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2:50 PM ET, June 13, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Bloomberg:
Facebook Members Register Personalized User Names at Rate of 550 a Second  —  Facebook Inc., the largest social- networking site, said members registered user names at a rate of more than 550 a second in the 15 minutes after the company offered people the chance to claim personalized Web addresses.
RELATED:
John C Abell / Epicenter:
Facebook URL Madness: I Got Mine, But So Did Haywood Jablome  —  Imagine the odds: No sooner did Facebook swing open the doors to its fire sale of vanity URLs than a geeky frat party ensued, as members reserved prankish, clever and lewd names instead of maybe the digital alias their friends (and mothers) might have hoped for.
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Facebook Usernames and OpenID  —  Today's launch of Facebook Usernames provides an obvious and exciting opportunity for Facebook to become an OpenID provider.  Facebook have clearly demonstrated their interest in becoming the key online identity for their users, and the new usernames feature …
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
AT&T already sold out of launch day iPhone 3G S pre-orders  —  Signaling a likely repeat of Apple's iPhone sell-outs of the past two years, AT&T is already warning that those making iPhone 3G S pre-orders that they won't get their handsets on launch.  —  The US carrier's internal sales system …
Sam Kennedy / 1UP.com:
Rumor: Xbox Natal is Actually Microsoft's Next Console  —  So you know how Microsoft is saying Natal will be as big as a console launch?  Well...yeah.  —  Earlier this week gaming blog Kotaku quoted Microsoft's Shane Kim as saying that the launch of Natal, Microsoft's new controller-free …
Matt Asay / The Open Road:
Apple's misleading Safari numbers still dwarfed by Firefox downloads  —  Apple has been desperately trying to turn Safari into a mainstream browser player.  Unfortunately, its numbers simply don't compare to Firefox.  —  Safari 4.0 notched 11 million downloads in just three days.
Discussion: eWeek, Macworld, Asa Dotzler and CNET News
RELATED:
Pthurrott / SuperSite Blog:
11 million Safari downloads? Um. Sort of
Pete Cashmore / Mashable!:
Twitterrific, TweetDeck and Destroy Twitter: 1st Victims of Twitpocalypse?  —  The Twitpocalypse, while an amusing concept in principle, may not have passed uneventfully.  Twitterrific, the popular Twitter app, has now confirmed (on Twitter) reports from our readers that its iPhone version is affected.
RELATED:
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
MMS and tethering functional on some AT&T iPhone 3Gs running 3.0?  —  AT&T's been feeding us a story that it'll offer MMS on the iPhone only “once [it completes] some system upgrades that will ensure our customers have the best experience,” but here's the thing: it seems that it works right now …
Discussion: iPhone Buzz
Jason Chen / Gizmodo:
Running Custom Firmware on the Palm Pre Is Rather Easy  —  Developer Steven Troughton-Smith seems to have discovered that running unsigned (custom) firmware—even firmware that bypasses the activation process—is super easy.  —  Not only can you use the Konami code to get the phone into dev mode …
RELATED:
Steven Troughton-Smith / High Caffeine Content:
WWDC+Palm Pre = Rollercoaster Week
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Facebook Nabs The Man Who Engineered Google AdSense For Many Years  —  Facebook has just hired Greg Badros, a Google Senior Director of Engineering, we've learned.  Badros joined Google in early 2003 and has worked his way up the chain since then.  At Facebook, his official title will be Director of Engineering.
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google to Launch a Microblogging Search Engine  —  Google prepares to launch a service that indexes and ranks content from microblogging services like Twitter.  Since it's very easy to post updates and the posts are usually very short, micro-blogging services are great for live blogging, posting real-time information about an event.
Discussion: Mashable!, Googling Google and Traffick, Thanks:atul
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Has The Pirate Bay Lost Its Appeal... Or Should We Not Trust The NY Times?  —  Someone just alerted me to a NY Times story claiming that the guys behind The Pirate Bay have lost their appeal of the verdict that found them guilty.  That would be big news (and it may very well happen).
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Andreessen and Horowitz Complete Raising Dough for $300-Million Venture Fund-Let the Seed Investing Begin!  —  Even in the midst of a tough investing environment, Silicon Valley legend and serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen (pictured here) and his longtime investing partner Ben Horowitz …
Discussion: Pulse2 and VentureBeat
Charles Starrett / iLounge:
Lightning Review: What Happened to Gizmodo's iPhone 3G S Hands-On?  —  File this one under “weird:” shortly after Monday's WWDC keynote ended—concluding of course with the announcement of the iPhone 3G S—we spotted a group of broadcast journalists huddled around the new device.
Richard Waters / blogs.ft.com:
Mozilla casts doubt on Microsoft's browser gambit  —  You'd think that Microsoft's rivals would welcome the company's announcement that it will ship Windows 7 in Europe without an internet browser.  —  After 15 years (that's how long ago it was that the US first forced Microsoft …
Discussion: ITworld.com and iTnews Australia
Tyler Tschida / AppAdvice:
iPhone OS 3.0 Re-Download Message A “Bug” Says Apple  —  The iPhone OS 3.0 re-download message saga may finally have come to a surprisingly positive conclusion.  —  We first reported seeing this new re-download message a little over a week ago when attempting to re-downloading an already purchased application.
Discussion: Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac and The iPhone Blog
 
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 More Items: 
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Pentagon Cyber Unit Prompts Questions
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Find Creative Commons Images in Google Image Search
Discussion: MarketingVOX
Larry Magid / CNET News:
Bing modified to enable porn filtering
Discussion: Bing Community
Don Clark / Digits:
DVD Jon's Ad at the Apple Store: the Mystery Continues
 Earlier Items: 
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Why Dell Can't Buy Palm
Discussion: Associated Press and Seeking Alpha
Ian Youngs / BBC:
Bands ‘better because of piracy’
Discussion: Technologizer
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent.org:
Microsoft Internal Startup Exec To Leave
Discussion: CNET News and TechFlash, Thanks:c_santiago
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Against real-time: Facebook to sort of bring back the old site design
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Sorry, There's No Way To Save The TV Business
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Authentic Brands licenses Sports Illustrated's publishing rights to The Players' Tribune owner Minute Media for 10 years, with plans to keep the print edition

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Ofcom rules that five GB News programs presented by Conservative politicians have broken its due impartiality rules and puts the channel “on notice”

Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTuber MrBeast announces a deal with Prime Video for Beast Games, a reality-competition show with 1,000 contestants, promising the winner a $5M cash prize

 
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