August 12, 2018 - Episode 505

What this episode covers

Description This week, TCL is bringing back Palm, Discord is selling indie games and Spotify makes a big partnership with Samsung. Participants Scott Ertz Host 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 Piltch Host 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. Opening Powered by TeknoAXE Nifty Gifties Powered by Microsoft Store TCL Takes Advantage of Backlash Against Huge Phones with Palm Reboot Over the past few years, phones have definitely gotten larger. In fact, since the beginning of the consumer smartphone market, phone screen sizes have nearly doubled. The original iPhone had a 3.5-inch screen, while the original Android phone, the HTC Dream (known as the T-Mobile G1 in the US), had a 3.2-inch screen. Compare that to the iPhone X's 5.8-inch screen and Samsung Note 9, announced officially this week, with its 6.4-inch screen, and you can see a big change in the market. read full article Piltch Point with Avram Piltch Powered by Newegg.com Extra Life Powered by Razer Discord Challenges Steam After Steam Challenged Discord Less than a month ago, Valve launched Steam Chat to all of its users. The feature is a near exact clone of Discord, the leading chat platform for gamers. The services had a small chance of success, being as it is built into the most popular gaming distribution client for PC games, but it had a big uphill battle against the existing platform. It is always difficult to challenge an established and beloved brand, especially in an industry that is overpopulated with brand loyalty. read full article News From the Tubes Powered by RiffTrax Facebook Implements Stronger Verification for Large Page Managers Facebook Page integrity leaves something to be desired. There's never any telling if a Page represents who they say they do, or if they are even related to the topic they claim. It's also possible for pages to merge, bringing an unsuspecting audience to a new type of content. In an effort to bring transparency to Pages, Facebook is implementing some new policies for Pages that have a large following. Facebook explained the decision in a post, saying, read full article * DRM Not Included Powered by Amazon Prime Spotify Gains a Big New Partner in Samsung Ever since entering the US market, Spotify has owned the music streaming business. Apple has made some inroads since purchasing and rebranding Beats Music, but they still trail in music selection and userbase. Spotify has gained a bigger foothold in the industry thanks to their newly announced partnership with Samsung. As part of the relationship, Samsung will tightly integrate Spotify service into their devices, including phones, televisions and new Galaxy Home. read full article Closing Powered by Tech Podcast Network