.::REALITYRECALL::.

Japan may need five years to rebuild from the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that has caused up to $235 billion of damage, the World Bank says.

Almost two weeks ago, discussions arose in the Neowin forums as to whether Google was planning to change their Google Chrome logo to a more simplistic design.

Well, today it has been announced that indeed they are now going to start pushing the new design and those who have been using…

Having trouble with your Gmail in China? Google politely requests that you blame the government, not the company. For several weeks now, users in China have been complaining about glitches within the popular mail program. When Google’s engineers looked into the issues, they discovered that the Chinese government was the source of the problem. “Relating to Google there is no issue on our side… This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail,” a Google spokesperson told The Guardian.

Strangely enough, the news comes almost a year to the day after Google announced that it would start redirecting Google.cn users to Hong Kong Google, having discovered that the Chinese government had hacked into a number of human rights activists’ accounts. This latest activity comes on the heels of a Chinese Internet crackdown meant to control the information relating to the popular uprisings in the Middle East. Skype, meanwhile, has been blocked since December. With the recent launch of a state-owned search engine, perhaps it’s not inconceivable that Google will be the next to go.

Chinese Government Messing With Gmail, Google Says originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New study links masturbation and prostate cancer

Remember that massive security vulnerability that Adobe identified in its Flash Player, Acrobat and Reader software? Well, shockingly enough, it hasn’t yet taken over the internet and ground productivity to a halt, but Google’s been proactive about it and patched the flaw by itself. Of course, the fix applies only to its own Chrome web browser, Firefoxes and Internet Explorer types will have to wait for Adobe’s fix, which is expected any minute now. Still, it’s good to know someone’s looking out for the security of our data, even if that someone already has access to most of it anyway.

Google patches Flash vulnerability in Chrome, leaves other browsers hanging originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 09:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Work is still underway on an Android version of VLC Media Player, the open source, cross-platform media player that plays just about any kind of file you throw at it, and a beta is expected within a month or two.

This new time frame is pushed back quite a bit from what we’d heard in December, when it was said to be coming in a matter of weeks. In an interview with a German site on March 19, VideoLAN board member Rémi Duraffort provided some detail about why it has taken longer than expected:

“Unfortunately, VLC uses some features from the libc that Bionic does not implement. For this reason we had to add workarounds to be able to compile and run VLC Media Player. It requires time as some of these workarounds are a bit complex.”

That’s not a reference to the Droid Bionic, but to Bionic, Google’s custom C compiler library for Android.

The app is expected to run on Android 1.5+, but will make special use of new audio and video APIs for devices running Gingerbread or higher.

Source: Handy-sparen.de

 

VLC Media Player for Android in 1-2 Months originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

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Motorola announced earlier that their XOOM Wi-Fi tablet will be available in Canada this April, but was very discreet about the pricing. Thankfully our friends over at Future Shop were not. They have put the Android 3.0 Honeycomb powered XOOM up for pre-order at the cost of $599.99 with an “Estimated release date: 04/08/2011″. Thanks […]

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While we’ve yet to see other Honeycomb tablets materialize in the shops after the Xoom, news has it that ASUS is about to debut its Eee Pad Transformer back in its home country this Friday. There’s still no final pricing to be seen for this Tegra 2 device, but some of our watchful readers have already spotted the stricken-through $799 label — in US dollars, oddly enough — on ASUS’ Transformer countdown page on Facebook, and hopefully this price tag will cover the docking kit as well. Anyhow, anxious Android fans will be able to order this peculiar 10.1-inch slate — in 16GB or 32GB flavor — later this week, so that Taiwanese pen pal of yours will finally come in handy.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: We just heard from our ASUS rep here in the US and it looks like the Transformer will be hitting the US market in early April. No word on pricing yet, but we will keep you updated.

ASUS to debut Eee Pad Transformer in Taiwan this Friday, Honeycomb confirmed (updated: coming to US in early April) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 07:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After needing to release a second Release Candidate just over a week ago, Mozilla have finally signed off on version 4.0 and made it available to the public ahead of the official launch date of March 22.

The Firefox website has yet to be updated, but we expect this will happen…

AT&T plans to acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom AG for a cool $39 billion.

read more

Share Contacts is a free app that gives Android users an easy way to send and receive contacts via SMS with others (even if they don’t have an Android device). More »

“We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Edgar Allan Poe (via kari-shma)

Randall Munroe of xkcd fame has drafted this handy chart that puts in perspective how much radiation humans receive from commonplace activites (such as eating a banana) and less ordinary situations (spending one hour outside of Chernobyl, for example). More »

Did you go out and see the Supermoon last night? It was huge! Well, in some places. I went out in New York and didn’t even notice a difference. Nonetheless, here’s the gigantic, fiery Supermoon hanging over Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. She looks pretty scary. [MSNBC] More »

CBC Community members sent in their photos of the ‘supermoon,’ the full moon at perigee on March 19.

Word on the street was Archos planned to give us a couple of new tablets at IFA this year, but it turns out the upscale Gen 9 hardware is coming a couple months prior to the September trade show. The new Honeycomb slates are set for a June 2011 release and pack a 1.6GHz ARM A9 dual-core chip (the prospect of which should get you spec-heads drooling), up to a 250GB HDD / 32GB SSD, and a patent-pending "disruptive 3G modem" — all for €400 (about $566). Archos' fiendish plan is to steal some of the iPad 2’s thunder with its speedy processor and competitive price, but history tells us it’ll need more than “competitive” to truly yank any marketshare. Too bad the post-PC world can’t be bothered to care, right Steve?

Sneak peek at Archos Gen 9 tablets: 1.6 GHz dual-core A9 processor, 250GB HDD for €400 in June originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Mar 2011 09:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The next version of Mozilla Firefox could be released in the last week of June, as the company moves to an accelerated release schedule.

According to a draft document, posted by Mozilla’s Rob Sayre and spotted by ConceivablyTech, a single Firefox release will take 16 weeks, a far cry from the…