.::REALITYRECALL::.

Last month there were more than a few rumors circulating around regarding EA potentially buying PopCap for upwards of one billion dollars. Official news hit today that not only is EA acquiring PopCap, but they're potentially paying as much as $1.3b for them. That $1.3b includes $650m in cash (hopefully delivered in gym bags full of $100 bills), $100m in stock, and a multi-year earn out where PopCap can potentially get another $550m if they meet certain earnings benchmarks over the next few years.

Why fork out this kind of cash for the creators of Peggle? Well, if the writing on the wall wasn't clear enough already, EA is serious about the digital arena. PopCap games are ridiculously good, and are known and loved by people worldwide.

Or, as EA CEO John Riccitiello put it, “PopCap’s great studio talent and powerful IP add to EA’s momentum and accelerate our drive towards a $1 billion digital business. EA’s global studio and publishing network will help PopCap rapidly expand their business to more digital devices, more countries, and more channels.”

So, congratulations are in order for PopCap. It's incredible to see an 11 year old company that makes (admittedly awesome) casual games selling for so much money.

[via TechCrunch]

Recently, we’ve been hard at work improving Android Market to give you new ways to find great applications and games, purchase books, and rent movies. Today, we’re releasing a new version of Android Market which makes all of these available on phones (Android 2.2 and higher).

In the U.S., you’ll be able to rent thousands of movies, starting at $1.99, right from Android Market on your phone. With the Videos app, available in Android Market, there’s no more waiting for downloads, syncing, or worrying about storage space. Simply sign into Android Market with your Google account, and you can rent movies from anywhere – the web, or your Android phone or tablet – and start watching instantly. You can also download movies to your device so they’re available for viewing when you don’t have an internet connection.

Also in the U.S., you can now purchase books from Android Market on your phone. Like movie rentals, books are linked to your Google account, so they’re instantly available across all of your devices – computer, phone, or tablet – without the need for wires or downloads.

You’ll be delighted to find we’ve overhauled Android Market to make it faster, easier, and more fun to discover great apps, movies, and books. We’ve created more space to feature some of the most interesting content of the week on the home page. We’ve added more top charts, with newer, more relevant items, and we’ve made it easy to swipe through these charts as you browse the store. We’ve also introduced new collections of great content, like staff picks and Editors’ Choice apps.

The new Android Market will be rolling out in the coming weeks to Android 2.2 and higher phones around the world. You don’t need to do anything – the update is automatic on supported phones. If you’re in the U.S., you’ll also be able to download the Videos app, rent movies, and buy books once you receive the new Android Market.

Your phone is about to get a lot more interesting! Enjoy the new Android Market.

Posted by Paul Montoy-Wilson, Product Manager

The RCMP in Yorkton, Sask., have charged a local man with kidnapping an 11-year-old girl, following an incident at the city’s summer fair last week.

Performers from the Bare Essentials burlesque show spent Monday’s lunch hour petitioning people about Saskatchewan’s stripping laws.

Gather around the iPad Trekkies, have we got a treat for you — CBS Interactive has just unleashed the Star Trek PADD App. At its core is a deep database of information about the shows and movies, including cast and character data, details about planets that populate the universe, and an episode guide. Best of all, the whole experience is presented in the classic LCARS interface that should be familiar to any fan of The Next Generation (or TNG as the cool kids are calling it). In addition to serving as a reference for all things Trek, the app pulls in feeds from the official Facebook and Twitter pages. You can get grab it, in all its black and pastel-colored glory, for $5 at the source link and check out the gallery below.

Star Trek PADD App is a LCARS-sporting Trekkie’s reference bible for the iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Previously mentioned note-taker Evernote just pumped up its Android app with a number of handy features, most notably rich text entry. Now you can create notes with styles like bold and italics, bullet points, numbered lists, and even checkboxes (grocery lists, anyone?). There’s also a new, larger widget that shows recent notes, speed improvements, and a great new tablet interface (shown above). Hit the link to read more, or head straight to the Android Market to download it. [Evernote Blog] More »

Recently we opened our Product Ideas page to gather your feedback about what you’d like to see next in Google Docs. Over a two-week period, nearly 4,000 of you participated, submitting close to 2,000 ideas and casting over 50,000 votes.

Our request for feedback was designed to help us better prioritize the features you want most in Google Docs. We’ll be sure to let you know as we roll out new features based on your valuable input. Here are just a few of the top ideas that we’re prioritizing:

RIM officially launched the BlackBerry App World back on April 1st 2009 and have announced some growing stats today. Some developers have decided to stop supporting BlackBerry devices, but RIM stated on their company blog that “BlackBerry App World is now in over 100 countries, seeing an average of 3 million downloads per day, and we recently crossed the 1 billion app download milestone!”

Comparing to other popular app stores the BlackBerry App World  is clearly not the biggest by any stretch. RIM has always stated they’re looking for higher quality apps that will help their 68 million+ BlackBerry users be more productive (their apps are also priced a bit higher too). Apple’s App Store just passed over the 15 billion download milestone and has over 425,000 apps. As for Google’s Android Market, they just reached 4.5 billion app downloads last month and have 200,000 available apps.

Congrats RIM!

Source: BlackBerry

Related posts:

1. Apple App Store to hit the 10 billion download mark
2. AppStore sails past the 3 billion mark with “no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon”
3. BlackBerry App World seeing “3 Million downloads a day”

The Saskatoon SPCA is wrestling with the fate of seven dogs rescued from a rural home near Yorkton after the animals ate the remains of their deceased owners.

Google recently released their own line of Chrome OS-clad netbooks, but with only a few choices and a somewhat high price tag, you might be more comfortable running Chrome OS on your own machine. Here’s how to install it on your current laptop or netbook. More »

Before you speak, ask yourself,

is it kind,

is it necessary,

is it true,

does it improve on the silence?

    — Sai Baba

Thanks Michelle K

There’s a fundamental flaw with fan-and-heatsink cooling systems: no matter how hard the fan blows, a boundary layer of motionless, highly-insulating air remains on the heatsink. You can increase the size of the heatsink and you can blow more air, but ultimately the boundary layer prevents the system from being efficient; it’s simply a physical limitation of fan-and-heatsink cooling systems in specific, and every kind of air-cooled heat exchanger in general, including air conditioning and refrigeration units.

But what if you did away with the fan? What if the heatsink itself rotated? Well, believe it or not, rotating the heat exchanger obliterates the boundary layer, removes the need for a fan, and it’s so efficient that it can operate at low and very quiet speeds. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Air Bearing Heat Exchanger [PDF]. Developed by Jeff Koplow, a researcher at the US government’s Sandia National Laboratories, the new heatsink (which has also been dubbed the “Sandia Cooler”) basically resembles a big, metal fan. The cooler consists of a static metal baseplate, which is connected to the CPU, GPU, or other hot object, and a finned, rotating heat exchanger that are cushioned by a thin (0.001-inch) layer of air. As the metal blades spin, centrifugal force kicks up the air and throws it up and outwards, much like an impeller, creating a cooling effect.

This new technique is so efficient that if these heat exchangers can find widespread adoption in computers and air conditioning units, Koplow estimates that the total US electricity consumption could drop by 7%. Furthermore, if you’re a computer geek, there’s another big advantage of the Air Bearing Heat Exchanger: it’s intrinsically immune to the build up of dust and detritus. The Sandia Cooler may also be the technology that smashes down the “Thermal Brick Wall” that is preventing computer chips from moving beyond 3GHz.

So when can you get your hands on one? Koplow is now working on a design that can be mass-produced — and hopefully he’ll soon be able to bring this awesome piece of technology to market.

Read more at New Scientist or read the research paper

After battling the buggy Words With Friends, I might just jump ships to the official Hasbro Scrabble game now it’s come to Android. Like WWF, it’s cross-platform so Android users can play against iOS and Facebook gamers. More »

If you have a lot of time and information invested in Facebook, it’s not easy moving to a new social network. Here are a few tips on moving your information from your Facebook account to your shiny new Google+ account.

Moving social networks isn’t the easiest thing to do, but luckily there are a few tools we can use to migrate pictures, videos, and friends. Wall posts and messages don’t make sense to migrate between networks so we are going to leave those out.

How to Migrate from Facebook to Google+	How To Diagnose and Fix an Overheating Laptop	How To Skin Your XBMC for Fame, Glory, and Best Looking Media Browsing Around

Holy social networks, Batman! An estimate from Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen suggests Google+ may hit the 10 million member mark in the next 24 hours. If the invite button is left on, this number could climb to 20 million by the weekend. More »

In a milestone event, free and open source blogging platform WordPress has surpassed 50,000,000 installations on websites, and this number is increasing all the time. This milestone comes just over eight years since the initial release of the web software, and just seven days after the release of WordPress 3.2,…

Canada’s telecommunication regulator is hearing competing ideas about how independent internet service providers are billed by large internet service providers such as Bell – rules that could affect prices and options available to regular internet users.