.::REALITYRECALL::.

Given the popularity of Apple’s iPad and the veritable glut of devices coming from companies like RIM, Motorola, Toshiba, et al, it’s only logical that a site as popular as Facebook would be working on a tablet-optimized version of its site.

The social network’s CTO Bret Taylor confirmed as much during a recent interview, stating, simply enough, “We need to make a tablet version of Facebook. It’s something we’re working on right now.” Fair enough, Bret.

Now, such an admission doesn’t mean that the company is necessary working on a native iPad app (though, again, we’d be surprised if such a thing didn’t surface in the next year), but Facebook may–much to Apple’s approval, no doubt–be working an HTML5 version of the site. “Long term we think a lot of apps will be written in HTML5,” said Taylor.

Facebook has apparently been “cautious” about fragmentation–or, at the very least, having its team spread thin with a proliferation of different device platforms. “The iPad was a casualty of that internally,” Taylor added.

Tried searching for “BitTorrent,” “RapidShare,” “uTorrent,” “MegaUpload” or even “Ubuntu torrent” lately? Good luck finding a Google domain that’ll autocomplete those results for you. Presumably caving to pleading from the MPAA and / or RIAA, El Goog has quietly begun to censor the results it shows when typing the above terms. Needless to say, the aforesaid companies aren’t too keen on the new procedures, and strangely enough, a number of other sites that would typically be grouped into this same category — MediaFire, 4shared and HotFile — remain on the cleared list. Hit the source link if you’re looking for loads of responses from companies angered with Google’s move, and feel free to reset your homepage to Bing, Yahoo or any other search engine who has yet to bend. You know, if you’re feeling rebellious.

Google begins censoring autocomplete results for BitTorrent, RapidShare and other Big Media profanity originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fixing people’s computers usually makes them appreciate you more, though this might be a little too far.

Ever get the desire to control your computer, Star Trek-style? With Windows 7’s Speech Recognition, it’s easier than you might think.

Microsoft has been working on its voice command steadily over the years. XP introduced it, Vista smoothed it, and 7 has it polished. It’s strangely not advertised as a feature, even though other voice command and speech recognition programs are hundreds of dollars. It may not be as perfect as some of them, but there’s definitely something amazing about vocally telling your computer to do things and it actually working

For the second year in a row, more American soldiers—both enlisted men and women and veterans—committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. A difference of six isn't vast by any means, but the symbolism is significant and troubling. In 2009, there were 381 suicides by military personnel, a number that also exceeded the number of combat deaths.

One of the problems hindering the military's attempt to address soldier suicides is that there's no real rhyme or reason to what kind of soldier is killing himself. While many suicide victims are indeed afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after facing heavy combat in the Middle East, many more have never even been deployed. Of the 112 guardsmen who committed suicide last year, more than half had never even left American soil.

"If you think you know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know,” Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, "because we don't know what it is."

Mock it up, talk it up and leak it out all you want, only Sony has the power to actually bring the so-called “PSP2” into the world — and that moment has come. The “sequel” to the PlayStation Portable was made official today (like, just now!) during a press event in Japan, looking every bit as — well, that thing looks like the PSP, doesn’t it?

Codenamed “NGP” — that’s “Next Generation Portable” Entertainment System — the device has been designed with five core tenets buzz phrases in mind, according to Sony: Revolutionary User Interface; Social Connectivity; Location-based Entertainment; Converging Real and Virtual; and PlayStation Suite Compatibility.

But what does that mean? For starters, the new hardware features dual analog sticks; a 5-inch OLED display (with 960×544 resolution — four times the PSP’s); a front touchscreen and rear touchpad (woah!); 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS; and, for good measure, the same six-axis motion system that propels the Move, plus a three-axis compass — oh, and we can’t forget the front and rear cameras (those come standard these days). Of course, the NGP plays games, too, which will be offered on new flash memory-based cards (so long UMD!) that feature added storage for DLC and game saves.

The NGP is coming this holiday season.

Update: Complete hardware specs, provided by Sony, are posted after the break.

Continue reading PSP successor is official, codenamed ‘NGP’ (Next Generation Portable)

PSP successor is official, codenamed ‘NGP’ (Next Generation Portable) originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ve never played a Facebook game. I once signed up for ESPNU College Town, but then I didn’t touch it.

I might have found the Facebook game for me, though, because Blue Fang and The Learning Company are set to release new versions of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego and The Oregon Trail on Facebook. The Oregon Trail will be out on February 2, which is six days from now, and Carmen San Diego will hit a week later on February 9.

This word comes from Blue Fang dev Darius Kazemi, who was extremely excited to share this with the world, as he should be.

It’s important to note that these are not the same version of these titles you’re used to. But that’s totally cool, because we’ve all played this s–t so much we need them to be changed up a bit. And, naturally, they’re going to incorporate some social bulls–t since it’s Facebook. Oh, and here are some trailers that’ll let you know what you’re in for.

I wonder if the power of nostalgia is enough to topple Cityville.

via Edge

Popular Calgary Flames centre Craig Conroy is expected to announce his retirement from hockey on Thursday.

Posted by Andrew Wilson, Software Engineer

Many of us are guilty of constantly switching back to Gmail to check for new messages. And if you’re like me, you’ve probably missed an important chat message because you weren’t looking at your Gmail window when it came in. If you use Google Chrome, these days can be over since we just launched HTML5 desktop notifications which display pop-ups whenever a chat message or new email arrives.

To turn them on, click on the Settings link in the top right corner of Gmail and scroll down to the “Desktop Notifications” section. If you just want to get notified about chat messages, or if you use Priority Inbox and only want to get notifications for important messages, you can customize your settings from there too.

This functionality is currently only available for people using Google Chrome, but we’re working to make notifications part of the standard Web platform.

Google gave us a glimpse of Android 3.0 Honeycomb earlier this year, but today they released more details on the upcoming OS. Here’s a look through what we can expect. Spoiler alert: It’s awesome, and it fixes many of Android’s biggest annoyances. More »

Just a week after being pulled by Google from its Android Market for breaking the developer agreement, Kongregate’s game-distributing Android app is back, after going through some changes.

The app, called Kongregate Arcade, makes more than 300 of the Flash games available on Kongregate.com available to Android-running smartphone owners. The app was in the Android Market a week ago, but Google pulled it the day it was released because its developer agreement forbids apps from distributing other apps, which it claimed Kongregate Arcade was doing.

Kongregate has tweaked the app some, using the Android browser cache to save game files rather than downloading them to a separate location, and running its Flash games full-screen in a Webkit browser while ditching the address bar from the top, thereby limiting what users can do with it. The idea is to make Kongregate more browser-like, allowing it to run Flash games like Android would other websites, and without downloading files that might constitute “distributing apps.”

There’s a trailer for the newly fixed app from Kongregate below, and Android users can find the new version of Kongregate Arcade in the Android Marketplace now — though for how long is impossible to say. Kongregate hopes the changes will meet Google’s requirements, but if not, you can still download the original Kongregate Arcade straight from kongregate.com.

Via Joystiq.

It’s still going to be a little bit before you can get your hands on a Xoom, but if you’d like to start playing with the Honeycomb SDK right now — and hey, developers, we’d encourage you to do just that — Google’s now made it possible. A version of the Android 3.0 SDK billed as a “preview” is now available for download, featuring “non-final” APIs and system images that will help would-be Android tablet devs get their feet wet as they prepare for an inevitable onslaught of these things over the next few months. So go on, get it while the gettin’s good.

[Thanks, D]

Android 3.0 Honeycomb SDK preview goes live originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Say you’re Research in Motion and you’re looking to up the app offering on your platform. There are a couple of ways to go about this. You could attempt to convince more developers of the validity of your operating system, getting them to develop applications for your devices as they develop for more popular operating systems like iOS and Android.

This couldn’t have been planned any better. The morning after Zuckerberg’s fan page was hacked, Facebook announced a pair of new security features to keep hackers at bay. The site can now be accessed entirely over an encrypted HTTPS connection. In addition, Facebook has introduced a “social authentication” feature that asks you to identify friends in photos, instead of making you struggle to decipher a captcha when extra authentication is required.

Facebook Boosts Security With Friend Identification and HTTPS Encryption originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toyota is recalling nearly 1.7 million vehicles around the world for various defects that may cause fuel leakage – the latest in quality control woes for the Japanese automaker.

As Wayne Gretzky passes one of life’s significant signposts and turns 50 Wednesday, his accomplishments and milestones remain virtually untouched, increasing appreciation for the man most consider the greatest hockey player in history.