Scientists have found evidence that water was trapped for up to billions of years inside rocks deep in an African gold mine.
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Things to look out for in tonight’s ultra-dark episode of Fringe [Fringe]
Tonight’s episode of Fringe is the best in ages. After a handful of somewhat weak storylines, tonight’s Fringe kicks your ass with a super-dark, messed-up tale of the aftermath of Peter Bishop’s kidnapping. Here are some things to watch for. More »
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Gmail Improves Labels with Integrated Hiding and Better Organization [In Brief]
Gmail graduated two label-related Labs features to all Gmail accounts today: Hide Read Labels (to declutter your Gmail sidebar) and Hide Labels from Subjects (to make Gmail subjects more readable on smaller screens). If you already had these features enabled, you shouldn’t notice a difference. If you hadn’t, click on the drop-down next to a label in the sidebar to selectively show, hide, or show-if-unread your labels. [Official Gmail Blog] More »
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Facebook 2.0 for BlackBerry images leak out
Facebook for BlackBerry is getting ready for a fresh update soon. According to these leaked screenshots it shows that version 2.0 will be seeing a complete UI refresh along with – and finally – Facebook Chat. Other improvements that are expected to arrive are the ability to View friends’ profile info, pages and friends lists. […]
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- BlackBerry Storm 3 specs leak out…
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- Images: Upcoming HTC phones with dedicated Facebook button surfaces
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Microsoft Research teases Windows Phones controlling Surfaces and crazy desktop UIs
Hey, look, at this point, we just want ourselves some good, old-fashioned copy and paste — but we’ll give Microsoft some credit for looking a year (or two, or ten) beyond that watermark at what could be coming down the pike for human-machine interaction — and specifically, how phones could play a role. In a presentation and promotional video pulled together this week, Microsoft Research boss Craig Mundie shows how you could tilt your smartphone to control a bubbly, colorful look into your personal life on your desktop machine and how you could snap a photo and then drop the handset onto a Surface for instant transfer (perhaps a bit like HP’s Touch to Share), among other gems. Of course, this is all pure research at this point — it’s any guess whether these comments could make the jump to production, and if so, when — but it’s fun to watch. Follow the break for video.
[Thanks, Jake]
Continue reading Microsoft Research teases Windows Phones controlling Surfaces and crazy desktop UIs
Microsoft Research teases Windows Phones controlling Surfaces and crazy desktop UIs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 04:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google Search Updates: Less Content Farm Spam, More Recipes [Google]
Two awesome things are happening with Google’s search engine. First, Google is finally going after the content farms that flood their search results with posts that care more about SEO than content. Wanting to filter that noise out, Google is pushing forward a new search algorithm which identifies posts from those types sites and lowers their search rank. That makes it harder for these sites to make it to the top of a results page for any given search string. It will affect approximately 12% of all queries on Google. More »
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This Is the Last Launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery [Space]
Today, Discovery reached for the stars for the last time in history. The launch almost got canceled because of a last-minute computer display problem, but the engineers saved the day a couple of seconds before the launch window deadline. Here’s the video of the launch. More »
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Web access is critical, Clement says
Federal cabinet minister Tony Clement says expanding access to the internet in Canada is “critical.”
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Finding the right place when you need it
Over the past few months, we have launched several new mobile search features for iPhone and Android-powered devices that make it easier to find local businesses. In the US, we launched an “open now” feature which lets you filter local search results to show only businesses that are open right now, based on their listed hours. When you’re hankering for pizza at 1 o’clock in the morning, this can be really handy:
Other local search options available globally include filtering by star ratings (find a highly-rated restaurant for your first date) and by distance (especially handy when you’re on foot).
You may have noticed other improvements as well, like the addition of images, reviews from around the web and bigger buttons for viewing a map or calling a business directly. Each business’s open hours are also shown in the result snippets.If you haven’t used local search recently, now is a great time to try it out. Just go to www.google.com in your browser, tap on the “Places” link at the top of the page, and do a search. You can also access these features when searching for businesses on Google Maps for mobile on Android devices.
Posted by Yoshi Matsumoto and Keiji Maekawa, Software Engineers
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1 killed in crash near Canora
One person is dead following a head-on crash on Highway 9 south of Canora, Sask.
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Android Market adds e-books; movies and music soon to come?
The Android world’s been a-buzz this last week over a few new Android Market URLS, including http://market.android.com/music/ and http://market.android.com/movies/. In case you thought there was nothing to this tip, guess again: the third member of this trifecta (http://market.android.com/books/) has gone live. That’s right, visitors to the Android Market can pick up Glenn Beck’s mile-a-minute thrill ride The Overton Window for a mere $9. We hope that takes some of the sting out of the fact that a Google Music launch wasn’t part of this month’s Honeycomb event — although if we had to wager a guess, we’d say that the company will have Music and Movie offerings soon enough.
Android Market adds e-books; movies and music soon to come? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Intel refutes Apple exclusivity for Thunderbolt I/O, LaCie and Promise detail first Thunderbolt peripherals
We can think of a pretty good reason why Apple might have a head-start when it comes to Thunderbolt-capable machines, but Apple doesn’t actually have a timed exclusive on the technology, at least according to Intel PR. The company told us that while it’s currently targeting an early 2012 launch for Thunderbolt with other OEMs — whereas the new MacBook Pro has Thunderbolt right now — there’s nothing stopping other manufacturers from launching machines with the 10Gbps interconnect a good bit earlier if they so desire.
In related news, the first Thunderbolt peripherals have just been formally announced — the Promise Pegasus RAID array we saw spitting out 800MB / sec video streams, and the LaCie Little Big Disk. The former will come in four-bay and six-bay variants, topping out at 12TB of magnetic storage when it arrives in Q2, and the latter will boast a pair of Intel 510 Series SSDs — which, by the way, have yet to be formally announced — in RAID 0 for 500GB of storage in total. PR after the break.
Intel refutes Apple exclusivity for Thunderbolt I/O, LaCie and Promise detail first Thunderbolt peripherals originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Facebook Pulls Plug on Breakup Notifier
Sorry Facebook stalkers–all 3.6 million of you. The popular social network has pulled the plug on Breakup Notifier, a recently introduced that promised to let you know when one of your friends changes their relationship status to single.After a good round of online criticism (the word "creepy" was bandied about an awful lot), Facebook has apparently pulled the plug on the third-party app. Here's a note that the site sent to the app's creator, Dan Loewenherz,To ensure positive user experiences on Platform, we run routine automated screens that take user feedback, machine learning and various algorithms into account and remove spammy applications. For example, if an application is making an inordinate number of stream.publish calls and receiving a large number of user reports, it may be removed by our automated systems to protect the user experience and the Platform ecosystem.Facebook has since issued a statement to the effect that it didn't so much block Breakup Notifier as tweak it, in order to "provide a positive user experience." Here you go,We have automated systems in place to ensure apps on Facebook Platform provide a positive user experience, and we’re currently looking into the issue with “Breakup Notifier”. Additionally, we did not block the “Blackmail Yourself” app. Some features were temporarily disabled this week as we worked with the developer to ensure the app complied with all of our policies, but it has been and continues to be accessible. -
Android Market e-books goes live; music and movies to follow?
The Android Market has never had any specific ban on carrying and selling straight up text documents, and users could search through the market and find apps that were, in effect, standalone e-books. Now, however, there is a section dedicated specifically to e-books which currently features around 500 titles from publishers such as Simon and Schuster, Macmillan, W.W. Norton and Co., Hachette, and more.
The URL for the site, market.android.com/books, was discovered by Android Guys last week, and the site noted that URLs for /music, and /movies worked and resolved to the Android Market.
Thursday is the first day the /books URL began landing on a real market page.
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Get Your Heinz Ketchup In A Bottle Made From Plants
Forget the distinctive glass bottle, most of the Heinz ketchup sold today comes in plastic containers. But a new partnership with Coca-Cola will soon see the company switching to something much more green: bottles made from plants.
Aptly called PlantBottle technology, the new material is nearly indistinguishable from regular plastic and remains 100 percent recyclable, but it’s made from 30 percent plant-based materials. Currently the process utilizes sugarcane from Brazil.
“The partnership of Coca-Cola and Heinz is a model of collaboration in the food and beverage industry that will make a sustainable difference for the planet,” Heinz Chairman, President and CEO William R. Johnson said in a statement. “Heinz Ketchup is going to convert to PlantBottle globally, beginning with our best-selling 20-ounce variety of Heinz Ketchup, which will reach consumers this summer.”
Coke has been using PlantBottle since 2009, while the first Heinz PlantBottles should be hitting store shelves in June, accompanied by the tag line “GUESS WHAT MY BOTTLE IS MADE OF?”
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