BitTorrent Using Facebook to Do Legal Things - 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.

Josh has come from the Brazilian wilds to bring yet another perspective on the gaming industry as well as today's up-and-coming technology. You may have seen him at GameStop over the past two years, or if you're a lover of Largo High School Productions, you have seen him up on stage doing his thing the last 4 years. On occasion, you can catch him on Xbox Live mowing down zombies in Left 4 Dead or making it rain on Madden 2010.

An APB beta participant recently noticed a "VOIP Premium" option in his account management page, which promises to keep ads off of the in-game chat program in exchange for real-life monies. Developer Realtime Worlds was quick to clarify the terms of these ads: they'll only play when traveling between Districts, and only if the player hasn't heard an advertisement in the last three hours.

The drums of war are sounding over the motion-controlled gaming market, and efforts have escalated significantly earlier this week, when Microsoft's Kinect gained an endorsement from one of the world's foremost cultural leaders: Teen sensation Justin Bieber. Click past the jump to see the intro video to one of Bieber's recent performances: A clip which shows Bieber and company trying out Dance Central and Kinect Adventures, unlocking a few lucrative (albeit fake) Achievements along the way.

Ever since last week's Nintendo press conference at E3 2010, everyone has been talking about the new Nintendo 3DS. What everyone seems to have forgotten is that no real games were announced, other than Kid Icarus: Uprising.

The evidence has always existed that large corporations will find useful, excellent ways to use torrent services and Facebook has joined the list of big businesses supporting torrents by stating this week that BitTorrent helps with the transfer of new code between each and every one of its servers.

Bing Entertainment launched this week and with it, Microsoft has given users the ability to stream and purchase music through the Zune MP3 store right from the search results. It only made sense for the Zune store to now also accept credit cards, after a long time of only being able to accept Microsoft points. Zune.net hasn't been able to be used to purchase music until this change was made; users would have to buy Microsoft points before they could actually purchase the songs they wanted. Adversely, consumers would have to access the Zune Marketplace or install the Zune software to accomplish what they wanted to do. Microsoft had to consider all consumers who may not have these devices or software installed who could be potential users of their services.

The Microsoft Store's official Twitter account is inviting folks to try Kinect at its stores "nationwide," which sounds a lot more impressive before the realization hits that there are only four locations in the entire country. The MS Twitter account also notes that Kinectimals will be shown off this weekend, so looks like those of you nearby will be able to play with skittles, which sounds a lot better than playing with a wet monkey. The miracle to me is that something interesting actually came out of twitter.

Ever since last week's Nintendo press conference at E3 2010, everyone has been talking about the new Nintendo 3DS. What everyone seems to have forgotten is that no real games were announced, other than Kid Icarus: Uprising.

Sony posted a new entry on their PlayStation blog this week, hoping to clarify some questions and confusion regarding their new PlayStation Plus package announced at E3 last week.

Are you tired of scouring the Interwebs for porn sites with names like www.somethingsemidirty.com or www.somethingharmless.edu? Well, your search just got a lot easier. ICANN, the international board in charge of the Internet has approved the addition of another top-level domain - .xxx. I bet you can guess what that's for.

Wednesday June 23rd, 2010 marks the end of round 1, which began back in 2007, for the Google owned YouTube vs. Viacom lawsuit with an unanimous decision in favor of YouTube. Judge Stanton's summary judgment states that section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act offers safe harbor to ISPs that take an active role in responding to copyright infringement complaints. He also stated that, "the DMCA is explicit," meaning sites like YouTube do not have to actively seek out infringing content, they only are required to respond to complaints.

Everyone here at PLuGHiTz Live! Radio that has a phone capable of using Foursquare uses it constantly but fortunately for Foursquare their user base extends beyond us and continues to grow by leaps and bounds. This is part of the reason why this location-based social networking service has been receiving enormous amounts of attention from investment groups and large Internet companies such as Yahoo! and Facebook. The other reason is because interested companies like the amount of innovation the service has seen over the past several months. Many of the talks with prospective investors have come close to closing but have fallen short. Their deal with Facebook, which is who Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley wants to work with the most, is on the rocks as they are finding it difficult to negotiate for more cash rather than stock in the social networking giant.

It is nice to be able to write about the upcoming 2-part film The Hobbit and not have bad news. It is the reason I have mostly avoided the topic until now. Today I have some of the best news nerds all over the world could possibly get. Guillermo del Toro is officially out as director and his replacement is Peter Jackson!