.::REALITYRECALL::.

Move over, Mickey D’s, and bring Ronald McDonald with you — there’s a new fast food king in town.

I just got a kick out of watching Microsoft’s “It’s Very PC,” “It’s Not Very PC” ad campaign, in partnership with ASUS and its upcoming Eee Slate. The ads are clever and highlight how a Windows-powered tablet can work well professionally and for play. In fact, Microsoft is kind of showing that one can use […]

Last time we checked in with ComScore’s report on smartphone platform market share among US subscribers three months ago, Android was doing a little happy dance as it overtook iOS for the number two spot overall. Well, the cuddly green bots have self-replicated yet again, enough to overtake RIM this time thanks in part to a 5.4 percent decline on BlackBerry’s part (down to 30.4 percent in January) coupled with a 7.7 percent boost on the Android side, moving up to 31.2 percent. We imagine ComScore’s next report — covering the period through March — will see a little boost on the iOS side thanks to Verizon’s iPhone launch, but RIM’s knight in shining armor might be further out; we still don’t know when QNX-based phones are going to happen, after all, and devices like the Monaco don’t really seem like cure-alls.

ComScore: Android leapfrogs BlackBerry among US smartphone subscribers to take first place in market share originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engineers built and flew a replica of the flying house in Pixar’s “Up” — setting the record for the largest cluster balloon flight ever.

It took 300 balloons, each 8-feet tall and filled with an entire tank of helium. The stint was for or National Geographic Channel’s “How Hard Can It Be?” show. Watch the video report:

Google Maps Navigation becomes more of a threat to the traditional in-car GPS business seemingly on a daily basis, and they’re taking another stab at it today with the addition of traffic re-routing capability in the Android app (which, while technically still in beta, is pretty darn solid) in both North America and Europe. Of course, Maps has had access to traffic information for a long time, so this is a natural progression — and just as Google uses an interesting combination of sources (including phones) to cull that data, it’s employing some smart schemes for re-routing that take into account both current and historical information about your route. The update’s available today.

Google Maps Navigation for Android adds real-time traffic re-routing originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How many rounds of rock, paper, scissors have you played in your life? Probably not enough to outsmart a computer. Have you identified trends in playing behavior? Doubtful. Are you predictable with your throwing strategy? Likely. Is it even possible to be any good at the game? Well, here’s your chance to find out. Test your rock, paper scissors prowess against a super smart, battle tested opponent: a computer. More »

Sofia M. Fernandez
The actor reveals new “winning” tattoo on “Sheen’s Korner.”
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Full story at The Live Feed

If you’ve been scanning the internet this weekend, chances are you’ve seen that particular Fox News story about alien bacterial fossils being discovered on meteorites. The findings in the Fox story were published in the Journal of Cosmology, which is less of an academic website and more like watching laser Jethro Tull at your local planetarium. More »

Earlier this year various presentation slides leaked out of all the BlackBerry handsets RIM will be releasing this year Malibu, Torch 2, Monaco and Apollo/Sedona. Now a new set of slides has leaked online showing that 2011 BlackBerry software roadmap. There are some interesting things coming down the pipe this year… most of them involve […]

Related posts:

1. BlackBerry 2011 CDMA Roadmap leaked: Curve Touch, Montana, Monaco…
2. Virgin Mobile Q4 Holiday Season Handset Roadmap leaked
3. Image: RIM shows off BlackBerry PlayBook at Rogers TabLife

Bryan Alexander
Robert Kirkman speaks to Sheen through THR: ”Charlie call us, we will totally make this…

Full story at The Live Feed

On Tuesday evening, the Android team was made aware of a number of malicious applications published to Android Market. Within minutes of becoming aware, we identified and removed the malicious applications. The applications took advantage of known vulnerabilities which don’t affect Android versions 2.2.2 or higher. For affected devices, we believe that the only information the attacker(s) were able to gather was device-specific (IMEI/IMSI, unique codes which are used to identify mobile devices, and the version of Android running on your device). But given the nature of the exploits, the attacker(s) could access other data, which is why we’ve taken a number of steps to protect those who downloaded a malicious application:

1. We removed the malicious applications from Android Market, suspended the associated developer accounts, and contacted law enforcement about the attack.
2. We are remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices. This remote application removal feature is one of many security controls the Android team can use to help protect users from malicious applications.
3. We are pushing an Android Market security update to all affected devices that undoes the exploits to prevent the attacker(s) from accessing any more information from affected devices. If your device has been affected, you will receive an email from android-market-support@google.com over the next 72 hours. You will also receive a notification on your device that “Android Market Security Tool March 2011” has been installed. You may also receive notification(s) on your device that an application has been removed. You are not required to take any action from there; the update will automatically undo the exploit. Within 24 hours of the exploit being undone, you will receive a second email.
4. We are adding a number of measures to help prevent additional malicious applications using similar exploits from being distributed through Android Market and are working with our partners to provide the fix for the underlying security issues.

For more details, please visit the Android Market Help Center. We always encourage you to check the list of permissions when installing an application from Android Market. Security is a priority for the Android team, and we’re committed to building new safeguards to help prevent these kinds of attacks from happening in the future.

Posted by Rich Cannings, Android Security Lead

This might just be news to get all atwitter about. The wildly popular mobile game Angry Birds, which has over 75 million downloads and counting, is taking flight and landing on Facebook pretty soon. With such encouraging numbers, it’s not exactly surprising to find that the game will be migrating…