Games are a strange genre. They’re insanely popular (just take a look at the best-selling or most popular titles across any App Store), and their dynamics are far from predictable. Sometimes, mindless, meaningless and dead simple titles would become overnight success stories, while other much well-developed and thought of titles would remain trailing in the abyss of non-recognition. Then, there are those cases too, where persistence and perseverance pays off. Rovio Entertainment’s Angry Birds lineup is one story that adheres to the latter category – a company on the brink of closure comes up with a title after countless attempts that becomes an insane hit with the masses, doing for Rovio what few titles have been ever able to achieve for their developers.
JoinedNovember 9, 2012
Articles530
Follow me on Twitter: @aatoo
Sony Entertainment has made a name for itself over the years for a lot of things, be it games (remember Twisted Metal, anyone?), gaming consoles, motion pictures, and lately, mobile phones. When the entertainment giant partnered with Ericsson to form Sony Ericsson, they introduced the world to a whole new dimension of feature phones with their Walkman lineup. Then, they were also the first ones to introduce a 12 megapixel shooter in a smartphone (if you can call Symbian that) with their Satio. Lately, since the company has become Sony Mobile, they’ve produced some top of the line devices with their Xperia series, and even took a bold attempt at merging smartphone with PlayStation gaming console with the Xperia Play.
I’ve lately been writing a lot about data backup solutions. Of course, they’re extremely important, since that’s necessary to protect your data and secure your personal information. No matter what platform or device you’re using, there are always backup applications and solutions available that would help you achieve the said purposes. Android, just like the rest, has no shortage of such apps, some of which are advanced enough to perform backups at the very basic level, copying complete partition images of your device to a safe location for future recoveries (nandroid backups, anyone?). Even just yesterday, we brought to you a backup solution that could save everything to a desktop PC – both Windows and Linux – without requiring root access, unlike the most famous backup tools.
With Windows 8, Microsoft took some rather bold and unprecedented steps. The RT version of the operating system, found on the company’s Surface tablet (and perhaps, soon to land of similar offerings from a plethora of other manufacturers), enabled the software giant to enter a market that was previously dominated by Apple’s iPad and various-manufacturers’ Android-based tablets. Judging by the response that Surface has received from the consumer population, Microsoft’s entry in this niche seems to be playing out well as of yet. The good thing is that the RT version of Windows doesn’t suffer from a serious lack of apps, considering as how a lot of legacy apps are becoming available in their Modern UI versions for the platform. Things do seem to be headed in the right direction.
Android has no shortage of apps and tools for a variety of purposes, and it might not be incorrect to say that the platform from Google, just like Apple’s iOS, can now boast “there’s an app for that” without being able to prove it. As a matter of fact, there are certain facets where Android has apps that iOS couldn’t even dream of – or at least the way how these apps function. Want some examples? How about keyboards? Android has plenty of very capable contenders, whereas in iOS, you cannot modify that unless you’re jailbroken. Then, how about replacement messaging application? Go SMS Pro has been a favorite among Android users for a long time now, and then certain manufacturers (like Sony & HTC) have their own custom messaging apps that are pretty useful and aesthetically pleasing. You don’t get that on iOS, and it’s unlikely that you ever would.
When the retail version of Windows 8 was released back in October last year, it brought a lot of improvements over all the earlier versions, despite the fact that a lot of people didn’t seem very happy with it. The new Modern UI, along with its ability to launch apps much faster, the improved copy/move dialog box, the new task manager with a plethora of new options, and the Charms bar, for instance, are just some examples to name, among many others. However, not all features (or lack thereof) could really be considered as improvements. I can understand the grudge that some people hold against Microsoft for taking away the Start menu to be a matter of personal preference, but some changes were downright limiting, the top of which turns out to be the operating system’s native inability to play DVD & Blu-ray discs.
There used to be a time when people considered a 20GB hard drive to be more than what they’d ever be able to fill up. Nowadays, depending on the type of usage that you have, a 250GB ones seems so little and insufficient. Then, the storage media in themselves have evolved a lot, both in terms of technology and form factor. Pen drives with up to 250 gigs of storage are not uncommon, high-capacity SD cards are mainstream, and lately, even SSD drives have come down to a level where almost everyone can afford them in their machines, taking advantage of the much-faster read/write speeds to the fullest.
The gaming industry is one of the largest ones out there, and no, I am not talking about the casino one. The one I’m referring to are the computer games that you and I have grown up with and developed a liking for, so strong that it, at times, borders on obsession. Computer games have redefined what powerful hardware and graphics could be used for and can achieve, and rightly so, because the level of detail that today’s popular titles deliver is as close to motion picture as you might imagine. Couple that with immersive storylines and realistic gameplay, and you may find yourself hooked to the screen for hours upon hours.
It’s true that Apple made tablets – portable computers with a slate design – a mainstream gadget with their iPad, even though there existed a lot of similar devices before that. Not only did they make it more accessible by selling the iPad at a price point that was agreeable to the masses, but the support from the Cupertino giant’s iTunes App Store with its massive number of iPad specific apps also helped the device’s popularity. Even though competitive manufacturers jumped onto the bandwagon with their similar Android based offerings, even today, the iOS App Store sports a much larger number of tablet-optimized apps in comparison to Google Play Store.
We all have experienced those times when the computer started becoming laggy, the performance started going down, and a lot of things begun breaking down. At times, you’d start facing unexpected system crashes, applications not working, the resource usage going up and a lot of other similar issues. While sometimes, this can be caused due to malware present in your machine, but what if that’s not the case? What if you’re using a top of the line antivirus and malware defense solution, but still face PC slowness and abrupt behavior?
