F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, HP moves away from Android, Microsoft moves towards Beam and Hulu moves their free service to Yahoo.

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.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

Only a month after Dell moved away from Android, another big name in the computer industry seems to be going the same direction: Hewlett Packard. Currently listed on their website are 27 Windows tablets and only a single Android tablet (presumably because they have a lot of remaining stock). But the company is done trying to differentiate itself in the low-cost android marketplace.

Videogame streaming has become a big business. 2 years ago, Amazon purchased streaming site Twitch for just under $1 billion. This year, TBS launched online and cable broadcasts of ELEAGUE, whose first season just wrapped up. But gamers were never going to be content just watching a game from someone else's decided perspective - they want to be able to control the action themselves.

This week Facebook made a big play in the battle between the free web and ad blockers. The company created a way to show ads to its users who were using ad blockers, allowing them to once again generate the revenue that is required to keep the service operational.

At the beginning of the week, a slightly misunderstood collection of announcements were made by Hulu. First, their Hulu-branded free TV service was coming to an end. For the few of you who used it, the service provided the last 5 episodes of many TV Series for free with heavy commercial interaction. Once a new episode aired, the 5th oldest was retired and the new one would take its place.

This week, Pokemon GO causes legal heartache, Facebook begins removing misleading stories and Hulu begins to prepare for live video.

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.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

T-Mobile has had a difficult relationship with reality in their past. In 2010, the company rebranded their 3G+ network as 4G, which was not exactly true. While it had speeds that were close to or within the speeds of 4G, the network itself was not that. Either way, the reality and the marketing were not the same. Since then, John Legere, the company CEO, has changed the company almost entirely.

As the concept of augmented reality begins to take ahold of the world in one shape or another, the inevitable has happened: the battle for ownership of virtual land has begun. A lawsuit, filed in California, claims that Niantic has no legal right to place virtual items on virtual land in a virtual world that they created over top of reality. The suit comes on behalf of New Jersey resident Jeffrey Marder, who is annoyed that people playing Niantic's popular Pokémon GO game have been hanging around his house and, in a few instances, have asked his permission to access his yard to chase a Pokémon.

Facebook likes to tweak the algorithm that decides what to show you in your news feed. Often, their intentions are to increase the value proposition of their product - the longer you stay, the more you interact with, the more advertising dollars they can generate. Therefore, it is in their best interest to continue placing posts in your feed that will hold your interest and keep you within the system. Sometimes, though, they attack things they consider to be a problem.

In the early days of streaming video services, it was easy to differentiate yourself. There were basically 2 services: Netflix offered movies, Hulu offered television. Today that's not exactly how it works. Hulu has exclusive access to the Criterion Collection, while Netflix gets episodes of CW shows a week after the season ends.

This week, Facebook goes to court, Yahoo goes to Verizon and Stranger Things goes on.

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.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

The landscape of the computer industry has changed a lot over the decade or so. IBM, the company responsible for personal computers, no longer makes or sells them, selling that division to Lenovo. Compaq, the company that created the IBM-compatible marketplace, was absorbed into HP. Dell, once the leader in computer sales, dropped and went private. Sony got out of the business entirely, spinning Vaio off to its own company. Hewlett Packard, formerly the first name in consumer sales, is now 2 companies, and one of them is not doing well.

The concept of Facebook Credits was doomed from the beginning. In 2011, the company forced developers to use their currency within Facebook-enabled games. Later that year, they saw potential in mobile payments. But, just a month later, the wheels started to come off of the bus. Zynga was pulling away from Facebook, and focusing their attention on mobile.

As soon as Yahoo appointed Marissa Mayer CEO, we all knew it would end one of two ways: she would repair the deficits of the company and turn it around, or she would be the last CEO of the company. There was no chance that the company would survive losses long enough to replace her, as the troubles were greater than could overcome the search for another leader. Unfortunately the latter turned out to be correct, as the core business auction has finally come to a close, with a new owner at the wheel.

If you have not yet watched, or at least started watching Netflix's original series Stranger Things, you are definitely in the minority. The program has been one of the most talked about series on social media, and there doesn't seem to be anyone saying anything other than "Wow."

This week, messaging makes money again, Yahoo approaches the end and Microsoft loves HD.

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.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

Tech Initial Public Offerings are a tricky endeavor, especially lately. They are so difficult that, in 2016, there have only been 5 tech IPOs. The latest is another messaging app, and one you have likely not encountered unless you are communicating often with Asia. The company and messaging product are called Line, and they work just like products like WhatsApp.

When Pokémon GO released last week, it was clear that it was going to be big. Within a few days, the game had more active daily users than Twitter. With successes like that, it was inevitable that companies would figure out a way to take advantage of the popularity of the game. As the first full week of the game progressed, we saw lots of companies find unique ways to get involved.

Since Yahoo's decision to sell the internet business, several attempts have been made to figure out exactly how to carry out the sale. The final decision was to hold a confidential auction, where bidders could determine the pieces they were interested in, and the price they were willing to pay. The auction has been held in several rounds, with bidders dropping out over time. The current round, which ends Monday July 18, is the final, and the board is expected to make a decision shortly after.

Since the launch of Windows 10 Microsoft has had an uphill battle trying to distinguish Microsoft Edge from Internet Explorer. IE was "The Browser You Loved to Hate," an ad campaign that Microsoft ran before retiring the browser stated. It's true, the browser received a lot of hate with regular internet users, mostly because of previous versions that had not performed nearly as well as its competitors. With that, Microsoft switched entirely.

This week, Pokemon GO takes over the world, HummingBad takes over your phone and Amazon takes a chance with Warner Bros.

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.

Daniele is a student at Florida Polytechnic University who is studying Computer Science with a concentration in Cyber Security. In High School, she was introduced to the science and technology world through the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), a robotics foundation where students of varying ages can compete through tasks that their robots perform. With help from mentors she met through FIRST, she became interested in programming and developing. Today, Daniele is a special events host for F5 Live: Refreshing Technology and PLuGHiTz Live Special Events and a co-host for both The New Product Launchpad and FIRST Looks.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

One of the words that is becoming most synonymous with Android is malware. It seems every few months we hear about another major piece of malware that is rooting Android devices by the millions and serving up disaster. In November we were informed about 3 new ones that were present in at least 20,000 Android apps in Play Store.

The most anticipated mobile game of the year, and possibly in the industry's history, was released this week: Pokémon GO. The title is an augmented reality game, combining mythical creatures and artificial locations with the real world. While walking around in reality, you can encounter Pokémon, allowing you to try and catch them with your phone. This is done with an AR screen, which puts the creature directly into your real environment.

The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Facebook over their lack of cooperation with an IRS investigation. Facebook transferred some if its intellectual property to a wholly-owned subsidiary located in Ireland. The transfer was made because of more favorable tax rates in Ireland versus the United States. This is a fairly common practice, so why are the IRS and DoJ involved?

The battle for video streaming dominance is a heated one, and it is set to get worse with time. This week, Amazon announced a new partnership that will add 33 new exclusive titles to Prime Instant Video. The partnership is with Warner Bros. and includes some of their largest titles, including Lethal Weapon and the Matrix franchise.

This week, Dell discontinues a commodity, Facebook downplays news and Apple buys obscurity.

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.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

One of the truths about technology is that it eventually becomes a commodity. Centuries ago, bronze and steel were technologies, which were commoditized. In more recent times, cars were once considered technology, though today have also been commoditized. When that happens, manufacturers involved in those commodities must find ways to differentiate themselves in the market or get out.

Since the beginning of the Xbox One, one of the best non-interface uses for the Kinect was Xbox Fitness. This app allowed you to exercise with the help of virtual trainers and coaches, using the Kinect sensor to ensure you were doing things correctly. Xbox Live Gold members got a whole collection of programs for free, with others available to purchase.

Over the past few years, Facebook has courted publishers to their platform with tools to make publishing news, reviews and opinions easy. For many publications, Facebook is the first or second most popular source of traffic on news stories, with people liking, commenting and sharing on the network. The newsfeed takes all of that into account for what to show on your News Feed, meaning that your friends topics are more likely to show in your feed.

In 2014, Apple made a seemingly surprising purchase in Beats. The headphone brand was in slight competition with Apple's own headphones and the music service was a market disaster. In the 2 years since the purchase, Apple has mostly rebranded Beats Music to Apple Music and the headphone purchase will help them make the terrible transition from a regular headphone jack to their proprietary connection. It would seem that the company has what it needs to revitalize their music business.

This week, Lenovo makes it easy to steal your data, Google makes a big push out of Fiber and Netflix considers playing offline.

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.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

One of the topics we talk about a lot here is personal security and for good reason: There are lots of ways to get harmed through technology. Whether it be a malicious ad on a website, an attachment in an email or an app in an app store, if someone wants your information there are plenty of ways to get it. Over the years Microsoft has tried to prevent that in Windows, but it requires everybody involved to be responsible and observant.

In the start-up world, there is the concept of a unicorn. This is a company in a crowded space that receives an unexplainable amount of investment dollars or sells for a price higher than can be explained. The concept of the unicorn has existed outside of startups, though. For example, the casual and mobile gaming industry as a whole seems to be a unicorn in itself.

Google Fiber may be a well-known name, but it is not exactly a commonplace service. In fact, the company only offers service in 6 markets today, with another 6 in-progress, and several others being considered. Expansion has been slow, though, partially because of the high cost of installation and partially because of overall interest in the offering, both from consumers and from municipalities.

In the last few years, Netflix has become the indispensable service for most of the developed world. Between television and movies, plus comedy specials and original content, you can waste away many hours with the content available on the service. In fact, as I sit here writing, I have Netflix running in the background.

This week, Windows says Hello to wearables, Twitter says no thanks to Yahoo and the world says meh to Google Magenta's music.

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.

Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.

One of the most interesting and innovative aspects of Windows 10 is Windows Hello. This is the altered login system that can use a variety of different unique identifiers to unlock your computer without you having to type your password. Currently, the most common authentication methods are facial recognition and the old standby, fingerprint reader.

A videogame that is capable of engaging people of all ages across all demographics comes infrequently. In fact, it happens almost never. Minecraft is, without question, one of those games. Children and adults have become obsessed with the digital LEGO, world-building game across desktop, Windows 10, mobile, console - anywhere you are, you can likely play the game.

In the tech industry, the billion dollar question is, "What is the future of Yahoo?" A decade ago, the brand was one of the most visited sites on the Internet. Today, however, the company is in disarray and its CEO, Marissa Mayer, has done everything that she can think of to keep the sinking ship afloat. While she has helped the bottom line significantly, she has not been able to patch the hole in the boat.

Artificial Intelligence is a computing concept that has been an obsession for many for decades. Science fiction stories are littered with AI, both positive and negative. In the real world, however, AI and neural networks have only recently become a big topic of research because of the power of cloud computing. Distributed computing has been used for long-running computing cycles for years, but now, thanks to the cloud, it can be used for large, short-term processes.

This week, Apple loses a lawsuit, TBS gains some gaming and Amazon is looking for new shows.

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.

In 2012, Apple was sued by a patent holder, VirnetX, for violating their patents with FaceTime and iMessage. In particular, VirnetX owns 4 patents that describe a particular process for secure, highly available communications, which they claim several of Apple's products use without permission. Apple first lost this suit in 2012, then vowing to fight the ruling, which would cost them $368 million. After redesigning the software and another court loss, the result is $626 million in penalty.

In the United States, it's been a long time coming. Videogames are a big deal here, but somehow professional gaming has never taken hold on television. Sure, sites like Twitch have given a rise in popularity but never in the mainstream.

One topic we've talked about a lot has been in online advertising. Advertising is one of the keys to the free web. Without online advertising, companies like ours can't make money and provide content to you without charging you. Therein lies the main problem with ad blockers.

The video streaming market is fierce. What started with Netflix providing other people's content has become a whole new industry. The Big 3 continue to try to separate themselves from the pack, and a great way to do that is to produce original content.

This week, we're at Gulf Coast MakerCon 2016!

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.

Daniele is a student at Florida Polytechnic University who is studying Computer Science with a concentration in Cyber Security. In High School, she was introduced to the science and technology world through the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), a robotics foundation where students of varying ages can compete through tasks that their robots perform. With help from mentors she met through FIRST, she became interested in programming and developing. Today, Daniele is a special events host for F5 Live: Refreshing Technology and PLuGHiTz Live Special Events and a co-host for both The New Product Launchpad and FIRST Looks.