Reality Bites
Google has added a new feature to their Google Docs platform; OCR for PDF and images files. OCR or optical character recognition will read the the text embedded into a PDF or image so that you can edit the document in a normal text editor.
OCR is not completely accurate though….
In a discovery likely to fan the flames of climate change debate, a team has concluded that the thinning ice on one of Antarctica’s major glaciers is not caused by global warming.
[Thanks, Nikesh]
Continue reading Jolicloud promises touch support in version 1.0, gives a demo now
Jolicloud promises touch support in version 1.0, gives a demo now originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
An Ontario company has won the bidding for the Saskatchewan government’s television network, the province says.
Today, Toshiba’s Digital Products Division announced an exciting limited edition dual touchscreen netbook/umpc called the Libretto W100.
Specs:
Toshiba says this mobile device is just a concept, and will only be available in limited supply in August, both from select retailers and on Toshibadirect.com. Though the company did not state pricing in the device’s announcement today, it is reportedly going to cost $1,099.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Toshiba – Touchscreen – Bluetooth – Microsoft Windows – Universal Serial Bus
It’s true that iOS4 and Android are the mobile operating systems of the day. But MeeGo, a mash-up of Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo OSes, could be a strong contender. Based on this demo, at least. More »
Operating system – Intel – Nokia – Android – Maemo
Saskatchewan RCMP pulled a man’s body from a river just east of the town of Pelly on Sunday afternoon.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders have announced that the CFL club made a record profit of $3.1 million in 2009.
The largest lottery prize pool in Canadian history will be up for grabs in Friday night’s Lotto Max draw.
If you’ve been bragging about your all-encompassing 7.2 surround-sound system to of your friends, prepare for a mighty dose of humble pie. Audi has hand-crafted what it calls the Sound Concept, an in-car sound system so excessive it should be able to cause your soft, fleshy bits to pulsate in new and exciting ways. There are five tweeters scattered across the dash and the doors, five woofers (four in the doors and a monster in the back), and then a whopping 52 mid-range speakers encircling the entire enclosure, creating a package that’s not likely to show up in the options catalog anytime soon. All these have been wedged into the interior of a Q7 SUV in the interests of Wave Field Synthesis, minimizing a user’s ability to hear specific speakers — and blowing Audyssey’s paltry 11-speaker DSX system right out of the water.
Audi’s Sound Concept cabin defines auditory excess: 62 speaker surround-sound originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Anyone can take a hammer and rib-spreader to a new piece of hardware. But it takes someone like Anand Shimpi, the man behind Anandtech who has personally suffered through four out-of-warranty Xbox 360 failures, to bring sage analysis to a teardown of the new Xbox 360. His reluctant sixth Xbox 360 is the new slimster (codename Valhalla) which, for the first time, combines the CPU, GPU, and eDRAM onto a single chip — previous Xbox 360 motherboards featured two discrete packages that split the CPU from the ATI designed Xenos GPU and eDRAM. The design allows for a single heatsink to be cooled by a single, larger fan making the new Xbox “noticeably quieter,” measured at 45dB when idle or 51dB with the 1.5Gbps SATA Hitachi HTS545025B9SA00 with 8MB buffer spinning at 5400RPM — that’s down from 50dB and 54dB, respectively, as measured on late 2008 through 2010 Jasper-class 360s. Regarding power consumption, Anand measured a 50% reduction from the original 2005 Xbox 360 (25% less than Jasper-class rigs at idle, or 20% to 17% less under load) and pulled just 0.6W when “totally off” compared to the 2W of vampire power pulled by older 360s. Anand speculates that Microsoft might finally be using cheaper 40nm components. However, we shouldn’t expect to see a price cut anytime soon as it will take Microsoft awhile to ramp up the material and manufacturing cost savings. Regardless, with Kinect and several new game titles on the horizon, Anand concludes that there’s still plenty of life left in the old Xbox 360 platform for those looking to make the jump.
New Xbox 360 gets a proper teardown analysis: power and noise reductions confirmed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Ever since HP CEO Mark Hurd said he wasn’t interested in smartphones, it’s like the company’s been making up for lost time — first by denying the exec’s predilections, and more recently by actually asking us to speculate wildly. Now Palm’s Developer Relations team has reportedly stepped in to confirm that speculation, telling devs that future devices and a new version of webOS are on the way. While there’s no knowing if those devices are smartphones or when we might see them, we’re told to expect a “very exciting” next year.
Palm confirms new devices, webOS upgrade originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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BP CEO Tony Hayward has told a congressional committee he is “deeply sorry” for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Overshadowed by the introduction of extension sync in today’s Google Chrome developer channel update was another important feature which has been in the works for some time. The same Google and Adobe collaboration which led to the introduction of Chrome’s internal Flash plug-in has finally resulted in an internal plug-in for displaying PDF files as well.
Canada’s cellphone companies have all earned an F, the lowest possible rating by the Better Business Bureau.
The description from the person that posted the video:
“A newborn fawn creates a dangerous situation when mom gets protective. Starts cute, ends scary. Warning: this is disturbing stuff.
I cut the footage because I ended up filming the dog’s owner, whose privacy had to be protected.
The dog eventually left limping—since posting this I have heard that it recovered. THE DOG IS OKAY, I think.
River, my deer-whispering cat, is fine—we’ll see if he learned his lesson. (And no, I won’t put him on a leash or lock him in the house. A cat is not a dog.)
We did call animal control, there was nothing they could do.
As to why I didn’t stop filming to help the dog:
there were other people around, the dog wasn’t mine, I selfishly felt lucky to have something extraordinary to film.
If that makes me an idiot… well, that wouldn’t exactly be news to anyone in these parts.
And no, we never gave food to a deer, but they are all over the place and we probably need some level of government to address the issue before some kid gets hurt. That’s why I filmed and posted this.
(Don’t worry, John Wayne, this is in Canada—here we like the government to help with problems individuals can’t address alone, it makes us feel like our taxes go somewhere useful. I am not advocating for more government in Texas or Iowa… to each his own, amigo. Incidentally, that’s another reason why no guns were involved in this downtown scene.)
After this was picked up by digg.com and others, my email account couldn’t handle the influx of comments (I stopped at 214 an hour), which is why I’m trying to answer questions here.
Finally: yes, my being there filming contributed to the problem, stressing the doe. And yes, I feel bad about it.
My excuse: River has been hanging out with deer for a long time… this was a first, because of the newborn, and it went haywire in a hurry.”
Blogging platform WordPress just released their 3.0 “Thelonious” update, debuting, among other things, an attractive and modern-looking default theme and a bulk plug-in, theme, and installation updater. The release also includes over one thousand bug fixes and enhancements. More »
WordPress – Tools – Publishers – Templates – WPMUDev.org
