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9:50 AM ET, May 19, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Palm Pre counting down to a June 6th launch?  —  Know what happens in the run-up to a major product launch?  Rumors are mongered and advertisements are sold, lots and lots of ads.  So we're not surprised to find the two colliding in the shape of an un-calibrated (not Pre calibrated …
RELATED:
The Official Palm Blog:
Palm Pre to arrive on Sprint on June 6  —  Sprint has announced today that the Palm Pre will be available on June 6.  Sprint announced that it will be available nationwide in Sprint stores, as well as at Best Buy, Radio Shack, and select Wal-Mart stores.  The webOS-based phone will retail for $199.99 …
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Palm Pre on June 6th for $200: It's official!  —  The day you've been waiting for is here.  Sprint just announced that the Pre will cost $199.99 after $100 mail-rebate and 2-year contract and will launch on June 6th as rumored this morning.  The phone will go on sale nationwide …
Scott Morrison / Wall Street Journal:
Google Searches for Staffing Answers  —  Concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete, Google Inc. is tackling the problem with its typical tool: an algorithm.  —  The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories …
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Launches OpenID Support - Users Can Now Login With Gmail Accounts  —  Last month, Facebook announced that users would soon be able to login to the site via OpenID.  Today, Facebook has officially become an OpenID relying party: users can now register for Facebook using their Gmail accounts …
RELATED:
Luke Shepard / Facebook Developers:
Facebook Supports OpenID for Automatic Login
Discussion: Download Squad, Webmonkey and AppScout
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
The Dam Just Broke: Facebook Opens Up to OpenID
Discussion: The Real McCrea
Bobbie Johnson / Guardian:
GPS system ‘close to breakdown’  —  Network of satellites could begin to fail as early as 2010  —  It has become one of the staples of modern, hi-tech life: using satellite navigation tools built into your car or mobile phone to find your way from A to B. But experts have warned that the system may be close to breakdown.
Kim Poh Liaw / SlashPhone:
Microsoft's My Phone Service Beta Open for Public  —  Previously available in limited invitation-only beta, Microsoft has upgraded its My Phone web portal and opened its service to public.  The free My Phone service will enable people to access, manage and back up their personal information …
RELATED:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Why is Apple Rejecting PhoneGap-Built iPhone Apps?  —  PhoneGap is a very interesting development platform for mobile applications that lets developers build apps that work for multiple devices, including the iPhone, using only HTML and Javascript.  That means far more people are able to develop mobile applications.
Discussion: Web Developer's Life in Beta and PMP Today, Thanks:atul
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Mobile Abandons Its Smartphone App To Focus On The iPhone  —  Score another one for the iPhone.  Yahoo is abandoning its mobile app for the Blackberry and other smartphones in order to focus more on its recently relaunched iPhone app.  For every other phone, it is concentrating …
RELATED:
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Want to Fool Apple's App Store? Plant an Easter Egg
Discussion: Technologizer and TechVi
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook Turns Down $8 billion Valuation Term Sheet, Claims 2009 Revenues Will Be $550 million  —  In the last couple of weeks Facebook received and turned down a term sheet for a new $200 million venture round of funding that would value the company at $8 billion, we've learned from a source …
Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:
Twitter sees tools, not ads, for revenue  —  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Twitter is working on various ways to make money from its fast-growing microblogging service, but advertising is an option that is not currently being considered.  —  Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said on Monday that the company …
Scott Austin / Venture Capital Dispatch:
Turning Out The Lights: NebuAd  —  (Note: We're keeping an ongoing tally of venture-backed company shutdowns this year as VentureWire reports on them.  See the list below.  Look for these postings under the title, “Turning Out The Lights.")  —  Online behavorial tracking start-up NebuAd Inc. …
Discussion: Screenwerk and Bits
Joe Sharkey / New York Times:
The Race to Provide Wi-Fi at 30,000 Feet  —  SOME airlines are rushing to offer Wi-Fi Internet connections in their domestic aircraft cabins, but none are talking about the space squeeze.  —  On an AirTran Airways Wi-Fi demonstration flight that went up and back down the Northeast seaboard …
Discussion: The Toybox
Sindya N. Bhanoo / Washington Post:
Doctors and Medical Students Embrace Smartphones  —  To his frustration, Steven Schwartz often encounters patients who have no idea what each of the pills they've been popping is called.  —  “But usually they can tell you what it looks like,” the Georgetown University Medical Center family practitioner said.
Discussion: Smart Mobs
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
MySpace Is In Real Trouble If These Page View Declines Don't Reverse  —  We've all been closely watching the total user number for MySpace and Facebook and trying to predict the date that MySpace's last stronghold will fall - no. 1 in U.S. social networking users.
Discussion: Venture Capital Dispatch, Thanks:atul
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Glympse: A Hassle And Worry-Free Way To Share Your Location, Minus The Social Network  —  We've all been there.  You're late for a meeting with friends, stuck in traffic and unsure of when you're actually going to arrive.  You call them with updates like “well, I'm closer now, but still not sure …
Jim Dalrymple / CNET News:
Stanford's free iPhone course hits 1 million downloads  —  Stanford University on Monday said its free iPhone Application Programming course has been downloaded more than 1 million times since being uploaded to Apple's iTunes U—a learning-focused area of iTunes—seven weeks ago.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Hearst: Zombie Seattle Paper Doing Better Than the Original  —  I'm still on record predicting the demise of seattlepi.com-the online-only zombie version of the erstwhile Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  My gut is that even though the Hearst-owned site has an edit staff 80 percent smaller …
Mallory Simon / CNN:
New services promise online life after death  —  (CNN) — Your husband, an avid gamer and techie, dies of a heart attack, leaving his vast online life ­— one you don't know much about ­— in limbo.  —  His accounts, to which you don't know the passwords, go idle.
Discussion: Terra Nova
Meg Tirrell / Bloomberg:
Pandora Media Founder Sees Reaching Profitability for First Time Next Year  —  Pandora Media Inc., the free online- radio service that generates playlists based on users' musical preferences, aims to be profitable next year for the first time since the company started in 2000, founder Tim Westergren said.
Discussion: mocoNews
Joe Wilcox:
Antitrust Primer: Google and Microsoft  —  Analysis.  Have you wondered why Microsoft quietly accepted yet another two years of government oversight?  Simply put, Microsoft doesn't want to end up with the problems looming over Google.  —  There has been much buzz over the last couple weeks …
Discussion: GigaOM and Search Engine Land
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Slim PS3 update: mysterious Chinese firm issues a cease and desist... to Engadget  —  You know, one of these days, someone at one of these big companies is going to get this right.  If you send a cease and desist about “leaked” photos of a supposed device, you're basically saying, “Hey guys, those pictures are real.”
Rafe Needleman / The Download Blog:
Flock 2.5 launches with support for Twitter, more services  —  Statistically, Flock is probably not for you.  This Web browser, the 2.5 version of which is coming out today, is “designed to be the essential browser for the most active 25 percent of users,” Flock CEO Shawn Hardin tells me.
Linuxpundit / LinuxPundit Weblog:
Netbooks: Up from Phones, Not Down from Notebooks  —  Last week I began a discussion of whether Linux will survive as an OS for netbooks.  I received a number of comments, some highlighting which netbook OEMs favored which Linux distros, other despairing at the paucity of verifiable market numbers (a distress that I share).
Discussion: The Open Road and Open Source
 
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 More Items: 
Dan Goodin / The Register:
OpenSSH chink bares encrypted data packets
Joel Johnson / Boing Boing Gadgets:
Welcome, Wired. We call this land “Internet”
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Twitter creator Jack Dorsey on user retention, Facebook comparisons
Wendy Davis / MediaPost:
Case Closed: NebuAd Shuts Down
Discussion: MediaMemo
 Earlier Items: 
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
Facebook: $20 Million a Year on Data Centers
Thanks:atul
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Supreme Court May Kill Sarbanes Oxley And Resurrect IPO Market!
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Harvard prof tells judge that P2P filesharing is “fair use”
Discussion: Techgeist and digg.com
Ian Deitch / Associated Press:
Israeli intelligence issues Facebook warning
Discussion: Beyond Search