.::REALITYRECALL::.

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 »

Fun Fact of the Day: Also, the word bed looks like a bed.

[@petergriffin / nerdvana / thd.]

Tagged: boobs, Fun Fact, Peter Griffin, Webcomic

Mark Cina
Plus, a new costar speaks out: “Ego-fighting,” “pain,” “actor’s sad condition” led to CBS show’s demise.

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Posted by Stanley Chen, Software Engineer

People get a lot of email these days. On top of personal messages, there are group mailing lists, social network notifications, credit card statements, newsletters you might have signed up for, and promotional email from a shopping site you used once months ago. Gmail’s filters and labels were invented to help manage the deluge, but while I have about 100 filters that triage and label my incoming mail, most of my friends and family have all their messages in a giant unfiltered inbox.

Last year, we launched Priority Inbox to automatically sort incoming email and help you focus on the messages that matter most. Today, we’re launching a complementary feature in Gmail Labs called Smart Labels, which helps you classify and organize your email. Once you turn it on from the Labs tab in Settings, Smart Labels automatically categorizes incoming Bulk, Notification and Forum messages, and labels them as such. “Bulk” mail includes any kind of mass mailing (such as newsletters and promotional email) and gets filtered out of your inbox by default (where you can easily read it later), “Notifications” are messages sent to you directly (like account statements and receipts), and email from group mailing lists gets labeled as “Forums.”

If you already use filters and labels to organize your mail, you may find that you can replace your existing filters with Smart Labels. If you’re picky like me and still want to hold on to your current organization system, Smart Labels play nice with other labels and filters too. On the Filters tab under Settings, you’ll find that these filters can be edited just like any others. From there, you can also edit your existing filters to avoid having them Smart Labeled or change whether mail in a Smart Label skips your inbox (which you can also do by just clicking on the label, then selecting or unselecting the checkbox in the top right corner).

Labs in Gmail are a great testing ground for experimental features, and we hope Smart Labels help you more effortlessly get through your inbox. If you notice a message that was automatically labeled incorrectly and want to help us troubleshoot, you can report miscategorizations from the drop down menu on each message (in doing so, you’ll donate the full message to our engineers so that we can improve the feature). Give it a try and send us feedback on how we can make it work better for you!

It’s a bittersweet occasion, really. Space Shuttle Discovery has just returned from the unknown that we call “space,” safely returning six astronauts and one zero Robonaut 2s to Earth after a 13-day mission. Discovery’s legacy stretches back 27 years, compiling 39 flights during that span and making an indelible mark on the history of American space exploration. This guy is also the first shuttle to be retired after NASA was rocked a few years back by the impossible-to-ignore budget crunch, and already museums and institutes (29 at last count) are lining up to lobby their case for capturing it. No question, having this 170,000 pound benemoth at your museum would likely benefit admission numbers, but it’s not like Discovery will be the only craft calling it quits in the near future. As of now, no decision has been made as to where it’ll wheel off to for the final time, but you can bet whoever lands it will make quite the scene.

[Image courtesy of Stephen Clark]

Space Shuttle Discovery returns from final trip, immediately begins search for final resting place originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 13:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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