Fueled by the release of Siri last October, 2012 has become something of a battle between a number of fledgling voice-recognition services. Following Siri, Samsung's S Voice offering has certainly made an impression, while Google Now also looks fairly impressive as the major players in mobile space compete to bring forth the very best service.
Microsoft opened up registrations for the BUILD 2012 conference, and with tickets selling like lemon-topped hotcakes, it’s rather surprising to see that the whole conference sold out in a matter of few minutes, at the time of writing.
We are pretty sure that we will see an Apple media event being held in September, part of which will be dedicated to introducing the world to some new hardware. As things stand at the moment, it looks nailed on that Tim Cook and his colleagues will take to the stage to announce and show off the next-generation iPhone in all its glory, but apart from that, the jury is still out on whether or not they will use the same forum to tell us about a couple of new iPods we are expecting, as well as the baby iPad, commonly dubbed as the iPad Mini.
The San Jose leg of the ongoing, worldwide battle between Apple and Samsung is really heating up, with pivotal members of both companies now taking the stand and offering their take on proceedings. For those of you who've been living in a cave for the past few months, Apple is claiming up to $2.5 billion in damages from Samsung regarding a wide range of alleged patent infringements, mostly circulated around the design of the Korean outfit's Galaxy design and form factor.
Although the Samsung vs. Apple trial has a decent amount of show time left before the jury is sent to deliberate on what they have heard during its entirety, it seems that Apple has a lot to be positive about. Although judge Lucy Koh has been less than happy so far with the behavior of both legal counsels, it has been the Samsung representatives that have taken most of the judicial negativity thus far, but we should know by now that anything can - and usually does - happen in cases such as these.
Of all the modern smartphone operating systems, Android is particularly known for being more heavily targeted by malware. It’s not a surprise, really, considering it’s a more open platform where malicious apps can make their way to your smartphone not just by installing things from unofficial sources, but also from the Google Play Store*.
Even before the well-documented IPO a few months back, Facebook had been placing increasing emphasis on improving its mobile prowess, and the purchase of Instagram for a cool billion dollars outlined this desire even further. Despite acquiring the most formidable social image app on the planet, Zuck and his team has continued without relent to improve its range of apps, while also bringing forth some new ones at the same time.
If you like to keep up with your technology news, the talk of the next iPhone will have been pretty hard to escape. In fact, such is the nature of an upcoming Cupertino product, the speculation regarding the smartphone has featured in most news outlets, tech-orientated or otherwise, and there's a recurring theme with regards to what's on offer.
I don't know about the rest of you, but for me there is nothing more exciting than experiencing the anticipation of waiting for an Apple media event to begin to see exactly they have in store for the technology loving public. As time passes by and the event draws in closer, we generally have a pretty decent idea about what is going to be on offer thanks to numerous leaks and educated guesses, but part of the excitement is the fact that we just never know for sure until Tim Cook takes to the stage and introduces us to the topic of the event.
Another bout of the popular Call Of Duty series is almost upon us, with Black Ops II set to hit stores this November, and the Activision-published franchise will be looking to topple the success of the first Black Ops, which was - and still remains - the fastest selling game of all time.
