This week, Xbox LIVE goes Metro, OnLive goes mobile and Clearwire goes modern.
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.
What happens when you work for the big Fruit company and you go rant on Facebook about your iPhone, apps and other things Apple? You get fired, of course. That's what happened to employee Samuel Crisp, one of Apple's beloved and adorned Geniuses. It turns out, even though his profile was set to private, one of his friends turned in his comments to Apple management. Apple termed the guy, stating that his comments violated the company's social media policy.
Until the defining question of "Will you Wii U," is answered after Nintendo's latest console, that was debuted this year at E3, hits store shelves it will be up to the 3DS and remnant Wii console sales to keep all the yen Nintendo is burning up in losses from creating a financial black hole from which even Mario can't escape.
This week, the plot has thickened on the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger. So far, the Department of Justice has filed suit to block the merger, and the FCC said they would vote to prevent it after receiving a document revealing their reasoning for the merger. AT&T's response to the FCC was to pull the FCC application, citing a focus on the DoJ case. This has not worked out as expected.
The PowerShrink technology from SuVolta comes as a breath of fresh air in a world that has been enamored by new mobile operating systems and applications while improvements in core technology seem to have been slowing down. PowerShrink looks to get the momentum rolling again by improving core technology that is specifically related to special transistors that perform voltage scaling for the CPU in a unique way and reducing leakage, which is a problem when chips can have over 1 billion transistors.
It's been a while since OnLive has made headlines. We go back about a year ago, when we last spoke of OnLive and that they launched a microconsole for your gaming enjoyment. This week, OnLive has recognized the trend that people play games on smartphones and tablets. However, OnLive hasn't drank all of the GameStop Kool-Aid, and won't limit the way or what games you play on the mobile platform.
The past few weeks have been a little uncertain for Clearwire. From their possible skip on a huge debt to losing 3 resellers, the industry was worried that it would lose a big player in the wireless game. Never fear, though, because Sprint is here to save the day. The company announced this week that there may be up to $1.6 billion in payments to Clearwire for their WiMax and future LTE services.
This has been a big week for Microsoft and its Xbox LIVE platform. We saw the launch of the dashboard update promised at E3 2011, plus the beginning of the media enhancements we have been waiting for. We got a surprise iOS app, called My Xbox LIVE, plus a Sony-esque User License alteration.