Reality Bites
This video shows the Sikorsky X2 breaking the world's helicopter speed record: 260 knots—that's 299.2mph vs the 172mph of conventional helicopters. Bonus: The video shows their X2 Light Tactical Helicopter too. More »
Back in 2007 we launched 1-800-GOOG-411, a voice-powered directory assistance service that connects you quickly to businesses across the U.S. and Canada. On November 12, 2010, we will shut down the service.
GOOG-411 was the first speech recognition service from Google and helped provide a foundation for more ambitious services now available on smartphones, such as:
Our success encouraged us to aim for more innovation. Thus, we’re putting all of our resources into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.
If you don’t use a smartphone, and you’re trying to call a business, you can send a text message with the name and location of the business to 466453 (“GOOGLE”) and we’ll text you the information, or on Gmail you can use the new phone-calling features to call any U.S. business free of charge. Also, if you don’t have the free voice search app pre-installed on your phone, you can download it here.
Thanks for all the calls, and keep an eye out for all the innovation to come.
Posted by The GOOG-411 Team
If you were waiting for the BlackBerry Storm 2 refresh—which was supposed to fix the wrongs in that ball of SureCrap that is the Storm 2—you may be out of luck. It looks like RIM is canceling it. More »
Windows: Security Essentials Screensaver scans your computer using Microsoft Security Essentials (Microsoft’s excellent anti-malware tool) whenever your screensaver activates. More »
While Fox and Universal’s joint attempt to make a Halo movie with Pater Jackson producing and Neill Blomkamp directing may have died a slow death years ago (with Blomkamp going on to become a star anyway as the director of District 9), all is not lost. New York Magazine’s Vulture blog reported yesterday that Dreamworks and Steven Spielberg are looking to get into the Halo movie game. Spielberg in all likelihood would not direct the thing, but would instead be an executive producer, not really having a hand in it at all.
Vulture says they’re aiming to adapt the novels rather than the games so as to avoiding to potentially having to foot the $12 million bill for Universal’s previous development.
Not a bad plan. Save some cash, and you still get exactly the same story, since, for the most part, the books are adaptations of the games. And I like the idea of a Halo movie, and the live-action ads Microsoft runs in advance of each new game, particularly “We Are ODST,” have shown the potential there. Do it, Dreamworks.
Talks between the two companies reportedly even touched on a possible acquisition
If you’re looking for a place to rant, rave, and delight in the newest happenings of your favorite shows, Miso is a tv-oriented social network that catalogs your favorite shows, keeps you updated, and connects you with other fans. More »
Android/iOS/Windows Mobile: If your main objection to location sharing services is that you don’t want to share your location all the time and when you do you’d like easy and private sharing, Glympse is a private and real-time location sharing tool. More »
Kristina Svechinskaya – who has been dubbed the "world's hottest female hacker" – recently appeared in a NYC courtroom to face charges of stealing $35,000 for the notorious Eastern European ZBot cyber-criminal gang.
Video chatting—the future is now! But it sure is expensive. Between Logitech’s Revue ($300 for the box and $150 for the cam), and Cisco’s $600 Roman emperor-priced offering, you might feel left out. But you have (affordable) options. More »
Dear Lifehacker,
Let's say I want to share a few files with someone sitting right beside me, and using a file-sharing service—like Dropbox—seems slow and unnecessary. What's the best way to share files with a friend sitting next to me? More »
We all have our own favorite sites to consult for the latest movie, music or video game releases. With a cleanly designed site called ‘When it Drops,’ though, Web surfers can now find all this information with one click of a mouse. Each week, When it Drops gives a snapshot of the latest movies, DVDs, albums, books and video games to hit the market that week, as well as the products released the week prior and those scheduled to drop over the next two weeks. Hovering your cursor over each icon will also give you some basic information about the newly released item. If you’re interested in seeing the latest movie to hit theaters, for example, you can instantly check the film’s rating on RottenTomatoes, find links to buy tickets, or view trailers. The concept may sound simple, but that’s exactly what makes ‘When it Drops’ so useful.
‘When it Drops’ Gives You the Latest Movie, Music and Book Releases originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 09:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
If you’re tired of your photos and videos being impossible to retrieve from Facebook, you’ll be happy to know that they are rolling out a new feature that allows you to download all of them in one big zip file. Here’s how it works.
Since this is a new feature, it’s not yet rolled out to everybody—in fact, we don’t yet have access to it ourselves—so you might want to bookmark this page and come back when the new option shows up for you. If you already see the new options, then let us know in the comments.
First you’ll want to head into the Account menu and choose Account Settings.
Then underneath the “Account Security” link, you should see a new link for “Download Your Information”. If this link isn’t showing up for you yet, then you will just have to keep checking back every so often until it is there.
Assuming the link is there now, you’ll want to click through the Download button.
And again, click through the next Download button…
And then click through the Okay button.
It will take a while for Facebook to put together a file containing all of your information, including your Photos, messages, and other information. Once they have done so, you’ll get an email that says your download is ready, and a link to click.
At this point you’ll have to enter your password again, to make sure it is really you.
Then click the Download Now button, and you’ll be able to finally download the file containing all your photos.
Once the file is downloaded, which might take quite a while, you’ll just have to extract it to access your pictures and other data.
Here’s a short video that explains how it all works:
In case you’re wondering, we pulled out the steps from the video guide, since some people prefer a step-by-step tutorial instead of a video. Either way, it’s great that we can finally get our photos out of Facebook!
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As another NHL season gets underway with six Canadian teams, there is at least some reason for guarded optimism in other parts of the country.
It’s no secret that Microsoft has a slight tablet, err Slate PC problem on its hands: Windows 7 certainly works on a “pad,” but the user interface isn’t meant for strictly finger input. The makeshift solution has been, of course, for its partners to create software skins of their own — see HP TouchSmart UI, the ExoPC “Connect Four” skin, etc. — but according to Microsoft know-it-all Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet, the guys in Redmond may just be working on a layer of their own. Now, Foley says these are just recurring rumors at this point, but they happen to line up with similar whispers we’ve heard that Microsoft might develop its own optional “shell.” Foley actually believes that it could be based on Windows Media Center, and points to an article by UK blogger Mark Wilson in which Ballmer is quoted saying, “what you’ll see over the course of the next year is us doing more and more work with our hardware partners creating hardware-software optimisations with Windows 7 and with Windows 7 Media Center […].” We don’t need to tell you, Mr. Ballmer, that we think that sounds like a glorious idea, and it’ll certainly buy you time until Windows 8 is ready in 2012.
Speaking of which, he also confirmed that it won’t be releasing another version of Windows in the interim as some may have suspected. We’ve similarly heard that Microsoft is heavily optimizing the new OS for slates, and is already prepping its partners with information on that front. Obviously all of this should be taken with a grain of salt at this point, but we sure are happy to hear that Microsoft’s starting to understand how important those UI layers are to consumer adoption and that the wheels may be in motion on finger-friendly interface improvements. Of course, for now we’ll be sitting here twiddling our thumbs until next week’s October 11 event to see if any elusive Microsoft slate announcements do in fact decide to make an appearance.
Microsoft creating its own software layer for Windows 7 tablets? Boy, we hope so originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Oct 2010 19:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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ZDNet , MarkWilson.It | Email this | Comments
Gene Simmons. Once upon a time, he played bass and unrolled his tongue out for that brown paper bag of musical hurt that is Kiss. Now, he just goes around saying stupid things like this: More »
We’re happy to introduce an easier way to use Google Latitude from your computer at google.com/latitude. You can now see where your friends are, start using Latitude apps, and share your location all from one place when you’re at your computer.
Find your friends
We launched Latitude with a desktop iGoogle gadget to help you stay in touch with friends and family that may not have a smartphone. We’ve since learned that a desktop experience is important to you even if you’re already using Latitude on your phone. Today, you can now visit a dedicated site that makes it easier than ever to use Latitude when you’re already on your computer. From the Friends tab, you can:
Do more with Latitude
You’ll also now find Latitude and Latitude apps together in one place. After browsing your friends list, go to the History or Apps tabs to turn on optional Latitude apps such as:
Share your location
Just like on your phone, you can choose to share your location with friends and family from your WiFi-enabled computer. Before you can share your location, you’ll need to first give Latitude permission to access your location when prompted by your supported browser. You can always change your browser or Latitude privacy settings later. Learn more in the Help Center.
To get started, go to google.com/latitude on your computer. If you’re new to Latitude, you can then start on your phone by sending yourself a text message or choose to start on your computer.
Posted by Kenneth Leftin, Software Engineer, Google Mobile Team
Okay ASUS, you win. We can’t keep all your leaked Eee Pad prototypes straight anymore. We’re guessing this is some sort of counter-intelligence move you’re making, leaking report after conflicting report of various sizes and operating systems for the things, and now we have word of yet another model joining the hypothetical fray. This one’s supposedly called the EP90, an 8.9-inch tablet with a 1024 x 600 display, storage of 16 or 32GB, a dual-core 1GHz processor paired with Tegra graphics and, apparently, some flavor if Microsoft Windows if reports of it running Office are to be believed. Beyond that, Ynet is also saying there’s a 12-inch tablet model on the way, which either proves the company’s disinformation plot or confirms that the Eee Pad lineup is about to get as confusing as the Eee PC series is today.
8.9-inch Eee Pad tablet leaks, Asus looking to dominate every mark on the ruler? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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