What to expect from Thor: The Dark World

Marvel's second installment from it's Cinematic Universe Phase 2 — Thor: The Dark. World, will be released in a few days. It will be released here in the Philippines on October 30, 2013 and in the US on November 8, 2013. The first Thor movie was quite a success with Chris Hemsworth playing the God of Thunder. Now we will see Thor battle an enemy who is out for revenge, intending to plunge the universe into darkness.

Here are some things we expected to the sequel Thor: The Dark World.

WARNING: SPOLERS AHEAD!

• More screen time for the other Asgardians

The first movie focused more on Thor and Loki. This time around we will see more action from the Warriors Three and Lady Sif.

• Girl Power!

This may be Thor's movie but the women characters will play a pivotal role. We can see Frigga joining the action and Jane Foster using her knowledge and intelligence during Asgard's war with the dark elves

We will also see more action from Lady Sif proving that she is the goddess of war. She even told Thor that she is completely under control of the battle.

• More scenery of Asgard and the other realms

From the trailers, we saw that Thor brought Jane Foster to Asgard. Unlike the first movie which was mostly on Earth setting, we will be seeing more of the kingdom of Asgard.

• A challenging villain

In the first movie, Thor only conquered Loki's envy of him and to show that he can be the rightful ruler of Asgard. This time the villain will be Malekith The Accursed which is played by Christopher Eccleston. Malekith is the ruler of the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim. He is seeking revenge and he want's to put the universe into darkness. In order to accomplish that he will need to unleash the Aether which is an all-powerful weapon capable of triggering mass annihilation.

• Battle sequences

Thor: The Dark World may not have the same level of battle sequences in Avengers or Iron Man 3, but it will have more action than the first movie. We only saw 3 action scenes from the first one: battle with the frost giants, Thor ramming S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and Thor defeating The Destroyer. This time around we will see the Asgardians battle an army of dark elves.

Thor will prove to Loki that hitting will always solve anything.

• Thor and Loki working together

Loki may be adopted, but Thor always treated him as a brother. With all Loki's mischief, Thor still believes that there is a glimmer of hope. Now he is asking for Loki's help and threatened to kill him if he betrays him. Loki looks cooperative yet will he still betray him or will he finally show the good side of him?

Loki: "You must be truly desperate to come to me for help" 

• End credits! SPOILER

This is what we love about Marvel movies, the end credit scenes! For the first time, Marvel will be having two end credits in a movie. The first one will be a mid-credits scene and it helps set the stage for Guardians of the Galaxy:

“After the Aether is back in the hands of the Asgardians , Sif and Volstagg bring the item to the intergalactic museum of none other than The Collector, played by Benicio del Toro . The reason for this is that the Tesseract is already on Asgard and they should have no two Infinity Stones in their possession. When he is alone with the Aether, The Collector utters the phrase, ‘One down, five to go.’”

The second one occurs at the end-credits:

“Thor returns to Earth and into the arms of Jane Foster, and they share a passionate kiss. The God of Thunder clearly chooses to be with her. In last scene, a beast from Jotunheim pops up in London, having previously passed through an interdimensional passage during the Convergence during the final battle.”

Credits to brainfreeze.be

Thor: The Dark World has all the hype. All it has to do is deliver. I have a very good feeling that this will be a great movie especially for those Marvel fans. Let's see and find out. Let me know what you think once you watched it!

BBM - A little too late

After the roll out of the BBM App a few weeks ago, Blackberry finally released it's BBM App for iOS and Android. Blackberry is on a downside and can the BBM App push them back? With all of the messaging apps that came out for the past months, does the BBM App stand a chance? Here are some features lacking from the BBM App:

1. Video Chat

All of the instant messaging apps out there have video chat. Did Blackberry just wanted the app to be exclusive for messaging? Even though it has a voice call feature, we still expect something more.

2. Stickers!

What makes messaging more fun and interactive? STICKERS! This is the one feature that instant messaging apps are battling on. Line, WeChat, Viber, KakaoTalk, etc. has their own line of stickers. They even offer in-app-purchases for more stickers. Blackberry just stick to it's simplicity with a few emoticons.

3. User Interface

Speaking of simplicity, BBM really made the design plain and simple. You have 5 buttons at bottom: Chats, Contacts, Groups and two side menus.

The left most button opens up with Chats, Contacts, Groups, Updates and Invites. This left side menu can also be accessible by swiping to the right.

The right most button opens up with Help, Settings, Invite to BBM, Create New Group and Join Group. However, this is not accessible through swiping gesture.

They should have removed the buttons for the side menus and replace them with Updates, Invites or Profile. Then they should just merge the side menus into one and make it accessible with the swipe gesture.

The BBM App is on it's new born stage so it still has more room for improvement.

4. Device Portability

Your BBM Pin is only exclusive to your device. Unlike other instant messaging apps which binds your phone number, email or Facebook to your account, BBM is only bound to your registration details and doesn't allow multiple device log-ins simultaneously.

Missing features of the new iPad Air and the iPad mini 2

Apple released a new line of iPads last October 22, 2013: the iPad Air and the iPad Mini 2. The 5th generation full-sized iPad has been branded as the iPad Air. It has a new design making it thinner and lighter. The iPad Mini finally have a retina display. Both have the new A7 64-bit chip processor which is also in the iPhone 5S, however the iPad Mini doesn't have the M7 motion co-processor. Both tablets are now pretty powerful yet Apple missed some features to wow us with.

1. No Fingerprint scanner and TouchID

We have all been amazed when Apple introduced the fingerprint scanner and the TouchID in last month's iPhone 5S keynote event. Since then we have also been expecting it to be included in the new iPad and iPad mini. Too bad it wasn't. The fingerprint scanner adds more security and the TouchID give more accessibility especially in downloading from the App Store. This is a very much needed feature for those who use iPads in the corporate world. Looks like Apple want's this feature exclusive to the iPhone 5S.

2. No GOLD!

You gotta admit that you drooled and your eyes popped when the iPhone 5S was announced. Just like the fingerprint scanner, we have all expected that gold will be added to the line of colors of the iPad. But another disappointed that it wasn't. The iPhone 5S is quite a rare to find the gold iPhone 5S. Did Apple run out of gold tint for the iPhone 5S? 

3. Still no 8MP camera

We all love taking pictures. Even if it is quite awkward to take pictures from the iPad, Apple should have upgraded iPad's camera to 8MP. If they want to get up a notch at the table race, they should dump the mediocre 5MP camera. They even fail to upgrade the iPhone 5S to a double digit MP to get in par with Samsung Galaxy S4.

4. More storage!

With all the games and apps consuming so much memory space comes the demand for more storage. If Apple wants the iPad to be one of the gaming consoles, they need to add more storage! Games like Infinity Blade automatically consumes more than 1GB. Let's say you have 10 of that kind of games, then add all of your photos, videos and music and you're almost max out of storage. Apple released a 128GB version of iPad 4 earlier this year. But you think the 128GB is enough for all your games and media? Even Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak wasn't impressed with the new iPad Air because he wanted more storage. He even said the following:

"Yes it's thinner, but I wanted storage. I don't have broadband at home, so I carry all my personal media in the iPad. So I was hoping Apple has a 256GB iPad."

Since the bigger iPad changed it's name to iPad Air, there have been rumors that Apple is planning for a iPad Pro in the near future. Would they be upgrading the storage by then?

5. Much bigger iPad?

All of us have their own preferences when it comes to gadget sizes. That's why tech companies are providing us their products in different sizes: their flagship product (phone/tablet), a mini version of the flagship and a bigger size of the flagship wherein in phones we have the phablet. Just what I said in the previous item, there are rumors of having an iPad Pro since the full size iPad became the iPad Air. But will Apple increase the size of the iPad to 11 inches to compete with the Microsoft Surface? Increasing the size is most likely for corporate uses and will it replace the laptop? If Apple will push through the iPad Pro they better come with great accessories such as cases and keyboards.

So do you agree with the missed features from this year's batch of iPads? Are there still other features missing? Let me know!