.::REALITYRECALL::.

From the Microsoft Press Release:
[QUOTE]
Gamer on the go? Now you can take many of your favorite Xbox 360 experiences with you, wherever you are. Xbox LIVE – the leading online game and entertainment service in your living room – will be available in your pocket for the first time this holiday on Windows Phone 7 Series. Unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today at Mobile World Congress 2010, the Windows Phone 7 Series games hub featuring Xbox LIVE unlocks a world of games, fun and a community of more than 23 million active members to Windows Phone 7 Series users around the world.

To watch the full replay of Steve Ballmer’s press conference at Mobile World Congress, and to experience Windows Phone 7 Series through an online product demo please visit: www.microsoft.com/news/windowsphone.
[/QUOTE]

It took more than 34 years to do it, but a Canadian has won an Olympic gold medal on home soil – Alexandre Bilodeau’s name entered sports history books Sunday when he grabbed first place in the men’s moguls at the Vancouver Games.

After a week’s worth of complaints and confusion, Google is updating Buzz to address many of the privacy concerns and annoyances raised by the new social networking service. The update brings three major changes.

First, they’ve replaced the auto-follow feature with auto-suggestions, letting you choose who you follow individually rather than automatically following everyone Google thinks you’d want to. Second, Buzz will stop automatically connecting to public Picasa Web Albums and Reader shared items. You can still connect these things, but you’ve got more choice. Finally, they’ve added a Buzz tab to your Gmail settings to give you finer control over how Buzz integrates with Gmail. From there, you can easily change whether or not other users can see who you're following via your Google Profile, turn off Buzz in Gmail, or turn off Buzz completely—something I suspect a lot of people will want to do. (The Buzz tab isn't available yet, and they do say "we're adding“, but hopefully it’ll be there soon.)

The mea culpa from the Official Gmail Blog:

It’s been an exciting and challenging week for the Buzz team. We’ve been getting feedback via the Gmail help forums and emails from friends and family, and we’ve also been able to do something new: read the buzz about Buzz itself. We quickly realized that we didn’t get everything quite right. We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We’ll continue to do so.

What do you think? Do these changes make Buzz a little more attractive, or are you already turned off by all the negative buzz about Buzz? Let’s hear it in the comments.

Are you looking for some unique wallpapers to express the feelings in your heart this year? Then you will want to have a look through our special Valentine’s Day collection.

Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution.

Looking for some great post-holiday wallpapers? Then be certain to look through our growing collection of themed wallpapers for your desktop.

How-To Geek Wallpaper Collections

• Desktop Fun: Underwater Theme Wallpapers
• Desktop Fun: Winter Theme Wallpapers
• Friday Fun: Retro Nintendo Wallpapers
• Totally Awesome Lego Wallpapers for Your Desktop
• Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: Guitar Edition
• Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: Abstract Art Edition
• Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: Windows 7 Edition
• Fun Wallpapers: The Linux Desktop Edition
• Amazing Desktop Wallpapers: Castle Theme Edition

Fixing a typo is handy, sure, but something tells me that the less morally scrupulous among us will have a field day with Google Buzz's edit button—namely, this comic. [DogHouseDiaries via reddit]

12 simple tricks to help give you a better Buzz.

Investigators and workers with CN Rail were kept busy Thursday after a 56-car train derailment in western Manitoba, RCMP said.

It feels like all of the nine million Google Buzz posts and comments flooded your inbox this week. And as if that wasn’t enough, suddenly that creepy ex started “following” you. Google has a fix for one of those issues.

As a result of user feedback, Google has made these little changes to turn Buzz into something slightly less creepy without having to resort to elaborate workarounds:

• More visible option to not show followers/people you follow on your public profile
• Ability to block anyone who starts following you
• More clarity on which of your followers/people you follow can appear on your public profile

Now if only they could make the whole thing less annoying. [Gmail Blog]

That’s right! After all those quick and dirty appearances, we’ve finally got our own Dell Mini 5 (aka “Streak” or “M01M“) prototype for a more in-depth look. Got a question about this mysterious beast? Drop us a line here and we’ll try to answer all your queries in our forthcoming impressions post.

Update: We’ve just added a bunch of new pics!

Update 2: And now we have a quick video after the break. You’re welcome.

Continue reading Dell Mini 5: we have it (update: new pics and video!)

Dell Mini 5: we have it (update: new pics and video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook may have partnered with AIM to bring chat to your desktop, but if you’re not a fan of the official AIM client, there’s now an easy way to get Facebook Chat in the IM client of your choice.

Over a year ago, Facebook announced that they planned to support Facebook Chat over XMPP/Jabber, the same protocol that Google Talk uses, so people could use Facebook Chat in their favorite IM client—and then it was never mentioned again. Yesterday, though, Facebook announced that in addition to the AIM partnership, the XMPP/Jabber implementation had finally come to fruition.

If you are using a multi-protocol IM client such as Pidign, Adium, or iChat, set-up is really easy—you just add a new Jabber or XMPP account, the username being your username@chat.facebook.com, with your password being the same as your Facebook password. If you still haven't gotten a Facebook username (the tag that appears after www.facebook.com/ for your profile page) you'll need to go to your Settings page to enable it.

Once you log in, all your Facebook friends should show up in your buddy list. If this is good enough for you, that’s fine, but I found it really messed with my organization. Although Facebook lets you decide which friend lists do and do not show up in your IM client, it doesn’t seem to realize that those not on a list are important too—so if you have friends that aren't on a friend list, they'll just show up in a list called "Buddies" on your IM client, and there's no way to take them off (short of hiding that list client-side). Since most of my AIM and Gtalk contacts were already on a list called "Buddies", I had to create a new list for them to get my organization back on track. You may or may not care—it's just a warning that that list will likely be where all your unlisted Facebook friends go (at least it was for me).

Apart from that, everything else should be handled pretty well client-side. Profile thumbs are grabbed, Away in your client corresponds to Idle on Facebook, and, if you were previously using the unofficial add-on for adding Facebook Chat to Adium or Pidgin, you should find that the official route is far less flaky as far as connection goes. The service is pretty new, so there are bound to be a few bugs or hidden workarounds—if you find any, be sure to let us know in the comments! Thanks, brishu!

Whether you call it a huge privacy flaw or just an annoyance, Google Buzz can put the contacts you automatically follow—a.k.a. those you most frequently email or chat—on a public profile page. Here's how to undo that.

Google Blogoscoped’s Philipp Lenssen felt he had to avoid following certain Buzz contacts, as he didn't want to expose his social circle to the wider net. He's right—if you have a Google Profile, once you set up Buzz, those you’re following, and those following you, are shown on your profile page in a right-hand link list.

Update: This might not apply if you haven’t touched much inside Buzz, or haven’t set up a Google Profile, or that Profile is set to be hidden from the public. If so, you’re mostly in the clear. But keep in mind that, once you post to Buzz, your profile will likely be created, and you’ll want to know what’s getting put up on the web.

To turn this off, sign into your Google account (via Gmail or elsewhere) and head to your Google profile—that link should work if you're signed in. Look for the two links showing "Following X people" and "X people following me." There's a gray note underneath those numbers, indicating whether they're visible to just you or to everyone.

If they're visible to everyone, hit the "Edit Profile" link on the right-hand edge of the blue bar in the middle of the page, to the right of "About me," "Buzz," and "Contact info." In the third column of options there, there are checkboxes that control privacy features, and one of them is labeled "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me." Un-check that box, and now your list of followers and followees is private—or at least seen only by those you're following, perhaps.

Want Google Buzz gone entirely? Log into Gmail, then look at the bottom of your inbox page for a “Turn off Buzz” link. If you’re mainly annoyed at Buzz’s constant, um, buzzing, read up on removing Buzz updates from your inbox.

This tip came courtesy of Contributing Editor Lisa, who was similarly shocked to see Google dropping everyone’s frequently-contacted names on the net. If you’ve found a similarly crucial privacy tweak for Buzz, tell us about it in the comments.

When you join Google Buzz, it automatically provides you with followers and followees based on prior communication. These people are then listed on your Google profile, which can be seen by all your friends. So, affair havers: maybe hold off.

A lot of the Giz staff was alarmed by the suggested/automatic follower lists, not because they were automatic, but because it was hard to tell how exactly they were chosen. Obvious additions, like girlfriends or coworkers, seem to make the cut. Other entries were people that were rarely—and sometimes never—emailed from the associated account.

Anyway, point is, it’s an odd concept, made odder by the fact that, as the Silicon Alley Insider noticed, other people can see you’re following, including the auto-adds. To put this in real terms:

• A girl you slept with in college sends you a message on Gchat, to tell you she has five beautiful children now, and that she doesn’t ever think about you, ever. Ok!
• You exchange some messages and a couple emails to be polite. You defuse the situation. You don’t mention it to your current girlfriend, because that would be weird.
• Coincidentally, you enable Google Buzz, which adds both your current girlfriend and this lady who you politely deflected.
• Your girlfriend checks out your Google profile, sees your friends list, and asks you who that lady is.
• You clumsily try to explain, “Oh, it just adds people you talk to automatically,” which only makes things worse.
• Fight!
• …
• You break up, which was probably a good thing anyway, because your relationship sounded really unhealthy. But you get the point, right?

Since fixing this is as simple as toggling a privacy switch in your profile, it’s less of a disastrous bug than it is an unfortunate default behavior, and despite their early insistence that this is a feature, not a flaw, Google will probably adjust accordingly. Still though, Buzz hasn’t gotten off to the greatest start, has it? [Silicon Alley Insider]

YouTube has introduced an optional "Safety Mode" filter designed to help users screen out potentially objectionable content.

<!–break–>

"An example of this type of content might be a newsworthy video that contains graphic violence such as a political protest or war coverage," explained Google spokesperson Jamie Davidson.

"While no filter is 100 percent perfect, Safety Mode is another step in our ongoing desire to give you greater control over the content you see on the site."

However, Sarah Perez of Read Write Web criticized the new filter, claiming that it failed to offer sufficient protection against the viewing of inappropriate content.

"Even if it's switched it on for a particular user account, the user can switch it off again just by scrolling to the bottom of the page," opined Perez.

"It may have been better if YouTube had introduced special ‘kid accounts’ which forced users on a particular computer to sign in in order to see YouTube videos. Once enabled on a PC, visitors to YouTube could have been presented with a sign-in box, not the YouTube homepage."



According to Perez, the accounts would then be managed by parents empowered to enable and disable the filter at will. 



"Instead, the 'Safety Mode' feature looks as if it's an attempt to placate the FCC and worried parents while not actually providing a anything the average web-savvy kid couldn't figure out in 30 seconds flat.

"So parents, enable the filter if you must, but remember, no technology – and especially not this one – can serve as a replacement for actual parenting."

Part of being a good user and consumer is understanding how technology works, why we use it the way we do, and what the barrage of acronyms and PR jargon means. We’re here to help you make sense of it all and give you a better appreciation for how that pile of transistors, pixels, and antennas works together to deliver the conveniences of the modern world to your living room or office.

What is RSS?

RSS, most commonly expanded to “Really Simple Syndication“, is a way for frequently updated Web sites to publish content so it can easily be repeated and aggregated around the Web. These feeds, as they’re called, are most often associated with news sites and blogs, but almost every Web site offers them. RSS, along with its close cousin Atom, strips out many elements of a Web site and leaves only the text, images and, in some cases, the audio or video associated with an article. It uses the XML markup language, a document formatting standard used not only in Web pages, but in office documents like those of Office 2007, Open Office, and iWork. This makes it a lightweight way to pass around content

Continue reading RSS, The Web’s Most Underutilized Time Saver

Filed under: Columns, Google, Web

RSS, The Web’s Most Underutilized Time Saver originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google announced on Wednesday that it plans to create and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States.
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