This week, Netflix keeps them coming back for more, the FCC has more to say about wireless and the fat lady is singing for Facebook?
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.
Ever since trouble started to arise for LightSquared, Sprint has been scrambling to build their own 4G LTE network. They looked to launch sometime in the next couple months. Ahead of that, Sprint had a pretty clever idea and that was to launch a line of handsets that had their new 4G LTE technology in them so customers could have the devices in their hands upon network launch day. All would seem grerat with that idea, except for the fact that one of their flagship phones, the HTC Evo 4G LTE (and AT&T's HTC One X), ran into some problems. Days before the attempted street date of May 18th for the device, customs held up the shipment on US docks because of Apple placing an ITC violation against HTC.
Ever since seeing the GM En-V concept car at CES last year, we were wondering when we would finally see automated cars driving across the nation. We knew Google was testing out some of their own vehicles in Nevada and now we've learned the possibility of automated driving is going to happen sooner than we previously thought.
The tablet market is really starting to get unforgiving, and as the competition heats up, some of the big players are getting out. The most notable and quickest exit from the market, of course, was HP, when they canceled their much anticipated TouchPad weeks after its launch. While it was not a full departure from tablets, it was an end to a new market they purchased.
Over the past few months, Verizon has made some deals with cable companies to enhance their reseller agreements and pick up some new spectrum. However, like the Alltel acquisition, Verizon will not be allowed to keep everything they own to make this happen.
I tend to not focus on rumor, but since it's almost time for E3 2012, let's do it. Microsoft recently posted a job opening on their website, looking for a "Skype for Xbox Program Manager Lead." If ever there was proof that Microsoft's acquisition of Skype last year was going to start paying off, this might be it.
Last week we asked if Facebook's IPO could be NASDAQ's biggest bust. Our opinion was that it indeed was, and this was before we witnessed the disaster that happened this week. The social network giant was able to walk away from the IPO with $16 billion in its pockets, however the stock price has been tanking since its technically-delayed opening last week. At the time of this article, the price has dropped down below $32, which is $13 down from when it opened a week ago.
It would appear that Facebook doesn't know when to stop. First they purchase Instagram, then they bought patents from Microsoft, then, of course, the disaster that was their IPO. With a pending lawsuit for misrepresenting growth rates and revenue, now would probably be the worst time to make a large purchase.
It seems that Netflix's new programming announcement may have been just the ticket to get more customers to sign up for the service. Either that, or the ones that left have realized nothing better is out there and have now come back to the movie and TV-streaming company. Yeah, it's definitely more the second one. A spokesperson from Netflix said that nearly one-third of all the new customers lately were previous Netflix customers who have come back to daddy after leaving the house and seeing that the rent next store is too high and doesn't offer nearly the same amenities.