On Thursday, Blockbuster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, meaning hundreds of stores will close over the next month as the company restructures.

Through bankruptcy, the company will eliminate about $900 million in debt, leaving the company with $125 million in debt to its senior bondholders. Other bondholders have been wiped out. Blockbuster's common stock currently trades at 5 cents, meaning for the most part, all long term shareholders have been wiped out, as well.

CEO Jim Keyes said the restructuring will allow Blockbuster to "continue to transform our business model to meet the evolving preferences of our customers."

Blockbuster has "a well-established brand name, an exceptional library of more than 125,000 titles, and our position as the only operator that provides access across multiple delivery channels -- stores, kiosks, by-mail and digital," added Keyes.

The company has about 3000 stores currently, with plans to close up to 1800 over the next year. 1000 closings were unveiled before the bankruptcy.

Throughout the bankruptcy, all stores and kiosks will remain open for current members.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

Hastings noted that 60 percent of Netflix's 15 million subscribers used the streaming service last quarter, on desktops, the iPad/iPhone, gaming consoles and a number of Blu-ray players and set-top boxes.

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