.::REALITYRECALL::.

Heavy rain causes flooding in Yorkton, Sask.

The Calgary Flames signed the enigmatic player they traded away in February, with centre Olli Jokinen getting a reported two-year deal worth $6 million.

James Hayward’s brother Dan says a shooting victim’s family is shocked by the court’s decision to allow a new trial for Kim Walker.

You’re guaranteed to get a mosquito bite this summer, no matter how diligent you are. If the itching is more than you can stand and you don’t have itch cream on hand, check your drawers for nail polish or Scotch tape. More »









MacGyver – Television – Business – Action and Adventure – Shopping

It’s only been a couple short months since HP announced its intentions to buy Palm, but apparently all the investors are happy and the lawyers are rich, because the two companies have just announced that the $1.2b transaction is official and the buyout is complete — Palm is now part of HP. Yes, it’s the end of an era — Palm’s been a part of the tech landscape in one confounding way or another since 1992 — but it’s also the start of what could potentially be a webOS renaissance, as HP plans to use Palm’s ideas and OS on everything from smartphones (phew) to tablets to even printers. We still don’t know exactly how Palm’s people and structure will be folded into HP, or what exact role CEO Jon Rubinstein will play, but Palm’s already lost some important people, and managing that transition while still keeping the product roadmaps on course will be the next great challenge for these two companies. Here’s to the best — now how about some of that rumored new hardware?

P.S.- Now that things are official, we can’t help but wonder about the fate of the HP Slate — there have been rumors of its death since the buyout was announced, and HP’s gone from crowing about it to total radio silence. We honestly don’t know one way or another, but we’d sure love to find out.

HP / Palm buyout officially complete — get ready for webOS printers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A group of consumer electronics manufacturers got together and finalized the specifications of a new A/V cable standard. It's called HDBaseT and is based on standard CAT5e/6—meaning we should wind up paying less for our home theater wiring. More »









HDMI – Business – Electronics – Consumer Goods and Services – Home Theater

A new trial has been ordered for a Yorkton, Sask., man sentenced in 2007 to life in prison for the death of his daughter’s boyfriend.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Over this past weekend, Verizon slashed the price of Microsoft’s two Kin phones by 50% to $49 and $29 respectively. Today CNET’s Ina Fried got the word from Microsoft that it is halting further development on the phone line to focus on Windows Phone 7.

The two devices, which were launched a little over two months ago, were marketed to younger users and specialized in social networking and location-based media.

Though the devices were visually attractive and included some noteworthy features, there were significant shortcomings to the platform which immediately became evident. For example, Verizon subscribers had to pay for the same data plan as an advanced smartphone subscriber would, but users did not have the same advanced features, like the ability to download and install apps, or synchronize calendars.

The phones will also not be released in Europe as originally planned, and the team heading Kin development will be folded into the Windows Phone 7 team.

We’ve contacted Microsoft for comment.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010















Microsoft – Verizon – Ina Fried – Smartphone – Windows Phone 7

The first solid details on the next update to Android, the 3.0 update code-named "Gingerbread," are beginning to pipe through and it seems as though Google is cracking down with stringent hardware requirements.

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By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Two major Linux-based mobile operating system efforts, Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin were combined earlier this year into a new project going by the name of MeeGo which will ultimately support a wide range of mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, notebooks, set top boxes, and more.

In March, the core MeeGo distribution infrastructure and OS base were made available to developers so the two code bases, teams, and projects could be combined into a single Linux distribution. MeeGo version 1.0 for Netbooks was released in May, and today, the baseline source code of MeeGo for handsets has been released as a developer preview.

This version includes the Core OS and middleware components, all the MeeGo APIs, incorporating Qt and MeeGo Touch UI Framework; a reference UI (home screen, lock screen, status bar, application launcher, virtual keyboard) and basic applications (Dialer, SMS, Contacts, Fennec Browser, Photo Viewer.)

The official “first version” will be called MeeGo Handset 1.1 and is expected to come in October. To check out this “day one” release, the images can be downloaded from MeeGo’s Day1 site.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010















Nokia – Operating system – Linux – Moblin – Maemo

By Ed Oswald, Betanews

Adobe’s dominant Flash video technologies are seeing their first legitimate challenge from HTML5 and its video tag, but don’t expect YouTube to be joining the ranks of video sites making the transition to the standards based media format any time soon.

The popular social video site said that HTML5 video does not yet meet all of its needs, although it called the format “a big step forward for open standards.” Parent company Google just last month launched its own open source video codec WebM, a possible candidate for the final video standard.

At the moment, there is a split in support for a standard codec. Safari and IE 9 Beta support H.264, while Firefox and Opera support WebM — Google’s Chrome is the only browser to support both. This lack of an agreement is part of the reason why YouTube thinks HTML5 has a way to go yet before it can be considered a serious contender.

YouTube has offered an experimental version of its site since January that does show videos for HTML5-ready browsers, namely Chrome and Safari at the moment, and streams those videos using H.264.

Codec confusion is not the only reason for not pushing ahead with HTML5.

Software engineer John Harding said that streaming issues are another reason, as HTML5 video is delivered over HTTP. This presents a problem in searching through a video: obviously with HTTP the whole video to that point needs to be downloaded in order to view the selected point. Content protection is another issue. With no method available for HTML5, it would make offering products such as the recently-launched YouTube Rentals impossible.

“We’re very happy to see such active and enthusiastic discussion about evolving web standards – YouTube is dependent on browser enhancement in order for us to improve the video experience for our users,” Harding said, but adding the caveat that “Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements.”

One has to wonder if Adobe and Google are tighter than what may immediately be obvious, however. Adobe has thrown its support behind WebM, promising to include the technology in a future version of Flash Player. Google is also doing its part: it has opened the doors to its Android mobile operating system to Flash, something Apple will likely never do.

With the strained relationship between Apple and these two companies, YouTube’s defense of Flash may be more than just a discussion on the merits of HTML5.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010















YouTube – Google – Adobe Flash – Apple – Adobe System

There’s nothing worse than watching a 30-second ad to watch some 30-second clip of something the world inevitably finds funnier than you do. Google/YouTube are acknowledging this phenomenon of the consumer psyche and will introduce an ad-skip button this year. More »









Google – YouTube – Search Engines – Searching – Advertising

Sure, you know Kinect, but do you know Kinect? While retailers have backed off publishing $150 pricetags for Kinect in bizarre displays of solidarity, UK shop Play.com has up some new specifics on the technology in its listing for the device. Here are a few of the standouts that were news to us:

• Field of view is relatively limited, something we could sense when spending time with Kinect at E3. The unit sees 57 degrees of horizontal and 43 degrees of vertical, with a 27 degree physical tilt to keep you in the action.
• Depth of view is similarly strict, ranging from 4 feet to 11.5 feet.
• Skeletal tracking is limited to two active players at a time, as we knew, but the system can at least keep its eye on up to six people at once — like that totally optional pair of backup dancers in Dance Central.
• Resolution, because we know you were wondering, is detailed as well: 320 x 240, 16-bit at 30 fps (we’re guessing this is the depth camera), 640 x 480, 32-bit color at 30 fps (yeah, this is the color one), and 16-bit audio at 16 kHz.

No huge surprises, and we’re sure a few more details will leak out before launch — can’t you just wait to get “off the couch, on your feet and in the fun”?

Kinect detailed in newly precise tech specs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell deliberately shipped millions of PCs that it knew to be faulty, according to recently unsealed court papers.

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The windows team blog posted a message to all of the eager customers waiting for the new rollout of Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4. The update hasn’t been going as quickly as most users would have expected, when it began rolling out two weeks ago.

The Hotmail team made a…

A YouTube video of a deer attacking a dog in a Cranbrook, B.C., residential neighbourhood has gone viral, getting more than 1.4 million hits since it was posted on June 6.