.::REALITYRECALL::.

(As heard through the glass as Roberto Luongo skated to the bench, having given up six goals on 28 shots in the Vancouver Canucks‘ 7-2 Game 4 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks.)

"I'm gonna ask you a simple question and I want you to listen to me: Who's the big loser here tonight at the casino? Huh? Roberto, that's who. Roberto's the big loser. Roberto loses! Make me a bicycle, clown! Dorothy Mantooth was a saint!

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna make Gretzky's head bleed for super fan 99 over here. …"

Thanks, Vince. For the record: Fantastic, prideful win for the Blackhawks in Game 4. But we doubt any of the Chicago dailies will publish an accurate headline about it, which would be "Delaying The Inevitable." This is still Vancouver's series, no matter how putrid the effort was Tuesday night.

Photo by Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune. Stick-tap to Frankie Monahan for the image.

The secret memo is one of two letters written by JFK asking for information about the paranormal on November 12 1963, which have been released by the CIA for the first time.

NHL fans learned something new this week when Colin Campbell revealed the existence of a “hitting zone” behind the net where, apparently, headshots are legal.

This got me to wondering: what else don’t we know about the NHL rink? So I dug into my old cartography library, and came up with this original map that lays it all out:

It all makes sense now…

Touchscreen devices are great, until you’re wearing gloves and have no way to control your phone. By dabbing just a bit of thermal compound on your gloves, though, your phone’s touchscreen will recognize your fingers again. More »

The NHL is staying on NBC and Versus for the next 10 years with a deal Commissioner Gary Bettman calls the most significant in league history. In a joint announcement Tuesday, the NHL and the NBC Sports Group said the new deal will run through the 2020-21 season.

What’s in a PlayBook? No, literally, what is in that thing? Well, most of the specs were known ahead of today’s release, but there was a bit of confusion about whether RIM’s 7-inch tablet did or didn’t have a gyroscope, which has now been set straight (it does!) by the crew at iFixit. They did their usual study of what it’ll take to repair your own PlayBook should the need ever arise, and gave it a repairability score of 7 out of 10. Replacing the front glass would be a bit of a pain to do, but then that’s the case with most portable devices. The motherboard also got a thorough examination, with all the power management, wireless connectivity, and memory chips getting identified and recorded for posterity. If you want to check iFixit‘s work, feel free to visit UBM Tech Insights as well, who have their own component list and closeup photography of that dual-core TI OMAP4430 system-on-chip. Yes, closeup photography.

BlackBerry PlayBook pried open, gyroscope and other goodies discovered originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For many of us, Facebook is home to a lot of our online communications—including our most private. Keep other people from getting into your account with these new Facebook features. More »

Oracle announced its intentions to discontinue the OpenOffice.org (OOo) suite of software on Friday 15th. The move does not come as a major surprise, following a ‘fork’ of the OpenOffice developers several months ago. The group who left OpenOffice.org development founded a ‘vendor-neutral’ group, known as The Document Foundation. The…

Most of Canada’s rich got that way by earning their money, rather than inheriting it, according to a study released Tuesday by BMO Harris Private Banking.

Most of us have desk jobs that involve sitting down for at least six hours of the day, and it isn’t news that sitting down for that long is bad for you, even if you exercise. Standing desks are a great option for some, but aren’t necessarily an option for everyone. What else can you do to regularly get off your butt during the day? More »

By Nick Peers

Improvements include copying open and locked files, compression and encryption and email notifications.

When you need to reinstall Windows, you shouldn’t have to spend an entire day installing years of updates, drivers, and necessary software along with it. Here’s how to create a Windows installation disc (or USB stick) that’s up to date, customized, auto-installing, and far less time-sucking than your original. More »

Google’s looking to improve its local neighborhood coverage with your help, opening the United States map in Google Map Maker for you to add your expert local knowledge. More »

Cross-posted on the YouTube Blog.

As the historic day approaches, the much-anticipated wedding of Britain’s Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton has people around the world buzzing with excitement.

While millions will be in London for the big day, it’s clear that people around the world have wedding fever. Google search trends show that in addition to the UK and the US, the top ten countries searching for “royal wedding” include places like Singapore and the Philippines. In response, we’ve been working to make as much of the big day as possible accessible to everyone. We previously announced the expansion of our Google Earth 3D imagery to offer a “Royals’-eye” view of the entire wedding procession, complete with 3D images of iconic landmarks and five species of digital trees that can be seen along the route.

Today, we’re thrilled that the Royal Household has just announced that footage of the entire ceremony will be live-streamed on their official YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel.

The live stream will begin at 10:00a BST (9:00a GMT, 2:00a PT, 5:00a ET) on Friday, April 29, and will follow the wedding procession, marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey and balcony kiss. Alongside the live stream, The Royal Channel will also feature live blog commentary of the event to give timely updates and insights as the day unfolds. For those of you in different time zones, the footage will be reshown in its entirety directly following the event and will be available in full on the site to view afterwards.

You don’t have to wait until the big day to “attend” the wedding, though. A video guest book has just been opened on The Royal Channel for anyone in the YouTube community to upload messages of congratulations, inspiration or well wishes to the happy couple.

More than 50 years ago, the marriage of The Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and Antony Armstrong-Jones was the first royal wedding to be broadcast on television and had over 20 million viewers. This one is already heralded as the first of the Internet age, where for the first time in thousands of years of royal history, the moment will be captured online and preserved forever.

Posted by Rachel Ball, Partner Development Associate

We’re firmly of the belief that SSDs are our future and Samsung would seem to agree. The Korean electronics giant has just announced that it’s selling its hard disk drive-manufacturing arm to Seagate Technology for a neat $1.375 billion in equal measures of cash and stocks. As a result, Samsung Electronics will own approximately 9.6 percent of Seagate and get to nominate one new member to join Seagate’s Board of Directors, while the two companies have further agreed to deepen their strategic relationship with related cross-licensing and supply stipulations. Samsung will provision Seagate’s solid state drives with NAND flash memory, whereas Seagate will furnish Samsung’s PCs and consumer electronics products with hard disk storage. The deal is expected to complete in full by year’s end and you can read all about it in Seagate’s press release after the break.

[Thanks, Pavel]

Continue reading Samsung sells HDD division to Seagate for $1.375 billion

Samsung sells HDD division to Seagate for $1.375 billion originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 05:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today is the day in BlackBerry land. The wait for a dual-core device with an up-to-date operating system and that stylized BB logo is now over, and a vast array of stores in the US and Canada are now ready to sell you your PlayBook. Whether you’ll actually want to buy one is less clear-cut, however, as basic productivity apps like native email and calendar aren’t yet available, Android app compatibility hasn’t yet been rolled out, and the PlayBook has an unfavorable dependency on having a BlackBerry smartphone nearby in order to be the best tablet it can be. Still, if you believe in RIM’s ability to overcome those early software hurdles, the PlayBook’s ready for ownership in exchange for $500 for the 16GB model, $600 for the 32GB version, or $700 for the 64GB-equipped top option (prices are the same in both US and Canadian dollars).

BlackBerry PlayBook now on sale in the US and Canada, starting at $500 with 16GB of storage originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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