Yes, my boss follows me on Twitter. And it’s no use denying that this makes a difference to what I tweet. For example, I always feel bad about not tweeting, because I report on digital media and a tacit part of my job description is to maintain an online presence. However, I don’t tweet if I am in a bad mood or am simply too busy. On the other hand, we should examine where the line should be drawn for social media and our private lives.

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I’m not going to tell you who I am until the end of this essay because I want to prove a point to you. Knowing who I am–who the author is–matters. Yet, in our new age of electronic media, this crucial fact is vanishing from much of the information we consume.

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It’s oh-so enticing: you find a copy of a brand new game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a pirate site and the temptation to download it is too strong.

Well, that temptation may have cost up to 1 million users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live the ability to use that service. According to a report in InformationWeek, Microsoft has banned as many as a million players from Xbox Live for altering their consoles in order to play pirated versions of games.

This week, Activision’s new Call of Duty was released, and InformationWeek speculated that because pirated versions of the game appeared on various sharing sites in advance of the release, the game’s developer may have exhorted Microsoft to enact the bans.

“Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with digital rights management technologies designed to detect pirated software,” InformationWeek wrote, “but some players have successfully ‘modded,’ or modified, their machines to circumvent DRM protections.”

Even if someone has been banned, their Xbox will still play offline games, InformationWeek said. But it’s not at all clear if the bans are permanent or if Microsoft will allow those who have been booted from Xbox Live to return at some point down the line.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But in a statement received by InformationWeek, the company said, “All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live.”

And on the Xbox support page, Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, has addressed some of the circumstances that could lead to a player’s being banned.

“Players who find their Gamertags banned from Xbox Live have wound up in that situation due to violations of the Xbox Live Terms of Use,” Major Nelson wrote. “The Xbox Live team monitors players for not just cheating, but also for things like threats, racism, profanity, and just being an all around poor sport and ruining the game for others.

“When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn’t just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won’t be able to go online at all during your ban. Initially, you may be banned for a day, a week, or depending on severity, permanently! Kiss that $50 goodbye.”

Copyright ©1995-2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Technology companies are launching big advertising campaigns as they wager on a pickup in business spending and jockey to have their products stand apart in an environment where new customers are hard to find and competition is intensifying.

Companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG) have recently embarked on major ad pushes. This month, Google rolled out globally an ad campaign to flag its Gmail service and Google Docs word processing and spreadsheets. It’s an unusual move for the Internet giant, which has done little traditional advertising.

On Thursday, Juniper Networks Inc. (JNPR), a maker of networking gear, is starting its first-ever global campaign to raise awareness of its brand. Its bigger rival Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) last week launched new radio, print and online campaigns promoting a line of products for small businesses and a new system for corporate computer rooms.

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The printed word has always had an Achilles heel: factual mistakes. Can the electronic reader help? Anthony Gottlieb investigates …

Nietzsche famously said that there are no such things as facts, only interpretations. Be that as it may, every writer knows that there are certainly such things as factual mistakes. Errors are common in all forms of media, but it is mistakes in the printed word that are perhaps the most pernicious. Once a “fact” has been pressed onto paper, it becomes a trusted source, and misinformation will multiply.

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The Obama administration’s most radical idea may also be its geekiest: Make nearly every hidden government spreadsheet and buried statistic available online, all in one place. For anyone to see.

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Forget altruism. Misanthropy and egotism are the fuel of online social production. That’s the conclusion suggested by a new study of the character traits of the contributors to Wikipedia.

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Considering the magazine-heavy resume of The Daily Beast founder Tina Brown, it stands to reason the Web publisher would take her cues from that world. But rather than adopt the banner, the most magazine-like Internet ad format, the IAC-owned Daily Beast has sworn off “traditional” Web ads in favor of custom executions.

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In March, an unfinished copy of 20th Century Fox’s film X-Men Origins: Wolverine was stolen from a film lab and uploaded to the Internet, more than a month before its theatrical release. The studio investigated the crime, and efforts were made to limit its availability online. Still, it was illegally downloaded more than four million times.

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Amazon.com’s first-quarter earnings grew 24 percent to $177 million, compared with the year-ago period, while net sales rose 18 percent to $4.89 billion.

In a statement, Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos said sales of its Kindle e-book reader “exceeded our most optimistic expectations.”

The online retailer said it expects second-quarter net sales of $4.3 billion to $4.75 billion, a 6 to 17 percent increase from the year-earlier quarter.

Stay tuned for highlights from its 5 p.m. EST call with analysts.

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Is all this talk about getting consumers to pay for the news they read online really a front for something else?

Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery say their new company, Journalism Online, is first and foremost about giving newspapers an easy way to start charging for subscriptions or soliciting micropayments for individual pieces of content.

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Researchers from City University London have published a report showing one European newspaper’s steep drop in revenue as well as unsteady Web traffic after it became an online-only publication.

The report, “Taking the Paper Out of News,” by Neil Thurman, a senior lecturer at the university, and Merja Myllylahti, focuses on Taloussanomat, a financial daily paper in Finland that stopped printing on Dec. 28, 2007 in a cost-cutting move.

According to the report, Taloussanomat, which had a daily circulation of 72,000, lost at least 75 percent of its revenue as it sacrificed print advertising and subscription fees in the shift. But the more surprising finding concerns its Web traffic.

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In the golden age of the record album, friends would gather around the hi-fi system to share the latest music, most of them not paying a cent. Today, music fans do pretty much the same thing–online, in social networks. But now, just about none of them pay.

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It seemed like more troubling evidence that kids these days engage in behavior they wouldn’t want to write home about. Researchers recently found that one in five teenagers have shared nude or seminude photos of themselves by cellphone or online.

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Last year, Leo Laporte became a Twitter quitter. The host of one of Silicon Valley’s most popular podcasts was none too excited that of all the names in the world, the burgeoning message service had picked one that hit piercingly close to home. The online broadcasting network that Laporte owns and runs a short walk from his house in Petaluma is called TWiT.tv, after his company’s flagship show, “This Week in Tech.”

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