This week, Activision attacks our wallets, Vodafone attacks a customer and AMD attacks the mobile market.
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.
Since its inception, the Xbox and Xbox 360 have seen flocks of hardcore gamers flooding the Xbox LIVE network to play the latest Triple A FPS title. A couple of years ago at E3 '09, after millions of frags were logged and countless hours of hailing Master Chief, Microsoft took the stage to say that while the gamers are the core of its existence, they wanted the Xbox 360 to be the center of your family entertainment and they wanted a console in every living room. With that came the announcement of Project Natal and good things to come in the future.
Apple fanboys are willing to trade all kinds of crazy things for an iPad - tons of money, their integrity, but one Chinese boy was willing to trade even more - one of his kidneys. The boy, 17-year-old "Zheng," was searching for a way to raise enough money to purchase an iPad 2 but could not find a viable source. That is, until he met a broker online who offered to pay 22,000 yuan, or about $3,000, for one of his kidneys.
2011 is going to be a really great year for sony. First, the PlayStation Network was hacked, then they released financials showing a huge decline and now this: Sony Pictures was hacked. This week's Sony hacking comes to us from a group called Lulz Security. The group is known for hacking into large companies' networks that should know better to demonstrate their believed superiority and to gain information.
Yes, finally an article about a chips manufacturer that doesn't start with an 'I' and end with 'ntel'. Most of us have been wondering if AMD would ever make an appearance in the mobile market so it was a delight to get some information on the Z-series chips that AMD plans on making a debut with. Better late than never, hopefully it's not too late.
Activision is looking to do something that so far only the PC gaming industry has been successful at: that of course is subscription-based gaming. Now there are some distinct differences between their subscription-based service and that of World of Warcraft, which serves as a good basis for comparison. If that seems confusing, just ignore the fact that CoD and WoW are on different platforms.
You know that annoying guy at work who is always posting on Facebook about what a jerk his boss is? Well, we know a lot of companies have strict policies against it and some are known for firing those employees. However, most companies do not have such policies against their customers speaking ill of them. I will emphasize most because this week brings us an example of a company who apparently does have a policy against customer badmouthing.
Spotify has shacked up with Facebook in a move that could launch a Facebook integrated music-streaming service on the social network in as little as two weeks. Word has it that the service is currently undergoing heavy testing, but once it goes live, Facebook's users in Finland, France, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK will see the green Spotify logo along the left of their newsfeed, with the familiar photos and events pages as well.