Sometimes, the higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment.

Forget about iPhone 5, for the time being at least. What was expected to be the iPhone 5 unveiling became just an iPhone 4S announcement.

Despite the speculations and the hopes, there would be only few minor changes an the next iPhone that is rightly though called iPhone 4S.

To majority of technology and apple admirers, this is probably the disappointment of the year.  Which by the way, we have a recommendation of new spelling to the word disappointment: Di(4s)sappointment.

Our major question, despite the obvious is: how Apple being aware of the high expectations, has let that happen.

While people politely cheered in the audience, Apple’s share price plunged 3 per cent.

That official iPhone 4s release probably looked great when they did it, but now, facing the disappointment, it looks much less appealing. However, here it is anyway.

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As iphone 5 is about to be announced, many people are trying to make guesses concerning its design and features.

The following youtube video that present a new iphone 5 concept gained more than 20 million views in less than three weeks.

Iphone 5 features

The iphone 5 features presented in this video are a bit too early for their time, but maybe something to aspire to in the next version. Iphone 5 features, whatever they may come up may not be that surprising, I am afraid. It may be slimmer than its predecessors and have one or two new gadgets or features, but no breakthrough is expected.

The new iPhone 5 is speculated  to be loaded with new features like video chat on 3g and 4g face recognition and extreme downloading

This iPhone 5 may be equipped with a speedy dual core A5 chip processor and a faster graphic chips that can deliver higher video resolutions (5-9 times better) and amazing “still” images when taking pictures, it will make multi-tasking a lot faster.

We, however, have some minor basic requests, although clearly aware this is too late for iphone5:

A much stronger battery, a bigger screen and solve the damn Flash problem… is that too much to ask?

Endeavour, the space shuttle named after the same Endeavour as our company, is naturally, of great interest for us. Endeavour’s last space voyage started today. The next voyage of the last of the shuttles will be Atlantis’ after which the shuttle space program would be terminated.

Endeavour blasted off on the next-to-last shuttle flight Monday morning under the command of Mark Kelly, the husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The wounded congresswoman watched the launch in private from Kennedy Space Center. As many as 45,000 guests jammed NASA’s launch site. The crowd outside the gates was estimated to be in the tens of thousands, if not more. It was the second launch attempt. Late last month, an electrical problem halted the countdown. Endeavour and its six astronauts will arrive at the International Space Station on Wednesday. They are delivering a $2 billion particle physics experiment. The mission will last 16 days. Only one other shuttle trip remains.

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Another chilling reminder to September 11 events. This time a classified movie taken from police helicopter documenting the fall of the two WTC towers. This movie was released last night.

I believe most of us clearly remember the moments depicted in the movie and clearly remember where they were and what they did at the time. Most of us were covering their mouth in shock, looking at the horrific site of the collapsing towers, refusing to believe it.

Apple iPad 2 announced today by Steve Jobs at Apple event.

Jobs appearance was a surprise, but he did in fact make the event. He shared some stats about the iBookstore, which has 2,500 publishers. He also announced that Random House is bringing over 17,000 books to the store.  

Then came the announcement. The iPad 2 is faster with the A5 chip and a dual core processor. Apple says it’s up to 2 times faster,a nd up to 9 times faster on graphics. It’s 33% thinner (thinner than the iPhone 4) and only 1.3 pounds compared to 1.5 on the old one. This should make it a little better for reading publications like The Daily – as far as general comfort.

It comes in both black and white. There is a rear and front-facing camera. Battery life is the same as old iPad – 10 hours, over a month of standby.

 ”We have the same legendary 10 hour battery life… with all this extra stuff in it and dramatically thinner.” And the pricing remains unchanged, starting at $499 for a 16 gigabyte model.

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This week I am in Israel, one of the wonder economies of the world that was one of the few that did not suffer the global recession. I am participating at the Israeli Business Conference organized by Globes, Israel leading economy newspaper.

“Almost no country in the world, Israel included, is just a national state any more. All countries are affected in all fields by global events. Our fate is not just historical, but also global. In the past, the world’s 192 countries were like ships on the sea, and the biggest problem was to prevent collisions. Today, the world is more like one great ship with 192 cabins. The cabins are the nations, and on the global ship, and the fate of every cabin on board depends on the fate of the ship, and what happens in the cabins affects the fate of the ship.”

Peres said, “When there are dangerous cabins, and they exist, then a broad coalition of other cabins will press the dangerous cabins to surrender for the good of the ship. The problem is ship-wide, and not a problem of collisions between ships. No matter where you look, we see the huge effect of the ship on the cabin, including the Israeli cabin. This begins with the economy: there is no national economy. There might be national poverty, but anyone wanting national growth must turn to the global economy.”

At the age of 87, Mr. Peres is still sharp, focused and has many visions concerning Israel in the coming era. Listening to him makes you understand why he is an asset to Israel and Israeli view.

Cushman & Wakefield, the London based real estate consultancy firm, has published their traditional survey concerning European business locations.

Ms. Elaine Rossall and Mr. Neil Gorman have conducted a thorough report illuminating key factors in relocating firms’ perceptions towards European location. They main findings are:

With a slow recovery from recession and with companies continuing to focus on being located in cities that can provide them with a cost effective yet efficient base, cities continue to be in competition with each other to attract inward investment. The European Cities Monitor examines a number of key issues that corporate consider when considering new locations and indicates how effectively each European city is perceived to perform and where improvements are seen to have been made over the last year.

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Europe is finally resuming its flights. Reports are coming in from many European airports.

A continental airspace closure took precedent in September 11, 2001 when the US had to close its airspace in order to neutralize potential further attacks.

The eruption of Icelandic Mount Eyjafjallajokull and the resulting volcanic ash cloud over Europe have caused severe flight disruptions since last week, grounded millions of people, tones of cargo and disrupted international air traffic over Europe and the Atlantic.

The above had enormous affect on trade, business and insurance. Not to mention convenience. The ecological effect is too soon to evaluate, however has a destructive potential on climate in case of severe eruption.

Europe is operating several airports and KLM has started today a gradual procedure in order to restore its flight schedule.

The continental boycotting due to the volcanic ash over Europe is gradually removed today in order to allow the millions of passengers and tones of cargo to start flying again.

It is amazing how such a simple incident could have grounded Europe traffic for few days and cause such damage.

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Long ago, we named our company after Captain Cook’s historic ship the Endeavour. The space shuttle Endeavour is named after the same old famous ship and for us down here, it is a major event every time the space shuttle caries our name and spirit to space.

Final frontier, as James T. Kirk used to call it.

Today, Endeavour space scuttle took off again in one of its last missions as the whole shuttles project will be terminated by the end of this year. The space shuttle Endeavour has set off for the International Space Station (ISS) on a repair mission and the video can be seen below.

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The famous Heineken brewery museum in Amsterdam just gained a new item. So far, the museum was dedicated to beer brewing related issues and the process of making it. About a year ago, the whole building went under constructions and today presenting enhanced audiovisual beer experience.

However, as from last night, there is an unusual additive to the building: the Dutch brewery started brewing browsers… Google Chrome to be exact. Slides of the browsers logo are projected on the outside wall of the Heineken building to be seen by nearly frozen by passers.

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