This week, Zynga's beginning to look a lot like Xbox, police stations are beginning to look a lot like Starbucks with the help of Facebook and Microkia is beginning the takeover.
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.
It has been a hard-fought battle since Microsoft first announced intentions to purchase Nokia Devices and Services last September. There have been factory worker strikes in China, tax liens in India and regulatory approvals in 17 countries. All of those issues have been resolved and this week Microsoft has welcomed Nokia Devices and Services to its family.
Last summer, former Xbox exec Don Mattrick took over as new CEO of Zynga and immediately went to work. Through this time, former CEO Mark Pincus has remained on as chief product officer and was still involved in day-to-day management of the company. However, that is about to change as Pincus gave up those roles this week.
Just down the road from Facebook's corporate headquarters, in the neighborhood of Belle Haven, now stands a police station, that has been reopened thanks to a large amount of funding from the social network giant. $600,000 will be given to the police station over the next two years and will include payment for rent, renovation and one officer's salary.
It's numbers time for Netflix and this quarter saw a steady increase in the number of subscribers, bring its total to nearly 50 million worldwide. Earnings are also up, from $962 million to $1.06 billion, but overall profit was fairly flat, mobbing from $48 million to $53 million. This shouldn't be a surprise, however: more subscribers means more royalties for content, both existing and original.