.::REALITYRECALL::.

Charlie Sheen’s complicated life is about to get even more complicated. A woman who slept with Charlie and wife Brooke Mueller at the same time is about to come forward and tell her story.

GPS enabled smartphones make it easy to get directions, weather, and many more location based services since they automatically know where you are.  With Geosense, you can bring this functionality to any Windows 7 computer even if it doesn’t have a GPS chip.

Windows 7 introduced the new Sensors and Location platform that would let Windows automatically respond to environmental changes sensed by light, orientation sensors, or GPS chips.  This makes your computer more aware of its surroundings and change itself accordingly.  The location platform is especially interesting, as it brings the potential of automatic location based search and maps to your PC.  Unfortunately, most laptops today are not equipped with GPS chips.  Thanks to Geosense, however, you can still use the location platform.

Geosense uses IP lookup, WiFi and Cell tower triangulation, and more to find your location as accurately as possible.  Geosense lists itself as a sensor in the Windows Sensors and Locations, so once you’ve installed it, all location-aware applications and services will be able to pickup your location from it.  Please note that Geosense only works on Windows 7 Home Premium and higher, as Windows 7 Starter doesn’t include the Sensors and Locations platform.

Getting Started:

Geosense is a free download for Windows 7, with both 32 and 64 bit editions.  Choose the correct one for your computer, and install.

While installing, it will ask to install a device driver.  Simply press Install.  You may also see a UAC prompt, which you should accept as well.

When it is finished installing, you are ready to use Geosense.  First, lets make sure Geosense is enabled.  Enter “Location” in your Start Menu search, and select “Location and Other Sensors”.

Here you should see Geosense listed as a sensor.  If it is not enabled, click the check box beside it and click Apply.

You can see more information about Geosense if you click its name.  This page lets you change the description, choose which users can use this sensor, and uninstall it if you choose.

Using Geosense

There are few applications today that make use of the Location platform in Windows 7, but hopefully we will see more in the near future.  The weather desktop gadget, however, is location aware, so you can easily test out your Geosense location with it.  Once Geosense is installed, you will notice a grey logo beside your city’s name on the gadget that shows that a sensor is available.

Click on the gear to open the options pane.  Here you can now select “Find location automatically” and it will display the weather for the location detected by Geosense.

 

Now your gadget should show a blue icon beside the city name, showing that the location is coming from your location sensor.

Unfortunately, sometimes Geosense cannot detect your location. If so, you will either see an entirely incorrect city (Seattle, WA is the default city, and usually is “detected” if Geosense fails to detect your location), or will show a red icon showing that it cannot detect your correct location.

Location-aware Google Maps

Another location aware application is a Google Maps app available from the Geosense site (link below).  This will automatically open a Google map at your current location, so you can easily search for directions and nearby businesses.  This could be very useful at a hotspot in a new city, for instance.  Once again, though, if it cannot detect your location, it may simply show a default location or a generic Google maps.

Conclusion:

Geosense and the Windows 7 Location Platform gives you a great way to make your mobile computing experience even more interesting.  Geosense brings location awareness to a much broader audience than previously possible, so hopefully we’ll see some unique and innovative uses in the near future.  Until then, even the current location aware apps are fun to try!

Note: If you’re concerned about privacy while using the Location-Enabled Google Maps Client, check out Google’s privacy policy regarding the service.

Link:

Download Geosense for Windows 7 and the Location-Enabled Google Maps Client

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Olympic hockey’s fever pitch may be over, but the buzz over Team Canada’s victory remains.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper suggested Monday that the Vancouver Olympics have elevated Canada on the world stage like never before.

You can now feed your social media obsession even further by downloading a Facebook app onto your Zune HD. Heads up though, seems that you may need to update your Zune software first. [CrunchGear]

After Sony’s warning, the PlayStation Network seems to be back online and fully operational, according to reader Larry Gallant. Updated

I wanted to let you guys know that the phat PS3s are now able to login to the Playstation network and the clocks are working. I was able to login at 6:28 PM eastern time in the Boston, MA USA area.

No official word from Sony yet, however, so proceed with caution.

Update: Multiple readers are reporting that things are fixed, and they now can use their PS3s normally.

Have you been able to connect to the network? Tell us in the comments. [Thanks Larry]

Although disappointed that he was unable to lead Russia to a medal in Olympic hockey, Alex Ovechkin says Canada deserved to take home the gold.

One of the more straightforward acquisitions Google's made in a while, they've just bought the online image editor Picnick. Given Google's past acquisition strategy—turning Grand Central into Google Voice, Writely into Google Docs—the logical expectation is that it'll get merged into its already excellent Picasa photo managing app. [Picnick]

Half the Canadian population, watched Sunday as Canada beat the Americans 3-2 in overtime to win the gold…

Full story at The Live Feed

Photos still look great for web-viewing even when they’re at resolutions well below the optimal size for printing. Resize and resample your images down to a more reasonable size at Web Resizer.

Photo by docentjoyce.

Upload a photo to Web Resizer and you can not only resize the image to smaller dimensions, but tweak its appearance and image quality. You can round the corners or leave them square, add a border, crop, rotate, sharpen and adjust the image quality to push the image size down even further. If you’re unable to decide which image quality setting is best, you can check the “Compare Image Sizes” box and Web Resizer will lay out images in increments of 10 points on the scale for you to compare. You can also do basic adjustments to the contrast, exposure, and tint of the image.

It’s not a tool for batch conversion or heavy editing but for individual tweaking to optimize a handful of site images or adjust a profile picture to fit within the size and resolution requirements of a site you want to upload it to, it’s a handy and free tool. Have a favorite online editor? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

We’ve been proponents of standing desks and treadputers for some time, but we’ve also met with plenty of reader skepticism on the subject. The New York Times examines why sitting all day is so bad for you, whether or not you exercise.

Based on the results of several recent studies, the Times’ Olivia Judson writes:

It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting – in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home – you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.

Indeed, if you consider only healthy people who exercise regularly, those who sit the most during the rest of the day have larger waists and worse profiles of blood pressure and blood sugar than those who sit less. Among people who sit in front of the television for more than three hours each day, those who exercise are as fat as those who don’t: sitting a lot appears to offset some of the benefits of jogging a lot.

The post goes onto discuss why sitting for so long is such a problem, in two parts. First, sitting really is “one of the most passive things you can do,” and second, “when you spend long periods sitting, your body actually does things that are bad for you.” Head over to the NYT for more details, and see if you can’t find a place to stand up while you read. Thanks happygardeningmama002!

The Calgary Flames announced on Monday the signing of acquired forward Matt Stajan to a multi-year contract.

A domed stadium in Regina could be successful, a feasibility study released Monday says, although the question of who would pay to build the multimillion-dollar facility remains to be answered.

Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) copies will begin restarting every two hours today.
Microsoft officials warned of the prompts and bi-hourly shut downs in early February. A brief summary of the events can be found below:
Effective March 1, 2010, Windows 7 RC enters the next phase of expiration:

Windows 7 RC users…

Sidney Crosby took a pass from Jarome Iginla and scored just under eight minutes into overtime to give Canada a 3-2 win over the United States and the gold medal in Olympic men’s hockey on Sunday.

The closing ceremony of the Vancouver Games kicked off with typical Canadian self-deprecation, but quickly became a celebration of Canada and its athletic and cultural achievements – often with a twist of humour.

It’s unclear exactly what’s going on at the moment, but it appears that the PlayStation Network is down and causing a whole host of related problems for PS3 systems, including 8001050F error codes, game crashes, corrupted trophy info, and even the complete inability to launch certain titles. There’s no ETA on when things will get back to normal — looks like it’s gonna be a Blu-ray kind of evening for PS3 owners out there.

Update: Sony’s tweeted that it’s “looking into it,” and our boys at Joy say that owners of original PS3s are seeing their clocks reset and even data loss in some cases. We’ll keep you updated.

Update 2: Given that issues started to appear as February 28th became March 1st, it’s being speculated that the PSN woes are related to an improper handling of leap years. Similar to the issue that bricked those Zunes back in 2008. Sorry, manually setting your date doesn’t help, we tried.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

PlayStation Network down, so are lots of PS3s (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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