Gadgetory

hi I'm Kara Tsuboi filling in for Bridget Carey and this is your cnet update cable cutters might want to put boxee TV on their wish list the system is now selling at walmart stores for ninety nine dollars and it includes a few perks for early adopters boxee is a DVR with antenna for picking up basic cable or broadcast TV and it also pulls in several subscription services like Netflix the DVR service will be free for three months for anyone who buys it during the holiday season you can also get three months of netflix for free and limitless DVR service for ten bucks a month after that AT&T and t-mobile are making it hard for smartphone thieves both gsm carriers have turned on a database that allows them to block a device from being used as soon as someone reports it stolen in the past carriers would shut off a SIM card to block a stolen smartphone but it wasn't foolproof since the crook could just put in another GSM carrier sim card verizon and friends will also launch a similar database to block stolen phones on their CDMA networks of course you still need to be careful about sensitive data on your smartphone a thief can grab data off the device before carrier blocks it AT&T also announced a new app for storing and sharing photos and videos it's called AT&T locker and the app gives Apple and Android customers five gigs of storage for free photos and videos taken can be saved to the locker and users have the option to share files to social media and email customers can also use the space to store music and other files amazon has been busy making its own games and it just released its first one for mobile devices called air Patriots the app is available on Kindle Fire Android and Apple devices it's a basic tower defense type game where players direct the path of airplanes during battle this is the second title from Amazon Game Studios back in August and made a facebook story game called living classics Apple's Wi-Fi version of the ipad mini goes on sale friday morning along with the new fourth-generation ipad log on to cnet for launch day coverage lower Manhattan well as many areas of the East Coast are still without power following the storm but federal officials say there has been some slight improvement to getting networks back up and just like previous disasters the Red Cross is taking donations via text messages texting redcross to 90999 gives ten dollars to help the families impacted by the storm in Apple's iTunes is now a hub for donating to the Red Cross that's your tech news update for today you can find links to all today's stories on the blog cnet com / update from our studios in San Francisco I'm Kara Tsuboi