This week, Yahoo's deal might leave them Scroogled, Zynga makes money while GameStop invests some and Dell's decision to go private might expose itself to more problems than they thought.
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.
Dell has officially announced its plans to take the company private once again. Originally founded as PCs Limited in 1984 by Michael Dell, the company changed its name in 1988 when it went public at $8.50 per share. The stock has had its ups and downs in the decades that followed, and has had trouble maintaining cohesion on its board of directors, causing a focusing problem.
It has been several quarters and many bad decisions since the last time Zynga, the spammers of Facebook, posted a profit. This week, the company bucked that trend, posting 1 cent per share. Compared to the expected 3 cent per share LOSS, that is an impressive performance.
While Zynga posts a small profit, they are still struggling in the sea of mobile and social game developers, and that sea keeps getting larger. GameStop has been talking about moving into the digital realm for a while now, and started doing that exact thing when they bought Kongregate in 2011. Now, the used-game giant is putting up $10 million for mobile game developers.
It has not been easy to be Yahoo over the past few years. They have seen their marketshare decline rapidly, attempted lawsuits to pay the bills and let's not forget a revolving door on the CEO's office. The most recent of five CEOs, Marissa Mayer, came to the company from Google with the intent of leaving her mark on this company the way she did on Google. Unfortunately for her, and possibly Yahoo, the legacy she leaves at Google will forever be remembered as her final position in charge of the disaster known as Google's local services.
Over the past year several suits have been filed against publishers and distributors of eBooks about price fixing. Amazon ended up refunding money, while several publishers have settled with the Department of Justice to end the suit.