The Olympic Games, held in London, England this year, will certainly be the highlight of the sporting calendar. Despite Wimbledon, EURO 2012 and many other big sporting events currently in full flow, none will quite live up to the glorious, diverse, and immensely entertaining Olympics. Living in London, the media has talked about little else over the past year, and as exciting as it is for us on a national level, most of the world will - in one event or another - be tuned in to a chunk of the coverage.
The long standing Asphalt series of racing games are amongst the most popular games on mobile platforms such as Android and iOS. Combining some of the established mechanics of games like Ridge Racer and Burnout, the games are known for their fast-paced, arcade-style racing, standard-setting graphics and awesome roster of licensed supercars from some of the world’s biggest names in the automobile industry.
Although we’re in the middle of an Apple related mayhem with their earnings report to Wall Street and the final release of OS X Mountain Lion to the Mac App Store, we mustn't forget what is going in other parts of the technology world. It wasn't that long ago when the Google team took to the stage during the first day of the I/O conference in San Francisco and introduced us all to the Nexus 7 and the Nexus Q hardware. In the weeks following much after the event, it seems to be the former device which is getting all of the attention, but the Nexus Q is getting its game up in the form of a dedicated app for Android devices.
Samsung's newest device, the Galaxy S III, has received a new OTA update internationally, removing the local search feature that has proved so controversial of late. Samsung has taken another step in its preemptive work to try and avoid Apple's legal juggernaut from being able to get another of the Koreans' handsets banned from sale.
Before Ice Cream Sandwich, manufacturers put their Home, Menu, Back and Search buttons in different order just to differentiate themselves from one another. Companies like Samsung even went head and removed the all-important Search button* altogether which results in a different Android experience.
Two new Smart Cover-like Nexus 7 cases have been outed by a UK accessory retailer, with the two protective options both featuring similar magnet technology that allows the tablet's screen to be turned on or off based on the case's position and orientation.
Last week, we reported on murmurs started by Samsung that August 15th would be the date for a significant product launch, and now, BGR has learned via a "source close to" the Korean company, that said product will indeed be the rumored Galaxy Note II.
The Nexus 7 tablet has been an almost permanent fixture in tech news of late, and with sales currently through the roof, Google has finally given its cheap-yet-powerful tablet its very first advertisement.
Developers who produce software for mobile smartphones and tablets are always looking to push the boundaries and are readily including the-next-big-technologies in their apps. In the past, we have seen apps reduced to minimalistic works of beauty, decisions made to remove buttons and houses navigation handled entirely by user gestures, and more recently, we are starting to see the serious emergence of augmented reality in mobile applications.
It sometimes really doesn't matter how hard companies like Apple and Google try to make their devices and operating systems the best and most powerful on the market, users just occasionally want to try something a little different. As you would expect, devices running the Android operating system always ship with a built-in native music player app which allows playback of any track that is imported to the device. Unfortunately, native apps don't always offer a one-size-fits-all solution, meaning people are often forced to look elsewhere.

