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Microsoft has said this weekend that its upcoming Windows Phone 7 will not support tethering.

The new statement directly contradicts the past statement from the Brandon Watson, the Director for Windows Phone 7.

In May, Watson said the ability would be enabled from launch.

Microsoft has promised that tethered connection sharing will be a reality eventually, but not in October when the first phones hit the market.

Tethering, along with copy/paste and full multitasking have all been stripped from the 1.0 software release, but will make comebacks in future firmware updates.

The Goverrnors Highway Safety Association has endorsed a total ban on mobile phone usage while driving, making their decision after carefully analyzing the results of a study by the American Journal of Public Health.

AJPH's findings saw a 28 percent rise in "distracted driving fatalities" from 2005 to 2008.

Furthermore, the report showed 16,000 vehicle-related fatalities from 2001 until 2007 were caused by drivers texting at the wheel.

"It doesn't take a Ph.D. to know that cell phone use and driving is dangerous and that lives have been lost due to this practice," says Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the Association.

A few states, such as California, have already banned cell phone use whilst driving, voice and texting.

The Association is a group of state highway safety officials from across the US. The group has helped shape many past transportation safety policies in the past.

Sony Ericsson has confirmed this week that it has no plans for future Symbian-based smartphones, moving most support over to Android.

Says an SE rep: "We have no plans for the time being to develop any new products to the Symbian Foundation standard or operating system."

Symbian remains the most popular smartphone operating system thanks only to Nokia, which still uses it on its smartphones. However, market share for the mobile OS fell to 41.2 percent in the Q2 from 51 percent in the same period last year.

In the same time frame, iOS and Android have grown exponentially, with Android expected to take the top spot as soon as 2013.

Over the course of the year many prominent smartphone makers have dropped or significantly cut back support for Symbian including Samsung and LG.

The WSJ is reporting this weekend that China Unicom's supply of iPhone 4s has already been exhausted.

Furthermore, the Journal reports that Unicom did not have enough supply for the launch weekend to begin with.

The carrier is said to received 200,000 pre-orders before Saturday morning when the phone launched in the nation.

Only 50,000 buyers got their phones on Saturday.

In 2009, Unicom began selling the iPhone 3G, but saw only 100,000 units sold in its first two months of availability.

Verizon Wireless is expected to stop selling unlimited data plans to new customers within six months, says the WSJ, instead opting to offer two plans with monthly bandwidth caps.

In June, AT&T made a similar move, dropping the unlimited 3G data plan while starting to offer three capped plans.

Earlier in the week, Sprint said the company may have to cap unlimited 4G data plans, especially if usage increases exponentially.

For the Q1 2010, average smartphone data consumption jumped to 298MB per month, from an average of 90MB during the period in 2009.

Nielsen research recently concluded that usage-based pricing models are actually fair, as the average smartphone user does not need unlimited. After reviewing 60,000 phone bills, Nielsen says the top 6 percent of smartphone data users use 49 percent of all bandwidth. That leaves the other 94 percent of users for the other half.

It is unclear what the new tiered plans will look like, but most expect them to be similar to AT&T's, which cost $15 for 200MB and $25 for 2GB. Unlimited plans currently cost $30.

A forum member of PSX-Scene has ported PSGroove to Sansa media devices running RockBox, giving more potential users a chance to jaibreak their PlayStation 3 using items they may already have at home.

For now, the port has been tested on the Sansa e200 and c200v1 series running Rockbox.

You can read full instructions, including downloads of the necessary software, here: PSGroove Ported to Rockbox

Last month, PSJailbreak showed the world that the PS3's security model was open to be exploited, and Sony was quick to shut down the project.

PSGroove, the "open source PSJailbreak," was released for the masses in early September, giving owners a chance to jailbreak their PS3 using development boards and other items such as Android smartphones.

A member of the PS3Hax forum has posted this weekend early screenshots of a custom PlayStation 3 operating system, one that can be installed if you have a jailbroken PS3 console.

The developer has dubbed the custom OS "PlayOS."

PlayOS is Linux-based, will run on firmware 3.41, and will take 730MB of external HDD since it runs off the Backup Manager.

The OS has a built-in dedicated web browser dubbed "PlayBrowse."

Because of hardware acceleration, the developer says users will be able to playback 1080p .mkv files.

Furthermore, the OS has support for .zip, .tar, .gz, .mp3, .avi, .mp4, and .divx.

It is important to note that you will need a development board, as it won't work with systems jailbroken with a smartphone.

Screenshots:

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said today that the company may offer a streaming-only plan for the United States, cutting out the ability to receive physical media in the mail.

The subscription would be cheaper than Netflix's current plans, which are $8.99 minimum for renting and streaming and would give users a chance to access 15,000 movies and shows via Watch Instantly.

"A cheaper subscription plan could be more attractive to new (subscribers) and it would also likely carry higher gross margins and potentially even higher gross profit (over time), given the extremely low cost of delivering streaming content," adds analyst Douglas Anmuth of Barclays Capital in a research note.

The rental company recently signed a multi-year deal to increase its NBCU streaming content, including all the seasons of "Eureka," "The Office," "Battlestar Galactica," and others. Additionally, Saturday Night Live episodes will be available the day after they air.

Mozilla Labs has shown off the Seabird concept smartphone this week, the conclusion of the "Open Web Concept Phone" project which began in early 2009.

The "Mozilla Labs Concept Series" asks the world what they want to see out of certain future devices, as long as they revolve around Firefox, Mozilla and the Open Web.

Billy May, working directly off all the community feedback, has now released a video for "Seabird."

The main new features of the smartphone are dual Pico-projectors, which allow for a fully projected keyboard, effectively turning your phone into a notebook.

Form factor is very slick for the touchscreen concept as well as very thin, while leaving enough room for the dual projectors.

There are no plans for the release of the phone or a Mozilla OS (the Seabird runs on Android), but I'll take a leap here and say there would be few people who wouldn't want to see this phone as a real device.

Netflix has announced today that they have expanded their licensing agreement with NBC Universal, making more NBC TV shows available through the "Watch Instantly" streaming catalog.

The deal will include more seasons of hit shows like "30 Rock," "The Office," "Friday Night Lights" and "Law & Order: SVU."

"Saturday Night Live" episodes will be available the day after they air from now on.

Furthermore, the new deal adds episodes of "Battlestar Galactica," "Destination Truth" and "Eureka."

"This agreement adds meaningfully to the wide variety of content that can be streamed from Netflix and breaks new ground in our relationship with NBC Universal," adds Ted Sarandos, Netflix's chief content officer (via the WSJ).

Netflix continues to add movie and TV content on a regular basis, striking deals with Starz, Relativity Media, Fox and NBCU.

iReader Review has noted today that Scrabble has become the first paid, third-party app for the Amazon Kindle.

EA has quietly added the app to the Kindle Store, at a hefty price of $4.99.

To play the game, you will need a second or third generation Kindle, or a Kindle DX.

You will not even be able to download the game if you have a first-generation Kindle e-reader.

While the Kindles have Internet access via either 3G or Wi-Fi, or both, the game only supports multi-player on the device, not online.

Target has finally officially announced it will begin carrying the Apple iPad in its brick-and-mortar stores.

The retailer will begin selling all six models of the popular tablet on October 3rd.

Starting with the 16GB/Wi-Fi model at $499, all the way to the 64GB/3G/Wi-Fi model at $829, the retailer says all Target credit-card holders will receive a 5 percent discount.

There are currently 1743 Targets in the United States, with the company planning to remodel 400 of the stores in 2011.

Additionally in its press statement, the company announced it was expanding 450 stores to add groceries.

According to multiple sources, HBO is set to launch a 3D on-demand channel in the Q1 2011.

HBO has not officially announced the channel, but a service spokesperson confirmed the plans.

Furthermore, the channel will launch with a world premiere of a 3D version of the blockbuster Inception.

For now, Warner Bros. says there are no plans for an Inception 3D conversion.

It was reported earlier in the year that Warner tried to convert Inception to 3D before its initial theater run, but director Christopher Nolan would not sign off on it, citing "Clash of the Titans'" poor reviews.

Looking to the future, Warner is expected to begin filming the third Batman movie in 3D next year.

Androidandme has posted video today of a prototype device unveiled at the GTC 2010 show, one that features a glasses-free 3D display.

A gaming UI company called Scaleform was showing off the prototype, which was built by Master Image and runs on a Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.

The device runs on the Android mobile OS.

Androidanme says the visual display was very impressive and that a device using the screen and features could be available as soon as the Q2 2011.

Despite Best Buy having the device up for pre-order for a couple of weeks, T-Mobile had not yet officially put the flagship G2 up for sale.

That has changed this week, with existing T-Mobile smartphone owners being sent an email offering them the chance to pre-order directly from the carrier.

The G2 will be T-Mobile's first device to support HSPA+, the carrier's very fast 3.5G/4G data network.

Furthermore, the device will have an 800MHz Snapdragon MSM7230 processor, which has the HSPA+ support built-in. While slower than current 1GHz chips, the processor can still record 720p video and handle Flash videos.

The G2 will also run a stock Android 2.2 (with no custom UI) and will have Swype as the default keypad.

Made by HTC, the phone has a 3.7-inch multi-touch screen, an optical trackpad, a 5MP camera with LED flash, 4GB of internal memory and an extra 8GB microSDHC card.

Upgrade price is $200 with contract, $500 without.