NBC Universal Gains Total Control of MSNBC.com as Microsoft Parts Ways with News Portal - 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!

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 have known for a while that Windows 8 would be released in October. For those who weren't convinced, even Samsung said their tablet would release in October. The problem has been that we had no idea when in October to expect it; would it be early or late? Our expectation has been late, as Microsoft tends to release products at the end of October regularly.

Former woman executive in charge of Local, Maps and Location Services for Google, including Google Maps, Google Earth and Zagat, Marissa Mayer, has now been named CEO of Yahoo. The company announced today that Mayer will be President and Chief Executive Officer, as well as Member of the Board of Directors effective July 17, 2012. This is certainly a good move for Yahoo, who has been in a game of CEO musical chairs as of late, going through three CEOs (two were interim) in the past year.

On top of Hulu's great moves as of recent, like bringing original foreign programming to the network and introducing a brand new video player with a 10-second rewind, Hulu is continuing their progress by adding more content this week. Larry King, who has been off the air since December 2010, has brought a half-hour interview series to Hulu and Hulu Plus, in a multi-year licensing and distribution agreement.

It doesn't matter how exciting the launch of a product is, if there are hardware problems, there is no way to overcome it. Whether it be Canon's sensor housing crack or a tablet whose screen is far below the quality it should be, no software patch can solve it. It becomes an even bigger problem when the product in question is in such high demand that you cannot find a retailer to take back the broken one because they do not have another with which to swap it out.

While Sony prepares the PlayStation 4, and Microsoft prepares the next Xbox, EA prepares for the PC. EA CEO John Riccitiello recently said in an interview with CNBC,

The 16 year Internet partnership between Microsoft and NBC has ended. NBC News announced that it now has complete control of MSNBC.com after acquiring the other half of the venture from Microsoft. NBC Universal will now rename the site to NBCNews.com but will still create content to MSN.com, which is Microsoft's news network, and in turn, Microsoft will create new content that will still show up on NBCNews.com.

It's been almost 2 weeks since Viacom pulled all of its content off of DirecTV, but there is good news for DirecTV customers: the negotiations are over and you can now watch your Nickelodeon again. What happened to get Viacom back on the provider? An agreement worth $600 million per year for seven years to Viacom, a gain of over 20 percent above their previous agreement.