Microsoft may ban as many as one million XBox Live users for modifying their consoles or playing illegal games. The company believes that between 600,000 and a million users have played pirated games on their system, or modified their Xbox console to include a larger hard drive, a modification which voids both the warranty and access to the XBox Live service.
A Facebook status update is keeping a young man out of jail. Rodney Bradford, a teenager from the Bronx, was accused of robbery at gunpoint in Brooklyn, however, a status update, which read "ON THE PHONE WITH THIS FAT CHICK......WHERER MY IHOP," was accepted by a judge as proof the teenager was not in Brooklyn at the time the crime was committed. While lawyers say that it is possible a family member or friend could have published the update on Bradford's page, the ruling sets precedent for social network statuses as legitimate alibis for defendants.
Walmart announced that it will give a $100 gift certificate to customers who purchase any BlackBerry handset next week. The deal is one of many the mega-retailer is planning to get customers into its stores leading up to the Holiday season and is valid for any BlackBerry purchased with a two year contract with either AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint.
Google is slashing the price of extra storage for its GMail and Picassa services. While the price of extra storage used to be expensive ($20 for 10GB on Picassa), Google is now offering users an additional 20GB of space for $5. The new deal gives users who send and receive a lot of large attachments a significant amount of space for an affordable price.
Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV. Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information about Get Digital Classes, visit www.shellypalmer.com/seminars