F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, Hungary ditches a money-hungry Internet tax, Alienware replaces SteamOS with better software and Microsoft bounces back with the Band.

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!

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.

Thursday night, Microsoft announced the Microsoft Band, and new health-related wearable from Redmond. The device has a very Modern design, a very Modern interface and a collection of health sensors: some fairly common, like heart rate, and others fairly unique, like UV sensor. The accompanying application platform, Microsoft Health, has compatibility with the Big 3 mobile platforms: Windows Phone, iOS and Android. The device was available Friday morning at Microsoft Store locations and online.

Because Valve underestimated the complexities of developing a specialized operating system, SteamOS has been delayed until, let's say 2015. However, if their other software projects are any indication, seeing the platform launch before 2017 would be pretty amazing. Unfortunately, unlike their normal inability to estimate the scope of a software project, this one has hardware partners losing money every day the platform is delayed.

We've seen Internet taxes proposed across the world before, but they infrequently get implemented and the ones that do infrequently last. This is the case in Hungary, whose proposed Internet tax has officially been abandoned. The Primi Minister, Victor Orbán, made the announcement following protests in the tens of thousands of participants were held across the country.

Google might be trying to do whatever it can to keep YouTube in its top spot as a video sharing platform, along with making it profitable. The word right now is that Google is tossing around creating a subscription model to YouTube that would let content watchers pay to skip the ads that show up during a video.

This week, Ello puts an ad blocker on its company, Stitcher gets sewn in with Deezer and one bad Apple turns into two bad weeks.

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!

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.

Exactly one month ago, Apple had a very bad week. Between build quality issues on the iPhone 6, iOS 8 update issues, iCloud and Apple Pay security plus a UNIX bug, life was not good for their customers or the company in the press. One thing we have learned about Apple is that they have a plan for recovering from major public relations disasters; perhaps that is a thing of the past. This week, Apple had another series of PR disasters, many related to the last batch.

We've talked at length about the Xbox One and Microsoft's decision to be indecisive on the path of the console. The good news is that it's finally all coming together, albeit in a slightly altered path than the original. And even though its competition is copying ideas that gamers said they didn't want but somehow are now miraculously loving (and are paying for), there hasn't been a major vision shift for over six months, so I think we've hit our stride. Microsoft's Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, has guided the ship for a while now but sat down with IGN's Podcast Unlocked to talk about some of the confusion and frustration consumers felt after the initial launch of the Xbox One.

We were all curious what was going to happen when Ello ran out of money. An ad-free social networking platform is a noble idea, but pay-for-feature websites have sprung up in the past and have failed, so many were worried about Ello's sustainability. Well, the good news is that Ello has answered both the money question and its promise to remain ad-free.

Over the last few months, we have worked to get our shows into Stitcher. If you don't know what Stitcher is, it is essentially a centralized podcast marketplace. One of the things that makes the platform unique is its growing range of devices on which you can access its content.

This week, HBO goes solo, Sony rests its laurels on the success of the PS4 and one town says Comcast isn't welcome in those there parts.

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!

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.

Congratulations are in order for Sony's seemingly only profitable division: PlayStation. September was another successful month for them, outselling Microsoft's new console for the ninth straight month. This is a big win for Sony, who has been having nothing but trouble internally. Between billion dollar losses and major layoffs, Sony needs the win here.

The Time Warner-Comcast merger has been a point of contention for many. Until now, the most vocal of which has been Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who has said that the merger will lead to higher prices for everyone.

HBO's business model has been fairly consistent for its entire existence: if you have cable, you can add HBO to your subscription for a monthly fee. In the last few decades of cable-based appointment television, this model has been incredibly successful. The two major changes to their business have been original programming, such as The Newsroom and Game of Thrones, and HBO GO.

This week, we are broadcasting live from Roboticon Tampa Bay 2014 at the University of Tampa!

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!

This week, we go to 3000 from the Brigade down in Miami!

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!

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.

This week, we discuss why these new Apples are finally Cook'd.

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!

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.

It isn't often that a company has an entire week they would like to Ctrl-Z. This week has been exactly that for Apple, or however you might accomplish an Undo on a Mac. It seemed that every time we turned around, Apple was making negative headlines again for a new reason. Between shoddy products, security disasters and knowledge thereof, plus an update that could brick phones, this is a week Apple would like to strike from the record. I don't think that's going to happen.

It isn't often that a company has an entire week they would like to Ctrl-Z. This week has been exactly that for Apple, or however you might accomplish an Undo on a Mac. It seemed that every time we turned around, Apple was making negative headlines again for a new reason. Between shoddy products, security disasters and knowledge thereof, plus an update that could brick phones, this is a week Apple would like to strike from the record. I don't think that's going to happen.

This week, Clippy might invade Minecraft, hackers invade the Bitcoin founder's email address and Apple evades the iGeneration of devices.

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!

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.

By now, everyone knows about the announcements that came out of the Apple event this week. Two new iPhone sizes, another half-hearted wearable device and another mobile payment platform. While there may not have been anything to get excited about, there was something truly interesting that happened during the event - an admission from Apple that the iGeneration is over.

The "serious discussion" rumors that Microsoft would be buying Mojang are apparently true. Microsoft will be planning to announce on Monday that it has acquired the gaming studio behind the insanely popular game, Minecraft, for $2.5 billion.

The Bitcoin saga is an interesting one. Amidst the violent ups and downs of the virtual currency, there has been a constant question on the minds of everyone. People have been wanting to know who the founder and creator of Bitcoin is. We know that the name Satoshi Nakamoto has been tossed around but we've not been able to put a face to the name. Whoever it is has made it very difficult to trace the concept of Bitcoin back to him or her. Even Newsweek went down a rabbit hole and came up empty-handed and confused. That was all true until this week, when we may have a new lead on who could've created Bitcoin.

The landscape of television and movies has been changing over the past few years in a big way. Less people are watching television live, with big new shows like The Blacklist being the most time-diverted shows on television. In fact, as I write this, I am streaming a television show on Netflix, which is a normal scenario for me. With services like Netflix and Hulu giving people access to shows without a cable subscription, many people have been cutting the cord with their cable companies; saving money with only Internet and subscriptions to these services.

This week, we say goodbye to Windows Live Messenger, we say hello to a new owner of Twitch and Netflix says "thank you" to one of Hulu's owners for a hit show.

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!

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.

With the onslaught of data breaches happening lately, both online and in-store, it almost feels like nothing is safe anymore. You might be feeling a bit skeptical about even stepping foot outside or on the Web, and you might have good reason for feeling that way. This week, a report has come out that could make your palms sweat a little more. Even if you have a secure Wi-Fi password or PIN code for your one-touch WPS option, hackers can still crack the code in under a second.

So it turns out the entire Internet was wrong, including us, and Google didn't actually buy Twitch. All the changes just seemed to be coincidence, as it was announced this week that Amazon stepped in and laid out $970 million for the video game streaming service.

In 2012, Microsoft announced that it was closing Windows Live Messenger, also known as MSN Messenger, worldwide in favor of its then recently acquired Skype. There was only a single exception: mainland China. While there was no real explanation at the time as to why China was keeping the outdated service which, obviously, would no longer allow out-of-country communication, it was accepted as just another China thing.

I often wonder if Comcast (NBC), Disney (ABC) and News Corp. (FOX) remember that they jointly own Hulu. It is usually when a company makes an odd decision that helps a service that they are not involved with in a way that hurts Hulu. This week, we discover that Netflix has purchased the rights to stream NBC's 2013 top-rated new series The Blacklist.

This week, Sony gets hit with hackers again, Ballmer focuses on basketball and the House of Representatives messes with the Internet.

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!

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.

Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO and now the owner of the NBA's LA Clippers, has officially stepped down as a board member with Microsoft this week, effective immediately. In an open letter to new CEO Satya Nadella, Ballmer mentions that his six month mark of retirement is coming up and he's had a lot of time to reflect on what he's done and what he wants to do moving forward.

For some reason, Congressional staffers love to spend time editing Wikipedia. Often times these edits are innocuous, but from time to time they can be material edits to content. Occasionally, those edits are not only material, but inflammatory. Fortunately for those of us who rely on the information on Wikipedia, the organization has a process for dealing with these edits.

With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Redbox owning the video-streaming service without needing to rely on customers having an active cable subscription, it would only make sense for companies tied to those cable companies to want a piece of the action. It also isn't surprising that financial groups are starting to talk about the benefit of those endeavors. This is why Barclays Capital issued a report this week saying that if HBO would sell its programming - something we all have thought would happen at some point soon - the company could make an additional $600 million per year.

This week, Gamescom brings out the true colors of the big two, Xbox original programming might find a new home at Warner Bros. and the FCC might care about your feelings on net neutrality.

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!

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.

As we've talked about on the show, the health tech space is growing so rapidly that government agencies are now afraid of it. That means the industry is doing quite well. It also means we're seeing new and cool ways to implement health features into technology products, as well as some interesting partnerships. This all happened when SMS Audio and Intel joined forces this week to launch a new line of in-ear health headphones.

This week at Gamescom in Germany, we got to see the future plans from Sony and Microsoft for the holiday season and beyond. Specifically, we saw the rebirth of some original ideas, and a little bit of copying and finger-pointing from one of the two.

When the FCC opened up public comments on net neutrality, they were flooded with input. As the deadline, July 15, got closer, they received so many comments that their servers crashed, meaning people wanting to give their input were left in the dark.

A couple weeks ago, Microsoft announced the largest round of layoffs in the company's history. While most of the loss will come from the Nokia division, several other divisions saw big cuts as well. One division seeing a full cut is the Xbox Entertainment Studios. Xbox head Phil Spencer announced that XES, founded only 2 years ago and about to release its first set of original programming, would be disbanded.