How to Connect Your Computer to Your TV

Android 4.1, Jelly Bean

Android 4.1, Jelly Bean: The world's most popular platform gets even better

Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, is the fastest and smoothest version of Android yet. Jelly Bean improves on the simplicity and beauty of Android 4.0, and introduces a new Google search experience on Android.

Fast & smooth

We put Android under a microscope, making everything feel fast, fluid, and smooth. With buttery graphics and silky transitions, moving between home screens and switching between apps is effortless, like turning pages in a book.

More reactive and uniform touch responses mean you can almost feel the pixels beneath as your finger moves across the screen. Jelly Bean makes your Android device even more responsive by boosting your device's CPU instantly when you touch the screen, and turns it down when you don't need it to improve battery life.

Simple, beautiful and beyond smart

Expandable, actionable notifications.

Android has always put you in control when it comes to staying notified and connected. Now you can take action directly from the notifications shade. Late for a meeting? Email everyone to let them know. Missed a call? Call them back in an instant. And because they’re expandable, you can get an even deeper look into the things that matter most, like multiple emails or photos on Google+.

Widgets work like magic.

With Jelly Bean it's now even easier to personalize your home screen. As you place widgets on the screen, everything else automatically moves to make room. When they're too big, widgets resize on their own. Interacting with your favorite apps and customizing your home screen has never been easier.

Seamlessly take and share photos.

Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, made snapping photos super fast; Jelly Bean brings that same speed to the next step: viewing. Just swipe over from camera to filmstrip view to instantly view the photos you just took, and quickly swipe away the ones you don’t like. Now sharing — and bragging — are a breeze.

A smarter keyboard.

Android's dictionaries are now more accurate, more relevant. The language model in Jelly Bean adapts over time, and the keyboard even guesses what the next word will be before you've started typing it. With improved text-to-speech capabilities, voice typing on Android is even better; it works even when you don't have a data connection, so you can type with your voice everywhere you go.

Accessibility.

With Jelly Bean, blind users can use 'Gesture Mode' to reliably navigate the UI using touch and swipe gestures in combination with speech output. Jelly Bean also adds support for accessibility plugins to enable external Braille input and output devices via USB and Bluetooth.

Android Beam.

With Android Beam on Jelly Bean you can now easily share your photos and videos with just a simple tap, in addition to sharing contacts, web pages, YouTube videos, directions, and apps. Just touch two NFC-enabled Android devices back-to-back, then tap to beam whatever's on the screen to your friend. Instantly pair your Android phone or tablet to Bluetooth® devices like headsets or speakers that support the Simple Secure Pairing standard by just tapping them together – no more syncing or searching required.

The new Google experience on Android

The best of Google just got better on Android. The search experience in Jelly Bean has a new look-and-feel, and has faster and more natural Voice Search. And Google Now brings you just the right information, before you even ask.

A new look for Search.

Android has search at its core. With Jelly Bean, a redesigned experience uses the power of the Knowledge Graph to show you search results in a richer way. It's easier to quickly get answers and explore and browse search results.

Voice Search.

Sometimes you'd rather just speak your search query. Or just ask a question. Android lets you search the web with your voice, and it's convenient for getting quick answers on the fly. It speaks back to you and is powered by the Knowledge Graph, bringing you a precise answer if it knows it, and precisely ranked search results, so you can always find out more.

Google Now brings you just the right information at just the right time.

Google Now tells you today's weather before you start your day, how much traffic to expect before you leave for work, when the next train will arrive as you’re standing on the platform, or your favorite team's score while they’re playing.

And the best part? All of this happens automatically. Cards appear throughout the day at the moment you need them. 

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Apollo 11

Crew: Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins. First manned lunar landing. The end of the moon race and public support for large space programs. The many changes made after the Apollo 204 fire paid off; all went according to plan, virtually no problems. Backup crew: Anders, Haise, Lovell.

First landing on moon. Apollo 11 (AS-506) - with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., aboard - was launched from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, KSC, at 9:32 a.m. EDT July 16. The activities during earth-orbit checkout, translunar injection, CSM transposition and docking, spacecraft ejection, and translunar coast were similar to those of Apollo 10.

At 4:40 p.m. EDT July 18, the crew began a 96-minute color television transmission of the CSM and LM interiors, CSM exterior, the earth, probe and drogue removal, spacecraft tunnel hatch opening, food preparation, and LM housekeeping. One scheduled and two unscheduled television broadcasts had been made previously by the Apollo 11 crew.

The spacecraft entered lunar orbit at 1:28 p.m. EDT on July 19. During the second lunar orbit a live color telecast of the lunar surface was made. A second service-propulsion-system burn placed the spacecraft in a circularized orbit, after which astronaut Aldrin entered the LM for two hours of housekeeping including a voice and telemetry test and an oxygen-purge-system check.

At 8:50 a.m. July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin reentered the LM and checked out all systems. They performed a maneuver at 1:11 p.m. to separate the LM from the CSM and began the descent to the moon. The LM touched down on the moon at 4:18 p.m. EDT July 20. Armstrong reported to mission control at MSC, "Houston, Tranquillity Base here - the Eagle has landed." (Eagle was the name given to the Apollo 11 LM; the CSM was named Columbia.) Man's first step on the moon was taken by Armstrong at 10:56 p.m. EDT. As he stepped onto the surface of the moon, Armstrong described the feat as "one small step for a man - one giant leap for mankind."

Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface of the moon at 11:15 p.m. July 20. The astronauts unveiled a plaque mounted on a strut of the LM and read to a worldwide TV audience, "Here men from the planet earth first set foot on the moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." After raising the American flag and talking to President Nixon by radiotelephone, the two astronauts deployed the lunar surface experiments assigned to the mission and gathered 22 kilograms of samples of lunar soil and rocks. They then reentered the LM and closed the hatch at 1:11 a.m. July 21. All lunar extravehicular activities were televised in black-and-white. Meanwhile, Collins continued orbiting moon alone in CSM Columbia.

The Eagle lifted off from the moon at 1:54 p.m. EDT July 21, having spent 21 hours 36 minutes on the lunar surface. It docked with the CSM at 5:35 p.m. and the crew, with the lunar samples and film, transferred to the CSM. The LM ascent stage was jettisoned into lunar orbit. The crew then rested and prepared for the return trip to the earth.

The CSM was injected into a trajectory toward the earth at 12:55 a.m. EDT July 22. Following a midcourse correction at 4:01 p.m., an 18-minute color television transmission was made, in which the astronauts demonstrated the weightlessness of food and water and showed shots of the earth and the moon.

At 12:15 p.m. EDT July 24 the Apollo 11's command module Columbiasplashed down in the mid-Pacific, about 24 kilometers from the recovery ship U.S.S. Hornet. Following decontamination procedures at the point of splashdown, the astronauts were carried by helicopter to the Hornetwhere they entered a mobile quarantine facility to begin a period of observation under strict quarantine conditions. The CM was recovered and removed to the quarantine facility. Sample containers and film were flown to Houston.

All primary mission objectives and all detailed test objectives of Apollo 11were met, and all crew members remained in good health.

Official NASA Account of the Mission from Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions, by W. David Compton, published as NASA SP-4214 in the NASA History Series, 1989.

At 9:32 a.m. Eastern daylight time on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 left Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, bound for the moon. Four days later, at 4:18 p.m. EDT on July 20, Neil Armstrong skilfully set the lunar module Eagle down in the Sea of Tranquility and reported, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." For the next 10 minutes Armstrong and Aldrin were occupied with several post-landing procedures, reconfiguring switches and systems. Armstrong found time to report to Mission Control what he had been too busy to tell them during the landing: that he had manually flown the lunar module over the rockstrewn crater where the automatic landing system was taking it. Then he made his first quick-look science report:

"We'll get to the details of what's around here, but it looks like a collection of just about every variety of shape, angularity, granularity, about every variety of rock you could find. . . . There doesn't appear to be too much of a general color at all. However, it looks as though some of the rocks and boulders, of which there are quite a few in the near area, it looks as though they're going to have some interesting colors to them. . . . "

After giving Houston as many clues as he could to the location of their module, he added some more description:

"The area out the left-hand window is a relatively level plain cratered with a fairly large number of craters of the 5- to 50-foot variety, and some ridges - small, 20, 30 feet high, I would guess, and literally thousands of little 1- and 2-foot craters around the area. We see some angular blocks out several hundred feet in front of us that are probably 2 feet in size and have angular edges. There is a hill in view, just about on the ground track ahead of us. Difficult to estimate, but might be half a mile or a mile. "

Armstrong and Aldrin then started preparing their spacecraft for takeoff, setting up critical systems to be ready in case something happened and they had to leave the lunar surface quickly. A short break in this activity gave Armstrong a chance to pass along more information about the landing site:

". . . The local surface is very comparable to that we observed from orbit at this sun angle, about 10 degrees sun angle, or that nature. It's pretty much without color. It's . . . a very white, chalky gray, as you look into the zero-phase line [directly toward the sun]; and it's considerably darker gray, more like . . . ashen gray as you look out 90 degrees to the sun. Some of the surface rocks in close here that have been fractured or disturbed by the rocket engine plume are coated with this light gray on the outside; but where they've been broken, they display a dark, very dark gray interior; and it looks like it could be country basalt. "

Setting up the spacecraft systems took another hour and a half to complete; then they were ready to get out and explore. The flight plan called for them to eat and then rest for four hours, but Aldrin called Mission Control to recommend starting their surface exploration in about three hours' time. Houston concurred. Although they had been awake almost 11 hours and had gone through some stressful moments during the landing, it seemed too much to expect the first men on the moon to take a nap before they made history.

While Armstrong and Aldrin tended to their postlanding chores, Mike Collins, orbiting 60 nautical miles (112 kilometers) overhead in the command module Columbia, had little to do. Houston enlisted his aid in an attempt to locate Eagle, giving him the best map coordinates they could derive from the sketchy information available. With his navigational sextant Collins scanned several spots, without success; Columbia passed over the landing site too rapidly to allow him to search the area thoroughly and he never found the lunar module. Determination of its exact location had to wait for postmission analysis of Armstrong's descriptions of the area and examination of the spacecraft's landing trajectory.

Getting ready to leave the lunar module took longer than the crew had anticipated. It was after 9:30 p.m. in Houston, an hour and a half later than they had hoped, when they opened the hatch. Armstrong carefully worked his way out onto the "porch," then climbed down the ladder, pausing on the lowest rung to comment on the texture of the surface and the depth to which the footpads had penetrated. At 9:56 p.m. he stepped onto the moon's surface, proclaiming, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - inadvertently omitting an "a" before "man" and slightly changing the meaning he intended to convey.

Armstrong made a cursory inspection of the lunar module and reported his reactions to the new environment. Aldrin then lowered a camera on the lunar equipment carrier - a clothesline and pulley arrangement that seemed out of place in the high-technology environment of Apollo - which Armstrong immediately began using. Mission Control reminded him to scoop up the contingency sample, which he did. "I'll try to get a rock in here. Just a couple." He noted that the collecting tool met resistance after penetrating a short distance into the surface material. He then stowed the sample in a bag that he tucked into a pocket of his suit. To the scientists on earth he remarked, "Be advised that a lot of the rock samples out here, the hard rock samples, have what appear to be vesicles in the surface. Also, I am looking at one now that appears to have some sort of phenocryst."

Aldrin then joined Armstrong on the surface, and they spent the next several minutes inspecting the landing craft and reporting on its condition, adjusting to the low lunar gravity and trying various ways of getting around on the surface. After a brief commemorative ceremony (reading the plaque attached to the lunar module) and a short conversation with President Richard Nixon, they began unloading and emplacing the scientific instruments and collecting samples. They supplemented earth's limited television view of their activities with descriptions of what they were seeing and doing. On a couple of occasions they acted like field geologists. Aldrin reported that he saw a rock that sparkled "like some kind of biotite," but he "would leave that to further analysis." After closely examining some rounded boulders near the spacecraft, Armstrong said they looked "like basalt, and they have probably two percent white minerals in them. . . . And the thing that I reported as vesicular before, I don't believe that any more. . . . they look like little impact craters where BB shot has hit the surface."

The geologists in Houston watching this surface activity on television were quite pleased with the astronauts' performance. At one point Armstrong disappeared from the field of view of the TV camera, causing some momentary anxiety at his apparent departure from the plan. It turned out that some unusual rocks had attracted his attention and he had gone off a few meters to collect them. That was exactly the kind of thing the geologists had hoped people on the moon would do. By the time the crew had taken two core samples, again experiencing difficulty in driving a sampling tool into the surface, and filled their sample return containers, Houston notified them that it was time to wind up their activity. Just before midnight CapCom Bruce McCandless told Aldrin to "head on up the ladder," and at 12:11 a.m. Houston time both men and their samples were back in the lunar module and the hatch was sealed. Humanity's first excursion on the surface of another celestial body had lasted 2 hours, 31 minutes, and 40 seconds.

Back inside the lunar module, Armstrong and Aldrin removed their lunar surface suits and portable life-support systems and used up their remaining film. Houston passed up some more instructions in preparation for liftoff and tentatively signed off for the night, but before long CapCom Owen Garriott, who had relieved McCandless, came on the line with some questions from the scientists about the nature of the surface and the problems in driving sampling tools into the surface. Three hours after they returned to the lunar module, the lunar explorers finally were able to turn in for a few hours of fitful sleep.

Next morning Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins spent most of their time setting up Eagle and Columbia for liftoff and rendezvous. Before the lunar module left the moon, however, Armstrong gave Mission Control a detailed description of the landing approach path and landing area, in the hope of helping scientists locate their exact landing spot, and summarized the characteristics of the soil and rocks around the area.

Liftoff and rendezvous went smoothly. When the two spacecraft were locked together Collins cracked Columbia's oxygen supply valve and Aldrin opened the lunar module's vent valve, to create a gas flow into the LM when the hatches were opened - part of the procedure to minimize back-contamination-while Aldrin and Armstrong vacuumed the lunar dust from their suits as best they could. Their vacuum cleaner, a brush attached to the exhaust hose of the LM suit system, was not very powerful and the tenacious dust came off only with difficulty. There was not nearly as much loose dust in the lunar module as they had expected when they returned from the surface; evidently it stuck tightly to whatever it touched. They passed the rock boxes and other items over to Collins and then clambered into the command module, where they removed their suits and stowed them in the bags provided. After jettisoning the lunar module and straightening up the command module, the three astronauts settled in for an uneventful trip back to earth.

In the early morning hours of July 24, 8 days, 3 hours, 18 minutes, and 18 seconds after leaving Kennedy Space Center, Columbia plopped down into the Pacific Ocean about 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) south of Johnston Island. Recovery crews from the U.S.S. Hornet arrived quickly and tossed the biological isolation garments into the spacecraft. After the cocooned astronauts emerged from the spacecraft the swimmers swabbed the hatch down with Betadine (an organic iodine solution); then astronauts and recovery personnel decontaminated each other's protective garments with sodium hypochlorite solution. The biological isolation garments were not uncomfortable in the recovery raft, but aboard the helicopter they began accumulating heat. Both Collins and Armstrong felt that they were approaching the limit of their tolerance by the time they reached the ship. An hour after splashdown they were inside the mobile quarantine facility. As soon as they had changed into clean flight suits, the astronauts went to the large window at the rear end of the mobile quarantine facility to accept the nation's congratulations from President Nixon, who had flown out to the Hornet to meet them.

Meanwhile, recovery crews brought Columbia on board and connected it to the astronauts' temporary home by means of a plastic tunnel. Through this, the film magazines and sample return containers were taken into the quarantine trailer, then passed out through a decontamination lock. Sample return container no. 2, holding the documented sample, was packed in a shipping container along with film magazines and tape recorders and flown to Johnston Island, where it was immediately loaded aboard a C-141 aircraft and dispatched to Ellington Air Force Base near MSC. Six and a half hours later the other sample return container was flown to Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, and thence to Houston.

AKA: Columbia/Eagle.
Location: National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, DC.
First Launch: 1969.07.16.
Last Launch: 1969.07.24.
Duration: 8.14 days. 

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Apple iPhone 4S

The iPhone 4S might not be the most exciting iPhone to date, but don’t write it off: The improved camera, faster processor, and the addition of the Siri personal assistant make for one powerful smartphone. If you’re upgrading from a 3G or a 3GS, you’ll see a huge difference. But if you’re currently rocking an iPhone 4, you might want to wait for the next upgrade. The phone's iOS still has a few things that irk me, and I wasn’t overly pleased with the call quality (though no “antenna gate” issues this time), but otherwise the iPhone 4S impresses.

The Same Premium Design

The iPhone 4S is largely identical in design to the iPhone 4, which, in my opinion, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It took a bit of time for me to get used to the iPhone 4’s slightly rectangular shape when I reviewed it last year. I grew to appreciate its aesthetic, however, which is both distinctly Apple and different from the pack of other high-end smartphones.
The overall design exudes elegance--from the rounded, individual volume up and down buttons to the ring/silent switch and the power/sleep button up top. Like last year's black iPhone review unit, the face and back are made of glass that is specially treated to withstand scratches and oily fingers, according to Apple. Despite the company's claims, though, I found the front and back of that earlier unit covered with fingerprints after only a couple of hours of use. This year, I got a white review unit and found fingerprints to be less of an issue.
I have to give credit to Apple every time a new iPhone comes out for making the unboxing experience such a treat for consumers. The packaging is sleek and minimalist, free of any gaudy carrier or app branding. When you slide open the box, you’re not greeted by thick heavy phone manuals that you’ll end up tossing in the garbage. The iPhone 4S seems more like a luxury item than just a mobile phone. Competing phone manufacturers should pay attention. 

And the Same Gorgeous Display

Like its predecessor, the iPhone 4S has a 3.5-inch, 960-by-640-pixel IPS display. When you compare the 4 and 4S displays to the 3GS, you’ll notice a huge difference. Whereas the iPhone 3GS's text--in the menus, in apps, or on Web pages--appears thick, fuzzy, and undefined, the iPhone 4's text is razor sharp, even when enlarged (as we tried doing when viewing a PDF).
The "Retina display"--so named because it surpasses the number of pixels that the human retina can process--also greatly improves the sharpness, clarity, and visible detail of images. I compared it to the Samsung Galaxy S II’s Super AMOLED Plus display as well as the HTC Sensation’s Super LCD display and found that I preferred the colors and sharpness of the iPhone over the other phones. The iPhone display fades in bright sunlight, however, whereas the other phones' screens were much easier to see.

iOS5: Good, not Groundbreaking

When iOS 5 debuted, I tweeted that it fixed just about everything that annoyed me about iOS 4. I was disappointed, however, by the lack of innovation in the update. Features like tabbed browsing, a single view for notifications, and the ability to use the volume rocker as a camera shutter button are long-standing Android features. Still, iOS 5 works well, runs smoothly, and is an overall strong update, and that’s really what’s most important.
We’ve discussed the new features of iOS 5 elsewhere, so I’ll only highlight a few of my favorite updates. The big news here is that you can finally update your iPhone (or iPad) over the cloud--you don’t need to connect it to your PC. Another welcome change is the update to notifications. When your phone is locked, you’ll see notifications on the lock screen. When you unlock your phone, they disappear. If you're already logged into your phone, the notification will pop up on your screen. You can see all of your notifications in a single view in the very Android-esque Notifications Center. If you're using your phone, notifications will appear as a pop-up at the top of the screen, then disappear. To see all notifications, you simply swipe your finger down from the top of the screen. Your notifications are sorted by app and category. At the top, you’ll also see widget-like stock and weather updates.
In mail, you can now add rich formatting, like bold and italic text, to messages, along with being able to indent text. Mail now has a built-in dictionary as well. Another highlight is the iMessage app, which lets you send messages to any iOS device, regardless of whether it has SMS support.

Excellent Camera, but Not #1

When Apple says that the iPhone 4S camera has 60 percent more pixels than the iPhone 4 camera, it means that an 8-megapixel camera is technically 160 percent of the resolution of a 5-megapixel camera. So really, it doesn’t translate directly to improved image quality, as more megapixels aren't an indicator of better image quality on small-sensored cameras. The higher megapixel count does mean that you'll be able to print out images at a bigger size without losing resolution, or to crop images without the cropped area losing resolution.
We did a head-to-head subjective lab test of the iPhone 4S’s camera versus a heap of Android phones including the T-Mobile myTouch Slide, which got top scores in our last Android phone camera roundup. The otherAndroid phones included the Samsung Galaxy S II, the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide, the Motorola Droid Bionic, and the HTC Sensation 4G.
We also tested a couple of other devices alongside these smartphones. To see how much the iPhone 4S's new camera has improved over the previous version, we included last year's Apple iPhone 4 (the black one) in our test group. And for a control subject, we used a stand-alone camera--the Nikon Coolpix P300--to see how the best phone cameras compared with a well-respected pocket camera.It was a close call for overall image quality, but the iPhone 4S ranked third in our tests, below the undefeated myTouch 4G Slide and the Samsung Galaxy S II,In my own casual hands-on use, I found the iPhone 4S’s 8-megapixel camera to be a huge improvement over the iPhone 4’s. My outdoor photos looked gorgeous with bright, yet natural colors and sharp detail. Lower-light photos weren’t as good; while the flash certainly helps, it does give people a strange color tone.
I’ve never been a fan of the iPhone camera's user interface. It is clean and simple, but a little too simple. You can’t tweak camera settings, like white balance, for example, and it only offers you one other shooting mode, HDR (high dynamic range). The myTouch 4G Slide lets you pick from many different modes, like Macro, Night, and Action modes. I do like the new grid option in iOS 5, however, which uses a bit of augmented reality to help you take level photos.
While I’m pleased with the camcorder boost to 1080p, I don’t like the fact that you can only capture video in 1080p. Why isn’t there an option to record in a smaller size? True, 1080p looks better than 720p, but you might not want to always record video in such a high resolution. For example, have you ever tried uploading a minute-long 1080p video to YouTube over 3G? It is excruciatingly slow. Uploading over LTE 4G, on the other hand, is an entirely different (meaning speedier) experience.
Every single Android phone I’ve ever tried lets you switch between video resolutions. This is yet another reason why I prefer the Android camera interface (the native and a few of the manufacturer-added interfaces) to the iPhone’s.

Performance: Data Speeds, Call Quality

According to Apple, data speeds for the iPhone 4S are double those for the iPhone 4, at 5.8 megabits per second for uploads and 14.4 mbps for downloads. The iPhone 4S can intelligently switch between two antennas for even better call quality, as well as faster download speeds. Using the FCC-approved Ookla app for measuring download and upload speeds, I tested the iPhone 4S over AT&T’s network in various parts of San Francisco. In the three areas I tested (The Mission, South of Market and Russian Hill), I averaged 0.38 megabits per second for download speeds and 0.21 mbps for upload speeds. This is a far cry from Apple’s claimed speeds.
But at last, the iPhone goes dual-core. Again, Apple is playing a bit of catch-up here; we saw the first dual-core phones all the way back in January. Still, having the A5 is better than getting no processor upgrade at all. The A5 is the same chip found in Apple's iPad 2, which is a very good thing; when we reviewed the iPad 2, we noted the zippy scrolling in the browser, as well as the speed when we used iTunes and quickly navigated through various menus and galleries.
As you’d expect, iPhone 4S is equally as speedy. Dual-core doesn’t necessarily mean double the speed, but you can see the difference between the two chips the most in video, gaming, and Web browsing. In our SunSpider JavaScript benchmark results, the 4S had a faster page loading time than the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II and the Motorola Droid Bionic, both of which have dual-core chips.
Call quality was a bit on the disappointing side. My friends’ voices sounded hollow and unnatural. One of my friends reported that I sounded as if I were in a tunnel, and another reported that they could hear some background noise, but it wasn’t too distracting. I didn’t experience any dropped calls, however. I even tested the iPhone in a notorious cell phone deadzone in San Francisco (a street in Hayes Valley). Data speeds were sluggish, but I was able to carry a full conversation without losing the signal. The iPhone 4S’s new antenna technology seems to solve any “you’re holding it wrong” antenna issues.
We’re still conducting our battery life tests and will update this review once we get those scores in. In my own use, I didn’t notice much of a difference between the battery life of the iPhone 4 and the 4S.

Siri: Your Sometimes Helpful Personal Assistant

I’m a bit on the self-conscious side so I wasn’t really keen on the idea of talking to my phone (without someone on the other end, that is). I was, however, intrigued by the concept of a virtual personal assistant. Siri is a sassy little thing, offering cute and often funny retorts to silly questions (Q: What do you look like? A: In the cloud, no one cares what you look like). Once that novelty wore off, I started trying to use Siri for actual tasks. Siri found a vegetarian-friendly restaurant near a music venue I was attending, texted my friend while I was trying to administer flea medicine to my cat, and looked up a recipe for making guacamole.
Siri is pretty good at understanding everything you say to it (Siri has no gender, FYI), but try to speak clearly. I also found that there are certain words it just can’t understand--“plantains,” for example. I do wish that the phone had a text option for situations like this. Being able to spell out the word to Siri is much easier than yelling “plantains! plan-tains!” into the iPhone over and over again. Siri is still in beta, however, so hopefully some of these minor annoyances will be fixed.

Bottom Line

As the phone editor at PCWorld, I get this question a lot: “Should I get an iPhone--or something else?” The “something else” usually translates to the latest and greatest Android phones. This question is hard to answer because it truly depends on what you’re looking for from your phone. Is this your first smartphone ever? You’ll probably find that the iPhone 4S has less of a learning curve. Are you a tech tweaker? You’ll probably benefit from the deeper customization options of Android. Want to try something completely different? Give Windows Phone 7 a test drive. If you currently own an iPhone 3GS and are due for an upgrade, going for the iPhone 4S is a no-brainer. If you currently own the iPhone 4, however, I’d recommend holding out for the next-generation iPhone. True, the camera and overall speediness have improved, and Siri is a neat feature, but otherwise the upgrade is incremental. You’re probably pretty happy with your iPhone 4’s camera and performance, so the upgrades might not justify the cost. Finally, if you’re looking into buying your first smartphone and want an iPhone, go for the less expensive iPhone 4.

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Lamborghini 50th anniversary celebration

Automobili Lamborghini SpA was founded back in 1963 by the late Ferruccio Lamborghini in an attempt to build the best GT car on the market, and it must be said the 350 GT came very close to that vision, it was a comfortable, high speed, V12 Gran Turismo car, the first production model to be built at the then brand new factory in Sant'Agata ... over the years many masterpieces have left the doors while the Lamborghini models evolved into some of the most exotic super cars available on the market, perhaps not the vision Ferruccio had in mind back in the Sixties, but there is no question about the fact the legendary Miura made the Lamborghini name a worldwide commodity.
After the Miura we saw cars like the Countach emerge from Sant'Agata ... probably the most featured super car on bedroom posters in the Eighties, in the Nineties the Diablo took over for about a decade until the Murciélago was introduced back in 2001 ... to last another decade in various evolutions ... in 2011 Lamborghini made everybody open their eyes wide to see the new V12 flagship; the Aventador LP700-4 ... a near revolution among Lamborghini fans, and a massive success ... in less than 18 months over 1,000 units were built.
So in 2013 Automobili Lamborghini SpA will be 50 years on the high end car market, time to celebrate, and we are sure something big will be organized in and around Sant'Agata ... but at the moment the official statements are still silent, there are no details yet about what is going to happen in 2013 to celebrate half a century of Raging Bulls.
We did however get a press release stating Automobili Lamborghini SpA will reveal a few details at the 2012 edition of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance during a press conference in the Quail, a motorsports gathering and the adjoining Concorso Italiano event where CEO Stephan Winkelmann will also show both the Urus and the Sesto Elemento concept cars for the first time in the United States.
For just about every anniversary before Lamborghini made a special model to celebrate, first up was the 1988 Countach 25th Anniversary edition, intended as a limited edition but with the delays in the unveil of the Diablo the 25th Anniversary Countach was built quite a lot. For 1993, the 30th anniversary Lamborghini did built something very special; the Diablo SE30, which was presented in a stunning 30th Anniversary Lavendar shade over a blue alcantara interior ... only 150 were built in total, all numbered while several were converted into a Jota edition, making the Diablo SE30 a very rare, highly sought after model these days.
In 2003 the next celebration model was released, now based on the Murciélago it was called the 40th Anniversary model, a production run of only 50 units this time, all finished in a stunning Verde Artemis shade (Jade green pearl metallic) and wearing several carbon fiber finished body parts that were black on the regular Murciélago. Also inside the 40th edition was special with an absolutely stunning combination of white leather and in an asymmetrical design with the driver's side upholstered in Grigio Syrius (dark grey) perforated leather and the passenger's side covered in smooth black leather.
So will we be seeing a 50th Anniversary limited edition model in 2013? I'm almost certain we will, and if the past is anything to go by it will be based on the current flagship; the Aventador. We've seen the Aventador Jota in Geneva this year, and rumor has it the MY2013 edition of the Aventador will be shown in Paris later this year together with the production version of the Sesto Elemento, only 20 to be built and available at a staggering 2,2 Million Euro each ... which leaves three other options for the 2013 Geneva Auto Show : either the Aventador Roadster, the Gallardo successor ... or an Aventador Anniversario edition.
At the moment there are still delays in the delivery of the Aventador LP700-4 due to the earthquakes in Italy, so adding the Roadster onto the already backlogged production line could be a problem ... so I fear we won't be seeing the open top Aventador in Geneva. The Gallardo successor could be making a debut in Geneva, we haven't seen any spy shots yet of the car being tested on the open road, but that only means Lamborghini is good at keeping it a secret ... so I vote for an Aventador 50th Anniversary edition.

Aventador

The 25th Anniversary Countach could be ordered in any color the customer wanted (even purple over a red interior ?!) while the Diablo SE30 had a special shade made for it, but you could also request a more normal shade ... however the Murciélago 40th Anniversary edition was a one shade model only, no other color besides the dark green metallic was possible ... so I would say the Aventador Anniversario, if any, would be a one finish model too ... and I see two things happening here : either they go for the special dark red metallic shade seen on the Aventador Jota and the Urus ... or they take it one step further and go for a bodywork in clear carbon finish.
Now why would I come up with a carbon fiber bodywork ... in fact I've been asking several of the well-known model makers that release the Aventador in 1/18 if a clear carbon model is in the pipeline, one online shop even listed it ... for a while. It seems Automobili Lamborghini SpA is declining every request for a license to build a carbon fiber Aventador scale model ... there must be a reason for that right?
So my guess is that Automobili Lamborghini SpA has plans for an Aventador model that boasts an unpainted bodywork showing a stunning carbon fiber weave ... either glossy or mat, both would be an instant hit on the current market scene ... add those amazing looking wheels seen on the Aventador Jota last March and you have a nice production of these rims set up.
Just for fun I made a render in PhotoShop showing how I would get an Aventador Anniversary to look totally different from the regular model, but still not have to do a massive investment in new tooling to build it ... and remember: they just opened a new building to develop prototypes ... or build a small number of a limited edition model. Most likely this is the place where they will build the Sesto Elemento run of 20 units, that way there is no interference with the factory production line ... and it would be just perfect to build about 50 units of a carbon fiber Aventador ... they have the experience of using carbon fiber anyway.

Naturally this is all speculation, and we'll just have to wait for an official press release to know what we will be expecting in 2013, both as celebrations and if there will be a special edition model to celebrate this important date ... I for one am sure we'll be seeing a limited edition Lamborghini model to make their 50 years get listed in the automotive history books.



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NOKIA Belle

Eye-catching design and high performance software meet in our new range of Nokia Belle phones. Catch up with your world at a glance, express yourself across six home screens, and share and pair with NFC – get set for a smarter smartphone experience.

What is Nokia Belle?

This is our celebrated operating system that we’ve updated to make your Nokia phone even more responsive, easy and fun to use.

It’s available in our new range of smartphones, but the exciting new features and improvements of Nokia Belle will also be available as updates for many of our existing compatible smartphones.

Faster and smoother browsing

The responsive touch screen and increased processing power of the new generation of Nokia smartphones all adds up to smoother web browsing, faster downloads, and easy multi-tasking.

Our new Nokia Belle phones offer fast internet connection and increased browsing speeds. That means you can keep on top of what’s going on in your world and stay updated with all the latest news from your network of friends and family.

Share & pair with NFC

One of the exciting features that makes Nokia’s new Nokia Belle phones really come into their own is their NFC capability.

Whether it’s sharing photos, videos and music, pairing with other NFC enabled smartphones, or progressing to new levels in Angry Birds – you can do it all in just a tap. NFC tags also allow you to easily access a whole world of exciting content, including film trailers, songs, microsites, maps, money-off vouchers and much more.

Six Home screens

Stay on top of everything, and personalise your Home screens to express yourself.

Tailor your live feeds to show what is most important to you and see the very latest updates from your social networks at a glance. Six Home screens give you many more opportunities to tailor all the different areas of your life, whether it’s timeout or your work life.

Live widgets in five different sizes

Your favourite contacts, email, music player, your clock or your calendar - whatever you reach for most you can keep handy across six Home screens.

And not only are the widgets more handy, they have also been redesigned and now come in five different sizes, rearranged to create a completely customisable apps set. And new ‘Toggle’ widgets now make tasks like switching on Bluetooth and changing profiles even easier.

Pull-down taskbar

All your notifications are in one easy to find place – and it’s as simple as sliding down a single tab from any screen.

The new taskbar includes access to your settings, as well as notification of incoming messages, missed calls and everything else you need to keep an eye on. You can also manage your connectivity from your pull-down taskbar, turning your Bluetooth or wi-fi on and off.

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