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Motorola XOOM hands-on video, now available at Telus

On April 7th Motorola announced that the XOOM Android 3.0 tablet was available in Canada. Future Shop had jumped the gun a bit and started selling them the day before so instead of waiting for a review unit to be sent, I rushed out to buy it right away. I had hoped that I would be able to get some hands-on videos posted soon after. Sadly, due to Real Life™ this was not to be.

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Computing Featured Photography Production 

Adobe and the mobile revolution: tablets, napkins, and the creative process

It’s been a busy month for Adobe so far. Hot on the heels of the recent preview of Photoshop on the iPad, Adobe has today released the official Photoshop Touch SDK for tablet devices. The fact that Adobe has decided to release an SDK is exciting, since it strongly indicates that not only are we a step closer to a full-featured Photopshop app for tablets, but also full Photoshop integration into the core builds of third-party applications. From the press release: The Photoshop Touch SDK and a new scripting engine…

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Arts Computing Featured Gaming 

Valve ARG suggests GlaDOS is still alive

Man I love Valve. I mean besides creating one of the best online ecosystems available to gamers in Steam, offering up arguably the best value for gaming maybe ever in Orange Box, and gracing the world with one of, if not the, most unique, entertaining, and challenging puzzle games ever in Portal, they just seem like really, really fun dudes. Take a look at last year’s promo material for the launch of Steam on OSX, particularly the Half Life 2 release. It’s that kind of tongue-in-cheek satirical slant Valve seems…

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Toshiba launches new ultra-port​able R800 series notebooks

Toshiba has now joined the Intel Sandy Bridge processor bandwagon, after it fell by the wayside for a while due to Intel’s little chipset boo-boo earlier this year. The new R800 series is an update to both the ultra-portable Portege series, and the thin and light Tecra series business class notebooks. While business class machines are usually only available direct, or through business to business resellers, and tend to cost a little more, you do get much better machines. The build quality is designed to take a few more knocks,…

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Google Maps 5.3 for Android is fascinating slash creepy

Google has added a new Location History feature to its Google Maps 5.3 for Android. The Location History feature is an opt-in decision, and once you do you’ll be treated to a personal dashboard that will give you all kinds of stats like Distance Traveled, Hours At Work, Hours At Home, and weekly averages. With its ability to rate locations using the Google Places feature, it also appears to be laying the groundwork to compete with FourSquare, Facebook Places and other location based services such as Yelp.

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Nikon announces the D5100 DSLR, coming late April

Today Nikon announced the newest addition to their line of DSLR cameras. Fitting in nicely between the entry level D3100 and high-end prosumer D7000, the D5100 replaces the D5000. Now Nikon has a complete range of 1080p video capable DSLRs to combat Canon in every price point. The D5100 is a substantial upgrade from its predecessor, and features many of the same spec’s as its bigger brother, the D7000. It has a 16.2 MP sensor, 3 inch 920,000 dot flip-out display, 11 AF points, and an IS0 range of 100-6400….

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Telus releases the rugged Motorola DEFY Android phone

Already available on T-Mobile in the US since November 2010, Motorola has decided to bring the rugged DEFY to Canada. This mid-range Android smartphone stands out from the competition in one major way – its durability. It has a scratch proof Gorilla Glass screen, is water-resistant, dust-proof, and can take a few more drops than your average smartphone. However keep in mind water-resistant doesn’t mean water-proof, so I wouldn’t suggest trying to duplicate the conditions of the image above! While the DEFY is certainly not a cutting edge Android phone,…

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Bell and Virgin Mobile release the HTC Incredible S and Bell updates Mobile TV

The HTC Incredible S is now available on both Bell and Virgin Mobile. This Android smartphone, the latest from HTC, was first shown at this year’s Mobile World Conference, on Feb 15th. It is incredible, then, that it came out in Canada so quickly. We usually have to wait at least 2 to 3 months for the latest phones to get here from the US and Europe.

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Featured Science 

Saturday Morning Science 009

Is Grey Goo the New Yellow Peril or Just Another Red Dawn?– Future, how I fear thee, let me count the ways. Long before one succumbs to future shock there is future anxiety. To the best of our knowledge we are the only species on the planet that builds fallout shelters, frets about asteroid collisions and establishes religions that posit an end to the world. If you are waiting for some ethologist to post “Apocalyptic Cultism Among Ring Tailed Lemurs”  you are going to wait a long time and either…

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