Facebook Facing Potential Competition

Currently Google has removed the ability to send out invitations, so unfortunately I can't hand out any invites. However, I do plan to update this post once invites become available again so keep watch.

A screenshot of my Google+ profile

Today Google opened up the Beta for their new social network, and clearly intended competition for the giant that is Facebook, Google+. Now you may be about to point out their past attempt at entering the world of social networking Orkut, and while I'm not all that familiar with it, based upon what I've experienced so far of Google+ Google certainly has a winner on their hands.

Everything about Google+ is just slick, from the overall presentation to the various functionalities like posting updates and photos. If you're at all familiar with Facebook, when asked to think of a color to associate with the site blue would more than likely pop into your head. If just for that one reason Google+ is refreshing. No more blue, just a black navigation bar and everything else is just white or grey. You're probably wanting more reasons than just color to be interested in Google+ and there are plenty others. For starters with that refreshment of color comes a fresh new aesthetic. Everything looks incredibly clean and slick compared to Facebook, not that Facebook is that ugly of a site to begin with though. I think what really makes a difference is the welcome lack of the clutter created by chat on the left and those pesky page and friend suggestions on the right. Granted this is a beta, but for the time being it is a definite step up from Facebook. On a side note, apparently Google managed to nab an Apple designer that worked on the original debut visual operating system and I've gotta say based upon how clean and slick that Google+ is it definitely shows.

In terms of features Google+ is essentially like for like with Facebook, including the ability to like or +1 posts, create groups, and chat with friends. What really sets Google+ apart from Facebook on this front, however, is integration with existing Google services like Google Voice to allow for much more.
What more could a social networking have you may ask? Well, Integrated voice/video through a feature called Hangout. You can set up a Hangout with a specific Circle, say friends, and then have your friends join you in a video chat which is also accompanied by instant messaging chat as well to allow you to easily sends links to those who you are chatting with. One interesting feature with the Hangout feature is the apparent ability to collectively watch Youtube videos with those you're video-chatting with. I tried this Hangout feature with a couple friends of mine and it works fantastically, one nice touch is when you're chatting with more than one friend the main video automatically switches to the friend that is currently speaking. I did attempt the group Youtube viewing feature but disappointingly either the feature is currently disabled or me and my friends simply could not get it to work.

 Now that I actually consider it, Google+ offers competition to not only Facebook but Skype as well with it's integrated video chat feature. As one of my friends brought up the seamless integration into the social network itself brings great ease when it comes to video chatting because you just need to have the person who you want to chat with in one of your Circles rather than having to separately download and own the Skype application and have to hunt down their screen name.

Overall I'd have to say that both Facebook and Skype should definitely be nervous at Google's true entry into social networking. Google+ is absolutely fantastic as it is right now, but the fact that it is was literally just released as a beta means there is potential for future changes and additions allowing for the possibility for even more killer features.

If you've had the opportunity to experience Google+, what are your thoughts?

Sounders Advance to Quarter Finals

Tonight the Sounders once again embarked on their defense of the US Open Cup, this time they met the Kitsap Pumas at Starfire rather than the Timbers at PGE Park as they have in their past two seasons. Michael Fucito got the scoring started and pushed the Sounders ahead of Pumas in the thirty ninth minute, unleashing a left-footed volley past former Sounder Bryan Meredith from a cross diverted by a Nate Jaqua header. Fucito then doubled the advantage fairly early into the second in the sixty second minute, receiving the ball in the box and giving a valiant individual effort to get past a defender to blast the ball past Meredith and into the net. The Pumas were not content just to sit and give the Sounders the victory, however. In the seventy first minute they fought their way back and lowered the deficit to just one goal on a goal by Nik Basagno. They weren't to complete the comeback, however, as the Sounders won 2-1.

Notes

• Next up the Sounders will once again face the LA Galaxy at Starfire in quarter finals
• There was Open Cup action around the country tonight, and it will not be purely Major League Soccer teams in the quarter finals, as the Richmond Kickers bested the Columbus Crew 2-1

Sounders Continue Unbeaten Run

With today's victory over the New England Revolution the Sounders have managed to grab nine points out of three games within eight days, and have advanced their unbeaten run to six games. New England kicked the game off with a bang earning a corner in the third minute, Benny Feilhaber taking it short to Sainney Nyassi who took a low shot through traffic that found it's way into the far corner of the goal, skimming the fingertips of Kasey Keller. The Sounders weren't to be discouraged, though. They kept fighting and pushing for an equalizer and finally found it through Tyson Wahl on a set piece in the thirty fourth minute. Mauro Rosales won the opportunity through drawing a hard foul against Ryan Cochrane and Tyson Wahl made the best of it, curling the shot neatly into the far upper corner of the goal past a completely helpless Matt Reis. Notably, this is Wahl's first Major League Soccer goal and what a first goal it was. Not only that, but Wahl's goal made him the thirteenth Sounder so far this season to score. The most of any MLS team. The Sounders doubled their total and grabbed the lead  minuted laters and again Rosales had a major role to play in it. Rosales slid the ball to Roger Levesque in the box, who slid over to Fernandez who fired past Reis who could do nothing to deny the Uruguayan his fourth goal of the season. The Revolution had several opportunities to even the score throughout the rest of the match, a Rajko Lekic shot that rolled just wide, a Shalry Joseph header skillfully saved by Keller, and a Zack Schilawski shot the clattered off of the crossbar, but fortunately it just wasn't to be for the Revs as they advance to being winless in seven.

Charlie Davies Fined for Diving

Charlie Davies, no wait I mean Charlie Divies, has been building up quite the reputation for diving and deceitfully drawing penalties when going one on one with opposing defenders. Just check out the video below of his latest bit of trickery:

Well, fortunately now it seems that Major league Soccer is beginning to crack down on diving and embellishment, or any theatrical act performed with the intention of deceiving the referee. Today the Major league Soccer Disciplinary Committee handed Divies a $1000 fine for the dive he committed against Real Salt Lake. Clearly this won't be a one time deal, as the following statement was made in the press release posted on mlssoccer.com: "Moving forward, all instances of behavior that serves to deceive and that directly impact the game will be subject to severe discipline, including a fine, suspension or both."

Levesque Lifts the Sounders Above the Red Bulls

Wow, what a fantastic and entertaining way to open up the Century Link era. Two goals a minute apart within the first fifteen minutes and that two goal lead lost and regained by the Sounders. The scoring started in the eleventh minute, off of a corner kick won by the Sounders. Mauro Rosales swung the ball into the box, which took a deflection out towards a waiting Erik Friberg who fakes a left-footed shot and then curls a right-footed shot into the far post past a hopelessly reaching Sutton. The Sounders struck again less than a minute later on another corner kick served into the box by Mauro Rosales and the ball once again gets deflected out towards a waiting Sounder, this time Alonso who strikes it first time low into and the far corner of the net. New York began to claw their way back in the the thirty first minute, Joel Limpere feeding the ball to a recently returned Dane Richards who lines up the shot and fires it past a reaching Kasey Keller who manages to get his fingertips on it, but just couldn't knock it out. New York then evened the score early on into the second half in the fifty eighth minute, Dwayne De Rosario feeding the ball to Jan Gunnar Solli who was sprinting up the right-hand side of the pitch. He then nutmegged Leo Gonzalez, made his way into the penalty area and crossed the ball forcing Zach Scott into an own goal. Then the Sounders quickly went about regaining their two goal lead. They won a corner kick in the sixty seventh minute, that Leo Gonzalez took and sent the ball into the box where a freshly subbed on Roger Levesque redirected the ball past Sutton with a flick header. Levesque then completed the lead restoration in the seventy eighth minute feeding off of a mistake he forced on Sutton, who momentarily hesitated on the ball, poking the ball from right between the keeper's feet and cooly tapping it in.

MLS Week 15 Predictions

Thursday, June 23rd
Seattle Sounders - New York Red Bulls: Having lost only once in their past eight games and leaving BMO field with a late winning goal from the foot of Fredy Montero, I'd say that the Sounders are prime and ready for their rematch with a Red Bulls decimated do to several Gold Cup call ups of it's starters, injury to Luke Rodgers, and Thierry Henry red card ejection last week against the Timbers. That doesn't mean that the Red Bulls offense is completely lacking, they've recently received both Dane Richards and Dwayne De Rosario back after both their national teams got eliminated from the Gold Cup. Maybe I'm a little biased, but I'm calling this one in Seattle's favor.

Saturday, June 25th
San Jose Earthquakes - LA Galaxy: Up until last weekend the Earthquakes had been on something of a hot streak but fell against an emerging Sporting Kansas side thanks largely to lack of ability to finish (seemingly a very common problem these day among MLS teams). The Galaxy has also been on their own hot streak lately, having gone un-defeated in their last eight games even going so far as to pull out a 3-1 victory of the Colorado Rapids last week missing almost all of their star players. The Galaxy is without a doubt going to maintain their winning streak.

FC Dallas - Portland Timbers: Despite a late comeback, when FC Dallas met the Timbers up at JELD-WEN earlier this season, they couldn't draw level and ultimately fell to the Timbers. In this rematch look for the Timbers to continue their poor road form and winless streak and for FC Dallas to continue re-building their momentum after the drubbing they received by Sporting Kansas a few weeks back.

Sporting Kansas City - Vancouver Whitecaps: After an awful 1-6-3 start to the season Sporting Kansas are really beginning to turn things around, recording two wins within their last three games and advancing their current undefeated streak. Sporting Kansas aren't the only ones actively turning their season around, after the firing of head coach Teitur Thordarson the Whitcaps have begun to show signs of life, rescuing a 2-2 draw against the Sounders off of a beautiful volley by Eric Hassli and recording just theit second win of the season last week against the Philadelphia Union. This is a close one, but I'm gonna have to side with Sporting Kansas due to the home advantage they have in Livestrong Sporting Park.

Real Salt Lake - Toronto FC: RSL hasn't exactly had the best of form lately, managing only draws after their loss against the Columbus Crew. Toronto has been performing much worse, however, having not won in nine matches. Seeing as RSL has the advantage of the fortress that is Rio Tinto behind them, they wil no doubt take all three points.

Seattle Sounders - New England Revolution: The Revolution has the most losses of any MLS team so far this season (7), with three of them coming in their last five games. Meanwhile the Sounders have lost only once within their last eight games and have one of the best goal differentials of the league, having allowed more than one goal only on three occasions. The Revolution should pose very little threat to the Sounders.

The Portland Timbers Continue to Struggle

After scoring two goals within a minute of each other only minutes into the second half it was looking like the Timbers had taken control of a game that had previously been firmly held by the New York Red Bulls on a fifth minute goal by Austin Da Luz. To the Timbers' misfortune that lead wasn't to hold. Another goal was added to the tally after New York defender Stephen Keel slid in on a Jorge Perlaza cross in the sixty seventh minute and knocked the ball into his own net, but the Red Bulls kept fighting and ended up drawing even. First came a goal courtesy of Thierry Henry, assisted by the earlier goalscorer, to bring the deficit down to one. Then, late into stoppage time New York was working their way into the box and the ball got crossed directly into the arm of a Timbers defender drawing a penalty. Ironically, twenty minutes earlier the Timbers had earned a penalty kick, but captain Jack Jewsbury clanged it off of the post. Dwayne De Rosario showed how to really take a PK, burying it into the back of the net just past a reaching Troy Perkins. That may have ended the game, but the drama didn't end there. Just two minutes prior to New York's game tying penalty kick an incident occurred between Henry and Adam Moffet, which despite the two shaking hands and putting it aside, resulted in a straight red for Henry and a yellow for Moffet. Now the Red Bulls will be heading into their mid-week meeting with the Seattle Sounders even more short-handed than they already were and without their top-scorer.

Notes

• The final tally for fouls during the match came out to 25 for the Red Bulls and 5 for the Timbers. That's more than a little lop-sided don't you think?
• The Timbers have two of the most offside players of the league in their squad, strikers Kenny Cooper and Jorge Perlaza, and they certainly re-enforced that stat tonight

More Late Dramatics for the Sounders

Leading into tonight's match, the Sounders had experienced a scoring drought for their forwards that lasted just upward of six hundred thirty minutes, Fredy Montero single-handedly broke that dry spell off of a beautiful free kick in the ninetieth minute. During the first half the Sounders struggled to find their way out of their own half of the field, only collecting three shots none of which found their way on target. One of their best chances, barring Montero's free kick, of the match by far came in just the second minute. After winning a throw in Lamar Neagle threw the ball in, and Mike Fucito just pounced on it. Sprinting towards goal he slid in the shot, but the ball just glanced of the post and out of play. That was his only opportunity though, Fucito had another chance in the fifty nineth minute, heading the ball just over the cross bar off of a cross by Montero. What really makes this victory sweet is the fact that only minutes into the second half the Sounders went down a man, after Jhon Kennedy Hurtado picked up a second yellow card after dragging down Toronto FC midfielder Alen Stevanovic. Despite the disadvantage, the Sounders kept fighting and pushing forward, eventually leading to the free kick that Montero knocked home.

Notes

• Things are beginning to go Sporting Kansas City's way, Friday they notched their first home win courtesy of a CJ Sapong goal against the San Jose Earthquakes
• The Houston Dynamo continue on their downward trend, falling 2-0 at home to the Columbus Crew
• Finally, for the first time since opening day, the Vancouver Whitecaps have managed to pick up a win, 1-0 against the Philadelphia Union
• Predictably the LA Galaxy continued their hot streak tonight against the Colorado Rapids at Dick Sporting Goods Park, dominating last season's cup winner's 3-1
• After a shocking 4-1 loss last weekend against Sporting Kansas City, FC Dallas continued on their winning ways with a 2-1 victory over Chivas USA

MLS Week 14 Predictions

Friday, June 17th
Sporting Kansas City - San Jose Earthquakes: Kansas City hasn't had the best record so far this season and San Jose may be on a recent hot streak, especially after last week's 4-2 victory over DC United, but last week's 4-1 drubbing of an on form FC Dallas away from home and the advantage provided by the recently opened Livestrong Sporting Park should provide enough to lift Kansas City over San Jose.

Saturday, June 18th
Toronto FC - Seattle Sounders: Toronto has been struggling, and while they valiantly salvaged a draw last week at the Home Depot Center against the LA Galaxy I doubt that'll make all that much difference against an on form Sounders looking for a win.

Colorado Rapids - LA Galaxy: This is an interesting match-up, last season's supporter shield winner against last season's cup winners. Despite losing key players to Gold Cup duty the Galaxy are still hot, and though the Rapids broke through their dry steak of draws last weekend with a stoppage time victory over the Portland Timbers the Galaxy have the clear advantage.

Real Salt Lake - DC United: RSL may not exactly be the beast that they once were, but they still represent a sizable threat especially within the confines of Rio Tinto. I say they continue on renewing their home unbeaten streak against DC.

Vancouver Whitecaps - Philadelphia Union: Vancouver's Shea Salinas, formerly of Philadelphia, stated that his new club would top his old one with a 3-1 scoreline. That seems like wishful thinking to me. Faryd Mondragon is arguably on of the league's top goal keepers and apart from Real Salt Lake claim one of the lowest number of goals allowed in the league. Vancouver are showing signs of bouncing back from their fourteen game winless streak, though. I'm gonna have to go with a draw.

Sunday, June 19th
Portland Timbers - New York Red Bulls: Recently the Timbers having been looking more and more like the expansion team that they are despite following closely in the Sounders' footsteps in bucking that trend early in the season. Their last three results have been losses, two of them coming at home. A lack of production up front and an over reliance on set pieces will ultimately be their demise. While it will undoubtedly be a struggle, New York definitely has this one.

Sounders Reserves Maintain Perfect Record

The Major League Soccer Reserves division was created back in 2005 to provide a chance for team's reserve squads to get play time, a chance to grow and show their skills and ability. For unknown reasons, the division was disbanded in 2008. For the 2011 season, however, the division has returned and the Sounders' reserves have been thriving in it. After a match with the LA Galaxy, the Sounders reserves advance their perfect record to 6-0-0.

The reserves has allowed players such as Lamar Neagle, Mike Fucito, and Miguel Montano to really shine and demonstrate their readiness for regular season play. Two of those players are now apart of the regular starting eleven, in fact. After getting subbed on early in place of Alvaro Fernandez and scoring the winning goal against Real Salt Lake a few weeks ago Neagle has since been given the starting nod in place of Fernandez. It's no secret that the Sounder's have been struggling offensively, and thus energetic and persistent was thrown into the mix and thus far he has done an excellent job of harassing and terrorizing opposing teams back lines. So far even to draw a red card against Real Salt Lake defender Jamison Olave. Not only does the Reserves League allow current member of the team to show off their potential, it provides an excellent means of testing out trialists such as those current with the team Cillian Sheridan and Samuel Ochoa both currently having tallied a goal each.

A Worldwide Audience

One probably wouldn't have believed that by the end of the night last Saturday that they would have witnessed what is perhaps one of the greatest goals to be produced in MLS, nonetheless see it go viral, but that is exactly what is happening to Eric Hassli's wonder goal. According to MLS Rumors it's been reported on in at least twelve other countries, including the likes of Hassli's homeland France, England, Spain, and Mexico. Amazing isn't it?

Hopefully this will go a ways towards convincing those who look down on Major League Soccer. If anything it certainly gives worldwide exposure to Hassli, the Vancouver Whitecaps, and a little embarrassingly the Seattle Sounders.

Winless Streaks Broken

Today two teams snapped their unbeaten runs and tasted victory for the first time since the opening couple of matches of the season. Those two teams are the Chicago Fire and Sporting Kansas City. The Fire were the first to play, against the Columbus Crew at Crew Stadium. They bombarded the crews goal the entire match and were finally able to find the back of the net and score the winning goal in stoppage time. The story was much different, however, at Kansas City. The faced an on form FC Dallas away from home immediately after their inaugural match at their new stadium Livestrong Sporting Park, and sent a message to the rest of the league that they are from out with a jaw-dropping 4-1 victory. Graham Zusi started off the scoring in the twenty eighth minute with a right-footed shot from the edge of the penalty area. FC Dallas answered courtesy Brek Shea four minutes later by excellently splitting through the defense and driving a low shot past Eric Kronberg, but it ultimately proved futile as Sporting Kansas went on to tally three more goals from the feet of Aurelien Colin, Zusi again, and Luke Sassano. These two matches today really demonstrate the level of parity within the league, and as a result how unexpected results can be. Even from teams that currently find themselves in residence of the bottom of the table.

Hassli's Wonder Goal

Is that a beautiful goal or what? Though I haven't been watching or following soccer for very long, that is without a doubt the best goal that I have ever seen. It is without a doubt Goal of the Week and the current top contender for Goal of the Year honors.

What are your thoughts?

Explosive Draw

While not nearly impressive as the one for Portland, the ECS reveals another impressive tifo

Tonight the Seattle Sounders and the Vancouver Whitecaps met for the first time in Major League Soccer, and while Vancouver took the early lead off of a questionable penalty kick a late flurry of goals and emotions ultimately left the match in a stalemate. The action started in the twenty eighth minute when Vancouver striker Camilo made a run into the box and took a total dive off of some phantom contact from Ovsaldo Alonso. Eric Hassli buried the resulting penalty kick to give the Whitecaps the lead. The action picked up again just about fifty minutes later, when Tyson Wahl crossed the ball into the box, Nate Jaqua headed it down and Mauro Rosales tapped it in for the equalizer. The Sounders managed to take the lead only three minutes later. After some chaos at the edge of the penalty box Osvaldo Alonso found the ball at his feet and he sent in a low drive that found it's way into the back of the net. Qwest Field erupted in delirious joy but the Whitecaps quickly put an end to that delirium. A minute later, Alonso made a defensive lapse in the Sounders' penalty area coughing up the ball toEric Hassli who sent in an absolutely beautiful right-footed volley in the far corner of Kasey Keller's goal. Make no mistake, that is without a doubt this weeks Goal of the Week and a top contender for Goal of the Year. Though that was the end of the action, I really can't complain with the end result. It was a match high on energy and high on the emotions, with a great performance from both sides.

Notes

• With tonight's draw against the Whitecaps, the Sounders have now tied both of their rivals in their first meetings at Qwest field and in Major League Soccer in general
• Tonight saw Miguel Montano's first MLS action since his unfortunate ejection in the Sounders' home match against FC Dallas last season
• The San Jose Earthquakes are certainly showing that they're far from dependent upon Chris Wondolowski when it comes to scoring tonight after a 4-2 victory over DC United in which former Columbus Crew striker Steven Lenhart netted a hat trick
• In a complete shock, Toronto FC managed to come from behind and equalize in literally the last minute of stoppage time with what will surely be a Goal of the Week nominee courtesy of Alan Gordon against the league-leading LA Galaxy
• Colorado managed to hand Portland their third straight loss, and second straight loss at home, thanks to a stoppage time goal from Drew Moor

MLS Week 13 Predictions

Thursday, June 9th
Kansas City - Chicago Fire: Up until this week Kanas City has been on a ten game road trip, and their results certainly showed it. The Fire haven't been doing so well either, but with new head coach Frank Klopas they're playing with newfound motivation. This is definitely a hard one to call, but I'm gonna favor with Kansas City and hope they finally start to get their season on track with their much belated home opener.

Saturday, June 11th
Philadelphia Union - Real Salt Lake: After an unsuccessful first season in MLS, Philadelphia has really picked things up. Currently they sit at first in the eastern conference, and there is definitely a reason for that. While they haven't exactly had the best goal production, their defense has been solid to make up for it. Meanwhile Real Salt Lake, while still definitely a powerhouse to be reckoned with, have been struggling lately at the hands of injury and Gold Cup duty. They managed to cough up a lead earlier this evening at Crew Stadium, and lost their home unbeaten streak a couple weeks back to the Sounders. This is another close one so I'll settle with a tie.

Portland Timbers - Colorado Rapids: The Timbers' first match this season was against the Rapids, and they fell to the Cup champions 3-0. Being at home and having lost two straight now certainly seems motivation for the Timbers to win this one.

LA Galaxy - Toronto FC: Honestly, not much prediction is involved on this one. LA Galaxy have continued to the beast that they are and Toronto has done nothing so far this year but struggle. Not only that, but the Galaxy has the home advantage as well. I'm calling the Galaxy.

Seattle Sounders - Vancouver Whitecaps: There is plenty of excitement around this game, the Sounders and the Whitecaps being historic rivals. Just like Chicago last week, Vancouver recently dismissed their head coach and their technical director has assumed coaching duties. So far, unfortunately for Vancouver, the change has proven to have any impact on the team's ability to get a result. With that, the Sounders recent good run of play, and the Sounders victory against the Whitecaps in the reserves league earlier this week factored in, I'm going to side with the Sounders.

Volkswagen's Sacrifice for it's Lofty Goals

Last year Volkswagen managed to sell 256,830 cars. Do you know what their sales goal here in US by 2018 is? At 800,000 units it's just over three times that number. Seems like the folks over at Volkswagen are a little delirious doesn't it?

So, the question now is how exactly do they plan on achieving that lofty goal? By making an attempt to raise appeal in the US market, primarily through cutting prices, sizing up and getting rid of any hint of style or personality in their cars. This trend could be seen with the recently released sixth generation Jetta, as depicted below:

Now, in terms of styling the Jetta is terrible. It is in fact quite decent looking, but that does little to cover the conservative nature of the design. Volkswagen took things a step further with the new Passat, making it even more bland and arguably anonymous. Check it out below:

Once again, the design doesn't offend, although that is the exact point. Summed up, this is the epitome of please-everyone styling. Unfortunately for Volkswagen, they took the blandness a little too far, because, honestly, both the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry are far more visually engaging and interesting than this thing and they aren't exactly what you would consider the most exciting cars to begin. This issue of styling is exacerbated even further with the presence of the flowing lines of the Hyundai Sonata and the top notch styling of the Kia Optima. Certainly Volkswagen may achieve they're goal of increased sales with this Passar, but to a tasteless audience.

Nintendo Continues the Innovation

At last years E3 Nintendo revealed the 3DS, revolutionizing 3D gaming by allowing for glasses free 3D. This year Nintendo continues their trend of innovation with the next iteration of the Wii console, the Wii U. The controller is the main focus of this new console, it is far from the typical game console controller. Now in addition to the typical buttons, analog pads, and triggers a 6.2 inch touch screen and front facing camera are now added into the mix. Now if you are playing a game on the television and a family member walks in wanting to watch something, you can transition to the controller's screen and continue playing from there. Not only that, but the second screen is also being implemented in fantastic ways within the games themselves. In a couple Mii-related games, one player plays through the controller either running and finding a place to hide or controlling a space craft while the other player use the television screen and Wii remote and try to find or attack that other player. The possibilities with this new controller are game-changing and endless, it's absolutely fantastic.

The 3DS wasn't completely left out of the presentation, though, seeing several new game announcements from Nintendo. Those new games include: Super Mario, MarioKart, and a new Luigi's Mansion.

Apple Reveals Great Things at WWDC

Today was the first day of Apple's World Wide Developers Conference, and in the company's keynote key details were revealed and discussed about OS X Lion, iOS 5 and their new cloud service iCloud.

OS X Lion
Unfortunately not much more was revealed about Lion than what Apple had already shown off at the Back to the Mac event or in the later update to the preview page on their website. The discussion of Lion during the keynote was more of a recap and a demo of those already-known key features (as can be found here). The real new and juicy details came at the end of the presentation of Lion, the price and release date. Only $29.99 through the Mac App Store and in the month of July. While it was simply a recap, another look at all of the key features has really risen my level of excitement for the new operating system. Not only that but the fact that it will be so inexpensive and available in roughly a month sent my excitement through the roof. The only issue I have is the fact that it is available exclusively through the Mac App Store. If something were to go wrong and I needed to re-install the operating system, I'd be a little stuck without any sort of DVD holding it.

iOS 5
While I don't have the same level of investment with iOS as I do with OS X, the reveal of iOS 5 and several of it's new features was certainly worthy of excitement. The most notable changes and updates include:

• PC Free - With version 5, iOS will become completely independent of the computer. Now OS updates will be pushed straight to the device itself and media will be synchronized and updated via either possibly Wi-Fi or iCloud (more on that later)
• Twitter will get full integration into iOS into many key apps such as, Camera, Photos and Safari
• A new messaging service exclusively for iOS users, iMessage. The service allows users to send text and multimedia messages via both Wi-Fi and 3G
• Game Center receives further enhancements, such as profile avatars and in app game purchases
• A new Reminders app
• The Camera app receives minor editing tools, such as crop and red-eye correction

iCloud
The final reveal of the keynote was Apple's new cloud service, iCloud. With it you can store multimedia (music, photos, documents, etc.) in the cloud and wirelessly and effortlessly sync it across all of your devices. Also, now in the iTunes store on iOS devices you can view a purchase history where you can download any previously purchased songs that you do not have on it.

High Energy Draw

Tonight's match against the Sounders was the Chicago Fire's first after the dismissal of Carlos de Los Cobos and with new head coach Frank Klopas. While the match ultimately ended in a nil-nil draw, both sides had excellent chances on goal and in these chances both keepers Kasey Keller and Sean Johnson really showed their skill as keepers. The Sounders first chance came in the sixth minute, when Mauro Rosales crossed to an open Lamar Neagle who headed the ball towards the goal, but was easily saved by Johnson. Neagle found himself another opportunity just three minuts later, but Johnson parried his shot over the crossbar. The Fire's best chance came in the twenty seventh minute, when Daniel Paladini was fed the ball from Corben Bone and he cracked off a shot from distance that Keller had to dive and knock away from goal. Next up the Sounders face fellow Pacific Northwest club and rival the Vancouver Whitecaps at Qwest Field.

Notes

• After last weekend's surge in goal-scoring, this weekend was relatively quiet, seeing only two games where a team scored more than once
• Portland continued their winless streak on the road, falling to Chivas USA in the seventieth minute on a goal by Marcos Mondaini
• Unsurprisingly Real Salt Lake made a comeback after last weekend's loss against the Sounders and topped the Vancouver Whitecaps 2-0