.::REALITYRECALL::.

BGR has a video of the BlackBerry PlayBook in action and it looks pretty smooth. The video shows off the Playbook’s app multitasking, the general user interface and answers questions on how it’ll work with current BlackBerrys. More »

We’ve shown you what some of the new Chrome web apps can do, but even if some of the apps are just links to existing web pages, installing from the web store allows for a few extra customizations. More »

You’ve already seen it on the Jolibook, but now anyone with a netbook or suitable computer can get their hands on the Jolicloud 1.1 operating system, which promises a number of improvements over version 1.0. Chief among those is the brand new HTML5 desktop, along with a simplified login process using Facebook Connect, a generally spiffed up UI, and a slew of other tweaks that promise better performance and battery life compared to the previous version. Hit up the link below to try it out for yourself, or revisit our Jolibook review for an in-depth look at the upstart OS.

Jolicloud 1.1 now available to download originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 15:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whether you’re resisting the temptation to upgrade to newer, faster hardware, or a year’s worth of use has made your Android phone feel slow and laggy, here are some ways to make your older phone run a bit smoother. More »

It took me 3 passes to realize she was talking about snow……its going to be a long Wednesday.  🙂

Serious Google Docs users might remember the heartache of seeing offline access disappear for what was “temporarily” a switch to HTML5-based storage. That “temporary” switch has been a long time coming, but in early 2011, Docs will once again offer offline access, Google says. By installing Docs as a Chrome webapp—or, theoretically, as a shortcut in any other modern, HTML5-friendly browser—you'll be able to get at your documents wherever you are. [Official Google Blog via ReadWriteWeb] More »

I’m a great fan of sliding keyboards, refusing all else in my smartphone choices. But a 10-inch tablet? Surely there’s enough touchscreen real estate to type accurately there, already? Nonetheless, this is what Samsung’s proposing, with the Gloria. More »

When Chrome launched their web store earlier today, the main question on a lot of minds was: “How are these apps any different from bookmarks?” Here’s a look at five of our favorite exclusive apps for Chrome that stand out. More »

Just barely after noon (Pacific time), the Google Chrome Web Store has launched! There are quite a few apps available, both free and paid, ready for you to install in your Chrome browser. The slick New York Times app that Google demoed earlier today is now available, as well as many other popular apps. In addition to apps, the web store features Chrome extensions and themes. Go check it out now! More »

Google just demoed Chrome OS running on a piece of reference hardware at its event in SF. It just takes four steps and less than a minute to set up a brand-new Chrome OS machine — it pulls all your Chrome themes and settings from the cloud, so it’s ready to go almost right away, and changes can propagate in less than a second in some cases. The reference machine demoed was able to come back up from sleep almost instantly — Google says the limiting factor is actually how fast the user can move their hand. (It wasn’t that fast in the demo, but it was still really fast.) The OS also supports multiple accounts with a guest account that runs in Incognito mode, and all user data is encrypted by default. The OS itself is loaded on read-only memory that can’t be altered without physical access — a tech which enables verified booting. (A “jailbreak mode” switch on the developer units lets you install whatever you want, but we’ll see what the final machines support.) What’s more, the OS will be automatically updated every few weeks — the goal is for it to get faster over time, not slower.

There’s also offline capability — Google Docs was demoed running offline, with changes synced when the machine reconnects. It seems like that’s an app-specific feature though — apps on the Chrome Web Store have to be built for HTML5 offline to work, obviously. Google also demoed Google Cloud Print, which allows you to print on your home printer from anywhere. Chrome OS devices will also be able to use new Verizon 3G plans for offline access — you’ll get 100MB of free data per month for two years, and then plans start at $9.99 for a day of “unlimited access” with no contracts required. (There will eventually be international options, but those weren’t detailed.)

There are still some unfinished bits though — there’s no support for the USB ports on the machines yet, and there are still some performance tweaks and bug fixes to come. (Don’t expect ever being able to connect a printer, as the company thinks its Cloud Print service is a better option.) The OS will come on Intel-based machines from Acer and Samsung in mid-2011 — and “thousands of Googlers” are using Chrome OS devices as their primary machines. An unbranded 12-inch reference machine called Cr-48 will be available for developers — read more about that here.

Overall, Chrome OS is very much a modern riff on the “thin client” idea from the 90s — an idea that Eric Schmidt himself pioneered while at Sun. Indeed, Schmidt took the stage at the event to explicitly draw the connection, saying that “our instincts were right 20 years ago, but we didn’t have the tools or technology.” That’s a pretty wild statement — and now Google has to deliver.

Developing…

Google Chrome OS gets detailed, first laptops from Acer and Samsung coming mid-2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It hasn’t been that long since we first saw Google’s web store — mid-May, to be exact. An updated version is currently being showcased on stage at the Chrome event. The UI looks much more refined, and those who are itching to try some out yourself, it seems some of the web apps are already available, at least partially: NPR, The New York Times, Amazon Windowshop. If you ask us, they feel a lot like iPad apps for browsers and mice / keyboard. Audio can run in the background even if you move to another tab. There’s offline mode, too. App purchases are tied to your Google account, naturally. There’s some gaming, but from what we’ve seen so far (“you pop it!“), it's nothing you're gonna be focusing a lot of time on. Interesting note from the Q&A is that the apps, since they're built with "standard web technologies," will work with all compatible browsers. We've been trying to access the web store (via the Chrome browser, naturally), but it's currently hiding behind a "coming soon" redirect — it's rolling out later today, though, at least for the US, so keep an eye out.

Update: Try that link one more time, the Chrome Web Store should now be live.

Google demos Chrome Web Store, rolling out later today to US (update: now live) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don’t put too much stock in this rumor–the news that comes from these third-party parts manufacturers is spotty at best. That said, we have seen some of these come to fruition in the past, and let’s face it, if there’s one thing we do seemingly no for sure, it’s that Steve Jobs is going to show off a new iPad next year.

And if Apple goes according to its prior scheduling for the device (the company is often a creature of habit when it comes to updating products), we’re going to see that iPad 2 early next year, seeing as how the first model was unveiled in January of this year.

Apple supplier Foxconn Electronics has reportedly been told to ship 400,000-600,000 iPad 2 units in the next 100 days, according to Digitimes‘ “sources from Taiwan-based component makers.”

Here’s what those sources had to say,

[T]he iPad 2 will ship as soon as the end of February in 2011. Apple originally planned to start mass production in January, but because the device’s firmware is currently still in testing, Apple has been postponing the schedule. Since Foxconn’s new plants in Chengdu are still in pilot production, iPad 2 will be mainly supplied by its Shenzhen plants, while the company’s upstream component partners have all been notified of the shipments schedule.

Foxconn naturally declined DigiTimes’ request for comment. My guess is that the site didn’t even attempt to contact Apple…

Our supply checks say that 10 out of 10 analysts are insanely bullish about tablets — despite the fact that there are only 2.5 competitive products on the market, and one of them only came out a month ago. So, naturally, it isn’t difficult to scrounge up sales predictions that show the tablet rocketing into the stratosphere, cutting into PC market share, while also expanding the market outright to accommodate its post-PC ways. Gartner‘s guess is 55 million tablets next year, while IDC has a more conservative estimate of 42 million, but both predict a sharp, exponential rise in the following years, and IDC takes it one step further: 18 months from now, combined smartphone and tablet sales will eclipse the PC, it claims, with both categories hovering in the mid-400 million range.

Now, that number is mostly smartphones, which isn’t an unprecedented shift in and of itself — the PC took a major hit in popularity in Japan once the kids got ahold of these newfangled phone things — but overall it represents a shift from the open-ended, flexible, and powerful PC to the narrow, task-specific, app-driven nature of the iOS and Android kind. Or you could spin it the completely opposite way: people need phones, so they buy a nice phone. No PC death knell in that behavior, and the tablet is still a very niche product with some good PR. Either way, we’ll be much more impressed with this sort of market battle when it’s the tablet (perhaps with a little help from the smartbook or netbook-lite category) going up against the Windows and Mac PC head-on, without smartphones shouldering most of the load.

Combined sales of smartphones and tablets to surpass the humble PC in 18 months, says IDC originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s planning to host your printer drivers in its cloud to make the Chrome OS (debuting today) a viable option. Now there’s a landing page where you can test Google’s web-based printing, if you’re using the latest Chrome dev release on Windows. More »

You know that untitled Spider-man project that’s set to revitalize the franchise at some point in 2012? Yeah, that’s being shot in 3D (not news) using 3ality rigs and RED EPIC cameras (superhotawesome news). Peter Jackson already scooped up 30 EPICs to help him shoot his next big venture, The Hobbit, in 3D, but he’s been beaten to the digital cinematography punch by the producers of the next Spidey flick, who have cornered a quartet of the cameras and actually started shooting with them on set yesterday. John Schwartzman, the dude responsible for filming the whole thing, has been extolling the virtues of using such fancy gear over on the RED forums, which is also where he promises his crew will be making further comments detailing the user experience. In slightly less thrilling RED news, the Scarlet S35 is being renamed to the EPIC Lite and will suffer the upheaval of having its features and price changed — hit the links below for more.

[Thanks, Anthony]

Spider-Man reboot is being shot in RED EPIC 3D, has John Schwartzman all kinds of excited originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 07:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google is showing off an early build of their Android 3.0 software, which appears to be heavily optimized for tablets (including the Motorola prototype it’s running on) and has been given a cloudy release window of “next year.” More »

Sure, Google might have just dropped Android 2.3 Gingerbread on the Nexus S just today, but that’s old news — Andy Rubin just took the stage at D: Dive Into Mobile and announced that Honeycomb is due “next year” with support for tablets. Andy demoed the new version of the OS on a Motorola prototype tablet, and it was very different, and highly customized — although there were still grids of icons, the apps were more “desktop” in flavor, and the traditional Android buttons weren’t present. We’re waiting for more details, we’ll let you know what’s up.

Android Honeycomb coming ‘next year,’ adds tablet support originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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