The Battlefield 3 beta has given users the chance to either play the beta early (48 hours earlier than the open beta) and for those who didn't, they got a free, no obligation chance to test out the beta to see if they liked it. So far, most people have loved it. But there are of course, the haters. There are issues with the beta, but this is why it is a beta after all. It does not represent the final product, nor does it show off the entire game.

But, there has been a tweet from the guys behind Battlefield 3 have tweeted that they've lost 34,000 pre-orders with those numbers rising. They remind everyone that "people need to be aware this is a beta, much more to come for the full game". I have to reinforce the same thing, it's not perfect for me, but I expect that for a beta. I do expect more from the full game, but I haven't canceled my pre-order. The news of BF3 possibly hitting Steam made me cancel my CD-key order and wait for Steam, though.

On top of Apple's announcement today of the iPhone 4S, Tim Cook has come out swinging with a bunch of Apple-related numbers to impress the world with. Starting with, there have been 16 billion songs downloaded from the iTunes store, and also 300 million iPods sold. To give you some perspective, Sony took 30 years to sell just 220,000 Walkman cassette players.

Cook also announced that "the MacBook Pro and iMac are the number one best selling notebook and desktop in the United States". Apparently, the Mac platform grew by 23 percent over the past twelve months, versus a four percent increase from the PC sector. Cook displayed a chart showing the past five years for Mac, showing that Apple is closing in on 60 million Mac users worldwide, leaving Apple short of owning a fourth of the personal computer market. Cook says "there are still 77 percent of people who are buying something else, we have an incredibly high ceiling here. We have a long way to go".

Cook has high dreams for Mac, and with the way things are going, they should have no issues getting there.

AC Ryan, International IT and CE manufacturer and leading digital lifestyle producer, have launched what they say is the future of digital home entertainment today - VEOLO. AC Ryan VEOLO combines the most demanded functions to provide a complete digital home entertainment unlike ever before - apps, internet, and a media streamer, all on your TV. VEOLO is powered by Android 2.2 Froyo platform, bringing an enhanced experience for apps on a TV, including casual games and social media.

The built-in web browser includes Java support which allows you to view your favourite Flash-based websites and stream videos from the comfort of your sofa, lounge or bean bag. Streaming your library of music, movies and photos in Full HD is great with the built-in Gigabit Ethernet connection. VEOLO also sports built-in wireless 802.11 b/g/n LAN, powered by an ARM Cortex A9 1GHz processor and includes on-board 512MB DDR3.

AC Ryan include a 3-in-1 remote control as standard with the VEOLO which ensures the VEOLO is a premium product with maximum features an unrivalled user experience. All the functionality of a keyboard and mouse, wireless motion controller and standard remote control, packed into a single, stylish, uncluttered remote control. VEOLO will be available on store shelves in November 2011 at a Suggested Retail Price of US $279.

BF3Blog has received an anonymous report from inside Valve, that they are in late-stage talks with EA to bring Battlefield 3 to Steam. The rumor is that Battlefield 3 will be available just in time for the release of the game on October 25. According to the report, EA and Valve are very close to reaching an agreement regarding sales of DLC content, which is the main reason Battlefield 3 wasn't previously coming to Steam.

Valve requires that all DLC is sold through Steam, whereas EA prefers to sell it through their own channels. This was why Crysis 2 (another EA title) was pulled from Steam earlier this year. Many PC gamers have lobbied both EA and Valve to bring Battlefield 3 to Steam and it looks like this may just happen. Fingers crossed!

Twitter and Facebook (as well as Apple stocks) is alive with disappointed after expecting more from the "Let's talk Apple" event.

Apple left the biggest announcement of the show till the end by introducing "Siri" aka your iPA (personal assistant). Siri takes voice commands and throws the whole concept out the window with a wildly impressive new way for you to communicate with your iPhone.

Apple bought Siri (a mobile assistant app) in April last year and has spent the time since evidently doing a great job of implementing it into iOS 5.0.

The internet and its dog can relax now, Apple has just got done officially revealing and discussing its latest smartphone, the iPhone 4S.

In what seems like what the iPhone 3GS was to the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 4S looks exactly the same as the iPhone 4, but comes with a lot more power. Using the new A5 chip that is used in the iPad 2, Phil Schiller from Apple said "Dual-core CPU, 2x as fast at CPU tasks. Also dual-core graphics. Up to 7x faster in the previous iPhone. One area you really see it scream is in games."

Some may have been expected a low-cost iPhone in the 4S, but we really all should have known it would just be a supercharged iPhone 4. When I say just, that might not have been the right way to put it. I've been using my iPhone 4 since it was first released and it is getting on the slow side and with all the new features and improvements coming to iOS 5.0, the extra power provided by the A5 chip should make a big difference when comparing to a regular iPhone 4 with the A4 chip. Add on to this the iPhone 4S is not a 4G phone as was rumored, but it will be able to offer twice the download speeds of the iPhone 4 with HSDPA compliancy of 14.4Mbps versus 7.2Mbps of the iPhone 4.

Plextor has hit up the ever growing SSD market with a new line of SATA 6Gbps drives in regular 2.5-inch form. There are currently two drives in the new lineup, the 128GB PX-128M2P and 256GB PX-256M2P, both of which depend on Marvell's 88SS9174 controller together with Toshiba TH58TV68D2FDA88 MLC 34nm NAND flash.

With 512MB DDR3 cache on the 256GB model and half that (256MB) on the 128GB, sequential write speeds vary between the two with Plextor promising write rates of 440MB/sec and 320MB/sec on the 256 and 128GB drives, respectively. Read rates, however, are equal at up to 500MB/sec.

Other included features of the new Plextor drives are SMART, NCQ, TRIM, Bad Block Management, Instant Restore and Plextor TrueSpeed firmware. As for pricing, with the drives first showing up in Japan we can get an idea from the JPY pricing of 46,800 (about $610 US) on the 256GB model and 21,800 (about $284 US) on the 128GB.

Enjoy the Superman reference? If not, I meant Phantom Zone, which means that Microsoft have killed the Zune, officially. Microsoft have removed all references to the Zune HD from its Zune site on Monday and later claimed that the removal was "a mistake". I don't think so, Microsoft. It looks as though they might have removed them early, and the removal was pushed mistakenly. A new support article on Microsoft Zune's support pages makes it very clear:

We recently announced that, going forward, Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy, and that we will no longer be producing Zune players. So what does this mean for our current Zune users? Absolutely nothing. Your device will continue to work with Zune services just as it does today. And we will continue to honor the warranties of all devices for both current owners and those who buy our very last devices. Customer service has been, and will remain a top priority for us.

This confirmation is the arrow to the heart of Zune, as they've failed to prove popular against Apple's iPod. Microsoft did kill off their original Zune-based devices earlier this year, which was the beginning of the inevitable end. Microsoft urged customers to purchase Windows Phone 7 devices for the Zune experience.

Toshiba's 3840x2160 resolution autostereoscopic (no glasses) 3DTV was announced in Europe at IFA last month, but it has now debuted in Japan during CEATEC. This time, with more details. Toshiba revealed that in lenticular 3D mode, it's limited to an effective resolution of 1280x720, and also showed off the face tracking that automatically optimizes the experience for up to nine simultaneous viewers depending on where they're sitting.

Toshiba also mentioned that there was an optional THD-MBA1 input adapter due out in 2012 and that 4K-res streaming IPTV is currently being tested. The Regza 55X3 will be priced at roughly $10K, which is close to its Euro-specced counterpart when it launches in December. No US launch date is currently known. But, I'll take 3 of them, thank you.

Sony are planning to update their PlayStation 3 to allow it to have support for 4096x2160 (4K) content. It will only be still content, but showing off some super high resolution photos on a 4K-capable screen or projector will look insanely awesome. The firmware update is planned for early 2012 and will let the PS3 support native output of 4K stills. The PlayStation store in Japan already has a PlayView "visual magazine" which supports both 4K and 3D.

This new update will allow any high resolution image to blow up to 4K resolution. Obviously you need a 4K-capable display or projector, but at least if you have the cash to spend on a 4K screen you now have something to use your PS3 for other than gaming and Blu-ray movies.