This week, Google still knows where you keep your porn, Zynga might be Drawing Something by themselves and Disney looks to Avenge the price they spent on purchasing Marvel.
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.
Last month, when I reported that Draw Something would turn into a TV game show, I thought that was pretty crazy as it was. Granted, previous shows Pictionary and Win, Lose or Draw were very successful but my feeling was that for this day in age, a social media game turned TV show could be a little farfetched. However, this week Twitter has decided that they are missing the spotlight and reports are coming in that the company is considering producing a reality TV show all about Twitter.
As Netflix continues to reign supreme after some of its detractors found their way back to the streaming service, competitors like Amazon Prime Instant Video are looking for new ways to bring subscribers to their content. Recently, Amazon inked a deal with MGM Studios for some classic movies and now the company has locked up deal, including a brief exclusivity, on a couple of popular shows. Amazon announced that it has signed a licensing agreement with Warner Bros to bring West Wing, Dark Blue, Fringe, Alcatraz and The Whole Truth to the Amazon Prime's Instant Video streaming service.
It feels like it was just yesterday that Microsoft had its //build/windows Conference, even though in reality it was almost a year ago. In that event we were granted the access to the wonderful Windows 8 that we are all sorts of excited about. After it was all over, the only thing I could think about was when the next BUILD conference would be and what we'd see next.
Remember the whole Google Street View issue of May 2010? You know, the one where Google was tapping into your WiFi and collecting any and all information it could, only to have to pay $25,000 for the damages they caused? Well, if you thought the ridiculously low fine for Google was enough, think again. The Google anti-trust drama continues to get even more interesting.
When Zynga purchased developer studio OMGPOP for $200 million, we thought they were either crazy or were going to make something happen and we just weren't aware. Shortly after the big expense, however, the social game company put on an "Unleashed Event" to show the media the new games they were coming out with in order to save the company. Unfortunately, the thought of new games like Elite Slots and Matching with Friends has not been enough for the company, who has seen a sharp downturn in the amount of people actually playing Zynga games in the past two months.
Zynga's incredibly low earnings have started the conversation among analysts that we started nearly 18 months ago: is Web 2.0 about to collapse? Based on stock prices for many of the large, public companies, it is starting to look like Web 2.0 is about to become dot com bust 2.0.
Since Disney picked up Marvel 3 years ago, there has not been a lot of Disney involvement in the comic company. Until recently, Marvel has been run as it always has been, being left alone by the parent company. With the recent successes of the live-action films, however, Disney cannot leave money on the table and has started discussions to bring a live-action Marvel series to Disney-owned network ABC.