Reality Bites
Whoa, Nelly! Is that a Firefox 4 download button we’re looking at? Why yes… yes it is! We can’t think of a much better way to wrap up one’s workday than by finding out that Mozilla’s own Firefox browser has finally made the official leap to 4.0, with Beta 1 going live for the adoring public today. It’s ready to be sucked down and installed for those with Windows, Linux and OS X-based machines, and the changelog itself is far too lengthy for this space (though it’s linked below for your perusal). You’ll obviously notice an overhauled look hitting you front and center, with a new add-on manager, support for the new WebM format, improved privacy settings and crash protection headlining the “big chart o’ features.” Give ‘er a download and toss your thoughts on the new build down in comments below, cool?
P.S. – Be warned that this may very well not work with your stable of add-ons right away, so we’d keep that stable 3.x.x build installed as a backup!
Firefox 4 Beta 1 now available for download originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Your wireless router broadcasts your Wi-Fi signal on channels ranging from 1 to 11.* As more routers broadcast on the same channel as yours, your router’s performance generally decreases. The solution: Scan for the least crowded channels and use one of those. More »
Wireless – Data Communications – Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection – 802.11 – Wi-Fi Connection
AppleCare has confirmed what we already knew: The incoming software update won’t fix the iPhone 4‘s transmission and reception problems. They acknowledged the antenna problem exists, offering the same solution as before: Buy a case or hold the iPhone differently. More »
iPhone – Handhelds – Smartphones – Apple – iPhone 4
The tornado that ripped through a Saskatchewan First Nation chewed a path half a kilometre wide and at least 45 kilometres long, Environment Canada says.
Bob Probert has died at the age of 45 after collapsing with severe chest pains, a spokesman for the family of the troubled former NHL tough guy confirmed Monday evening.
Can Lady Gaga be stopped? Self-marketing genius, living performance piece, fortuitous flavor of the month or some combination of the three, the Lady’s rise to fame seems uninhibited by even bad press and a mediocre music video. You could argue that the world has reached its Lady Gaga tipping point, but the numbers would refute you. As we reported back in April, Gaga made YouTube history by pulling in over a billion views for just three videos (we’ve calculated our managing editor is responsible for at least half of those hits). And now, she’s just earned another milestone by raking in over 10 million Facebook fans.
As of today, she’s earned 10,673,476 fans, to be exact. That’s more people than the population of Portugal, where naysayers just may want to send every Gaga fan. (We hear Lisbon is lovely this time of year. Or not?) She overtook President Obama, still sitting pretty with 9.82 million fans, to have more followers than any other living person on Facebook. Detractors of the Haus of Gaga will be heartened to know that intangibles such as Texas Hold ’em Poker, Mafia Wars and ‘Family Guy’ are still trouncing the Lady with their fan counts.
Continue reading Lady Gaga Trounces Obama With 10 Million Facebook Fans
Filed under: Celebrities, Social Networking
Lady Gaga Trounces Obama With 10 Million Facebook Fans originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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BP says it has spent more than $3 billion US responding to the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Continue reading Logitech Revue Google TV box hits the FCC
Logitech Revue Google TV box hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Remember those creepy scenes in Mission Impossible II when Tom Cruise wore those super-realistic masks of other people’s faces? This one, made by SPFXMasks, is kinda like that, but even creepier. And out-creeping Tom Cruise is no small feat. [BoingBoing] More »
Tom Cruise – Recreation – Travel – Cruises – Specialty Travel
Robonaut2 may have fantastic biceps, but raw muscle won’t put a man humanoid on the moon — that takes rockets. Rockets like the one in this RR-1 prototype lander, recently outfitted with a Guidance Embedded Navigator Integration Environment (GENIE) system to let the craft safely descend to the lunar surface. On June 23rd, NASA and partner Armadillo Aerospace put the system to the test, hoping it could figure out the complex algorithms necessary to process volumes of data from the laser altimeter, GPS and inertial sensors, and quickly enough to steer the rocket engine accordingly… but the machine performed like a charm. See its first solo flight in an inspiring, flame-filled video after the break, and skip to 4:12 for the good stuff.
NASA successfully tests autonomous lunar lander navigation system, codename GENIE (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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About 350 property owners in Saskatchewan will qualify for disaster relief from the province after weeks of stormy weather that has destroyed homes and ravaged communities.
Rescuers use canoes as heavy rain causes widespread flooding in Yorkton, Sask.
According to Android product manager Gaurav Jain, Google Music will be launched concurrently with Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) at the end of this year. Presumably just in time to battle iTunes Live. More »
Google – List of Google products – Search – Search Engines – Android
Firefox commands enough market share to make it the world’s second most popular browser, but Internet Explorer has always kept a significant lead thanks to its presence in the enterprise market. Microsoft is very good at making things easy for large businesses, and Mozilla showed little interest in approaching that market until 2007. But Mozilla’s efforts to improve deploying and managing Firefox on a large scale, and the increasing importance of being “standard compliant” might finally be swaying some businesses away from the in-built Windows browser.
IBM is the latest (and possibly largest) company yet to ditch IE for the little open source browser that could. The company plans to pre-load it and make it the default browser on all new computers issued to employees and is strongly encouraging staff to use it on systems already in circulation. IBM’s vice president of Linux and open source software, Bob Sutor, called Firefox the “gold standard” for open source Web browsers and lauded Mozilla’s commitment to open standards in a blog post announcing the change in IT policy at the company. He also credited Firefox with “reinvigorating” the browser market, something you only need to look to IE8, IE9, Chrome and Safari to see the evidence of. [From: Ars Technica]
Filed under: Web
IBM Tells Employees ‘Switch to Firefox’ originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Over 100 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day, making the social networking site something of a clearinghouse for random holiday snaps. Of course, those holiday snaps quite often contain people, and its in tagging those people that the whole process of adding photos to Facebook slows down a bit — finding faces, drawing boxes, typing names, etc. Those first two steps are now in the process of being automated thanks to recent Facebook acquisition Divvyshot. Facebook will now identify faces in your photos after you upload them, automatically, just like any ‘ol cheap compact shooter can do. Sadly it won’t identify who that face is yet (you still need to type in a name), but this simple addition should make tagging much, much easier. However, we’re still waiting for Google Street View’s auto face blurring technology to make an appearance before we start uploading the greatest moments from our last vacation.
Facebook adds face detection, still can’t identify books originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Microsoft could be set to announce a multi-touch mouse in the coming weeks.
Company officials registered arctouchmouse.com on Tuesday March 30 this year and several European retailers have begun publishing listings for a “Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse”. Blogger Long Zheng spotted the details and notes that the new mouse could be…
Like gadgets? Ever stand in line for one or over-consume just to slake your obsession? Yeah, us too. Then prepare for a humorous yet brutal look at yourselves, and the impact of your lifestyle, in the newest Futurama episode that aired tonight on Comedy Central television. We suggest curling up into a protective fetal position before clicking through for the video scraps.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Futurama critiques modern gadget and social media obsession using 1950s technology (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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