.::REALITYRECALL::.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser continues to lose overall market share in the great browser wars, especially to Google’s Chrome browser. Net Application’s latest survey of web browser usage show that Internet Explorer dropped from 54.3 percent in May to 53.7 percent in June. By contrast, Google’s Chrome browser jumped…

Google has created a stir recently by changing a lot of their services’ interfaces to coincide with the announcement and private beta release of their Google+ social networking service. So today we’re sharing our opinions of the changes that Google has made, considering so many use their services, and giving…

Your bookmarks bar can get awfully crowded. To make more room and pretty it up a bit, remove the site titles from the bookmarks so that just the distinct favicon appears. You’ll get more room and a cleaner look. More »

Whoops. Diet soda might have no calories, but that doesn’t keep it from growing your waistline. A new study finds that diet drinkers might be even worse off than regular soda drinkers.

Diet soda is not, it turns out, a panacea for overeating. But it’s not just because ordering a burger, fries, and a diet soda means you’re still consuming too many calories; it’s because diet soda itself may increase your waistline.

The news comes from a University of Texas study that examined data from 474 participants in the San Antonio Longitudinal
Study of Aging, a continuing study of elderly Mexican and European Americans. The result: Diet soda drinkers saw a 70% increase in waist circumference compared with non-drinkers over the course of a decade. People who drank more than two diet sodas a day saw a staggering 500% greater waist circumference compared to non-drinkers.

Part of the problem may be traced back to aspartame, the artificial sweetener used in many diet sodas. According to a study from other researchers at the university, heavy exposure to aspartame may directly increase blood glucose levels, leading to an increase in diabetes risk. “Artificial sweeteners could have the effect of triggering appetite but
unlike regular sugars they don’t deliver something that will squelch the
appetite,” explained Sharon Fowler, an obesity researcher who co-authored both studies, in an interview with the Daily Mail. (If this sounds familiar, here’s why.)

So what’s the solution? Cut down on your soda intake–both diet and regular. And while you’re at it, stop driving so much and exercise more at your job. Or get your employer to join Keas, where you’ll get rewards, instead of just being scolded.

[Image by Flickr user “Cowboy” Ben Alman]

Reach Ariel Schwartz via Twitter or email.

Related: Your Mom Is Why You’re Fat

Also Related: Gilded Grub: Burger Shoppe’s $175 Burger

It’s not just Apple’s App Store striding past milestones today, Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace has also rounded a notable marker in its development. Specifically, it’s now reported to have passed 25,000 apps by one site tracking comings and goings within it, though that figure’s up for debate as the other WP7 apps tracker still lists the total at just under 25k. The main point is that the WP7 ecosystem is growing, and faster than previously at that — it took until the end of March to accrue 11,500 apps, a span of five months from its launch, whereas the last 13.5k have come in the brisker period of three months. Provided this acceleration continues, and there’s no reason to expect it’ll slow down with Mango on the horizon, Microsoft’s mobile OS reboot promises to be in pretty competitive shape in time for its first anniversary — a notable feat considering how far behind WinMo had fallen. Perhaps RIM can use this as an instructive example?

[Steve Ballmer image courtesy of Reuters]

Windows Phone Marketplace now populated by 25,000 apps, speeding up rate of growth originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gadgetsteria, WinRumors  |  WindowsPhoneAppslist  | Email this | Comments

The latest Skype update for Android is available to everyone, but it only enables video chat on four specific handsets. Fortunately, impatient modders have gone some way to correcting this profound injustice, by creating APKs that activate video calling on other handsets too. So far we’ve heard of successful ports on the Samsung Galaxy S II and the HTC Sensation, Thunderbolt and EVO 4G. If you’ve got some other handset with Android 2.3, a little experimentation with the APK might also be worth your while. However, we just tried it on an Xperia Arc and didn’t get very far: the app ran, but efforts to communicate with an Xperia Neo resulted in one-way video, a locked landscape mode and plenty of awkwardness. Let us know if you fare better — you’ll find a Thunderbolt-specific download at the DroidLife source link, and a more general APK at TechPetals.

[Thanks, Rashid and JT]

Skype 2 video chat unofficially enabled on the Galaxy S II, Sensation, and others originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  DroidLife, TechPetals  | Email this | Comments

Horses, Wales

Photograph by Marian Ubrankovic

This Month in Photo of the Day: Animal Pictures

This photograph was taken near Pitt’s Head in Snowdonia National Park. The sun was setting and the backlighting created this dramatic picture.

(This photo and caption were submitted to the 2011 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest).

The deadline for entering the photo contest is July 11. Send in your best shots today!

See more pictures of U.K. national parksLearn more about horses &raquo

Been lusting after the Galaxy S II, but aren’t willing to break the bank? We hear you, and apparently Samsung does too. Up for pre-order today, on the Swedish arm of Three, is the Galaxy Z — billed as a more affordable spawn from its Korean progenitor. The Gingerbread-toting handset will sport a 4.2-inch Super Clear LCD, 1GHz dual core processor (rumored to be Tegra 2), and 8GB of onboard storage, extensible with microSD. Fret not camera junkies, also present is a 5 megapixel sensor plus flash and “HD” video recording. All that stands between you and this little Galaxy, are 4,000 kronor (about $630) and your undying love of Swedish meatballs.

Samsung Galaxy Z: Galaxy S II’s ‘affordable little brother’ now ready for pre-order originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Phandroid  |  Samsung Hub, Three (translated)  | Email this | Comments

Posted by Jason Cornwell, User Experience Designer

We get a lot of great feedback about how Gmail helps you be more efficient, keep in touch with family and friends, and get work done. We’ve saved you from forgetting attachments and made sure that you got the right Bob. Over the years, adding countless features to Gmail has made it an increasingly powerful communication hub, but along the way the interface has also become more cluttered and complex.

That’s one of the reasons we’re embarking on a series of interface updates to help strip out unnecessary clutter and make Gmail as beautiful as it is powerful. This is part of a Google-wide effort to bring you an experience that’s more focused, elastic, and effortless across all of our products. The changes are not going to happen all at once. We know that you love and care about Gmail as much as we do, and we’ll be working on these upgrades gradually over the next few months to allow plenty of time to understand and incorporate your feedback into the evolving design.

We’re kicking things off with two new themes for you to try out as a sort of sneak peek at what we’re up to. Starting today, you’ll see the “Preview” and “Preview (Dense)” themes in the Themes tab in Gmail Settings. Why two themes? Our new interface will eventually expand dynamically to accommodate different screen sizes and user preferences, but until then you can pick the information density that you prefer.

Here’s what one of the new themes currently looks like:

And in conversation view:

Click the images above to see larger versions.

If you poke around you’ll hopefully find a lot to like and a much cleaner, modern look but also few rough edges. In particular, some Labs features may look a little strange in the new themes. We plan to fix these issues as we roll out changes in the coming months. You can also expect some updated themes that embody the same design principles but are better suited to working in a dark environment, use a different color palette, or include the illustrations that we know many of you love to see around your inbox.

Look out for these and other new features over the next few months. In the meantime, try out the new themes as a preview of the future of Gmail and let us know what you think.

P.S. Like Gmail, Google Calendar is also getting a new look. You’ll see it automatically within the next few days so there’s no need to turn it on, and we’ll also continue to make improvements there in the coming months. Details about the current changes to Calendar can be found in the Calendar help center.

It looks like Facebook isn’t the only one planning a secret Instagram rival. Pool Party is Google’s Android-based answer to Instagram and it’s already in beta testing (accessible by invite only). More »

Rumor has it that ASUS wont be the only company with a sliding Android tablet this holiday season — DigiTimes claims to have it on good authority that Acer will be launching its own 10.1-inch slate with a peekaboo QWERTY stashed behind the screen. The ARM-powered device is reportedly being manufactured by Compal, but beyond that your guess is as good as ours. By the time it lands we should be getting our first taste of Ice Cream Sandwich, but it’s a pretty safe bet if this unnamed device does ship later this year, it’ll do so with Honeycomb on board.

Acer planning a sliding Android tab for the holidays, won’t fit in your stocking originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  DigiTimes  | Email this | Comments

iPhones. iPads. Android. Windows Phone 7. And even Jailbroken phones. We’ve updated all of our essential apps lists to include a few forgotten favorites, some long awaited arrivals and, as always, even more amazing apps. Check them out! More »

““I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.””

– Lisa Kleypas (via tror)

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies”

– Aristotle | goodbyerachel (via quote-book)

Today we’ve updated the Google search experience for BlackBerry 6.0 WebKit enabled devices. We’ve added a number of enhanced search features integrated throughout the homepage and search result pages, making searching faster and easier on www.google.com, especially on touch-enabled Blackberry devices.

Left: Improved homepage with autocomplete and search history as you type.

Right: See more information with search options and enhanced results.

• Enter searches faster: Save time by using autocomplete and search history queries that appear beneath the search box as you type.
• Web search: Find what you're searching for fast. Comprehensive results pages let you see relevant websites, images, videos, news, real-time results and more. Simply click on the arrow button ‘>>’ to the left of the top search box for more refinement options.
• Image search: Swipe through image results quickly and easily on touch enabled devices. Start by selecting ‘Images’ at the top of www.google.com, then enter a search. From there, click on any image to view a larger size.
• Local search: Find restaurants, shops and other popular business categories with a single tap. Start by selecting ‘Places’ at the top of www.google.com, then click on an icon from the Places homepage.

These features and more are available on most RIM OS 6.0+ devices with WebKit browsers like the BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry Bold 9780, and can be accessed in 20 languages across 70 countries.

To try out the new features, go to www.google.com in your mobile browser. We recommend that you bookmark Google Search to your phone’s home screen, so that Google search is just one click away.

Posted by Ryan Doherty, Software Engineer

While tech pundits are widely praising Google’s new Plus product, I’ve found the one feature that could take away from Facebook where it’s most dominant: Time on the site.

Facebook users are known for staying on the site for over half an hour a day, something no other site could compete with… until now.

To be honest, my gut reaction after using Google Plus was initially, “Why on earth would anybody switch to this from Facebook?”

However, when I loaded up Google Finance as I do every morning, I suddenly realized that I was asking the wrong question. The reality is that users won’t have the option of not using Google Plus.

Google already has more users than Facebook, over one billion. They aren’t going to suddenly leave Facebook in droves, they’re just going to spend more time on all the sites in Google’s network. That big notifications box in the top right of all Google sites is the reason why.

As I’m browsing around Google-powered sites there’s occasionally a red notification alert that pops up and immediately grabs my attention. Soon enough I’m clicking through the various notifications and seeing what my friends have shared and who has recently begun sharing with me.

It’s a not-so-subtle tactic by Google to quickly increase the amount of time you end up spending on Google properties. It’s also an easy way to immediately add social discovery to all of Google’s products.

The notifications box is also something that Google could leverage to steal one of Facebook’s most valuable assets: developers.

Something like 30 percent or more of all Facebook users’ time on the site is from applications. While Zynga, which is reportedly filing to go public this week, has built a multi-billion dollar business on top of the platform, it has little loyalty to the company.

The primary reason is that Facebook is now taking a 30 percent cut of every game developer’s business. By contrast, Google, which brings in over $30 billion in revenue each year, could easily afford to let developers keep all the money they generate.

Add in the fact that Google also has the fastest growing mobile distribution channel of any company (Android) and you suddenly realize the power that the search giant has to woo developers.

No, Google Plus is not a “Facebook killer,” but despite the company’s numerous failed attempts at getting into social media, the new Plus product gives users no other option but to accept the fact that Google is becoming exactly that: social.

This is clearly just the start, though. Once Google Plus becomes stable and more widely used, the company will attempt to compete with Facebook where it matters most by building an entire social platform. The notifications are just one indicator of what lays ahead.

Readers, have you tried Google Plus yet — do you think it has the potential to cut into your use of Facebook?

Disclosure: I own shares of Google.

Update
Looks like I was dead on with the platform prediction … there’s now code already showing their interest in launching games within the system.

It may be too soon to tell quite how you feel about Google+, but let me tell you right now: the new Google Calendar look is love at first sight. Clean, smooth, sparse—it's everything we've ever loved about Google's UI, coming out just at a time when the rest of its properties get more cluttered by the day. More »