Windows 8 Release Candidate...I mean Release Preview Comes Early - 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.

Not quite so unexpectedly, thanks to a pulled Microsoft blog post on May 30th (published again on May 31st), we found out that Christmas was coming early... sort of. Windows 8 probably won't be hitting PCs until holiday season 2012 but Microsoft was a few days ahead of the of the scheduled June 2nd release. Steven Sinofsky the head of Windows, didn't promise anything in a recent blog post but at least it feels like things are on track.

Sony's new PlayStation, codenamed Orbis, may not be releasing until next year, however the company has been very vocal about some of the things we may or may not see on the new console.

There is a new scam on the Internet and it is one of the better ones we have heard about in the last few years. Online scammers are luring people into installing a ransomware app on their computers that then informs them that they have violated federal child pornography laws and takes them to a website to allow them to pay their fine. Obviously, anyone with a brain knows that the government does not communicate with you through pop-ups on your computer, nor do they merely fine you for child pornography. Also, chances are people who have viewed child pornography know it and are probably waiting for the cops to bust their doors down, not offer them a way to pay a fine.

This is one of the two times of year when every time you turn around, there's another rumor, and it is so much fun for us to sift through the muck to find what might actually be truth. This rumor comes to us care of Microsoft and a number of domain registrations. Recently, Microsoft has registered MicrosoftSmartGlass.com. The site does not currently have content, but instead redirects to a Bing search for "microsoftsmartglass." Certainly a clever way to have a website about a product that is unannounced that is full of content.