In the recent months, MetroPCS has released a couple of very affordable phones for consumers.  They’ve done it again today releasing the ZTE Avid 4G.

The phone gives you a huge amount of bang for your buck, cooming it at only $149. As far as power is concerned? The ZTE Avid features a 1.2 GHz dual Core CPU running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

While it only has a 4 inch 800 x 480 display, the rest of its features make up for that, including 4G LTE support.  Avid 4G also sports a 5MP rear facing camera and a VGA front facing camera.  For a slight monthly fee, you will also have the ability to turn your phone into a mobile hotspot.

This handset is great option for those looking to get a great phone for not a lot of money.  You can order it directly from the MetroPCS site or in-store.  So if you have some gifts to buy for the holidays or just want to reward yourself, log on or head in and get yours today!

ICANN held its domain name auction this week. The results promise to change the Web as we know it next year.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – or jolly old ICANN for short – is giving the gift of .christmas this holiday season. On Monday, at an all-day event at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton, ICANN held its prioritization draw for expanded generic top level domains. With companies vying for 1,930 new website suffixes, the old .com Web promises to look a lot different come next year.

More than 300 representatives from international universities, small businesses, major corporations, and more were in attendance to jockey for gTLDs as varied as .hangout and .sport, determining the kind of marketing edge their brand will have on search engines in years to come. The event was the culmination of what has been a whirlwind expansion for ICANN’s recognized domains. Registration for new gTLDs closed last June, with applicants paying $185,000 for each domain name, netting ICANN $350 million. Google applied for more than 100 gTLDs alone for domains such as .and, .blog, .book, and even .lol and .transformers, and .app was the single most contested domain at the time, receiving 13 applications.

The draw functioned like a lottery to determine the order in which ICANN will evaluate applications, with higher numbers meaning a longer processing period. The very first new gTLDs are expected to clear the approval process by second quarter next year.

Several organizations also applied for domain names in multiple languages, including Chinese and Latin, and no English-language domain was among the first 100 gTLDs chosen at the event. The Catholic Church’s application for .catholic in Chinese was the first drawn.

Most of the common TLDs that net natives are accustomed to – namely .com, .gov, .edu, .mil, and .org – were implemented in the mid-1980s to function as general-purpose domains. ICANN eventually took control of these domains in 1999, and implemented seven more between 2000 and 2011, including the now-infamous .xxx domain. But who knows? By next Christmas, love.kittens may well wind up among your favorite websites.

At last, an American-based Legoland Hotel is opening ... and from the looks of it, the hotel should please all patrons young and old.

Real talk: On top of everything I said about how much the Nintendo 64 meant to me, Lego was also my jam. Castles, military forts, metropolises, you name it, I’ve built it. Although I’ve never had the opportunity to go to the Legoland themepark, I may need to think ahead about spring break now that Legoland the hotel is set to open ahead of schedule.

Although the press release was unclear to name when the original launch date was, it did toot the California-based Legoland Hotel opening date of April 5, 2013. The three-story, 250-room hotel boast separate sleeping areas for adults and kids along with treasure chests that are unlockable after guests have completed an clues-type hunt throughout the room. Naturally, kids quarters are bunk bed style – because they have to play up on the whole stacking blocks theme around here. So far, Legoland Hotel offers three themed room types: Pirate, Adventure, and Kingdom. My personal favorite is the Kingdom; it comes with a Lego frog prince, snail, and crown! It’s an epic childhood that’s never too late to have.

Outside the rooms, guests also have immediate access to the pools, lounge, themepark, and waterpark. Expect to see approximately 3,422 Lego models scattered across the vicinity. Legoland Hotel is offering a deal of two free children’s admissions to Legoland and Sea Life Aquarium with two adult ticket purchases if you book before the year’s end. Nobody likes a belated Christmas gift, but I think kids will make an exception if it’s for a vacation at the best place on earth (sorry, Disneyland). Reservations begin at $309 per night.

Of course, if you can’t wait until April and have extra cash to burn, Lego-themed hotels already exist in England and Denmark if you’re up for a quick hop across the pond.

Gearbox Software reveals plans to raise the level cap and add a third playthrough option to Borderlands 2 in early 2013.

The veil lifts today on Gearbox Software’s third DLC release for Borderlands 2, titled Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt. That’s the third of four planned content packs due for launch before June 2013 under the terms of the game’s Season Pass. As we’ve already seen with the Mechromancer and as various members — right up to Randy Pitchford himself — keep hinting, other ideas for more add-on content are being thrown around as well. The never item on the dev team’s agenda after Big Game Hunt is unleashed on January 15, 2013 is the long-awaited level cap boost.

The first Borderlands capped out at level 50, but each of the four downloadable content packs for that game boosted the total a little further, eventually landing on a final cap of 69. Gearbox is clearly taking a different approach with Borderlands 2, as the two DLC releases so far kept the cap at 50 and Hammerlock will do the same. The plan with this sequel is to boost the cap independently of any paid content drops. Even more enticingly, Gearbox intends to further enhance the replay value by having the newly raised level cap tie into a third playthrough option.

Currently, completing the Borderlands 2 story unlocks True Vault Hunter Mode, a New Game+ mode that carries over all character progress and collected loot into a new game. The world becomes considerably more dangerous too, with level 30+ enemies tearing at you from moment one, but you’re also better equipped to handle it. TVHM, as many fans refer to it, is designed to carry players through the remaining 20-odd levels to the cap. Complete a second playthrough and the entire world automatically levels up to the cap, including any uncollected sidequests (and the loot that they offer).

Gearbox might not be talking yet about the numbers lined up for the coming level cap bump, but having a third playthrough in the mix as well suggests that it won’t be some paltry five-level uptick. I would expect to see at least 10 more character levels — perhaps even 19, to bring the cap up to the previous game’s 69 limit — added in support of a third playthrough. For semi-regular to occasional fans, this is a cool development. For hardcore Borderlands nutcases with hundreds of hours invested, it is game-changing.

While Gearbox insists that the bulk of the Borderlands 2 audience, more than 80 percent, still hasn’t hit the cap, the smaller group of dedicated fans has had plenty of time to get comfortable. The addition of raid boss-esque Seraph Guardians — not to mention the Seraph Crystal currency that they drop and the Seraph loot you can purchase — only served to up the value of farming the creatures of Pandora for rare level 50 loot. Gear that likely took many hours spread out over multiple days — since each Seraph is a one-defeat-per-day proposition — to collect. All of it will quickly become outmoded once the level caps jumps up, and that’s exactly what the diehards have been waiting for.

It’s impossible to ignore what Gearbox has accomplished with a few simple tweaks. A game that was once easily summed up as “Diablo with guns” is now starting to more closely resemble a massively multiplayer online role-playing game played from a first-person perspective. There’s no subscription in the traditional sense, though it could be argued that the scheduled, pre-announced DLC drops being tied to a Season Pass is a step in that direction. There are no microtransactions either, though again, content like the Mechromancer DLC and rumored, upcoming customization packs certainly carry the flavor of value-added micropurchases.

Then, on top of all of this, there’s the existence of Gearbox SHiFT, which has so far been used to feed leveled chest-unlocking Golden Keys to the community. Little has been said about what SHiFT’s purpose is beyond Golden Key distribution. Gearbox admits that the account-driven service — think a simpler, less demanding version of Ubisoft’s Uplay — allows the developer to monitor player data and use that collected info for patch development, but it obviously has other uses as well. Given that it is already a platform for distributing Golden Keys, you have to believe that someone at Gearbox is considering other ways to leverage the tool for the benefit of the player community.

The coming year promises to be an exciting one for Borderlands 2 fans. All evidence points to Gearbox having big plans for the looter shooter, plans that step beyond the pre-launch promise of four DLC packs by or before June 2013. The coming level cap boost and third playthrough option represent major enhancements to the potential longevity of the game, and hints from folks as high on the totem pole as Randy Pitchford — just scroll through his Twitter feed — suggest that even more is planned beyond that. Stay tuned for more news on the rising level cap in early 2013.