV Guide’ that the upcoming Season 7 will offer answers and even more changes for the ‘HIMYM’ gang. He also let slip that there will (probably) be only two more seasons left for the comedy.

“All of our contracts are up after [Season] 8,” he said, “So we’re preparing for that to possibly be the end. As long as we know that a year from now, that’s fine. But if we don’t, then that’s a problem!”

 

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Has your Thrive been acting more like sleeping beauty, and less like the tablet you paid for? Before embarking on a mythical tale, whereupon you eventually find its more charming compatriot, know help from Toshiba is forthcoming: “We’re aware of the issue and are working on a fix.” No further details on when it’ll land, or what exactly it’ll fix, but if you’re anything like us, you’re just happy it won’t end up where another Tosh tablet did — in eternal slumber.

Toshiba acknowledges Thrive’s sleep addiction, fix apparently in the works originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Archos is shedding its downmarket reputation while preserving its downmarket price with the release of the G9 series of tablets. Available in 8" and 10.1" form factors and starting at $299 and $369, respectively, these tablets aren't the sluggish, resistive touchscreen slates we've come to expect. In fact, Archos is calling these the 'Fastest Tablet[s] on Earth,' thanks to the premiere of the OMAP 4460 and its two 1.5 GHz Cortex A9 cores. It wins on the numbers but does it have the features and quality to best the likes of Motorola or Samsung? Read on to find out more.

Sometime during the day tomorrow (Tuesday, July 19th) when you sign in to Xbox LIVE you’ll receive a prompt to accept a mandatory system update. If you are signed into LIVE already, you may be signed out and asked to accept the update and you’ll be back online in a few moments.

There are no new features that will show up once your system has been updated.

This update is preparation for additional system enhancements coming to Xbox 360 later this year.

Okay, preemptively, enough giggling. Feminine hygiene is serious business—and booming business, too. Which is why Summer's Eve has dropped this big budget yonic ode to the female genitalia, which they say shaped the course of history. More »

The BlackBerry PlayBook hasn’t exactly captured the hearts and minds of the market since its rather lacklustre sales debut earlier this year. Even die-hard BlackBerry fans admitted that it’s not the ‘complete package’ that tablet buyers expect, given the absence of features such as native email and calendar applications, and…

A Kansas State University professor recently spoke up on the issue of violence in video games, stating that the real problem is not the violence itself, but the type of child and the parent-child relationship.

Charles Smith, professor of family studies and parenting expert said:

There is a mass hysteria about violence and video games, but it’s the context and type of video game, and more importantly, it’s the type of child.

Smith said that with a good parent-child relationship, most children can play a video game and will not become violent because of it. Some of the first video games I played were Mortal Kombat and Duke Nukem — and I didn’t turn into a gun-toting sociopath.

Violence is a part of a lot of great stories, literature and fairy tales. We don’t want to ban good literature just because there’s violence in it.

Impossible. Everyone knows video games invented violence.

Smith stated his concern regarding the push towards realism:

The realism in video games is changing constantly because of technology. This causes more realistic violence, and video games are becoming more and more immersive in terms of their nature.

I find cartoon or video game violence amusing — as long as I can remove myself from it. Those aren’t people being injured, those are pixels responding according to their programming. The first game to make me uneasy about video game violence was Soldier of Fortune and its detailed entrails — the more realistic the graphics, the more difficult it is to remember that it’s just a game.

Kudos to Smith for speaking out and placing the onus of responsibility where it should be: on the parents, not on the video game developers.

Android: Ever been hit with an unexpected data charge on your wireless bill? Avoid this in the future by using My Data Manager, a free app that will alert you when you get close to your free data threshold. More »

That unappealing smell could be the stench of jealousy, after a man uses the law to his advantage and snags a $300,000 house in Texas for a mere $16. Now his high-falutin’ neighbors are all cranky that he might get away with such a steal.

KHOU.com out of Texas brings us the story of the man who moved into a foreclosed home and filed some paperwork, along with a $16 fee, in the town of Flower Mound, and could end up with his McMansion if he lives in it for three years.

Kenneth Robinson’s new neighbors say he’s a squatter, but he says he is just using the law to his advantage. After the previous owners walked away from the house when it was in foreclosure, the mortgage company went out of business. So Robinson moved in after researching “adverse possession,” a little-known Texas law.

He printed out an online form and filed it at Denton County courthouse for $16 and was granted rights to the house. The home has no electricity or running water, but Robinson just set up camp anyway. The law says he gets exclusive negotiating rights with the original owner. If they want him out, they have to pay off the mortgage debt and the bank would have to file a lawsuit.

Robinson doesn’t think that’s likely, and after three years, he can ask the court for the title to the home. In the meantime, he posted “No Trespassing” signs after his neighbors tried to get him arrested for squatting. Cops can’t remove him because home ownership is a civil, not criminal matter.

“If he wants the house, buy the house like everyone else had to,” says one neighbor. “Get the money, buy the house.”

Or, just pay $16 and still get the house.

Stranger moves into foreclosed home, citing little-known Texas law [KHOU.com]

A long lost island in the North Atlantic Ocean sits on the seafloor, but rivers and mountains and other remnants of its time at the surface remain etched on its features.

NASA’s orbiting astronauts detached a huge storage bin full of trash from the International Space Station on Monday and loaded it aboard Atlantis for the last shuttle ride back to Earth.

Parents who let their toddlers sleep in the same bed as them aren’t slowing their learning and behaviour development, a new U.S. study has found.