.::REALITYRECALL::.

Michael Bishop threw three second-half interceptions to sink any rally attempt by the visiting Winnipeg Blue Bombers, who dropped their fifth straight Labour Day Classic, 29-14 to Saskatchewan, on Sunday.

If Fujitsu was going for sexy, it certainly missed the mark with the LIFEBOOK T4310, one of the least attractive machines of its kind, but where the T4310 tablet falls short on style, it certainly makes up for with its excellent multitouch-friendly capacitive touchscreen. Playing with Windows 7’s new touch features, it almost seems feasible to use the OS with a finger (gasp!), and the screen can also accept pen input (based on pressure-sensitive Wacom technology) when your blunt jabs aren’t getting the job done. The multitouch prowess is most evident using Microsoft’s Surface-inspired Touch Pack applications, which come pre-installed, but it’s also a nice way to get around in Internet Explorer. Other perks of the machine include a 360-degree rotating hinge, a hot-swappable drive bay, and all the internal accouterments (SSD, 3G) one could ask for. Video demo is after the break.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

Continue reading Fujitsu’s multitouch LIFEBOOK T4310 tablet makes quick work of Microsoft’s Touch Pack

Fujitsu’s multitouch LIFEBOOK T4310 tablet makes quick work of Microsoft’s Touch Pack originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If your Velcro jacket fasteners were made of this German-engineered steel "Velcro", you'd be able to withstand 35 tons worth of force—provided your skin and bones don't tear first.

The “Velcro”, which isn’t really Velcro but has one side with spikes and the other with steel brushes, can withstand heat at up to 800 degrees Celsius.

And if you’re interested in tearing these Velcro strips vertically (as in straight out instead of horizontally, where it’s stronger), it can hold up to 7 tons. So, a 6 ton man or a 6614 pound Hummer H2 could be suspended from a building with no problem. (*Although its not clear how much of this stuff they’re talking about to support that much weight, its hard not to be impressed.) [New Scientist via Make]

Just as we predicted, Microsoft’s request to have that ban on sales of Word put on hold pending appeal of i4i’s XML patent victory has been granted. That means IT managers and excitable first-year college students can continue to happily throw down cash for the world’s most popular word processor, while the rest of us twiddle our thumbs waiting for either proceedings to resume on September 23 or Stevey Ballms to write the big check and make this whole case disappear forever.

Filed under: Software

Microsoft Word allowed to stay on sale… for now originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Things are looking up for the one American automaker that didn’t go for a government bailout, and it’s not just because of “cash-for-clunkers.

Glenn Healy has resigned as the NHLPA’s director of player affairs.

Hey Apple, check this thing out! Toshiba just blazed into IFA on a 7-inch multimedia tablet, the JournE touch. It’s dominated by the touchscreen display, but underneath there’s support for a wide range of codecs (H.264, DivX, WMV), 802.11b/g WiFi, some online multimedia services like YouTube and Flickr, and some light internet duties thanks to Internet Explorer running on Windows CE 6.0 Pro. Despite the size and multimedia prowess (it can output sub-1080p video over an HDMI plug in the dock), the device measures a mere 14mm thick and weighs just under a pound. There’s only 1GB of built-in storage, but that can be expanded via the SD slot, and the device can access external storage over USB. Word is it’ll retail for 250 Euro in Q4 this year.

The device feels pretty nice in hand, but there’s still a bit of a prototype vibe about it — maybe because it’s still a prototype. It’s clearly a resistive screen, and the device will include a stylus for non touch-optimized apps. Toshiba seemed to be having fun with the multitude of Apple comparisons, namely since there isn’t an Apple device to compare it to yet. They also call the video output the tablet’s killer app, and promise to show more once they can track down a WiFi signal. Sure, it’s just a MID at the end of the day, but we’ll be happy to humor them — it’s a pretty hot MID.

Update: We’ve got some video hands-on of the JournE right after the break — gaze upon its G-Force displaying prowess!

Update 2: Added one more video after the break, just in case you didn’t get enough the first go ’round.

Continue reading Toshiba’s JournE touch multimedia tablet (updated with hands-on video!)

Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs

Toshiba’s JournE touch multimedia tablet (updated with hands-on video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today, September 2, is the Internet's 40th birthday! On this day, 40 years ago, in a test lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, two computers passed test data through a 15-foot gray cable – it was then called the ARPANET. One month later Stanford Research Institute had also joined. By the end of the year, UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah had joined, thus creating the "internet". The Web, as we know it, was invented by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, when he invented the "World Wide Web" or "WWW".

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The Vancouver Canucks have reached a 12-year contract extension with star goalie Roberto Luongo.

Gmail’s reliability honcho jumped on the webmail’s official blog last night to explain what happened during yesterday’s repeated outages. The gist? They took down a few servers for maintenance Tuesday morning (Pacific time), expected the webapp’s “request” routers to handle all the re-directs to valid servers, and … were unpleasantly surprised. The Gmail team notes that IMAP/POP worked throughout the outages, and that they’re working on a fix for similar problems in the future.

How did you end up dealing with Gmail’s downtime yesterday? Did any of the alternate ways into Gmail work for you, or did you just have to relinquish availability for a short while? [Official Gmail Blog]

EBay plans to offload Skype, as the company has been unable to cash in on the popular VoIP service

Free-agent forward Alex Tanguay signed a one-year, $2.5-million US contract with the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday.

If the ‘I’m a Mac’ ads are to be believed, one of the biggest selling points of the Apple computer is its supposed invulnerability to viruses, spyware, and other evil programs. Of course, those who follow these sorts of things know such a claim is misleading at best. OS X has seen a number of viruses and other nasties over the past several months, as the OS has gained popularity. And now Apple seems to finally be admitting, if rather quietly, that OS X is not quite immune to the Internet’s more nefarious elements.

Apple confirmed last Friday, to PC Magazine, that the latest version of OS X (10.6, or Snow Leopard) features a built-in anti-malware tool. Although OS X has had a feature called ‘file quarantine’ since the 10.4 days, the latest update automatically detects certain Mac-specific threats and suggests that the user quarantine them.

To start, Apple will only detect two different types of malware, but some are already questioning how effective Apple could possibly be at defending OS X against online threats. Apple doesn’t have a great track record at promptly addressing security holes, after all. In fact, some may see (we among them) the Cupertino-based company’s new anti-malware move as an unwitting challenge to online miscreants that could result in an explosion of harmful, Mac-targeted software. [From: BetaNews and PC Magazine]

Filed under: Computers, Web

Apple Quietly Admits Macs Get Viruses originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Nate Mook, Betanews

Has Google issued an apology about today’s Gmail outage, or is the company trying to downplay the issue?

We’re not really sure.

In a blog post this afternoon, Google engineering director David Besbris wrote, “We know many of you are having trouble accessing Gmail right now — we are too, and we definitely feel your pain. We don’t usually post about minor issues here (the Apps status dashboard and the Gmail Help Center are usually where this kind of information goes). Because this is impacting so many of you, we wanted to let you know we’re currently looking into the issue and hope to have more info to share here shortly.”

“We feel your pain” seems to be a new recurring Google slogan. It’s the same exact thing the company said one year ago when Gmail went down for 15 hours.

But more disconcerting is Google’s remark that “we don’t usually post about minor issues.” To tens of thousands of Gmail users who immediately took to Twitter, Facebook and blogs to express their frustration, no such outage would be considered minor. E-mail remains a crucial artery in which most important communication flows around the Internet.

Although it was only down for two hours, the Gmail outage — and Google’s response — highlight the problems of migrating critical services to the cloud, and raise questions of what level of service should be expected. Most users do not pay for Gmail or Google Apps, but they still rely entirely on Google to keep the services up and running. Are we asking too much?

As we continue marching toward cloud-based applications, these questions will be at the forefront of the industry. If Google can’t stop their hosted apps from breaking, then nobody can.

Will companies be willing to switch to Web versions of Microsoft Office, Photoshop, or other important tools when a multi-hour outage could literally halt work right in the middle of the day?

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

Officially recorded as the most downloaded singleplayer title in Xbox LIVE Arcade history to date, more than 200,000 people purchased Shadow Complex in the first week of its release.

There’s some sneaky, new malware on the loose, and this time, it’s after the users of Mozilla’s Firefox browser. According to Laptop Magazine, the plug-in poses as an update for Adobe’s Flash Player. Users are taken through some fake steps and are lead to believe the installation was completed. No harm done, right?

Wrong. The plug-in replaces ads on Google search pages with its own ads, and worst of all, the spyware has the ability to track what pages you browse and what you search, according to TrendLabs Malware blog. In other words, you lose all privacy. This is certainly not the news folks want to hear. Especially since most users switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox because of malware problems similar to this one.

While this attack proves that not even Firefox is invincible, you can still safely surf the Web. All it takes is a little common sense. Remember, don’t download an add-on called ‘Adobe Flash Player 0.2.’ If you feel like you do need a legitimate update for a flash player or anything else, always make sure to download directly from the developer’s Web site. Think before you click, and you’ll avoid problems like this. [From: Laptop Magazine and TrendLabs Malware blog]

Filed under: Computers, Web

Spyware Posing as Flash Update Hits Firefox originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Good news for BlackBerry owners who tether their phones—RIM has made the process easier by including a bulit-in version in the leaked 5.0.1. Desktop Manager update.

The pre-release version is available now in English and multilingual versions for those anxious to give it a spin. As always, make sure you have a plan that supports tethering so you don’t accidentally run up an outrageous data bill. [The BlackBerry Ninja via IntoMobile]