.::REALITYRECALL::.

Anna Torv – a name we'd heard hide nor hair of in the States just three short years ago.  While yet to still become

Today is the first page in a new chapter of our mission to improve access to the cultural and educational treasures we know as books. Google eBooks will be available in the U.S. from a new Google eBookstore. You can browse and search through the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale. Find the latest bestsellers like James Patterson’s Cross Fire and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, dig into popular reads like Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken and catch up on the classics like Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and Gulliver’s Travels.

We designed Google eBooks to be open. Many devices are compatible with Google eBooks—everything from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers. With the new Google eBooks Web Reader, you can buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud. That means you can access your ebooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa—using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage.

In addition to a full-featured web reader, free apps for Android and Apple devices will make it possible to shop and read on the go. For many books you can select which font, font size, day/night reading mode and line spacing suits you—and pick up on the page where you left off when switching devices.

You can discover and buy new ebooks from the Google eBookstore or get them from one of our independent bookseller partners: Powell’s, Alibris and participating members of the American Booksellers Association. You can choose where to buy your ebooks like you choose where to buy your print books, and keep them all on the same bookshelf regardless of where you got them.

When Google Books first launched in 2004, we set out to make the information stored in the world’s books accessible and useful online. Since then, we’ve digitized more than 15 million books from more than 35,000 publishers, more than 40 libraries, and more than 100 countries in more than 400 languages. This deep repository of knowledge and culture will continue to be searchable through Google Books search in the research section alongside the ebookstore.

Launching Google eBooks is an initial step toward giving you greater access to the vast variety of information and entertainment found in books. Our journey has just begun. We welcome your feedback as we read on to the next chapter.

If you’ve installed quite a few extensions and don’t quite need all the toolbar buttons those add-ons placed to the right of your address bar, you can now stash them away with a right-click in the latest Chrome dev release. More »

This Internet finding is an irate letter from the thin-skinned litigation enthusiasts at Cash4Gold to a “Mr Haberny” who apparently made a habit of sending gold-painted rocks to the firm, along with colorful missives describing the circumstances through which he came to posses them, which included a Tibetan pilgrimage with a legless hooker from Singapore. Mr Haberny sought many interesting forms of compensation for his “gold,” including a birthday party at McDonald’s, and an unspecified activity in the company of Ed McMahon.

(via JWZ)

South Korea is conducting naval firing drills just one day after North Korea warned such exercises would aggravate already high tensions between the rival neighbours.

On Sunday, Facebook announced big changes for Profile pages, hours before Mark Zuckerberg’s ’60 Minutes’ interview. The biggest change is the emphasis on photos: from the summary at the top of the page to photos of your relationships, images dominate the new design. You’ll also notice that Facebook has done away with the old tabbed interface that separated your wall, info, photos and events into different pages. These viewing options have largely been pushed into the left rail below your primary profile photo.

Instead of hiding most of your personal information behind the ‘Info’ tab, the new design features an introduction at the top of your profile page that summarizes your job, relationship status, hometown, birthday and more. Beneath your summary is a row of the most recently tagged photos of you. Because these are highlighted so prominently on your profile, you’ll probably need to be even more vigilant than before in making sure bad party pics or embarrassing high school candids are removed. Fortunately, you can hide any of the photos in your new Profile summary by clicking the ‘x’ that appears when you hover over each one.

Continue reading Facebook Unveils New Profile Pages

Facebook Unveils New Profile Pages originally appeared on Switched on Sun, 05 Dec 2010 17:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Remember that “Related” / “Similar” tab we spotted in Google’s own Gingerbread video? Looks as if you won’t have to wait for Android 2.3 to enjoy the spoils of having El Goog sort out what similar apps you may like after you download one. This morning, waves of Android loyalists are finding a new tab in their Market, with a Droid 2 and Nexus One both seeing the update here at Engadget HQ. Naturally, it works just like the App Store’s equivalent, but it remains to be seen just how accurate the advice is. When looking at ‘Related’ for the (also recently updated) Engadget app, we’re finding items we’d prefer to be listed first about a page or so down, but we’re sure the mix-and-match engineers in Mountain View are already fine tuning things as we speak. You know, during the brief moments they aren’t preparing for Tuesday’s big Chrome reveal.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Android Market update brings long-awaited ‘Related’ tab, similar app suggestions originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Dec 2010 13:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Adobe just released a beta of the newest Flash player, complete with lower CPU usage and full screen dual-monitor playback. Chrome, though still uses its built-in, stable version of Flash. Here’s how to get the beta goodies in Chrome. More »

Our favorite personal money management site, Mint, began its international expansion today by making its service available to those in Canada. The Canadian version is the same as the US version, apart from its ability to connect to Canadian banks as well as US banks. Canadians can access Mint by hitting the link below. Other countries are still forthcoming, but we hope to see support for international banks soon. [Mint Canada] More »

The headline pretty much reveals the brunt of it, but indeed, it looks like next week Google is going to start talking about how its Chrome operating system is coming along. Multiple sources have told us that Google will be holding some sort of event on Tuesday, December 7th — we’re not sure if it’ll be a live event, a webcast, or something else entirely — and that the shindig will see the launch of that Google-branded Chrome OS netbook we’ve been hearing about. Again, we’ve heard that the Atom-powered laptop isn’t going to be a mass market device — there will only be around 65,000 units available to Google’s closest “friends and family” — and that the Cloud-based OS is still very much in a beta, non-consumer-friendly state. It’s a bit odd that we still haven’t received an invite to this planned event since it’s purportedly days away, not to mention it conflicts with the All Things D: Dive Into Mobile Event, but at the time of publishing this post we had yet to hear back from Google’s PR team with an official comment.

Of course, this all lines up with TechCrunch‘s report that Google will be launching its Chrome Web / App Store very soon, as well as yesterday’s launch of Chrome 8, which supports those aforementioned Chrome apps. (Companies like TweetDeck have already started demoing their browser apps.) Don’t forget that those apps are going to be a large part of the OS, so it would make sense for Google to talk about ’em in tandem. The pieces sure do seem to be fitting together quite well, and while we still have lots of unanswered questions, we’re feeling confident that we’ll be getting some official answers on all this Chrome-ness very soon.

Update: AllThingsD has also heard a similar December 7th launch date of the Chrome Web Store. The evidence seems to be mounting here…

Update 2: Well, there you have it, Google just sent out invites for its December 7th Chrome event! We will be there!

Image note: As we said last time, that picture above is just our own mockup of what a Chromebook may look like. We even added a Chrome key!

Sources: Google-branded Chrome OS netbook to launch on December 7th originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Wondering just how well a tablet would do if picked up and marketed by all four major carriers in America? We’re still waiting for the breakdown within our borders, but there’s hardly a doubt that the unprecedented carrier arrangement has helped Samsung shatter its estimates on Galaxy Tab sales. Purportedly, the outfit has just passed the one million mark in global sales of the 7-inch Android tablet, but Information Week is quick to point out that Sammy’s not clear on whether that’s units in the sales channel or units in the hands of consumers. Either way, one million’s nothing to scoff at, particularly when you consider that only 600,000 had been sold as of November 22nd. The firm’s now hoping to move 1.5 million of ’em by the year’s end, and while that’s still well short of the estimated seven million iPads that have been sold to date, it’s a sales rate that we’re sure no one at Samsung is kvetching about.

Update: CNET heard from a Samsung representative that the company hasn’t officially announced the sales figure here, but hopefully we’ll get some clarification soon. It’s possible that the PR team simply isn’t ready to dish out the number in official fashion yet. We’ll keep you posted.

Update II: So, it’s just what we expected — the numbers are real, but Samsung wasn’t quite ready to come clean with ’em. According to Kim Titus, Director of Public Relations for Samsung Mobile, the company has “sold one million Galaxy Tabs globally.” Good on ’em!

Samsung sells one million Galaxy Tab units (update: confirmed) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Android Community  |  The Chosun Ilbo, Information Week  | Email this | Comments

In the proud tradition of Fringe, tonight's new episode answered some huge questions — and posed some even bigger new ones. Chief among them: Just how much of this war between universes is in one man's head? Spoilers below… More »

Ken Miller is stepping down as head coach of the Saskatchewan Roughriders but will continue to have a role with the team.

The year 2010 is expected to be one of the three warmest years worldwide since the collection of reliable climate data began – and Canada’s on track to record its hottest year yet.