This week, Tumblr tumbles into a pile of cash, Hulu's letting go of some of theirs and Google Beats the Apple.
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.
This is pretty cool. Intel, along with creating jobs and working on new microprocessors is also going to help the NFL. This week Intel said they were working on utilizing their Atom chips in a way so that they can be placed inside NFL players' helmets and give real-time impact and G-force data to the medical staff on the sidelines during the game. This will allow the staff to remove players when forces exceed set limits, or allow them to react faster to serious injuries in those pile-ups that occur. We have no set time frame or date that this will happen, but it's another step in the right direction for players of high-speed, high-impact games.
Microsoft's been on a Tweet craze lately. After announcing that the 'Series' from 'Windows Phone 7 Series' will be dropped, they dropped an announcement on their Twitter saying Verizon customers should expect WinPho 7 devices for the holidays with more coming in 2011.
A little while ago Sony Ericsson hinted that there might be a PlayStation Phone and now they really seem to be hinting at it, or are they?
HSPA, where have I heard that before? Oh yes, it was talked about when 3G technologies were new and upcoming and improving and developing and all that good stuff. Now, we have HSPA+, which is 2.5x faster than the former HSPA network. To summarize, both of these networks are third generation technology. With me so far? Good.
If you have been following The UpStream since August of last year, you know very well that Google and Apple have been battling over Google Voice on the iPhone. Apple claimed that Google's Voice app duplicated too many features of the iPhone and that it would be confusing for users.
OnLive still may be battling its latency issues, but that's not stopping the company from releasing their MicroConsole TV adapter that connects your TV to your Internet and allows you to game with a nifty PlayStation360 lookalike controller with media buttons on the bottom.
The concept of spending real money on virtual items isn't anything out of this world. Millions of people already do that in FarmVille, but in Entropia Universe cows are so much more than just a few Mac Worlds ago and so much less expensive.
Last week Microsoft talked about Kinect not being hacked by NUI Group, an open-source conglomeration of of developers and programmers, but merely that they wrote "drivers" allowing the device to be used on different platforms. None of that has changed but this week they are doing flip-flopping on some other issues concerning their intentions with Kinect.
Today I have the misfortune of being the bearer of bad but not unexpected news - Portal 2 has been delayed again. Its most recent planned release date was February 9, 2011. Now we find out that we will not get the pleasure of playing Co-op Portal until April 20, 2011. Only a 2 month delay, but we all know how this works with Valve. Do any of you actually expect to see Half-Life 2: Episode 3?
I think that by now everyone knows that Twitter is a huge, worthless hole filled with cash. What you might not know is that Tumblr is right behind them, following the same path.
Now that we have discussed how Tumblr stays around, the next topic is why. It bills itself as a blogging site but in reality it tends to lend itself to being very 4chan. In fact, recently there has been a war building between the anti-social 4channers and the anti-social tumblrs. Sounds thrilling, eh?
I know, I told you weeks ago about a possible price cut for Hulu Plus and after reading the press release last week and seeing that it was still $9.99/month, I informed you otherwise. Well, for the first time in a long time, one of our rumors turned out to be correct as this week Hulu Plus announced it was out, available and less than $10/month. That's right, you can now have the awesome that is Hulu Plus for only $7.99/month.