Best of January 2013

Best of January 2013

With the month’s end, there is a lot out there in the world to discover. There is no time for boredom, but in case you are, this is going to be a long article. Maybe you missed on some fancy news. Here are the highlights from my point of view of January.

Best gaming console:

The best gaming console should be a 3DS, as pocket gaming is also part of the word consoles. A 3DS XL Pikachu edition is coming to America for the Nintendo club members. I really want one. Wasn’t there a charizard edition coming? Well, some people believe a 3DS is better than the XL because it is lighter, but it all comes down to personal opinion. The XL is not 500Kg more than the original and I am willing to sacrifice some calories in order to hold a bigger screen. It just can’t get cuter, and the original is also packed with some glossy shiny plastic. Some limited editions aren’t half-bad either.

Best online (flash) game:

This time I choose it from Nitrome, a site full of nerdy, isometric pixilated sprites. I used to love the site ever since they made this old game called mutiny, and spent a lot of time on it with my friends. Back then it was a plain website that is not so heavy on your browser. I don’t know what happened with Nitrome today, as most changes are to the worst, stretching game dimensions and painting the page with adverts that the only good change was the settings on all games, and the steam game. As for the best NEW game they made, as most of their games are good (I still have my complaints on the webpage design) Hot AirJr would take the title. Its sprites are cuter (like yoshi’s island) its menu is also better (like Kirby games) and the difficulty is hard for beginners which is good because it throws you right into where you should be (assuming you played all previous titles). Funny, it even has a storyline. Check it out here. I was going to choose Plunger because of its DYNA-like character but noticing the enemies in the game with the restricted movement it didn’t capture enough gravity. In hot air it may be you controlling the balloon, but the basket is controlled purely by physics. However it might be a good idea to check out a lot of the games on Nitrome. The old-school ones are great.

Best tablet:

Samsung Galaxy Note II 10.1”

Honestly I have never imagined 2GB of RAM on any smartphone or tablet, but the fact that this phone is so big that it is considered a tablet makes it the ace monster in the market. Of course there is a 5.5” screen, but honestly I wouldn’t want to waste such high specs on a lower screen. I don’t mind a drop in pixel density since all tablets nowadays, even ones with a lower screen, do not have a high pixel density like this one. Here are some highlights of the specifications of the N8000:

800 x 1280 pixels, 10.1 inches screen (~149 ppi pixel density)

MicroSD card slot up to 64 GB

16/32/64 internal storage, 2GB RAM

Quad-core 1.4GHz processor Cortex A9

You can see the rest of the specifications at GSMarena.

Best blog:

Every month I will pick a blog. Of course it has to be updated but I also prefer blogs talking about what I like, such as Zelda games. It’s good to admit that some other blog could be better than you as long as there is no real rivalry between the two. This month I recommend you to check out http://touriantourist.blogspot.com/ this blog seems to capture a lot from Zelda and have a good design. This blog has 7 posts on the page. That's okay because you get to see a lot I guess. Better than most other blogs I see in the world. Heck, even the official Google blog is like this. WHY?!

Best smartphone news:
Now while saying the best smartphone bluntly wouldn't work as there are a lot out there, although I love the LG 4X HD P880 over the Samsung SIII and would nominate the Motorola Droid DNA in this contest, let’s stick to the news rather than a comparison between Yugioh monster cards. (The playing cards are 16:9, and so are the screens’ aspect ratios for all the smartphones, so that is a pun in a way or another)

Moving on to the actual news, a way for HTC to catch up with the new NFC technology, HTC is making a remote control to control your smartphone and TV. It also works as a clock, displays SMS, and makes calls, and makes your phone ring when you need to find it. I certainly don’t know if this is a good approach or a bad one, but I hope HTC makes it work for a lot of HTC smartphones then it will probably be good. There are so much more features that you can see a video here.

January has been a good month for all of us and I hope next month brings more tech gadgets to the house. I also hope PC game developers stop requesting new processors and graphics cards because they will ruin computers eventually. Play More Zelda!