Facebook Upgrades Its Messaging, Again - 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.

Allante - also well known as Wolff - is the newest member and co-host for PLuGHiTz Live! Radio. A gifted artist, he is usually found drawing up a character or two or sketching up whatever comes to mind. Do not think that he is not a hardcore gamer because he is about as hardcore as it gets! His favorites range from fighting games to RPGs, adventure and even a racing game here and there. Fighting games are his forte and he relays this message for all who oppose: You mess with the Wolff and you get the fangs!

XB360 - Enigmatic Wolff

PSN - Tsukuyomi_Okami

So any notion that Hulu might be finally moving in the right direction, even after they put themselves up for sale can just be tossed out the window. The video-streaming service hit another roadblock this week, as their Facebook integration launch ended in failure, at least for now. Logging into your Facebook account to connect your Hulu account to it would sometimes result in you seeing some other users' information, like profile photo and email address. I guess if you're into the whole live someone else's life kind of thing, it's not such a bad feature, but for everyone else, we'd prefer to see our own information.

Facebook, in an attempt to mitigate the damage done by Google+, made a big integration announcement this week. Starting now, if you install Skype version 5.0 for Windows, you will be able to use Skype from within Facebook.

With Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams largely out of the picture, CEO Dick Costolo is looking to expand their current ad platform to start bringing in some more money as they look to raise another round of investor capital. Who and how much are still unanswered questions but in the past Twitter has averaged around $200-$300 million per round so we could probably expect to see a similar amount this time as well. The reason for the new capital is simple, they need to buy time so they can actually try to find a way to legitimize their service. This is a problem that goes back well before March of last year when Biz Stone announced they really weren't sure how to make money and also weren't really worried about it, at all.

You have to admire the nerve of a company like Apple who started their life off with a commercial literally breaking people free from the man's hold on them with a sledgehammer going after companies for using a pretty common phrase that has been around since before Apple got into the mobile space. That, however, is exactly what has happened once again, this time between Apple and GetJar, a mobile phone application marketplace.

It has come to my attention that the VP/COO of Sledgehammer Games understands the frustration that color blind gamers endure as well as those that are forced to play with them, especially in games like Modern Warfare 3. We don't mean to be team killers; it's just sometimes hard to tell who's who. Better safe than sorry right?

In the wake of myspace's sale last week, Google has decided that it needs to fill the power vacuum by filling the position vacated by myspace. There are, apparently not enough second-tier, poorly thought out social networking sites, so Google is stepping in with Google+, since second-tier and poorly thought out are right in their wheel house. Google+ is both of these.

We know Xbox LIVE has been very much into the video scene. No matter where you live and what you like to stream, there's options for you. You have Netflix, Hulu Plus, AT&T U-Verse and even Sky Player for my people in UK, and that's just the third-party stuff. There's a whole catalog of video goodness within LIVE's Video Marketplace, too. However, if you are like most people, we blow by the Video Marketplace on our way to Netflix or Hulu Plus, knowing our options are a little more extensive over there. There's that, and the fact that we've already paid a monthly subscription for one if not both of those services and don't want to shell out another 400-800 Microsoft Points to rent out an HD movie.