.::REALITYRECALL::.

An increase in public awareness about aliens and UFO likely contributed to the record number of sightings reported to Britain’s Defence Ministry in 1996, according to Britain’s National Archives UFO consultant, David Clarke.

The Pocketables crew keep teasing us with more visuals of a purported unbranded Android MID, this time throwing up a good size comparison in the form of a Sony VAIO P lurking in the background. Very little can be said at this point without exploding the story into wild speculation — we’ll leave that part to you, dear readers — so we’ll stick to the seemingly self-evident stuff. The above screenshot indicates SD expansion and phone capabilities, and there are a few more after the break that show off an impressively svelte physique. Of course without a substantiated source and millions of skilled Photoshop artists out there, these pictures could still be fake — but aren’t they pretty?

[Via Slashgear]

Continue reading Mysterious Android MID gets more pictures, still no name

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Tablet PCs

Mysterious Android MID gets more pictures, still no name originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So you thought 100nm was about as narrow as lasers could get, huh? Well think again brother, because scientists at Norfolk State University have now demonstrated a 44nm ‘spaser’ that performs a laser’s functions by the alternative means of surface plasmons. By using such an unorthodox technique, the researchers have been able to overcome the minimum size limitation to lasers, and they even claim spasers could be made as small as 1nm in diameter. Peeking into the (not too near) future, this could improve magnetic data storage beyond its current physical limits, and even lead to the development of optical computers that “can operate at hundreds of terahertz” — and here you were, thinking that your brand spanking new Core i7 system with Blu-ray was future-proof.

Filed under: Science

World’s smallest laser cracks open the door to THz CPU race originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 05:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CRISTAL is a research project that moves the universal remote to a Microsoft Surface-type table with incredibly intuitive gestures. Want to watch a movie? Drag the cover to your TV. It even lets you trace a path for your Roomba.

Throw away everything you thought you knew about the truth. This is the one. We can’t wait to stuff one awkwardly into the fake keyboard tray of our fake MacBook Micro and live life just how Apple rumor sites have always wanted us to live it. Granted, Nowhere Else has gotten some pretty great scoops in the past, so we won’t rule anything out just now. The pic above lines up pretty well with all the rumors we’ve heard so far — which sort of helps and sort of hinders its veracity in our eyes. Nowhere Else isn’t calling it either way, if that helps you in your soul search for the truth. Another pic is after the break.

Update: Eagle-eyed tipster Terry points out that the “Welcome” graphic is an easy spot on Google Image Search, with that exact configuration and timing of converging letters from Leopard’s intro video showing up in the very first result. Try it for yourself! Not a good sign, folks.

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Continue reading Apple tablet pic ‘leaked’: this is the real one, we can feel it

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Apple tablet pic ‘leaked’: this is the real one, we can feel it originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Aug 2009 12:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thanks to a combination of RSS magic and Twitter API, it’s possible to search the tweets of everyone in your Twitter network with Google Reader. Here’s how to do it.

First, though, why would you want to do this? The native search tool provided by Twitter only tunnels back about a week and a half. Anything beyond that is lost in the ether. Thanks to a handy little tool created by Dave Winer, you can turn your follower list into an RSS feed and import that feed into Google Reader, which turns the data from the Twitter feeds into a search-friendly mountain of feed items. How do you do it? From ReadWriteWeb:

It couldn't be much simpler. Just put your Twitter username into this link, instead of mine, and load it up in your browser: http://tw.opml.org/get?user=marshallk&folder=1

It may take just a minute, but the end result will be an OPML file. You can either go up to your browser’s File menu and select “save as” or you can View Source and copy and paste the source of the page into a text document. Save it with a memorable name and either .xml or .opml as the file type. It’s really quite easy.

Now if you want to put this puppy into Google Reader just log in, click on “manage subscriptions” and find the import/export button. Import that file into Google Reader and you’re ready to rock and roll!

In our test of the service, we were able to mine all sorts of things from the feed we created. How much did our band of followers talk about Texas? Quite a bit more than we expected. Check out the full article at the link below for additional information or use the technique quoted above to jump right in. Have a favorite Twitter-centric hack of your own? Share it in the comments.

Google have announced that today they have added Picasa Web Albums as another source of user-uploaded, geo-tagged images within Google Street View.

When you open Street View in Google Maps you will now see pictures from Picasa as well as from Panoramio. Google’s new ‘Photosynth’ type navigation in Street View seems to work fairly seamlessly between photos from Picasa and photos from Panoramio.

Check out the photographs in this little hack I created a few weeks back. You should be able to see Picasa photographs as well as pictures from Panoramio.

Via: Google LatLong: Picasa photos in Street View

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Get your suicide pills ready, because there may not be an Apple tablet in 2009. That’s what Apple mavens John Gruber and Jim Dalrymple’s “very reliable sources” are saying: No tablet till 2010.

Jim Dalrymple says:

Very reliable sources familiar with the product have said speculation of the tablet being introduced during the September event are flat out wrong. The Apple tablet, they said, would not see the light of day until the first part of 2010.

The event in September will be focused on music, which means we could see new iPods and perhaps some updates to iTunes. The tablet computer will not even be mentioned as part of the event, my sources said.

While in response to Brian’s account on the conversation with someone claiming to be in the know, Gruber has this to say:

I’m almost certain there’s no tablet coming this year. It’s a 2010 thing.

Both seem adamant about it. Unlike the usual rumor sites—who are a random hit-or-miss most of the time—Gruber has an almost perfect track record when it comes to breaking news about upcoming Apple products, usually right before an event.

Still, the truth is that very little is known about Apple’s super-secret new products outside of a handful in the Cupertino campus. And while that handful may spill at some point, the information is usually vague until very close the release date. In other words: While the sources pointing to a 2009 Apple tablet release may be wrong, Gruber and Dalrymple may be wrong too.

Heck, for all we know, everyone may be wrong, and this whole tablet thing may end being a just a wet dream. Or maybe everyone is partly right, and there will be a September announcement and the tablet will be available sometime in 2010, similarly to what happened with the iPhone. That will give time to iPhone app developers to prepare their software for the new format.

I don’t know. I don’t give a damn. I just want someone to give me the damn thing already. In the meantime, we are taking the Apple tablet meter 20% down. [Loop Insight and Daring Fireball]

Pop Culture, Sports, Celebrities, Babes, Gadgets, Technology, Rumors, and Innuendo.

Large screen nettops are somewhat of a mystery to us. Lenovo’s latest, the all-in-one IdeaCentre C300, is certainly a looker on the outside, but the beauty of that screen real estate is hampered by a 1.6GHz Atom processor / integrated graphics unable to handle our internet streaming needs — Hulu, Pandora, and Netflix were all but a wash. Still, it’s pretty light and sturdy, and when powered on absolutely quiet and cool — we watched four hours of a DVD with a minimum of stutter and little to no heat or machine noise. We’re still putting it through the paces, but in the meantime, feel free to live vicariously through our unboxing in the gallery below!

Filed under: Desktops

Lenovo IdeaCentre C300 unboxing and hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs

Mysterious Android touchscreen MID pics surface, Charles Fort notified originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Contestants from 84 countries have descended on Grand Bahama Island to compete for the Miss Universe crown, to be decided August 23. Sunday was the swimsuit competition, entitled ‘Perfection in Motion.’

Once Google Reader added manual controls to its new “Send To” menu, you knew some delicious URL tweaks would follow. Some already have, including a “Save as PDF” trick from the Digital Inspiration blog.

If you want to save a Reader feed item as a PDF, email a full blog post to somebody when you only see a partial item, or work more intelligently with social services, Amit Agarwal has your hook-up. Head to Settings in Reader, click the “Send To” tab, then hit “Create Custom Link” at the bottom. You’ll be asked for a Send To link name, a URL with replacement codes, and an icon location. The link below has all three of those for its tweaks, including one that creatively uses the previously mentioned PDF Online converter.

We are, of course, open to your own suggestions and codes that extend Google Reader through this neat little open door. Share the links and URLs in the comments, and we’ll possibly pick them up for a meatier post down the line.

Earlier this week rumors surfaced that Steven Spielberg was quite interested in producing the film, but for now Microsoft says otherwise.

The Google Reader team’s been busy of late, adding social network sharing and friend following features, but also giving power users a (long-awaited) ability to mark items of a certain age as read.

Most noticeable, on an item-by-item basis, is the new “send to” menu. Head to Google Reader’s settings, click off the social networks you want to add access to (or manually add a URL, if you’re hack-friendly like that), and they’ll appear on the send to menu. Reader will also notify you when friends you’re following in Reader have web sites with feeds attached in their Google Profiles.

But the most important changes, for those using Reader to get their news reading done, are the Mark as Read tweaks. It’s not a custom search by date, exactly, but it does let you skip through a huge pile of unread items after, say, a long weekend, week’s vacation, or general absence from your feed reader. You get the ability to mark items older than one day, one week, or two weeks as read, which is a pretty good start.

A few other changes are in effect for mobile users and note sharing, so hit the link to learn about them, and share what you’re able to do now, or what you don’t really like about Reader’s changes, in the comments.

Canada is planning to reform its copyright law and if the entertainment industries have their way, the rights and privacy of consumers will be thrown overboard. It’s time for all Canadian BitTorrent users to stand up against the increasing power of the anti-piracy lobby, before it’s too late.