.::REALITYRECALL::.

Eric Tillman will be the new general manager of the Edmonton Eskimos, according to the Edmonton Journal’s website.

Google’s shouting loudly about it’s new almost-as-fast-as-you-think Instant search powers, and it is indeed clever. But a programmer worked out how to do this for Microsoft a year ago. Could Bing have beaten Google? More »

They’re not official Google creations, but a few third-party developers have already adapted the idea of Google Instant’s real time search results to two other services: YouTube and Maps. More »

Microsoft is set to launch its Zune Pass subscription service internationally, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans.

The subscription service is currently only available in the United States. Company officials are working day and night to secure Zune Pass internationally in various markets. Neowin understands that the UK will…

The keen eyes over at Liveside.net have spotted that Microsoft have a few tweaks and additions coming to the Windows Live websites’ header, as well as Web Messenger.

Only a few weeks ago Microsoft released a beta refresh for Windows Live Essentials which saw a new feature in Messenger allowing people…

If women playing games, especially pretty women, weren’t still such a rarity, it’d be a less interesting Google search. And even though, as a medium, video gaming is a lot more equal than it’s been in the past, it’s still a tall order to fire up Xbox Live and come across a player of the female gender. Plus for some reason, all women on Xbox Live have the exact same voice and sound like 12-year-old boys. I’m not sure what that’s about.

Anyway, girl gamers do exist, and there are plenty to drool over. For your convenience, we’ve stripped (get it?) the “wandering blindly through the plains of the Internet” portion of the process of finding them, and gone straight to the “staring at pictures” part.

14.

The Frag Dolls

A rotating group of Ubisoft-sponsored female pro-gamers. Let me reiterate: Rotating. Female. Pro. Gamers. The Frag Dolls show up on Xbox Live every Friday for your multiplayer enjoyment, and from the sounds of things, they splatter many of us amateur miscreants all over cyberspace. These aren’t just women who happen to know their way around a controller; these are women who know their way around rocket launchers. Tanks. Car theft. Gunslinger duels. Bare-knuckle boxing. Sounds like a great date – even if you’re losing.

13.

Image Source

Morgan Webb

TV host, columnist – Morgan Webb plays a lot of video games and could probably kick your ass at many of them. She co-hosts X-Play on G4, which hit 1,000 episodes this year, and reviews enough games to put on episodes three times a week. She also hosts G4 Underground.

12.

Michele Boyd

If being an actress (she plays Riley on The Guild) and snowboarder weren’t enough, Michele is crazy smart. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior from the University of California – Davis, which means she knows more about your brain than you do. Michele games, watches stuff like Battlestar Galactica, and probably understands the science behind Warp drive and those worms that crawl in your ear in Wrath of Kahn. Is it getting hot in here?

11.

Image Source

Zooey Daschanel

Indie queen Zooey’s position on nerd love lists has never been exactly low. She even took the starring role in the formerly SciFi Channel’s miniseries “Tinman,” an update of the Wizard of Oz that was…well, somewhat dreadful. Turns out, though, in addition to leading her own band, taking on cool indie film roles, and generally being a super-cool girl next door, Zooey is a huge fan of – wait for it – The Legend of Zelda. And not just any Zelda: the SNES sequel A Link to the Past, arguably THE BEST Zelda. I don’t know about you, but for me, potential 16-bit makeout music would raise any woman’s stock.

10.

Milynn Sarley

Spreading her love of games and nerd culture throughout the Internet via her YouTube channel is what landed Milynn (pronounced My Lynn, not “your Lynn”) her a gig  hosting for EA TV. Clearly you know what you’re talking about when the gaming industry calls you for a job. Also, if you needed more evidence of her awesomeness, Milynn is working on her black belt in Shotokan – so she can hand you your ass both digitally and in real life.

9.

Image Source

Jessica Chobot

Not only does Jessica share your affinity for video games, she writes for and does hosting at IGN.com – so she’s knowledgeable. She’s like having a hot player’s guide, or a hot new release calendar. Here’s a woman who not only will play games with you and talk games with you – she can teach you a few things as well. And maybe not just about games. (She writes a blog for Maxim. Totally what I meant.)

8.

Image Source

Mila Kunis

What’s cooler than starring in the lackluster Mark Wahlberg adaptation of Max Payne? Well, lots of things – but having some digital street cred at least is cool. Mila earns hers setting people on fire in World of Warcraft. In addition to hilarious turns on That 70′s Show and Family Guy, she spends her time vanquishing monsters as a mage in the MMO. Cue about 900 thinly veiled innuendos about magic missiles.

7.

Felicia Day

A woman so deeply entrenched in the MMO culture, she was able to write, direct, produce and star in a hugely successful web show about it called The Guild. And she’s a redhead. And she’s hilarious. And she’ll dress up with you when you go to Comic Con. Or for other special occasions, like every Wednesday night.

6.

Clare Grant

Having Seth Green for a husband gives Clare a ton of nerd cred at the outset – she’s married to Scott Evil, people – so when she says video games are her hobby, it’s probably fair to say she can rock an energy sword as well as a zergling rush. She’s an actress who has appeared in Black Snake Moan and Walk the Line, but Clare’s coolest role must be producing and starring in Saber, an award-winning Star Wars fan film along with…

5.

Rileah Vanderbilt

…who also wields a lightsaber with more skill than both Kenobi and Vader in A New Hope. Rileah also is an actress who has appeared in movies such as Hatchet and Hatchet 2 and Frozen, which was a Sundance 2010 selection, and she’s into comics, video games and Star Wars (obviously). Really, that video linked in Clare’s profile should be plenty, but if not, know that Rileah is also one-fourth of the mysterious Team Unicorn, along with Clare, Michele and Milynn.

4.

Image Source

Jenny McCarthy

She shows up in Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 and Your Shape on Wii – and she’s been playing games since Pac-Man. And apparently in addition to acting in Command and Conquer, Jenny’s an avid player. So she’s funny, sexy and an adept military strategist. Sounds ideal for the inevitable zombie apocalypse – and you’d have someone to play games with, too.

3.

Image Source

Megan Fox

Imagine a digital femme fatale who could rip off her face and set you aflame with her fire breath as “Finish Him!” echoes in your ears – that’s Megan, a devout Mortal Kombat fan. Before she was appearing in perpetual sunset as robots wail on each other care of Michael Bay, she was playing games – her first system was the Super Nintendo.

2.

Image Source

Grace Park

She’s the sexy science fiction icon best known for her turn as the killer Cylon robot model Number Eight, who was also a fighter pilot, in the 2003 Battlestar Galactica update. Even better(!) – she’s an old-school gamer. Grace is into Donkey Kong and the all-time most-likely-to-lead-to-things date game, Super Mario Kart. It doesn’t get much hotter than that.

1.

Your Girlfriend, Idiot

Especially if she’s in the room right now, looking over your shoulder, your girlfriend is the hottest woman gamer there is. And that’s what you should tell her. Specifically if she plays with you, and can stand you. Seriously – she’s real, and that’s a pretty big boon. Don’t have a girlfriend? You should get on that. Hop on Xbox Live on Friday nights and try to impress a Frag Doll. (Note: You may have to practice your abilities, and charms, beforehand.)

Windows only: It's no secret that the iTunes installer loads up your system with extra components you probably don't need, and there's no way to opt out—unless you crack open the install file, that is. More »

With Google focusing Chrome OS on netbooks rather than tablets, their comments about Froyo not being suitable for tablets is a little puzzling. What would you suggest people use, Google? Donut, like ViewSonic’s ViewPad 100? More »

The reality of fewer assistants in the classroom for special needs students is sinking in for Saskatchewan families.

One-time Edmonton Oilers captain Jason Smith faces charges of domestic assault and confinement after an incident in Calgary earlier this summer.

With a gold master OS, plenty of devices raring to show themselves, and a more or less obvious October launch window, it’s clear that Windows Phone 7 is right around the corner. Pocket-lint is reporting today that its sources, “senior figures within the industry,” are pegging October 11 as the special day, with a New York launch event to make it all official. The handsets will then be available later that month, according to one of those sources. It sounds like everybody is ready for Microsoft to start fighting back in the world of phones, the question is: are you?

Microsoft launching Windows Phone 7 on October 11th? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Pocket-lint  | Email this | Comments

Some parents want Wi-Fi removed from schools, saying wireless networks are unsafe for students.

Search as you type. It’s a simple and straightforward idea—people can get results as they type their queries. Imagining the future of search, the idea of being able to search for partial queries or provide some interactive feedback while searching has come up more than a few times. Along the way, we’ve even built quite a few demos (notably, Amit Patel in 1999 and Nikhil Bhatla in 2003). Our search-as-you-type demos were thought-provoking—fun, fast and interactive—but fundamentally flawed. Why? Because you don’t really want search-as-you-type (no one wants search results for [bike h] in the process of searching for [bike helmets]). You really want search-before-you-type—that is, you want results for the most likely search given what you have already typed.

As you can imagine, searching even before someone types isn’t easy—which is why we are so excited today to be unveiling Google Instant. Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.

Here are a few of the core features in Google Instant:

• Dynamic Results – Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
• Predictions – One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
• Scroll to search – Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Here’s a video that explains Google Instant in greater depth:

To bring Google Instant to life, we needed a host of new technologies including new caching systems, the ability to adaptively control the rate at which we show results pages and an optimization of page-rendering JavaScript to help web browsers keep up with the rest of the system. In the end, we needed to produce a system that was able to scale while searching as fast as people can type and think—all while maintaining the relevance and simplicity people expect from Google.

The user benefits of Google Instant are many—but the primary one is time saved. Our testing has shown that Google Instant saves the average searcher two to five seconds per search. That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we’ll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!

As part of our current rollout, Google Instant will become the core search experience on Google.com for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8. We’ll also be offering Google Instant to our users in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. who are signed in and have Instant-capable browsers. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll work to roll out Google Instant to all geographies and platforms.

We’re very excited about today’s announcement and hope that you are too. Give Google Instant a try and let us know what you think!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

Some users have reported that they’re now seeing results streaming as they type from the Google homepage, before they click “Search.” That might explain today’s new doodle, and will likely be a major part of Google’s event later today. UPDATED: More »

Android only: If your Android phone gives you grief about running out of space, or you’re just curious as to what’s taking up room, DiskUsage has the scoop. The app provides a basic visualization of your phone’s internal and SD storage spaces. More »

The Saskatchewan government says it has arranged to buy land in Regina from Canadian Pacific Railway – if and only if a massive stadium project goes ahead.

Mozilla has released Firefox 4 beta 5 to the official beta site, we can also report that Mozilla have selected the 08/31 dated build candidate as beta 5.

Beta 5 includes the new “Firefox Button menu” this new “Firefox Menu” will replace the Menu Bar. The goal is to put the…