.::REALITYRECALL::.

The developers behind Angry Birds, Rovio, had been searching for investors for a while and today, the Finland-based company announced that it has managed to secure over $40m from a collection of investment companies, one of which is connected to Skype. The companies to come on board are Accel Partners,…

No surprises here, just the straight-up news that RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook is one small step closer to retail: it’s gotten FCC clearance. Well, at least the WiFi-only version has — no sign of the WiMAX-capable version for Sprint yet — but RIM’s actually sneaked all three capacities of the device through on one filing (16GB, 32GB, and 64GB). There’s still quite a bit of material protected under the company’s confidentiality request with the feds, so we can’t see internal or external pictures or the all-important user’s manual… yet. But that label document is certainly cute in blue, isn’t it?

BlackBerry PlayBook hits FCC in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB flavors originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What you’re looking at in the psychedelic photograph above is the result of an overturned tractor-trailer in Peabody, Massachusetts that was carrying a load of — you guessed it — printer ink. Fortunately the spillage isn’t believed to cause any environmental damage, but unfortunately you can’t just take your empty cartridges down to Peabody for a quick fill-up. No word on how this may affect HP’s bottom line, but since the markup on ink is absurd, we’re sure they’ll have enough dough to cover the loss. Bonus shot after the break.

[Image: Boston.com]

Continue reading Visualized: Overturned ink-carrying tractor-trailer paints the town red… literally

Visualized: Overturned ink-carrying tractor-trailer paints the town red… literally originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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sblaufuss:

vegkat:

knitwise:

chuushite:

The Whale… If you read a recent front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

This just made my day.

 I’m not crying.  I’m just cutting onions to make lasagna for one.

I have something in my eye. IT’S TEARS

Oh man. I have got to get bigger things on my daily to do list.

P.S. This is really old news item, but it checks out.

TELUS, Bell, MTS, Videotron and now SaskTel have all shifted to branding their wireless networks as “4G”. Today SaskTel has gone 4G too. A press release just went out that states their first “4G” product will be the Novatel Wireless MC547 Mobile Internet Stick in late April: “SaskTel is pleased to announce that its entire […]

Related posts:

1. Rogers begins to build out HSPA+ wireless network
2. TELUS to “deploy HSPA+ Dual Cell technology” in 2011 (and increase revenues 3.5% to 6.5%)
3. SaskTel, TELUS & Bell ink Network Sharing Agreement that brings HSPA devices to Saskatchewan by 2011

Pwn2Own, the annual three-day browser hackathon, has already claimed its first two victims: IE8 on Windows 7 64-bit, and Safari 5 on Mac OS X. Google Chrome looks set to survive for its third year in a row.

Internet Explorer 8 was thoroughly destroyed by independent researcher Stephen Fewer. “He used three vulnerabilities to bypass ASLR and DEP, but also escape Protected Mode. That’s something we’ve not seen at Pwn2Own before,” said Aaron Portnoy, the organizer of Pwn2Own.

Safari 5, running on a MacBook Air, was compromised in just five seconds by French security company Vupen. Both attackers netted $15,000 for successfully compromising a browser.

The contest continues today and tomorrow. Firefox 3.6 is yet to be attacked, and tomorrow will see the very first mobile browser deathmatch. Windows Phone 7, iOS, Android and RIM OS, all with their stock browsers, will be attacked by security researchers to find out just how secure mobile browsing is. Again, $15,000 is available for the first person or team to compromise each of the browsers.

Google, Apple and Mozilla, incidentally, all rolled out updates to their browsers just before Pwn2Own. It was not a coincidence.

Internet Explorer and Safari first to fall at Pwn2Own 2011, Chrome and Firefox still standing originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, remember when Jolicloud told us yesterday that it was going to release its Joli OS 1.2 sometime in the future? Well, the future is now! That’s right, you can download the OS or test out the web app in Chrome right this second. Naturally, we had to try out the new version for ourselves and we put it to the test on an Acer Aspire One 522. For those that have never downloaded the OS before, Jolicloud makes it incredibly easy — you can simply grab the .exe file from its site and the installation process takes care of the rest. Those that wish to download the ISO can do that as well. There’s also that new Chrome web app, but we’ll get to that soon.

Sure, the OS has dropped the “cloud” part of its name, but ironically, it’s more cloud based than ever. The entire OS has always been centered around web apps, and now the focus is on making those easier to share, discover, and create. The latter is probably one of the biggest changes — as you can see above, we made an app that launches the Jolicloud Engadget tag page. All we had to do was type in the URL and add a picture to the shortcut. You can also star an app easily from the main menu, which will flag it for your followers. (For those that aren’t familiar with the social aspect of the OS, you can follow others and see their apps, etc.) Other than that, the UI has been polished a bit and Dropbox has been integrated so you can easily access files from any of your Joli OS devices. And that’s where the new HTML 5 Chrome app comes in — you don’t have to install Joli OS on all your computers, you can now simply log in on any system that has a Chrome browser, although local apps, like OpenOffice won’t work. All in all, we’d say Jolicloud continues to make its cloud OS better and better — but don’t let us tell you how it is, hit the source link and try it out for yourself.

Joli OS 1.2 available now, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ahead of the most recent Pwn2Own, Google made a rather proud challenge: it’d pay $20,000 to any team or individual who could successfully hack Chrome. Two takers signed up for that challenge — and then both backed down. One individual didn’t show up and a second entry, known as Team Anon, decided to focus their efforts elsewhere. There’s still time left for someone to come out of the woodwork and scrape off that polish, but as of now no brave souls have registered intent. Meanwhile, IE8 was taken down by Stephen Fewer, who used three separate vulnerabilities to get out of Protected Mode and crack that browser’s best locks. Safari running on a MacBook Air got shamed again, cracked in just five seconds. Not exactly an improvement compared to how it fared in 2008.

Safari and IE8 get shamed at Pwn2Own, Chrome still safe… for now originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wifi networks are 30 percent slower than fixed broadband connections, according to a new report, because of phyical barriers and interference from other devices.

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Android devotees who've been coveting some of the iPhone's best apps for a while have been in for a treat these past few weeks—first Words With Friends came to the mix, and now Read It Later, an offline news caching reader, is finally available. Users can save documents through their browsers at work and read them offline on their phones. More »

The Canadian dollar hits its highest level since November 2007, driven by rising oil prices and concerns about spreading Middle East conflict.

via

Windows/Mac/Linux: Mozilla dropped the Firefox 4 release candidate for developers yesterday, but as of this afternoon the release candidate is available for everyone to download and test out. More »

Canadians are the most active users of the internet in the world, according to a new global report.

To every nap lover’s delight, it turns out that sleeping may play a larger role in learning than previously thought.

Dan Sarkar, a self-described “Appleseed fanboi,” says he couldn’t live any longer in a universe without cool replicas of the guns we see in the series. More »

Posted by Dave Cohen, Engineer Google Photos

Recently we updated Google Profiles to help you decide what the world sees when it searches for you. Your profile and scrapbook photos already make it easier for people to get to know you, but we want to do more to help you showcase your favorite pics.

Now you can add Picasa Web Albums to your Google profiles. By choosing to show the “PicasaWeb” tab, you will enable visitors to see your public albums. Private albums will remain visible to only the people you’ve shared them with directly.

Add Picasa Web Albums to your profile now by visiting profiles.google.com. We hope you enjoy this change, and be sure to let us know what you think in our forum. Happy posting!

If you need to create an invoice fast, Billable wants to help you out. All you need to do is visit the Billable site, edit the invoice template, and print. More »