This week, HP makes its triumphant return to hardware with the Slate 2, GameStop gets a little off-topic and tablet taboo happens within Barnes & Noble's little Nook.
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.
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.
Guess what happens when a division of your brand loses money eight years in a row? You split it up, of course! That's exactly what is happening with Sony's TV division, furthering their bad year that just keeps getting worse.
This week marked a year since the Kinect took effect on the Xbox 360 and made a world-changing impact on gaming and life itself. Since the Kinect entered the market before the holidays last year and set records across the globe, we've seen tons of new games at E3 and more and more creative ways to use Kinect.
Sure, as of last week, HP might be looking a little brighter than a few months ago. Their destructive leader, Leo Apotheker, has been thrown out and replaced by former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. After a few weeks of uncertainty, she was able to regain some control and she may even bring HP back from the brink of total disaster.
It's been a rough ride for HP with the game of executive musical chairs that has continued even after HP announced it would stay involved in the hardware business. So with some of the confusion out of the way, they have decided to drop another Windows 7 tablet in our laps, the Slate 2.
At the end of September, Tony Bartel, president of GameStop, announced they would try to market a "GameStop-certified gaming platform" that involved tablet devices. As we inch closer into the holiday season, GameStop has announced that 200 of their U.S. stores will be sporting a variety of Samsumg, Acer and Asusteck Computer Inc. Android tablets. According to GameStop's CEO, J. Pauls Raines,
When Hulu went up for sale, it seemed that Yahoo, among other companies, was at the top of the running list to acquire the video streaming service. However, we learned a couple of weeks ago that Hulu was backing out of its proposed sale, partly due to Disney not agreeing with anyone. Yahoo pulled out shortly before the end of the sale, citing controversial and internal problems within the company.
It looks like Barnes & Noble didn't want to take the chance of getting burned by the Amazon Kindle Fire this holiday season. Some internal documents surfaced that revealed a November 15th release date for the their new Nook Tablet device. From the image it is nearly impossible to tell the Nook Color apart from it's younger brother but according to Barnes & Noble, the differences are mainly on the inside.