IPhone 4s

IPhone owners can hit their home button, and ask about the time and weather, or to make a phone call. A female-sounding voice will respond to your request. Siri also works with reviews website Yelp. Need help, say, in finding Indian restaurants in San Francisco? Ask Siri, and it will sort through a selection of restaurants and pick one for you. Apple purchased Siri nearly a year and a half ago.
Google has long had its Voice Search feature and has been researching voice recognition for years. Android-based phones using its Voice Search have been capable of quickly pulling up street directions from voice commands. But Forrester analyst Frank Gillett says that with Siri: "Apple has really set the bar in voice recognition."

iCloud

Apple executives also touted new features of its iOS 5 software and iCloud, which eliminates the need to sync devices. The software becomes available Oct. 12.

Apple's iCloud will serve up your music with a premium $24.99 yearly service called iTunes Match. It will allow people to upload to Apple's iCloud music from their libraries that was not purchased at iTunes. Music purchased elsewhere can be automatically piped to all devices a user has connected to Apple's iCloud.

The iCloud launch comes as Amazon, Google and Facebook duke it out for media delivery. Last week, Amazon unveiled its low-priced $199 Fire tablet to rival Apple's iPad and its media tie-ins to Amazon's cloud services and stores. Facebook, at its f8 developer conference the week before that, launched an array of music services from Spotify and Rdio to video services including Netflix and Hulu.
ICloud makes all your media available to all your devices and puts Apple in the driver's seat for the consumer cloud. Apple is betting that consumer loyalty to its market-leading iTunes music service will pay off big. For Apple, this is another way to ensure customer lock-in.

"I think iCloud is a huge deal. You don't have to think about which devices any more it just sort of reaches out and connects them," says Gillett. "I absolutely see Apple as leading the way in personal cloud."

Google and Microsoft have elements of helping you organize your content but not in this seamless way across multiple devices, he says.

Other products

Apple, which traditionally has introduced new iPods each fall, this year left the current iPod Nano and Touch models virtually intact, except for price cuts. The iPod Touch, Apple's best-selling iPod, now starts at $199, down from $229, and the Nano starts at $129, down from $149. The Nano adds a new look — digital watch faces, including one with Mickey Mouse. There's a white iPod Touch, as well.

At the session, Apple updated sales statistics on many area of its businesses.

OS X Lion, the operating system update for its Macintosh computers, has more than 6 million downloads so far, 80% more than the previous edition, Snow Leopard.

Cook said Apple has sold more than 300 million iPods in the 10 years that the devices have been for sale. There are now 20 million songs available in the iTunes Music Store, up from 200,000 when it started.

The App Store has 500,000 apps available, and has seen 18 billion downloads to date, Cook said.

Researcher Gartner forecasts 468 million smartphones will be sold worldwide this year, a number that will climb to 1 billion in 2014. Apple's iOS smartphone operating system accounted for 18% of the worldwide market in August compared with Google's Android at 43%, according to Gartner. Google's Android has seen explosive growth in the past year. A year ago, Google had 17% of the market vs. 14% for Apple's iOS.

by:http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-unveils-iphone-4s-iphone/story?id=14669698

PES 2012

Pro Evolution soccer
Eternelle rivale du FIFA d'EA Sports, la simulation phare de Konami sort cette année le même jour, ce jeudi 29 septembre. Pour l'emporter face à son concurrent, Pro Evolution Soccer, communément appelé PES, a musclé ses modes en ligne.

Jusqu'en 2008, la franchise PES a dominé le marché français des simulations de football, avant d'être rattrapée par FIFA, poulain de son très puissant concurrent EA Sports. Depuis, chaque nouvelle édition est une nouvelle remise en jeu, afin de tenter de reprendre son titre et son statut dans le coeur des joueurs.

Si l'on annonce chez Konami quelques nouveautés sur le ludiciel lui-même (intelligence artificielle retravaillée, nouvelles animations et possibilité de contôler un deuxième joueur en cours de partie), il est manifeste que les efforts de l'éditeur japonais ont tout particulièrement porté sur les aspects multijoueurs.

"Le Online est un élément clé de PES 2012 et nous avons travaillé dur pour offrir des options qui améliorent à la fois l'avantage concurrentiel du jeu, et qui renforcent les modes solo de la Master Ligue Online", assure Jon Murphy, European PES Team Leader de Konami.

Jusqu'à huit personnes pourront désormais prendre part aux matches en ligne, que ce soit sur Playstation 3, Xbox 360 ou PC (Windows). Si le principe des "groupes communautaires" (où se fédèrent les joueurs, en fonction de leurs affinités) est connu, il sera à présent possible de relier ces groupes entre eux, et de disputer des matches intercommunautaires, afin d'en exacerber la rivalité.

Le "match-making", mode semi-automatique permettant d'apparier les joueurs souhaitant en découdre en ligne, évitant de longues et fastidieuses recherches d'adversaire idoine, a également été revu. Les belligérants ont désormais plus de chances d'être placés face à des adversaires qui leur ressemblent. Ainsi, les tricheurs, adeptes de la déconnexion lorsque le match est mal engagé, ne trouveront bientôt plus de joueurs fair-play à affronter.

Enfin, la Master Ligue Online, grand championnat en ligne mettant l'accent sur la gestion de son équipe, a bénéficié elle aussi d'améliorations. Il est possible d'adapter le style de son équipe au sien, en affinant des paramètres tels que le physique, l'équilibre de jeu, rapidité, technique, etc. Les joueurs ont désormais des contrats limités dans le temps, et peuvent être revendus si leurs exigences deviennent trop importantes. Enfin, le cycle blessure/soin/rééducation a été retravaillé pour un plus grand réalisme.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 est disponible le 29 septembre sur Playstation 3, Xbox 360 (69,99?) et PC (49,99?), et sortira le 27 octobre sur Playstation 2 et PSP (19,99?).

by:www.aufaitmaroc.com

TV tonight: Terra Nova

Monday, September 26, 2011

By Alex Strachan, Postmedia News

Visually ambitious -- and emotionally ambitious, as well -- time travel with Terra Nova Monday night.

Photographed by:

Handout, Fox

The three laws of time travel into the past, as codified by the great science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury, are:

1. Don't change anything in the past.

2. Don't leave anything behind.

3. Don't bring anything back.

If recent TV history teaches us anything, it's that mainstream network TV tackles time-travel tales at its own peril.

Viewers can be forgiven, then, for approaching Terra Nova -- the ballyhooed, heavily promoted time-travel thriller from movie producers Peter Chernin and Steven Spielberg and 24 writer-producers Brannon Braga and Rene Echevarria -- with a wait-and-see attitude. Over-hyped, big-budget failures like The Event and FlashForward are still fresh in the memory of viewers hoodwinked early on, only to be let down later.

That said, Terra Nova's two-hour opener features surprisingly affecting performances by Jason O'Mara and Shelley Conn as a couple desperate to escape a dystopian future world of overcrowded cities and a restrictive two-child policy. The knock on most TV sci-fi tales is that they get lost in all that spiffy technology, and lose sight of the human story.

The other knock is that they become so wrapped up in their cleverness and overweening sense of self-worth that they turn off the mainstream audience that watches down-to-earth dramas like The Good Wife, House and Grey's Anatomy.

Terra Nova hits all the right notes in its opening 17 minutes: It's tense, brooding, realistically written, well-acted and moves along at a brisk, urgent pace. The opening sequences, set in an Orwellian cityscape where it's always raining and always night, have a real sense of dread and urban desperation.

When Terra Nova jumps back in time, 85 million years, to be exact, back to the era of dinosaurs and a brave new world in the making, the tone shifts. (The actual visual image, of O'Mara's character jumping through a time portal and waking up in a primordial jungle, is breathtaking.)

The story becomes more of a relationship drama between parents and their teenage children -- Swiss Family Robinson meets Ray Bradbury. It suddenly feels hokey and cornpone, despite evidence of an ever-present threat lurking outside the guarded walls of the colony compound. It's these family scenes that hint at the series to come: Terra Nova has aspirations of being a serialized TV drama, similar in tone and feel to Spielberg's Jurassic Park films.

Fortunately, there are things to recommend it, even when the story bogs down and drags between periods of weepy sentimentality and contrived conflict.

The jungle is palpable and real, not some Hollywood back lot. Terra Nova was filmed in Queensland, Australia, and it shows. The gorgeous setting is a character in its own right, as the Hawaiian jungle was in Lost. Terra Nova is not just visually ambitious; it's emotionally ambitious, as well. It wants us, the audience, to invest real emotion in its core family of characters, and in its opening two hours, it largely succeeds. It's about starting over, not just as a society, but as a family.

Terra Nova is not exploring new ground, exactly, but TV is a better place with it.

(Citytv, FOX, Monday 8 p.m. ET/PT)

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Kindle Fire

Last Friday, Amazon sent out invites to a press conference being held this coming Wednesday. They didn’t give away any details in the invite, but given our scoop earlier this month, everyone assumed it was to unveil the new Kindle tablet. We can now confirm this is correct. And we know a bit more.

On Wednesday morning in New York City, Amazon will unveil the Kindle Fire. Yes, this is the name Amazon has settled on, to help differentiate the product from the e-ink Kindles, which will still be very much alive and for sale. And while Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will show off the Fire on stage, it won’t be ready to ship until the second week of November, we’ve learned.

Everything we’ve previously reported on the hardware remains the same. It will be a 7-inch backlit display tablet that looks similar to the BlackBerry PlayBook. Gdgt’s Ryan Block was able to dig up a bit more about the connection. Apparently, the Kindle Fire looks like a PlayBook because it was designed and built by the same original design manufacturer (ODM), Quanta. Even though Amazon has their own team dedicated to Kindle design and development, Lab 126, they wanted to get the Fire out there in time for this holiday season so they outsourced most of it as a shortcut.

Block’s sources seem very wary of this shortcut move. But having played with a DVT model myself, I can assure you that it’s better than the PlayBook because the software is better and, more importantly, the content available is much better. Amazon has built their own custom version of Android (that looks nothing like Android) and it utilizes their own Android Appstore. While that store doesn’t offer all the apps found in Google’s Android Market, Amazon has been rounding up the big app makers to get them on board for the Fire launch, I’m told.

Amazon has also been inking last-minute deals with the likes of Fox for movies and TV shows through their streaming video service which will be a key part of the Fire. And they have several publishers on board for magazine offerings, as Peter Kafka reports today. The Fire will rely heavily on Amazon’s MP3 service and, of course, the Kindle bookstore.

One thing I wasn’t sure about when I saw the device was if there would be an email client. I didn’t see one, but I thought maybe I missed it. Turns out there won’t be one included by default. Instead, you’ll be able to get one through the Appstore, or you can use the browser.

Another thing I wasn’t sure about was the chip inside of the device. I’ve now learned it’s a TI dual-core OMAP chip. This is the same chip used inside many newer Android devices. The PlayBook also uses it. I’m not sure what the clock-speed of the CPU will be, but I’d guess 1.2 GHz. This will make it significantly faster than the rival Nook Color, which uses a single core 800 MHz OMAP.

But…

Sources also suggest that Barnes & Noble is on the verge of launching the Nook Color 2 next month. In fact, that may play into Amazon’s timing here. They’re announcing the device well over a month before it will be available. Sources suggest that the Nook Color 2 will feature a 1.2 GHz OMAP chip, with a focus on displaying multimedia content better. There will also be a focus on streaming content and a big increase in the number of apps available, we’re told.

The Nook Color 2 will also be built on top of Gingerbread, Android 2.3, we hear. That would put it ahead of the Kindle Fire, which is believed to be based on Android 2.1. Again, neither of them look anything like Android, but the APIs available are key when it comes to the Android version.

And then there’s the issue of the price. While the Nook Color 2 is expected to retail for the same $250 that the current Nook Color does (and the original one may drop to $200), the pricing of the Kindle Fire is a bit of a mystery right now. Originally, we were told it would be the same $250. But there have also been whispers floating around that it could be $300.

We also originally heard that Amazon Prime would be included, as a big enticement for would-be buyers. That may be off the table for now as well — but it’s not yet clear. It’s possible Amazon will release one version with Prime included for $300 and a version without it for $250. Getting Amazon Prime for $50 would still be a deal, since it’s normally $79 for the year.

That’s all for now. All will be revealed on Wednesday. Below, the excellent mockup my colleague Greg made based on what I saw.

by:http://techcrunch.com/