.::REALITYRECALL::.

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.

Windows and Mac: Tunnelbear is a two-switch VPN service that allows you to access content across the world. In the current version you can only switch between the US and the UK, but that’s still pretty handy if you need a way to get to your favorite content from across the pond. More »

If you’re still waiting to pull the trigger on an Android 3.1 tab, decision day may be coming soon. Back in June, Archos revealed two G9 models: the 8-inch 80 and the 10-inch 101. Well… in case you needed time to save up a little extra dough from your paper route, pricing has been revealed ahead of the September release. The smaller of the two tablets will start out at $299.99 and the more stout of the pair at $369.99 (both 8GB base models), a cool Jackson more than originally reported. Just as a quick refresher, keep in mind that beastly 250GB options are available for both, boasting Seagate’s 7mm Momentus Thin HDD technology. You know, if you’re wanting to carry around your entire Metallica bootleg discography on one of these bad boys.

[Thanks, Elliott]

Archos G9 tablets priced: $300 and up, ship in September originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jul 2011 06:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chrome: Many of your favorite sites have their own Chrome extensions that offer offline browsing, powerful searches, or other features. There’s a Web App for That is a Chrome extension that, once downloaded, gives suggestions for future extensions based on the sites you visit most often. More »

Fellow geeks, rejoice! What was once believed to be a cesspool of men and sausage is now teeming with female life! That's right, lads—Google+ has a sizable female presence after all! More »

For those who prefer using feed readers to streamline their online consumption, you can now follow individual Google+ user streams via RSS feeds using a webapp called, simply, Google Plus Feed. More »