LinkedIn Proving Social Networks Can Profit - The UpStream

Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.

With over ten years of audio engineering experience, Nick's addition to PLuGHiTz Corporation is best served when he is behind the mixing board every Sunday night to produce the audio side of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Piltch Point and PLuGHiTz Live Night Cap. While mixing live every week, his previous radio show hosting experience gives him the ability to co-host as well, giving each show a unique flare with his slightly off-center, yet still realistic take on all things tech. An integral part of the show, you can find Nick always enveloped in coming up with new (and sometimes crazy) ideas and content for the show and you can always expect the most direct opinion on the stories that he feels need to be shared with the world. During the few hours where Nick isn't sleeping or working on ways to improve the company, he spends his free time going to hockey and football games and playing the latest titles on Xbox 360. Email him for his gamertag and add him today for a fun escape from the normal monotony and annoyance that the Xbox LIVE gaming community can sometimes be!

Jon is a F5 Live co-host and UpStream contributor as well as the Chief Cash Officer of PLuGHiTz Corporation. We don't know how he wears so many hats so well or how he still finds time to feed his need for all things tech but some questions are best left unanswered. If you're up for a challenge go find him on Xbox Live @shinobiJon and if you figure him out...let us know.

Allante - also well known as Wolff - is the newest member and co-host for PLuGHiTz Live! Radio. A gifted artist, he is usually found drawing up a character or two or sketching up whatever comes to mind. Do not think that he is not a hardcore gamer because he is about as hardcore as it gets! His favorites range from fighting games to RPGs, adventure and even a racing game here and there. Fighting games are his forte and he relays this message for all who oppose: You mess with the Wolff and you get the fangs!

XB360 - Enigmatic Wolff

PSN - Tsukuyomi_Okami

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

We've been covering Apple's relationship with several of their manufacturing companies, including Foxconn, for quite some time already. From the harsh working conditions to workers pledging not to kill themselves anymore, we've been reporting on these issues for over a year. Our good friend Avram Piltch of Laptop Magazine discussed more issues at length on our last episode of F5 Live as the media has just picked up on these issues.

Motorola just seems to have a lot of ups and downs as of late. While their CES booth was certainly miles ahead of what was presented last year, the disaster of the "CES Best In Show" Xoom still looms. This week, Motorola can chalk another mistake to their "oopsies" column. Motorola sold a batch of Xooms to the one day, one deal site Woot who then resold those units between October and December 2011.

Kodak, the company that invented the digital camera in 1975, will be phasing out production of digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital photo frames before the middle of the year. The company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, completed the middle of January. While the company will still manufacture home printers and offer photo-printing and enterprise services, the company will start focusing on their brand-licensing program to generate revenue.

This week, a few new vulnerabilities were discovered in Google Wallet. The first requires that the device be rooted to allow someone near you to enable the stealing of a Google Wallet PIN. That exploit is about as easy to take advantage of as the last one we discussed, so we won't go into a lot of detail.

Many of our readers may not even know what Psychonauts was, but those who do will be very excited to hear that a sequel might be in the works. The initial release of the game was not all that successful, but after being added to several of the older digital distribution systems, some for free, people learned about a game and everyone who played it seemed to love it.

It is fairly early in LinkedIn's public life and it seems to have been nothing but good for the company so far. Since going public in May of last year, their earnings, as well as their subscriber-base, has continued to rise. Their earnings, announced this week, show that their earnings this quarter have risen 105%. Yes, LinkedIn made more than double this quarter than this quarter last year. That is impressive growth for any company, even more so for a social network.

For those living under a rock, this is the time where I inform you that the Xbox dashboard was revamped shortly before Christmas to include more media partners, features and enhancements that further helped them prove that the Xbox really is made to be the center of all your family entertainment.