.::REALITYRECALL::.

Have you heard about this new thing called Windows 8? It has a nifty Metro-style UI, and reader Sebastian Nielsen put together a Windows 7 desktop to bring some of that style around a little early. Along with some other attractive customizations, it’s today’s featured desktop. More »

A 20-year-old Irish man was caught by the Brazilian Federal Police with 72 bags of cocaine inside his intestines. This is how he looked inside, using a three-dimensional computed tomography body scanner. It’s actually more disgusting than I expected. More »

RIM stated yesterday that they’ll start to rebate the BlackBerry PlayBook – combined Q1 and Q2 shipments of their first tablet has only come in at 700,000. Today Rogers is the first carrier to discount the PlayBook, but only to employees. The prices are in effect until December 1st and probably best if you’re considering buying one to quickly find a friend who works at Rogers. Here are the prices: 16GB now $249.99; 32GB is $349.99 and the 64GB model is $399.

In addition, we’ve been informed that TELUS has also dropped their employee pricing, but only $100 off model.

Source: BGR

Related posts:

1. Mobilicity employees start BlackBerry PlayBook training
2. Virgin Mobile to release the BlackBerry PlayBook
3. iPad 2 available March 25th… starting at $519

As if Research in Motion’s co-CEOs haven’t done enough, shareholders inflicted serious pain overnight and early today. RIM shares plummeted, following yesterday’s dire earnings report — by about 22 percent in after-hours trading.

RIM opened at $22.89 this morning, off yesterday’s close of $29.54. The stock is fairing better in mid-morning trading, well if down nearly 19 percent could be called better. Shares are down 66 percent from their February 52-week high.

Investors are punishing RIM for what can only be called a disastrous quarter: PlayBook sales — 200,000 units; year-over-year decline in BlackBerry shipments (after about a decade run of gains); 59 percent fall in profits (to $329 million); and 10 percent drop in revenue (to $4.17 billion). Rome is burning, as RIMs co-Neros are playing their fiddles.

“Management remains in blatant denial, in our view”, say sBernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu. “For instance, the co-CEOs do not recognize the failure of the Playbook and continue to sell its merits in terms of security. The tablet shipments fell from 500k to 200k units in one quarter…we expect investors to lose all confidence in RIM’s earnings power”.

Earlier this year, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop called Symbian a burning platform. But it’s RIM’s platform that is burning now, as Android competitors and Apple snatch users from BlackBerry. It can only get worse come iOS 5’s release, when Apple unleashes its competitor to BlackBerry Messenger.

One question lingering now: What will co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis do next? Already there is expectation RIM could follow HP down price-cut row. Last month, HP gave up on TouchPad after only six weeks of sales, cutting the price from $499.99 to $99.99 before exiting the WebOS tablet market altogether. RIM isn’t likely to give up on tablets, but it also can’t let all that inventory rot on store shelves.

Earlier this week, IDC put RIM’s global tablet share at 4.9 percent, which now looks to be roughly 50,000 units too high.

But it is bad decision-making and increasing competitive pressure on BlackBerry that has set fire to RIM. BlackBerry shipments fell to 10.6 million units from 12.1 million a year earlier. While new BlackBerry OS 7 devices are off to a solid sales start, the company says, next-gen QNX won't be ready for new smartphones until some time next year. Meanwhile, Samsung's hot Galaxy S II smartphone goes on sale today from Sprint and on September 18 from AT&T. Then there is iPhone 5, which is sure to sock BlackBerry sales as much or more than the current model already has.

Photo Credit: J. Helgason/Shutterstock

An American hunter who abused wounded birds in Western Canada and videotaped his antics is facing a $15,000 fine and a three-year hunting ban in Canada.

Sometimes you’re watching a random TV show on a random channel and you wonder, who was she again? What show was she in? And then you forget about it and those questions are left unanswered, your brain untapped. With VideoSurf, the app can identify the show you’re watching and give you info about everybody in it. More »

The first quarterly earnings report post-Wake Up Call have just been published for Canada’s own Research in Motion, and while the cash is still flowing, investors and analysts alike aren’t feeling too rosy about the future. Despite Q2 revenue of $4.2 billion and a GAAP net income of $329 million, RIM’s stock plummeted nine percent following the news. Why? That reality was at the lowest end of estimates, and as we’ve seen, it takes a blowout quarter to please the folks on Wall Street. Nevertheless, the company’s touting a subscriber base that ballooned 40 percent year-over-year (surpassing 70m total), and while it’s quick to trumpet the rollout of seven new smartphones, not a one of them managed to astound the QNX-desiring critics. The report also notes that 10.6 million handsets were moved in the quarter, around $780 million was invested as “part of a consortium of companies that successfully bid to acquire intellectual property assets from Nortel,” and it’s forecasting that BlackBerry smartphone shipments in Q3 will grow between 27 percent and 37 percent compared to Q2. Sadly, the company only “shipped” 200,000 PlayBook tablets, with the prevailing thought being that it actually sold far fewer. Moreover, nary a forecast was given for future PlayBook sales.

As for thoughts from the head honcho(s)? Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, stated that “overall unit shipments in the quarter were slightly below our forecast due to lower than expected demand for older models,” further noting that his firm will “continue to build on the success of the BlackBerry 7 launch to drive the business as we focus our development efforts on delivering the next generation, QNX-based mobile platform next year.” Next year is a long, long way away, though, and there’s no doubt whatsoever what kind of competition will be in place by the time 2012 rolls around. We’ll be hopping on the analyst call here in a few, and you can look beyond the break for any notable mentions.

Continue reading RIM’s Q2 earnings report: $329 million in net income, not enough to fend off critics

RIM’s Q2 earnings report: $329 million in net income, not enough to fend off critics originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A new study has been released that shows the top 15 brands in Canada. The report was put together by Brand Finance who analyzed calculated the “strength” of a brand by organizing “detailed economic data, infrastructure data and perceptual market research data to rate and then value each nation brand”. At the top of the list was RBC, followed by TD Bank. As for the telecom sector, it was Bell (Canada’s 2nd largest carrier) who took home 6th spot overall, but claimed to be the strongest wireless brand. Rogers followed by placing 9th and TELUS came in at number 13.

For some reason – probably to gain media attention – Brand Finance decided this was a opportune time to single out and slam Waterloo-based RIM, who dropped 5 spots to the number 10 position. Kicking RIM while their down took up most of their press release and stated that “Blackberry’s dramatic decline comes as other handset providers are encroaching on the traditional B2B space, impacting handset sales. Blackberry has also failed to recently capture the hearts and minds of consumers globally in the way that Apple has managed to do.”

It’s great to see so much wireless being represent, a respectable 28% make up the top 15. Hopefully when RIM announces their Q2 results they will jump up in value, both in revenue and in the hearts/hands of Canadians.

Source: CNW

Related posts:

1. RIM, TELUS, Rogers, Bell and MTS all make the list of brands Canadians love/hate
2. RIM, MTS, SaskTel and TELUS make “Canada’s Top 100 Employers” list
3. Strategy Magazine recognizes TELUS in “Brands of the Year”

Continue reading MSDN previews Windows 8 touch on Windows 7 hardware

MSDN previews Windows 8 touch on Windows 7 hardware originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are a few pretty great backup apps for Android, but our favorite has to be Titanium Backup. It requires a rooted phone, but you can backup and restore apps from Dropbox, run automatic batch backups, and even uninstall crapware. More »

We got our paws on the two upcoming Archos Android 3.2 tablets the other week at IFA — and now it seems that you’ll be able to follow suit in the near future, with pre-sale beginning September 20th. The Archos eight-inch G9 starts at $299 for the 1GHz 8GB version, going all the way up to $369 for a 1.5GHz processor and a whopping 250GB of storage. The 10-incher has a 1.5GHz processor and 16GB of storage for $399 or you can plunk down $469 for the 250GB version. The 1GHz 80 G9 starts pre-sale on September 20th through Archos and goes on sale at select retailers on the 30th. Its 1.5GHz counterpart will be hitting in October. Press info is after the break.

Continue reading Archos G9 tablets doing the pre-sale thing September 20th

Archos G9 tablets doing the pre-sale thing September 20th originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a message to its shareholders on Thursday, DVD rental and video streaming company Netflix revealed that its subscriber acquisition has significantly slowed due to the revised subscription rates it announced two months ago.

Under the company’s new pricing structure, its unlimited video streaming feature, which was previously included freely in its DVD-by-mail subscription packages, would incur its own subscription cost for all subscribers. The effect this had on the price at the consumer’s end was shocking, and for some subscribers, it represented a 90% price increase in their subscription packages.

At the time, We posed the following question to Betanews readers:

“Netflix has separated DVD and streaming plans — raising prices 60 percent for many customers. How will you respond?”

Only 14.39% of responders said they would continue with their current plan and nearly 60% planned to close their account.

Now, Netflix says it expects to end the quarter with 2.2 million DVD-only subscribers instead of the 3 million it expected in July, and 9.8 million streaming only customers instead of the 10 million it had previously projected.

The net loss from their prior projection is a million subscribers.

It should be noted that this 36 million total still represents growth from last quarter, which Netflix ended with 24.59 million subscribers, it’s just that growth has been happening considerably slower than the company initially expected.

“We know our decision to split our services has upset many of our subscribers, which we don’t take lightly, but we believe this split will help us make our services better for subscribers and shareholders for years to come,” the company’s statement today said.

The company has not changed its financial guidance as a result of this projected loss in subscribers, and its international subscriber guidance is the same as it was in July, but the market didn’t take today’s announcement too kindly, and shares of Netflix opened 15% lower than yesterday.

1926

This shot from the movie The General is the most expensive shot in silent film history. It was filmed in a single take, that had to be perfect, with a real train and a ‘dummy’ engineer (notice the white arm hanging out the conductors window). Some of the locals who came to watch the filming, thought the dummy was a real person and screamed in horror; supposedly, one person even fainted.

(via Jaeger Amzallag)

If you want to cook corn for the masses, Bon Appetit suggests a dead simple, ingenious method: “cooler corn.” More »

Android/Windows/Mac: Cheetah Sync offers a free, wireless syncing solution if you want to make sure the music, photos, documents, and video on your Android phone or tablet are always backed up and in sync with a folder on your desktop. More »

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer was his usual frank self when he met financial analysts yesterday, admitting that the world isn’t yet as keen on Windows Phone as he’d hoped. To be precise, AllThingsD reported him as saying: “We haven’t sold quite as many as I would have liked in the first year.” His cunning plan? Well, that’s easy: make it all Nokia’s problem. Or, as he put it: “With Nokia we have a dedicated hardware partner that is all-in on Windows Phones.” Indeed, the Finnish manufacturer has now staked far more than Microsoft on the success of this “third ecosystem” and, if its imminent Mango handsets fail to turn things around, we may eventually see Stephen Elop standing behind that silent cash register.

Ballmer: Windows Phones aren’t selling very well, but we’re not worried originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 06:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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