Microsoft Reinvents 1985 - The UpStream

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.

Microsoft has made a bold move this week, announcing the end of an era; the most inappropriate branding in the tech industry. For the past 20 years, Microsoft has used a flag to denote its Windows line of products, but it didn't used to be that way and won't be that way much longer.

This week, we learned of an interesting story that is on the same strange level as that of Brazil arriving late to the PS2 party. Panasonic has announced that it has stopped producing VCRs in Japan. I had no clue they were still making them, but it is assuring to hear they have halted production of their antiquated effort. I suppose the realization of video content being streamed over the Internet or being stored on a DVR device has finally hit them. There aren't many places that even source the blank tapes anymore.

What happens after you post record profits and then your production facility's documents were hacked because people are starting to learn about the downright awful working conditions of the employees? If you're Apple, you are investigated and audited to make sure these allegations aren't true, even though reports of suicides and other deaths have been coming out of the Foxconn production plant for almost a year now.

Sony recently tipped their hand a little by showing us how they see the future of power distribution in the year 2030 with their prototype power outlets. About 18 years from now we will no longer be slaves to the power companies' monopoly on our lives and the pay-as-you-go way of life will have infiltrated more than just mobile communications service providers and charging stations for your electric cars and e-bikes.

It has been about 9 months since E3 2011 when Sony proudly showed off the new and improved PS Vita but only Japan had yet to see it on store shelves, until this week, and in the hands of core gamers. According to Shuhei Yoshida, who is in charge of all the games produced internally for Sony platforms, the mobile gaming market in Japan is healthy and actually larger than the console market. He also mentioned that sales were good but nothing to get ecstatic over, in an interview with Dean Takahashi of Venture Beat. Sony fans outside of Japan remember the disappointment of having the release date pushed back to February 22nd 2012 (unless you preordered) from an original 2011 holiday season release. So why is Yoshida remaining optimistic about the PS Vita's US launch?

For those who haven't been following along through the Clearwire story, the wireless company has been going through a bit of turmoil as of late. Uncertainty, some changes and some money issues have been troubling the company for more than a year. Let's quickly recap to catch you up to speed.

After an interesting battle with the FCC, LightSquared, and subsequently Sprint, who had announced a plan to partner with LightSquared for 4G LTE, the company has been dealt a crippling blow. The FCC has suspended a waiver granted to them in 2010, that would allow them to build-out their LTE network. The waiver was revoked over concerns that the spectrum used by LightSquared would be dangerously close to navigational GPS, and that it could affect up to 75% of GPS signals.

First there was Wii Motion Plus and now Hulu Plus. On February 16th, Nintendo inked a partnership with Hulu that will finally allow the Wii to stream movies and TV shows using Hulu Plus through the console. It took a while, but the good news is that the Wii now has the same popular lineup as that of the PS3 and the Xbox 360.