The UpStream

Things might be looking up for Hulu, finally. CEO Jason Kilar said this week that the video streaming service has over 1 million paid subscribers on its network, meeting its numbers that the company predicted earlier in the year. With Hulu still up for sale, this certainly adds a lot of value to the company, who has been struggling in recent months to gain any traction in a market of new, rising services.

While Hulu plans on spending another $375 million on content this year, it also helped that they spent big bucks on partner agreements with Viacom and Miramax only a few short months ago.

It also should be noted that Hulu is still the only service to stream just-aired shows as soon as 24 hours after initial airing. Kilar chalks up the growth of the company to those TV shows and the exclusives that they have with the joint owners of News Corp., Disney and Comcast Universal.

Kilar did mention that, despite some programming stations not wanting to come over to the green machine, Hulu is projecting $500 million in revenue this year alone. "I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll work with everyone over time," Kilar said.

As far as the sale of Hulu, that's still up in the air. Rumors of Google, Amazon or Yahoo bidding for the company are still flying around and nobody behind the closed doors are saying anything to hint one way or the other. At this point, all we know is that 1 million paid subscribers are waiting for an answer that needs to be known soon.

GameStop has been making some very strange and/or questionable decisions as of late. They learned from EA about the devious ways of digital distribution, they've tampered with content found in brand new games and they've even started to belive that Apple products are so shiny that even they can make money off of an iPod. So what's GameStop doing now to go along with this steady stream of slightly insane? They're going to sell tablets, of course! Not just any tablet, though, as GameStop is going to be selling their own GameStop branded two-handheld device.

Tony Bartel, president of GameStop, said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz that they've selected a "GameStop-certified gaming platform" to market after going through several options on what the tablet of choice might be.

What could this tablet have that you won't see anywhere else? We have details after the break.

During Mobile World Congress in February this year, Nvidia made a powerful showing with their super-powered mobile quad-core CPU, appropriately named Kal-El. It put the Tegra 2 and Core2Duo to shame according to the Coremark benchmark. Its 12-core GPU also blew us away with stunning 1440p game demos that made all of us here at PLuGHiTz Live! Radio think it could change the way mobile computing works, and as it turns out, we were right because Kal-El has a secret fifth core.

Wait, doesn't that mean Kal-El is masquerading around as a quad-core and Nvidia is outperforming Tegra 2 and Core2Duo by cheating? Well, it doesn't seem that way and here's why. Yes, Kal-El has five cores but the purpose and architecture of the fifth core makes it more of a core that's crippled by kryptonite than a super core. It does perform a function that seems to be unique to mobile computing, though, and you can find out all about that by reading on after the break.

On September 10th of this year at Mobile Future Forward, the topic of discussion was largely mobile payment technologies and the rather mediocre adoption rates they have been experiencing. As it turns out, the corporate sector may not be the market segment that brings mobile payments into the mainstream, as companies like Square, Amex, Google and Visa had previously expected. Instead, average consumers offer potential in not only growing the market for mobile payments but opening up an entirely new market segment.

The big guns at Mobile Future Forward also cited the lack of widespread use of NFC (near field communication) in mobile devices and retail outlets wasn't helping their cause and they didn't expect that technology to be mainstream for at least another three years. Google announced Google Wallet back in May of this year and they have teamed up with Sprint to start pulling NFC and widespread mobile payments into the present.

I have very good news - the wait is almost over. In just a few days the tech media will finally stop talking about the iPhone 5's impending release! The reason, of course, is because Apple has scheduled a media event for October 4th. Based on reports that Sprint has canceled vacation time for mid-October and the fact that Apple really has nothing else going for it, it must be the release of the iPhone 5.

The phone, however, is not what I am intrigued about (big surprise, right?). We all know that Steve Jobs resigned as CEO not long ago. This unveiling will be the first one with new CEO Tim Cook at the helm. He has to be the presenter. Without him on stage, it will send the message that he is not cut out to fill the shoes of Jobs who, even during illnesses, has been on stage for major events.

How is this going to work for Cook? Hit the break for my take on the situation.

It's been a rough couple of weeks for HP since CEO Leo Apotheker announced plans to spin off their computer division and discontinued webOS hardware. Everyone everywhere seems to think it is a terrible mistake that will ultimately sink the company. Apotheker asserts that focusing on the software and services business will bring HP back to prosperity, but the rest of the world seems to think it is a terrible decision.

The rest of the world seems to include HP's Board of Directors, as Leo Apotheker was let go only 11 months after joining the company. If you remember, he was brought in to replace former CEO Mark Hurd was terminated for inappropriate behavior with a contractor. Since taking over, Apotheker has constantly been a source of confusion for those of us who spend our lives covering the industry. After promising a bright future for webOS and then closing the platform, it is no surprise he is out.

Who will replace him? We have her name and history after the break.