Hasta La Gadget!

Just as you thought that all the news about Google is enough for one day, apparently there’s still more. And this one has been in queue for months. Chrome for Android beta version first arrived in February this year. Early this month, it was updated with a tad of stability and performance tweaks.

Seemingly not enough, Google is finally announcing today that its Chrome for Android has left beta phase and is now available on Google Play for downloading. The announcement came in conjunction with the opening of the Google I/O developer conference earlier today, where we saw the Nexus tablet for the first time. Interestingly, the device will be the first to sport Chrome as its default browser, as speculated.

The full version of Chrome for Android includes important stability and performance fixes, as well as some minor UI adjustments for tablets. Unfortunately, you will have to get your Android device running Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean to enjoy the highly anticipated browser. We still have to test the full version of Chrome for Android. We’ll let you know our thoughts shortly. Meanwhile, you can get the app via Google Play.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Rovio may be seeking partnership with Angry Birds theme park in China, Google Maps for Android gets offline functionality,

It’s the 200th episode of “SYTYCD,” the first live episode of the season, Zooey Deschanel is the guest judge and the BIG reveal of the Top 20. I am one pinata away from a party over here.
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Nintendo is saying that no one should pay attention to any sort of pre-order prices that online or brick-and-mortar retailers attach to anything related to the Wii U. The company has not given any indication about the price of games or hardware – something that has made a lot of analysts worried since the device is launching later this year – but it is doing its best to quash any floating rumors.

Among the more startling pricing suggestions is an online retailer listing Wii U games at a price of £64 (around $100) each. In response, T3 quoted a “Nintendo spokesperson” as saying, “Retailers are beginning their presale activity, but given there is no official software price, they are using fictitious prices. When software pricing is officially announced later this year, I am sure retailers will adjust their websites to reflect the true price.”

The only thing Nintendo has gone on record as saying with regard to price is that it will not make the same mistake that it did with the $250 3DS – which suffered extremely sluggish launch sales. The most questionable piece of the puzzle is the Wii U GamePad. The touch-screen controller has been hinted at being priced anywhere from $79 to nearly $200.

[via T3]

Nintendo $100 Wii U game pre-orders denounced is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
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We talk a lot about the influence of money in politics. It’s the defining issue of this era.
But in case you need one more reason to loathe the flood of money in politics, let me offer a different perspective. That of the politician.

It may be easy to assume that politicians love being showered in money. But here’s a secret: the truth is, most of us hate it. Hate it.

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It has been a bad year for democracy. With a distinctly legalistic, high-minded and scholarly tone to mask a hypocritical, over-reaching, ideological assault, the Supreme Court of the United States is actively reshaping American democracy. Exchanging their legal robes for a shot at legislative policy-making, while shattering conservative vows of judicial restraint, the Court first turned corporations into people (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission). Not satiated by empowering inanimate entities, next up for the Court was to disempower the real thing: people. The court opined that people who, by majority vote, create an association at their work place, lack the right to self-governance and cannot ask those who receive benefits to pay their “taxes” for the organization’s services. Making such a ruling required the Court to not only overturn decades of precedence, but also to put forth an answer to a question that was not even briefed, or argued, before them. As Justice Sotomayor wrote, “Not content with our task, prescribed by Article III, of answering constitutional questions, the majority today decides to ask them as well.”

Just this week, the Court shut the door on Montana’s effort to allow democracy to flourish in its state. And now in the case of the Affordable Care Act, the Court seems determined to apply its activist brush to one of the most important pieces of legislation to be passed since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, with no more than gossamer of a legal argument. Searching for some chink in the armor, the fate of the ACA rests on a determination of whether or not the Commerce Clause permits the federal government to mandate that every American purchase health care. A recent Bloomberg poll of top American Constitutional law scholars had 19 of 21 scholars stating that the Court should, on Constitutional grounds, uphold the health care legislation. Yet only 8 of those same 21 scholars expect the Court to do so. That disparity bodes ill for the future of any socially, or economically liberal policy put forth by Congress or President Obama. The Court has essentially decided who will win the policy battles to come.

We are clearly dealing with a Supreme Court that is no longer content to preserve the canon of the Constitution, or allow for adaptations that extend the Constitution’s promises of freedom and justice to disenfranchised populations (as is the case in with both health care and immigration legislation). A powerful majority of the Court has mapped out a policy-making agenda based on their personal views of how government business should be conducted, and they are determined to stay that course regardless of the intended limitations on the scope of their power. Our Supreme Court is no longer the Founding Fathers’ expected check on executive and legislative overreach in our system of checks and balances, but a partisan tipping the scales to its ideological agenda.

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