F5 Live: Refreshing Technology (Audio)

This week, Pandora gets more competition, Apple products get a price reduction and Valve gets official with its spec for the Steam Machine.

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.

The recent launch of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c have not been without the infamous Apple disasters. From the iPhone 4 antenna issues, Apple Maps overall inaccuracy and the myriad of iPhone 5 issues, including camera and in-box scratching, Apple has not had a good phone launch in a while. For once, Apple has launched 2 new handsets together, and both are having their own individual problems.

Last week, Valve officially announced more information on both the Steam Machine and SteamOS. Eligible Steam users can sign up to be one of the 300 randomly selected members to receive a Steam Machine prototype, which will ship later this year. And now Valve has released details and specs of the prototypes.

France has a difficult relationship with reality. They have, in the past done crazy things like prevent Yahoo from purchasing Dailymotion because the government didn't want it sold to an American company, and then they go and do rational things, like challenging Google over its universal privacy policy. Defending them or being mad at them is definitely a moving target.

The battle for mobile streaming just got another major player in Rdio. The streaming service has announced that their stations service, similar to Pandora or Last.fm, will now be available to all users of the iOS or Android apps, whether paid or free subscriptions.

This week, Netflix shows its Super HD to everyone, Valve opens up to the living room with full Steam and Americans can't figure out teh Interwebz.

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.

BlackBerry's world is not exactly what they thought it would be. Sales are down, profits are down massively, layoffs are imminent and they just sold themselves to Fairfax Financial Holdings. In a letter of intent from BlackBerry, Fairfax Financial Holdings will purchase the struggling smartphone brand for $4.7 billion.

Ever since the introduction of Big Picture Mode and the Steam Box rumors, Valve has found a way to stay in the news, despite Gabe's ever-increasing insanity. This week, Valve announced more details on the Steam Box, and we now know that it isn't just one machine - even though we've known that unofficially for a while - and the company also announced the release of SteamOS.

A report released by the Pew Research Center reveals that 15 percent of American adults, 18 or older, do not use the Internet at all. The main reasons cited for avoiding the net are its difficulty to use and a lack of relevance.

Despite a fairly constant battle with ISPs, Netflix has unleashed its Super HD video quality to all streaming customers, regardless of the service provider. Previously, Super HD was only available to customers whose ISP had implemented Open Connect delivery system, but member requests have encouraged them to roll it out to all members.

This week, Microsoft rebrands Bing, Rockstar rings up the sales and BlackBerry reverts to its past.

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 stranger topics in our world has been the concept of Co-CEOs. The most famous example of this odd concept is Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie of Research in Motion (now BlackBerry). These two were replaced by Thorston Heins in 2012, but that transition has not panned out well. BlackBerry took forever to launch its BlackBerry 10 OS, which was plagued by marketing disasters, and that was the best aspect of the company's performance over the past year.

If you have been paying attention to your social media feeds over the past 2 weeks, you already knew that Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V was going to have a huge opening. If you read any of the reviews online, you could probably have guessed that it was going to have a record-setting release. But, how did it do in reality?

Over the past year, we have watched as Microsoft has redefined itself. From a completely redesigned Windows, to an entry into hardware and a corporate reorganization, topped by CEO Steve Ballmer's retirement, it is a completely new Microsoft. The one thing that has been the staple of the new One Microsoft philosophy is a central branding.

Sometimes I wonder if companies make announcements just to see if we will believe them or not. That is what we have here. Netflix has announced that their original series House of Cards will soon be available at Redbox, one of their biggest competitors.

This week, Icahn couldn't stop Dell, Pandora keeps moving toward advertising and Zynga will take the win, no matter how small it may be.

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.

In the 7 months since Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners announced plans to take Dell private, the pair has had a series of issues. He had to raise his bid because of loud major investors, plus the disaster that accompanies Carl Icahn's involvement in a corporation.

When former Zynga employee Alan Patmore left the company, he took with him 760 files through Dropbox. The files contained incredibly confidential information, including unannounced game design documents, company policy on how and why certain game mechanics are or are not included into a release, as well as the success and failure of particular new features for CityVille, the game for which Patmore was the general manager.

It has been 7 months since the federal Copyright Alert System, also known as the six-strikes system, went live, customers have been assured that permanent removal from the Internet was not a part of the system. According to new Alerts being sent out by AT&T, however, this does not seem to be the reality of the situation.

The search for a new CEO for Pandora concluded this week. Six months after the company's CEO, Joe Kennedy, resigned in March amidst strong Q4 numbers, Pandora announced its new chief executive today in a press release.

This week, Microsoft picks up Nokia, Yahoo points out the feds and Spotify keeps your music playing when you get home.

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!

A few months back, it was revealed that Microsoft and Nokia had been in talks for a buyout, but that something had gone wrong and the talks had ended permanently. There was a lot of speculation over the reasons, from the market penetration of Windows Phone to pricing. No matter what was said at that point, it would appear that it was all a distraction from the fact that Microsoft and Nokia were actually finalizing details over the acquisition.

After Microsoft's initial reveal that was followed up by the company's E3 announcement, a lot of changes and updates were made to the console. However, through all of the announcements and focus shifts, we were still waiting on a release date. This week, Microsoft came through and delivered just that.

Ever since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO of Yahoo, the company has had a complete turnaround. Yahoo is quickly becoming more relevant again and now owns an extremely large portfolio, and capped off the transition with a logo change. Now, Yahoo is becoming more transparent as well, and released some documents this week about the number of data requests received from government agencies around the world.

Ever since its arrival here in States, I've been following the Spotify saga. From the company's first greeting message to the list of new features and markets added recently, I'm a huge fan because of the software's uniqueness. Plus, it seems the developers are constantly adapting to the market and keeping Spotify competitive and ahead of the curve. This week is no exception, with the introduction of Spotify Connect.

This week, Apple gives up its quality, Marvel gives up its villain and Nintendo gives up a dimension.

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.

Apple's $368 million patent loss to VirnetX and subsequent lost ruling challenge has cost Apple more than just some money. As part of the battle, Apple has redesigned the backend of their Facetime system, resulting in significant quality loss.

In a move that sent the Internet into fits of insanity, Nintendo this week announced a new product in the 3DS line, the 2DS. The device, available on October 12 for $129, will be fully compatible with all games that the 3DS and 3DS XL can play, but without the 3D capabilities. It also has an altered design, looking more like a tablet that a clamshell; imagine an open 3DS.

A year ago, Facebook removed facial recognition from its photo services in Europe. The decision was made after a threat from the German government, where facial recognition is mostly illegal. As part of the agreement, all of the European facial templates were deleted, in return for the German commissioner dropping proceedings.

This week, BB guns and cell phones don't mix, Zuck's Facebook page gets hacked and it's time to stop playing games on your Windows.

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.

Sometimes, the tech world has some mishaps and usually nobody gets hurt. Unfortunately, this is not one of those times. In Seoul, South Korea, LG was holding a promotional event this week for their newest smartphone, the LG G2. As part of the event, there was a contest of sorts where people had to race for balloons which contained a voucher for a free G2. During that contest, 22 people were injured in the sheer pandemonium that ensued.

In addition to Microsoft's plans to retire Microsoft Points this week, the company has also announced that it will retire the Games for Windows Live marketplace on the same day, August 22. Microsoft has been working hard to unite their brands as well as focusing on their core businesses, and non-Windows 8 gaming under a non-Xbox brand is, apparently, not one of them.

We've talked about vulnerabilities a lot in the past, to the point where we had to recap all of them. Even though we haven't gone into a lot of detail about Facebook's security issues, the social networking giant also has its faults, to the point where they will pay you to find bugs, but only if you report them correctly. This is what Palestinian IT researcher Khalil Shreateh discovered this week, when he identified a major flaw in Facebook's security.

It has been two months since The Pirate Bay accused Prenda Law of planting torrents on its site in order to sue. As The Pirate Bay had suggested, Comcast has confirmed that site user Sharkmp4 is actually John Steele, founder and head of the copyright roll Prenda Law.

This week, Yahoo completes its makeover, OUYA still hasn't finished shipping its pre-orders and Android won't stop winning at malware.

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.

Cyber analyst team Trend Micro has warned us that by 2014, the count of malicious software created for Android will surpass the 1 million mark. To recap on why this is such a big deal and a problem, let's reference back to articles in the past two years about how Android is one of the most unsecure platforms on the market.

To continue the OUYA craze this week, the company is handing out credits to their backers on Kickstarter for not shipping out a console to each of them who pre-ordered one, even though the game system is already on shelves in retail stores. For those not aware, OUYA is an Android gaming system that only runs you $99, and I've never quite understood it. It doesn't have the same power as NVIDIA's SHIELD and appears to have been made to appease all of the gamers who are mad at corporations for putting DRM on their games to protect them from piracy, or something like that.

It was only a matter of time before this happened. Since taking over the company, Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer has been changing everything about the company. She has closed up unproductive products and purchased companies she thought were a good fit, such as Tumblr and Rockmelt. She even decided to try and revive Flickr.

In a trend that I have had no luck understanding, micro vlogging has become a popular business. Between Twitter's Vine and Instagram video, there is no shortage of videos so short they cannot get across a point.