.::REALITYRECALL::.

In an effort to gain a foothold in the exploding mobile market, Windows is unveiling a new low-power version of Windows next month—but not available for a while longer. From the Wall Street Journal. More »

Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox 4 is out with another beta, and this one has mostly bug fixes—more than 1,000 of them, actually. But Mozilla has simplified and improved the process for setting up syncing between desktop and mobile browsers. More »

The Chrome community responded with staggering enthusiasm and, acting together, raised 60,599,541 tabs for charity.

Each Chrome user chose the causes their tabs would support, which determined how we allocated our one million dollar donation. Accordingly, we’re excited to make the following donations on behalf of the Chrome community:

• $245,278 toward planting trees in the Atlantic Forest, one of the world’s endangered tropical forests.
• $232,791 toward providing clean water, by building freshwater wells for communities in developing nations.
• $112,078 toward building shelter, to be constructed by volunteers for impoverished families in Latin America.
• $267,336 toward administering vaccinations against meningitis to combat outbreaks in Africa.
• $142,518 toward publishing books by local writers and illustrators, which will be created and donated to schools and libraries across Asia and Africa.

We’ll be making the donations at year-end, and our partner charities are already looking towards applying the funds from Chrome for a Cause in 2011. Read more about how your donation will be applied specifically by visiting our partners’ websites:

• The Nature Conservancy
• charity: water
• Un Techo para mi País
• Doctors Without Borders
• Room to Read

We’re glad to connect Chrome users with these important causes all around the world — so much so that we’re already thinking of more Chrome for a Cause projects for the future!

Feel free to keep your extension installed if you’d like to hear about future opportunities to work together with the Chrome community for a good cause. We’ll post all the details about how to participate on the Chrome blog, so make sure you check in when you hear about new opportunities.

Thanks for joining us in this endeavor. Happy Holidays!

Posted by Sarah Nahm, Product Marketing Manager

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It’s only been out a few weeks but is already one of the best-selling video games of all time. The latest Call of Duty release has now apparently climbed into the eight-figure territory when it comes to sales revenue.

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It never fails. Now that Fringe has become the best television show in two universes, it’s getting moved to the Friday-night slot that claimed Firefly and Terminator. How can we save Fringe from Fox’s Friday-night curse? A few ideas below. More »

YouTube’s introduced a new feature into their embed code, allowing viewers to save embedded videos to watch later on youtube.com. More »

It’s not offering any indication that Windows Genuine Advantage will follow suit, but Microsoft has just made the rather surprising move of shutting down its longstanding Office Genuine Advantage program. As with Windows Genuine Advantage, that program was designed to combat piracy and, as any Office user can no doubt attest, it wasn’t shy to make its presence known — warnings like the one above popped up when downloading templates from Office.com, for instance. Why the change? Microsoft isn’t exactly offering too many details, with a spokesperson only going as far to say that the program has “served its purpose,” and that Microsoft is “making several new investments that will allow us to engage with customers and help victims of fraud.” In the meantime, however, it looks like you can now simply go about your business without a warning to be found.

Microsoft axes Office Genuine Advantage, says program has ‘served its purpose’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toyota Motor Corp. has agreed to pay the U.S. government a record $32.4 million US in additional fines to settle an investigation into its handling of two recalls at the heart of its safety crisis.

The herbal remedy echinacea is no better than a placebo at stifling the sneezes, sore throat and fever of common cold sufferers, a study suggests.

(Cross posted from the Gmail blog)

When we launched calling in Gmail back in August, we wanted it to be easy and affordable, so we made calls to the U.S. and Canada free for the rest of 2010. In the spirit of holiday giving and to help people keep in touch in the new year, we’re extending free calling for all of 2011.

In case you haven’t tried it yet, dialing a phone number works just like a regular phone. Look for “Call phone” at the top of your Gmail chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.

To learn more, visit gmail.com/call. Calling in Gmail is currently only available to U.S. based Gmail users.

Happy New Year and happy calling!

Posted by Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer

North Korea has called South Korean artillery drills on a front-line island a ‘reckless military provocation’ but said it would not retaliate, backing away from earlier threats to strike back.

Android: We recently showed you how to get the fantastic Gingerbread keyboard on your rooted 2.2 Android phone, but some kindly folks over at XDA-Developers have made their own package for rooted or unrooted phones running 2.1 and above. More »

Hacked your Kinect recently? Then you probably know something most regular Xbox 360 gamers don’t — namely, that the Kinect’s infrared camera is actually capable of higher resolution than the game console itself supports. Though Microsoft originally told us it ran at 320 x 240, you’ll find both color and depth cameras display 640 x 480 images if you hook the peripheral up to a PC, and now an anonymous source tells Eurogamer that Microsoft wants to do the very same in the video game space. Reportedly, Redmond artificially limited the Kinect on console in order to leave room for other USB peripherals to run at the same time, but if the company can find a way around the limitation, it could issue a firmware update that could make the Kinect sensitive enough to detect individual finger motions and inevitably lead to gesture control. One of multiple ways Microsoft intends to make the world of Minority Report a reality, we’re sure.

Microsoft seeking to quadruple Kinect accuracy? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 20:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google hacked site notification notifies you if your site is hacked (repeat this five times fast) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 09:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FOX is 100% committed to Fringe, just not the Fringe you’ve been watching. In comments made to EW’s Jeff Jensen, FOX execs described their game-plan to save the show – which doesn’t need saving, according to them (confusing!) – by reinventing the image of Fringe from dense character driven adult SciFi to rebellious-teen targeted horror.