.::REALITYRECALL::.

On January 25, 1921, the word "robot" was introduced to the world in Karel Capek's play "R.U.R." (Rossum's Universal Robots). The play premiered in Prague in the Czech language, but it later came to New York in 1922 in English, and the term robot took off. 

Although Capek used the introduced the word in his play, he gives the actual credit to his brother, Josef Capek. The word stems from the Czech word robota meaning forced labor, drudgery, and servitude. In the play, Capek's robots, which resemble humans and can think for themselves (so, today, they'd probably be called androids?), were created as a means of cheap labor. Eventualy, they rise up, kill all of the humans, and take over the world–that idea also took off: The Terminator, I, Robot, Transformers, etc.

Well, robotics have definitely come a long way since 1921 (and the fear that robots will take over the world has probably increased). We now have the ASIMO, BigDog, the Kawada HRPs, Roomba, and Pleo, and it just wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t call them “robots.”

Happy 90th Birthday, Robot!

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Yesterday, both Mozilla and Google introduced new browser features capable of preventing third-party advertisers from tracking Firefox and Chrome users, respectively. And, while both services aim to give users greater control over their online information, they operate in noticeably different ways.

Mozilla’s new system alerts third-party advertisers and companies whenever a Firefox user doesn’t want to be tracked. Once a user activates the feature, every third-party service attempting to track his behavior will receive an alert, in the form of a ‘Do Not Track HTTP Header.’ As a result, users will get a steady diet of more generic, less personalized ads. The only caveat, however, is that Mozilla’s mechanism relies upon the cooperation of third-party tracking companies.

Continue reading Google, Mozilla Adding New ‘Do Not Track’ Features to Browsers

Google, Mozilla Adding New ‘Do Not Track’ Features to Browsers originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A tiny group of users is responsible for the great majority of BitTorrent activity, according to Spanish researchers.

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Back in November last year, we wrote that the “IPCalypse” is only 100 days away. At the time, this seemed like a long time, but the IPcalypse is coming early, with current estimates that IPv4 addressing will run out in the next 9 days.

As of writing, Hurricane Electric reports that…

Hey, can everyone please stop talking about the iPad? RIM’s been skirting around Apple’s tablet, saying only that its upcoming PlayBook slate would have “comparable” battery life, but now it’s dropped all pretense and called the iPad out by name. Specifically, the Canadian company’s senior business marketing VP Jeff McDowell has promised that the PlayBook will offer “equal or greater” battery endurance to Apple’s device, while using a smaller cell size. The latter part isn’t hard to achieve, considering Apple filled most of its slate’s innards with Li-Pol juice packs, but the promise of matching its autonomy from the wall socket is a big claim to make. Many people consider that to be among the iPad’s foremost strengths, so RIM is surely aiming high by pledging to not only match it, but potentially better it. The PlayBook we saw in person wasn’t quite up to that level yet, but there’s still time until that March launch for RIM to turn bold words into a beautiful reality.

RIM: PlayBook battery life will be ‘equal or greater than the iPad with smaller battery size’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Isaac Hannaford is a concept artist at former Halo developers (and series creators) Bungie, who recently got the all-clear to post a ton of his work on his personal site. Good news for us! More »

We’d been wanting to build a fun, useful, app-like way to display weather information on our search results pages in the mobile browser. So we pulled together a user experience designer and team of engineers and built a new weather search results snippet that lets you actually play with the results. To try it out, just go to google.com on your iPhone or Android-powered device and search for ‘weather’.

At first glance, you’ll see content that we’d previously shown you before: current conditions and a forecast for the next few days. But by moving the slider over the next 12 hours, you can now see a detailed hour-by-hour breakdown of the changing weather conditions. As you do this, keep an eye on the temperature, wind speed and humidity and see how all these conditions are expected to trend across the day. You may also notice that the background color changes throughout the day. Of course, as you scroll further down you’ll see our regular web search results for your query.

This new weather search experience is available only in English, but we have more updates on the way. We hope you’ll enjoy using it!

Posted by Nick Fey, User Experience Designer and Michael van Ouwerkerk, Software Engineer

You’ll still need to have that Windows PC acting as an intermediary, but folks looking to use Google’s Cloud Print service now at least have considerably more devices at their disposal to print documents from. Following up its roll-out to Chrome OS netbooks last month, Google has now announced that it’s begun rolling the service out to its mobile Google Docs and Gmail sites, which you’ll be able to use to print documents from most mobile devices that supports HTML5 — those running Android 2.1+ or iOS 3+, for instance. What’s more, while you will still need that Windows PC connected to your printer for the time being, Google now notes that both Mac and Linux support are “coming soon.”

Google brings Cloud Print service to mobile Google Docs, Gmail originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though we’ve already had a chance to see what they might look like, a new wave of leaks from PreCentral suggest that HP’s 9.7″ webOS tablet will have a 1.2GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and wireless docking features like whoa. More »

Jeff Dickerson, a moderator known as gobluejd on AndroidForums, is a former BlackBerry addict gone Android.

So you are thinking of moving from a Blackberry to Android, huh?  Well it’s a scary journey, but once you do, hopefully you’ll never look back.

As a former Blackberry addict myself I knew there would be some hurdles and things I knew ahead of time that I might truly miss. Once you decide to take the plunge, there are some obvious understandings you’ll want to embrace. The 3 “biggies”:

1. Blackberry Messenger

   – This was hard to lose.  I miss the received / sent icons but after a month or so, Google Talk took over.  It’s just as good plus I can use it at any PC I am at as well.  I used Google Talk from the beta days, so it was already familiar.  The hard part was getting everyone else that I BBM’d to use Google Talk.  Most of them already had Gtalk installed on their BB’s so eventually they just started communicating with me this way.  Now a year later there is no problem,  I love Google Talk.

2. BB Holster Magnet

   – Yep I still miss/want it.  When you un-holster your BB, the screen instantly comes on, the call/email/etc is staring you right in the face.  With Android you don’t get the information staring you in the face but it is much simpler to access, you swipe down the notification bar, select the item and you are instantly taken to that specific app.  It takes some getting used to but if you never used the BB holster feature you won’t even miss it!

3. Security

   – If this is your personal mobile phone, you really have no worries.  If it’s a company phone more than likely you’re on a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) and your IT department will have to okay the transition to Android.  Keep in mind if you’re on Microsoft Exchange, your emails are secure no matter what mobile device you’re on (Windows, Blackberry, Palm etc).  That being said, non-Exchange emails (Gmail and Blackberry Internet Server aka BIS) are secure from the server to your mobile device.  All other email is not secure no matter what the device.

Here are some quick pros and cons of each platform to further guide your decision/transition:

Performance

1. Blackberry – Quick and somewhat stable.  Typically I’d have to do a battery pull every few days.  The re-boot time is ridiculous – sometimes 8 minutes.
2. Android – Quick with no lag or hesitation.  I do not think I have ever had to take the battery out, unless swapping for another one.   Boot time is quick.

Battery

1. Blackberry – The battery life on a Blackberry is fantastic.  However keep in mind that it is not doing much.
2. Andorid – Not so good.  I can make it through a full day – sometimes.  However I find that I am doing A LOT more with my phone.  There are threads upon threads on Android’s battery issues.  It all depends on how you use the phone.  If you’re browsing the web for an hour or watching a video (something you would not typically do for long on a BB) you’ll certainly see the difference.  If there is something at which Android can improve, it’s battery life.

Email

1. Blackberry – This is what RIM / Blackberry is known for.  Gmail on BB is starting to improve but does not hold a candle to Android.  If you’re not on BES this really does not matter to you.
2. Android – So far email is pretty good.  Emails are almost instant with Exchange.  Gmail however EXCELS (of course, it is a Google!).

User Interface (UI)

1. Blackberry – Not much to say here.  It’s tried and true.  No glitz and glam.  It does what it is supposed to.  I now refer to this as the DOS phone.
2. Android – Wow!  What the hell have I been smoking that has caused me not to move us all over to the Android side?  Two words: Love it!

**Note – User interface really is a matter of personal preference rather than a question of better or worse.

Web Browsing

1. Blackberry – Painful to browse the web.  If you’re stuck with it, at least it accesses the web.
2. Android – This is where Android DOMINATES.  Web browsing is night and day compared to Blackberry… and by that I mean wonderful.

Apps

1. Blackberry – More and more apps are showing up, but the iPhone OS is keeping it behind.  It will be interesting to see what Blackberry can do to start competing with Android and Apple OS.
2. Android – Dominates again.  More and more apps that are loved on Apple iOS are already making their way to Android.  Android is right up there with iOS.

Well hopefully this information can aid in your decision making process.  I certainly had help from our forums, but collectively this info was not available in one place when I was in my decision making process.  A year later, I am now an Android addict and a proud member and moderator here at Android Forums. If you want to find me on AF my user name is gobluejd!

Posted by Tyler Odean, Google Cloud Print Team

Let’s say you need to print an important email attachment on your way to work so that it’s waiting for you when you walk in the door. With Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print — a service that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install drivers — you can.

To get started, you’ll first need to connect your printer to Google Cloud Print. For now, this step requires a Windows PC but Linux and Mac support are coming soon. Once you’re set up, just go to gmail.com from your iPhone or Android browser and choose “Print” from the dropdown menu in the top right corner. You can also print eligible email attachments (such as .pdf or .doc) by clicking the “Print” link that appears next to them.

We’re rolling this feature out in U.S. English over the next few days, so if you don’t see it right away please check back. In the meantime, you can learn more in the Google Cloud Print help center.

Chrome: Adding extra features to Gmail isn’t a new idea, but Minimalist Gmail for Chrome is the best tweaker yet: You can hide items, add row highlights, and even change the five Google links at the top of the page. More »

The giant PC gaming rigs of the last decade are so passé. Hot this year are sleeker, more cut models, models like the DARWINmachine Hammerhead HMR989. It looks like a crazy casemod but it’s actually a custom-built rig you can order, priced at $2,899 and sporting a vertically mounted NVIDIA GTX460 graphics accelerator, a 2.8Ghz Core i7-860 processor, a combination of SSD and platter-based storage, and a power supply left hanging on the side. It’s all aluminum and resin sheets and lovely, though we could probably do without the blue LEDs.

DARWINmachine Hammerhead HMR989 gaming rig looks ferocious, can attack your desk for $2,900 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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