.::REALITYRECALL::.

The Calgary Flames announced Saturday they have offered Theoren Fleury a tryout as camp gets underway in Alberta.

Hoping to prevent errors like the one made by CFL officials in the disputed match between the Montreal Alouettes and B.C. Lions last week, the league is reportedly looking at changing some of its game rules.

Remember when I told you the 802.11n spec wasn’t final, even though you’ve prolly owned a wireless N router forever? It’s final now. You can carry on with your life now (since you don’t have to buy new stuff). Feel better? [Signal2Noise]

Ouch, sorry friendly neighbors to the North. The Zune HD hits the U.S next week (Sept 15), but Microsoft has now confirmed that it currently has no plans to make it available beyond the States. At least for the moment.

Microsoft told Ars that:

“For the time being the Zune HD device will remain US only. Right now we are focused on deploying an exciting service in the form of Zune Video to 18 markets. We are looking at potential future hardware experiences for these markets, but do not have anything to announce right now.”

So that doesn’t say never, it just looks like they’re focusing on the U.S. first. The original Zune 30GB hit the U.S in November 2006, and it took until June 2008 for it to reach Canada. But given Apple’s ho-hum updates, something tells me that the Zune HD could roll out overseas much quicker than that. [ArsTechnica via Engadget]

Diminutive forward Theoren Fleury was reinstated late Thursday by the NHL, permitting him to resume a pro career that came to a screeching halt in June 2006.

In mid-August we got our first brief glimpse of the simplified Facebook Lite. The stripped down (Dare we say, “Twitteresque?”) version of the ‘Book has now launched in beta and anyone can get access by visiting lite.facebook.com.

This alternate version strips away the apps, the groups, the boxes, and leaves Facebook’s most important features — the inbox, status updates, photos, and comments. Also, gone are the semi-useful customized filters, feeds, and chat, which are vital for some. The simple site loads noticeably faster, is friendlier to navigate, and is much easier on the eyes thanks to the lack of people sending you virtual booze, or asking your to join their Vampire Fraternity.

Continue reading Facebook Lite Goes Live, Strips Away Distractions

Filed under: Web, Social Networking

Facebook Lite Goes Live, Strips Away Distractions originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The early bird may get the worm, but there’s something to be said about burning the midnight oil. In fact, according to a new study, staying up later and longer may increase alertness and productivity more than being an early riser.

Photo by myyorgda.

According to the study as reported by Scientific American:

An hour and a half after waking, early birds and night owls were equally alert and showed no difference in attention-related brain activity. But after being awake for 10 and a half hours, night owls had grown more alert, performing better on a reaction-time task requiring sustained attention and showing increased activity in brain areas linked to attention.

Of course we wouldn’t be surprised if another study were to come along touting the opposite conclusion, so it’s worth taking this news with a grain of salt, but the post is an interesting addition to the early bird versus night owl discussion. If you’re looking to find your peak performance time, check out our previous post on the best times morning people and night owls should get work done.

Want to show off a PDF or PowerPoint presentation on a web space without having to include an obligatory link to Adobe’s PDF viewer for the link-doesn’t-work crowd? You can embed those documents anywhere using Google’s document viewer.

Google Operating System points out an embed code that works for any PDF or PowerPoint file that’s hosted somewhere, anywhere online, and can be pasted into just about any web space that tolerates frames. Here’s an example of what that embedding looks like with an old 1040 tax form:

Hit the link for the cut-and-replace embed code, and check out the previously mentioned Scribd iPaper embedding for another no-software-needed document sharing solution.

Google also announced growth of 400% in the number of students using Google Apps on campus.

Not to speak ill of the fired — and not to jump to conclusions after a single day of rookie camp — but Brent Sutter has it all over Mike Keenan.

Keenan, sacked after two wheel-spinning winters at the helm of the Flames, was known for a rather laissez-faire approach to practice. In other words, few whistles, little plotting. Just a seemingly endless (and useless) blur of five on fives, four on fours, three on threes. And, everyone’s favourite, five on ohs.

Not Sutter.

Early in Wednesday morning’s session — his first time on the ice in Flames togs — Sutter was stopping drills, repositioning players, making them do it over (again and again). Dialogue, albeit of the one-way variety, was non-stop.

In short, this guy was actually coaching.

Quite a departure from the previous regime.

"Basically, we want to form our identity here A.S.A.P.," says Sutter, who, not surprisingly, concentrated on own-zone responsibility. "It’s important to get working on it the first day. I thought our first session was very good . . . and the kids were getting the hang of it. It’s repetition, it’s continually doing it over and over again till we have ‘er nailed. Get working on our details, gets working on how we want to play."

Sutter went on to assure the assembled media that the veterans, on the premises Saturday, will face the same philosophy — structure, structure, structure. Particularly for team defence. (Meaning that a number of well-heeled gentlemen, including your favourite player, will soon be getting re-acquainted with their own zone.)

"There’s got to be a mindset — every day, this is the way we practise, this is the way we do things," says Sutter.

Later in the conversation, Sutter had been asked which prospects stood out Wednesday. He had no answer.

With reason. A single morning’s drills prove nothing.

"It’s very important — you evaluate over time," says Sutter. "It’s the first day. Guys are just getting into the groove of things here. Every day, our practice habits and our intensity and our sharpness will pick up and get better. For the first day, it’s been pretty good."

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

A Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed to Betanews that the company is planning to demonstrate technology currently being planned for version 4 of Silverlight, its media distribution platform based on .NET, designed to provide both an interactivity layer and digital rights management services for movie studios and other content providers. These services, the company now says, are intended to “enable movie studios and retailers to provide the same rich interactive experiences via digital copy and Internet distribution as consumers get with DVD or Blu-ray.”

As many DVD and Blu-ray Disc collectors already know, “digital copy” in this instance refers to a separate file distributed with a disc that usually plays in ordinary DVD or BD players, but which plays interactively on PCs. If Microsoft’s plan as it currently describes it becomes successful, movie discs produced in the near future could bear the Silverlight logo.

Microsoft “buried the lede,” in this case, in an announcement late yesterday that ostensibly referred to the company’s pending demonstration next week at a broadcasting conference in Amsterdam, of the next generation of streaming media for its Internet Information Services Web server platform, which is being upgraded to version 7.5 for Windows Server 2008 R2. But that streaming platform is for Web sites that publish video; arguably, you don’t need IIS to watch a disc. Or at least you shouldn’t, perhaps except for the fact that Microsoft is intending Silverlight 4 to pave the way for its latest DRM platform. PlayReady DRM was announced in 2007, and Microsoft’s first partnerships were revealed a full year and a half ago.

But that was when the platform was being discussed as the “mobile version” of Microsoft’s desktop-level DRM, which either was being called PlaysForSure or waiting on a new name, depending upon whom at Microsoft one asked. Now it appears that name will be PlayReady; and this week’s news appears to indicate its lead-off product will not be on mobile platforms after all.

Though distribution of Silverlight 3 has been ongoing for the last two months, and what was described as an “official launch” took place last July 10, Microsoft held what its marketing team described as an “official Silverlight 3 launch event” yesterday at the Amsterdam conference. There, S3 shared the stage with Expression 3, the company’s Web development system geared toward designers, which utilizes the S3 platform. But the “official” official launch event appears to have been the debut, at least in the public conscience, of Silverlight 4, with what promises to be a next-generation smooth streaming system building on the 1080p, H.264-based model that debuted in S3.

Conceivably, movie discs bearing the Silverlight logo may very well also make use of the IIS 7.5 Web platform, essentially as an authentication system for S4’s PlayReady DRM.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

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So yep, Windows 7 on T91 is good for sofa surfing too…

Details, News and Links for Asus Eee PC T91

We wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions, but Archos might just be onto something with its upcoming 9pctablet, which is due to launch alongside Windows 7. The Windows 7 bit isn’t an accident, since it’s really the first OS from Microsoft that makes it conceivable to use much of the OS with a finger, rather than the stylus. It’s not all there, of course: Archos had to build its own touchscreen keyboard to replace Microsoft’s woefully inadequate implementation, and there’s an optical mouse sensor on the side of the display and a stylus buried within to pick up the slack.

Overall the hardware seems very solid and astonishingly dense, and despite the recent advancements we’ve seen in thin and light laptops, it’s pretty incredible that Archos has a full Atom-based PC running inside this thin, fanless slab. What wasn’t so incredible was the resistive touchscreen, at least on the unit we were playing with. Our touches kept getting misread inexplicably as an inch below where we were tapping, and it didn’t feel like a “light touch” resistive model at all — no confusing what we felt with capacitive, though perhaps we got a faulty unit. This is probably a scenario where resistive makes sense, but we’d say Archos has a lot of work to do on the drivers or **something to make this more usable. The good news is that there will be an optional, super-slim external keyboard, which should make input on the 9 a bit less of a chore.

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Archos 9pctablet hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re probably not going to see an Apple tablet tomorrow, but the Archos 9 could hold us over. The “netblet” (yea, my portmanteau of the words netbook and tablet) runs Windows 7, but I’m not sure I’d shell out $500.

The 0.63-inch thin Archos 9 feels pretty sturdy, but one major complaint is that it feels heavy. Archos says it only weighs 1.2 pounds, but something about the balance is wrong, because it felt heavier than that in my hands. The hardware is pretty simple—a 9-inch resistive touchscreen (no multitouch) with a few surrounding physical buttons.

There is a Ctrl+Alt+Delete button and a keyboard trigger on the right, the latter which quickly launches Win 7’s finger-friendly keyboard. (Archos will also market a USB keyboard along with a case.) If you don’t like using your finger on the screen, there is a tiny optical trackpad on the right and two mouse buttons on the left side. The touchscreen is pretty responsive, and there is a stylus on the back, so I don’t see the need to really reach for the bitty mouse. I’ve always found optical trackpad annoying as hell.

The Archos 9 comes with Windows 7 Starter (remember that means no wallpaper changing or Aero) and its 1.2GHz Intel Atom Z515 processor and 1GB of RAM run it well. Watching a 720p Windows Media clip was decent, and when I fired up Wi-Fi and launched a browser, I was able to watch some streaming Hulu videos.

It only has 60GB of storage space, which could get cramped if you plan on keeping loads of video on it but doesn’t seem like a deal breaker to me. My biggest worry is battery life. It has a 4-cell battery (which is actually swappable) but I am guessing it won’t get more than 3 hours of juice.

I'll withhold final judgment until the full review. I am in search of a tablet like this for sitting back on the couch and surfing. The Archos could be it—though $500 is a bit much—but I've also still got my fingers crossed for a thinner and lighter Apple one.

We’ve referred to Windows 7’s Libraries as a top thing to look forward to, and then as one of the best underhyped features—but if you really can't get used to them, you can disable it.

The new Libraries feature in Windows 7 creates what are essentially virtual folders—you can combine multiple document folders together into a single library that combines them all into a single folder, create new libraries, and access them from common file open dialogs.

It's an excellent feature that's a huge step forwards in Windows file management—but if you aren't able to get used to a new way of doing things, the Tweaking with Vishal blog has a registry hack to completely eliminate them. Simply download, extract, and double-click on the provided registry hack file, then restart your computer and you'll see that the Libraries are completely gone. There's also an uninstall registry script provided just in case.