Sunday 6 October 2013

Sylvester Stallone to reprise rocky movie yet again

Rumours thrive that Sylvester Stallone is going to be playing the personality of ‘Rocky Balboa’ once again, in a brand new film set inside the ‘Rocky’ universe.

The extremely popular character Rocky Balboa first appeared in the Oscar-winning 1976 movie ‘Rocky’ and has been the central character in a minimum of six films to date.

MGM films have officially offered the brand new project, currently known only as ‘Creed’ to director Ryan Coogler.

The proposed film is really a spin-off as opposed to a straight sequel.

Michael B. Jordan, star of this year’s ‘Fruitville Station’ as well as HBO TV drama ‘The Wire’, will play the grandson of recurring series character Apollo Creed. The planned story would call for young Creed to enter the world of boxing, with Stallone’s Balboa playing the function of his guide.

Director Ryan Coogler, who worked with Jordan in the aforementioned ‘Fruitville Station’ film, is claimed to be enthusiastic about the concept and is hoping to co-write the script.

Apollo Creed, as portrayed by Carl Weathers, was originally presented as Rocky’s rival. In the initial position, Creed (who was supposedly based on a combination of Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard and Joe Louis) was the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion as well like the confidence businessman. When challenged with the lack of proper opponents, Creed decided to put his championship on the line against a local, unknown fighter.

The initial film mostly centred around the chosen fighter Rocky Balboa as he trained for the largest fight of his life. In the later films, Apollo Creed became a tutor and a close pal to Rocky.

Weathers played Creed in each ‘Rocky’ film until ‘Rocky IV’, where the character was killed in a fight with Russian boxer Ivan Drago (portrayed by Dolph Lundgren).

In spite of the character’s downfall, he’s significantly mentioned in both follow-up movies and remains extremely popular with fans of this series.

The ultimate movie in the original Rocky series, ‘Rocky Balboa’ was released in 2006 to a keen critical and commercial reception. In 2010, Sylvester Stallone was inducted into the Worldwide Boxing Hall of Fame and Museum for his creation and portrayal of Rocky, also as the many tributes he has paid to boxers and the sport of boxing in his career.

SOURCES:

http://www.sylvesterstallone.com/stallone-inducted-into-boxing-hall-of-fame/

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/stallone-to-play-rocky-again-in-spin-off-creed-053257511.html

Saturday 5 October 2013

Tablets set to outsell PCs by the end of the year

Update – The writing was on the wall the first time Steve Jobs stood up on that platform on January 27, 2010 and showed everyone the future of computing. The tablet has altered the way we take part in games, compose letters and work away from the office, So this news story about a drop of 13% in sales of laptops and an increase of 7percent in sales of pc tablets, isn’t surprising 3 years on. It is only going to grow for that little tablet pc with apple continuously innovating, microsoft starting to move into the industry with their windows 8 tablet pc’s and google’s android spreading out its market share quicker than anybody else, it’s tricky to see how a laptop or maybe the desktop can contend.

The number of laptops sent from producer to retailer fell by 13.9 per cent worldwide over the period, while volumes of desktop computers shipped dropped by 7.4 per cent, according to estimates by Canalys analyst firm.

Year-on-year, PC shipments to European, Middle Eastern and African markets showed a decline of three per cent. Western Europe in particular proved challenging for vendors, with a decrease of 10 per cent over the year.

Volumes to the Asia Pacific region declined 0.5% year-on-year to just over 40 million units, with figures for the region affected by a six per cent fall in shipments to China, which accounted for almost 45 per cent of the Asian market.

Apple remained the top PC vendor for the quarter, with a 17.1 per cent market share with over 18.5 million units. This is a 4.5 million unit lead over Lenovo, its closest competitor in the market, but still a dip from the 19 per cent market share the Californian company enjoyed in the second quarter of 2012.

Lenovo, the Chinese multinational, gained market share in notebook and desktop PC shipments over the quarter. It also bucked trends by reporting strong annual growth in EMEA (34 per cent), the US (28 per cent) and especially Latin America (93 per cent) and performed well on the tablet side of its business, where it shipped an estimated 1.5 million units.

“It is striking how successful it has been in globalising its PC business and breaking the one million unit barrier is an important milestone for its tablet shipments,” said James Wang, an analyst with Canalys.

“Lenovo is on an upward curve with its tablets, expanding in mainland China and Latin America, where there is little competition from the likes of Google or Amazon.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10226694/Tablets-set-to-outsell-PCs-by-the-end-of-the-year.html


Thursday 3 October 2013

Does amazon promote a keyboard that works with the kindle fire hd

You’d consider that outer keyboards for tablet pc’s are ‘basically of a muchness’ by now, wouldn’t you? If only it was as easy as ensuring the keyboard in question is similar with your Operating system after which, oh, I don’t know, getting the damn thing…But it does not seem to be like that, sadly.

Now, Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is compatible with external keyboards, but not with most of them. Which means you’ll probably be stuck rooting through an extensive list of keyboards (most of which don’t appear to bother letting us distinguish whether they’re ‘Kindle friendly’ or not).

The ‘Amazon Basics keyboard’ does not appear to work for every reviewer, either. Some like it, some don’t.

Frustratingly, opinions tend to be inconsistent when it relates to Kindle Fire compatibility, with a few claiming that individual tablets work and others furiously reporting sentiments similar to “do they b******s”.

Nonetheless, all isn’t lost, gentle reader. Customers on Amazon.co.uk have claimed that the following models are compatible (to varying degrees) about the Kindle fire:

The Advent Bluetooth Keyboard

The Perixx Keyboard

The Microsoft Bluetooth Keyboard 6000

The Belkin Android Mobile Bluetooth Keyboard

Obviously, I can’t personally confirm these customer experiences, but online boards are commonly a great way to see what is around and what models others have used without spending any of your own money.

As I have said in another place on the web, it really does pay to shop around. I strongly suggest reading the opinions for each of these keyboards before you commit your heard-earned wonga to one of them.

On another interesting forum, I found that there’s even some debate as to whether Amazon have protected against third party keyboards intentionally. Amazon are well known for their (infrequently) restrictive hardware, so it is not really a huge leap of the mind to consider the corporation blocking out exterior keyboards. Though, I can find no endorsed statement from Amazon with reference to this one way or the other, so your guess is as good as mine.

When you do decide to perform a web search in order to discover more, please keep in perspective that the Kindle Keyboard is a type of eReader that is largely unrelated to the Kindle Fire or Fire HD. Content, opinions and boards regarding this one will hinder any hunt containing the terms ‘Amazon+Kindle+Keyboard’. ‘Annoying’ scarcely did it justice.

ADDENDUM: As it seems, there is an official Amazon keyboard that works with Kindle Fire HD, but it does not appear on the UK Amazon site. Personally, I’d suggest getting this one if you’re a US-based user. If Amazon promises that it will work, then it’ll probably work.

In the UK, well, its actually frustratingly vague regarding what keyboards work and what is going to not. Another suggestion is to head down to the local computer store and ask them if you are able to try one out. That usually works.