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.

Over the past couple of years, industry interest in communications technology has really grown. Where once only a few chat applications, like AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, ruled the internet, today, there is a huge selection to choose from. But, with interest comes acquisitions, and this week another platform has gone to one of the big guys, with Amazon acquiring Wickr. The company announced,

When Windows 10 was announced, one of the biggest changes was to the distribution model. Rather than being a multi-year development cycle with major updates bringing a new version number and a new charge, Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows. All updates would come under that moniker and would not cost - instead, these updates would be bi-annual and be distributed through Windows Update. This week, some of that has been walked back, but not the important part - Windows 11 will be a free update for Windows 10 owners.

When Microsoft launched Windows 8, the Windows Store was a big part of the changes to the operating system. The Store was an integrated place for people to safely acquire software for their computers, similar to the App Store, Google Play, and others that came before it. But Microsoft struggled, on and off, to get enough apps in the store to make a big play. But, the Microsoft Store (which is the renamed Windows Store) has a new plan - become the secure mall of apps instead of a single store.

The one topic that everyone seems to be able to agree on is the dangers presented by big tech. While everyone sees different potential hazards, the existence of hazards is seemingly universal. As such, it is a focus of the current Congress and the House Judiciary Committee. This week, the Committee approved a new bill that would likely break up the big tech companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google.

There is no doubt that consumers love Netflix. However, inside the industry, the feelings about the streaming giant have not been quite so positive. In fact, many efforts have been made to try and degrade the image of Netflix, particularly within the academy. One of the loudest voices in that charge has been Steven Spielberg. However, sometimes favors change, and now Spielberg is working with Netflix for original content.