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5:15 AM ET, November 15, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Joshua Topolsky / The Verge:
Is this the first BlackBerry with the BBX OS?  —  We've just gotten a look at what might be the first-ever photo of the next iteration of BlackBerry devices (based on the upcoming BBX operating system and its QNX roots), and we wanted to share.  The phone you see in the picture above …
RELATED:
Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
Leaked BlackBerry London is real, launching in Q3  —  We've just heard from a trusted source that the dummy device The Verge posted an image of earlier today is indeed a real BlackBerry, and it should in fact launch as the company's first BBX-based smartphone.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The Death Of The Spec  —  Earlier today, my colleague Matt Burns wrote a post noting that most tablet makers may be largely failing because they've sold their soul to Android and are now just in the middle of a spec war, which no one can win.  I'm gonna go one step further in that line of thinking: the spec is dead.
RELATED:
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Device Specs  —  Drew Breunig, “Device Specs Have Become Meaningless”: … Spec-based reviews of computers and gadgets are inherently flawed, a relic of an era that's already gone.  Movie reviews are about what the movie is like to watch.  Is it enjoyable, is it entertaining, does it look and sound good?
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Apple releases iTunes Match  —  Apple on Monday released a new version of iTunes that includes iTunes Match.  —  iTunes Match, will set you back $24.99 per year.  The software scans the content of your music library and matches it to the music available on the iTunes Store.
RELATED:
Jason Snell / Macworld:
Check your music's iCloud Status
Frederic Lardinois / SiliconFilter:
Apple Launches iTunes Match: You Can Now Get Your Piracy Amnesty for Just $25/Year
Twitter Blog:
Once in a lifetime  —  Increasingly people flock to Twitter to discover information and connect around occurrences like natural disasters, sporting events and cultural moments.  And then there are times when Twitter is where you might go to experience an infrequent curiosity.
RELATED:
Scott Beale / Laughing Squid:   A Visualization of Tweets Mentioning 11-11-11 Traveling The World
Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:
MacBook Air now 28% of Apple's notebook shipments  —  Apple's MacBook Air models now make up 28 percent of the company's notebook shipments, up from just 8 percent in the first half of the year.  —  Research by Morgan Stanley involving NPD figures reported by analyst Katy Huberty indicate Apple's thin …
Discussion: I4U News, The Next Web and TUAW
RELATED:
Thomas Houston / The Verge:
Adobe Touch apps hands-on: Photoshop Touch, Kuler, Proto, and more come to Android  —  While Adobe first announced its Touch Apps suite at MAX 2011 earlier this year, the Android version of the apps are finally rolling out today.  Each app retails for $9.99, requires Android 3.1 or later, and an 8.9-inch screen.
Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:
Siri sibling Trapit launches as intelligent discovery engine for the web's content  —  Say hello to Trapit.  The latest offspring from CALO, the DARPA-commissioned artificial-intelligence project that gave birth to iPhone virtual assistant Siri, launches in public beta Tuesday as a personalized discovery engine for the web.
Felix Salmon:
The future of online advertising  —  I gave a talk on Thursday at the AppNexus Summit in front of a few hundred digital advertising types.  The first part of the talk was a macro overview, but when the Q&A session started, all that anybody wanted to talk about was my take on online media.
Discussion: Epicenter, AdExchanger.com and Digiday
Jay Yarow / Business Insider:
GOLDMAN: Demand For The iPad Is Fading  —  Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope released a somewhat troubling report on Sunday for Apple bulls, saying demand for the iPad is fading.  —  He's not adjusting his estimates for iPad sales, but he does think Apple will have to do something to address the first hiccup in the iPad's growth.
Somini Sengupta / New York Times:
Rushdie Wins Facebook Fight Over Identity  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The writer Salman Rushdie hit Twitter on Monday morning with a flurry of exasperated posts.  Facebook, he wrote, had deactivated his account, demanded proof of identity and then turned him into Ahmed Rushdie, which is how he is identified on his passport.
Charles Humble / InfoQ:
Adobe Donating Flex to Open Source Foundation; Continues Fire Sale on Formerly-Core Software  —  Hot on the heels of news that Adobe is abandoning developing Flash for mobile devices, Adobe has also now announced its intention to donate the Flex SDK to “an established open source foundation”.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
The making of the Xbox: How Microsoft unleashed a video game revolution (part 1)  —  Editor's note: This story is the first of two articles on the 10th anniversary of the launch of Microsoft's Xbox video game console, which debuted Nov. 15, 2001.  The narrative is based on recent interviews …
Discussion: WinRumors and LAPTOP Magazine, Thanks:deantak
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Links Posted By Big Facebook Pages Have A 0.14% CTR, 1 Click Per 1000 Fans  —  The click through rate for links posted to the news feed by Facebook Pages with over 100,000 fans is 0.14%, or 1 click per 715 impressions according to a new study shared with us by analytics provider EdgeRank Checker.
Beth Snyder Bulik / AdAge:
O, No!  Overstock Backs Off O.co Name Change  —  ‘We Were Going Too Fast and People Were Confused,’ Says Company President  —  Overstock.com officially rebranded itself as O.co about six months ago.  It changed the sign on the NFL stadium to which it owns the naming rights …
Matt Lynley / Business Insider:
Amid Torrid Growth, Some Growing Pains For Mashable  —  At age 20, Pete Cashmore launched a social news site called Mashable out of his home in Aberdeen, Scotland.  —  Six years later Mashable is one of the largest news sites on the web, with more than 20 million unique visitors each month.
Discussion: @mona
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Google Announces “_nomap” WiFi Opt-out Option, Wants Other Location Providers To Go Along  —  As promised, Google has announced a way for WiFi router owners to stop Google from including them in the company's location database.  —  The opt-out requires a change in the name of the wireless network …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Siri Protocol Cracked, But Unique iPhone 4S ID Requirement Hampers Distribution  —  Applidium, the developers who brought the open source video player VLC to the App Store only to have it pulled over licensing issues, have announced that they have reverse engineered the protocol used to allow Siri to communicate with Apple's servers.
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Fab Hits A Million Users, Is Raising Many Millions of Dollars  —  Design-focused flash sale site Fab announced an important user milestone today, the site hitting a million members; The company celebrated by giving each of their users $10 to spend and another $10 more to each friend they signed on.
Discussion: Digits and Social Media
Dustin Earley / Android and Me:
Ice Cream Sandwich source code hits AOSP; custom ROMs are a go!  —  Modders, hackers, developers and lovers of all things root, your time has come.  It has just been announced over on the Android Building Google Groups page that the source code for Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0, is available now.
Liam Spradlin / Android Police:
Screen Shots Surface Showing What Could Be The Google Music Store - Expect Free Song Of The Day, Recommended Artists, And More  —  Lending credence to theories that Google's November 16th event may have something to do with the debut of the Google Music Store, a writer at TecnoDroidVe has discovered …
Jolie O'Dell / VentureBeat:
Vint Cerf: The government is going overboard in Internet copyright control  —  “When Bob and I started writing the specs for the Internet in 1973...”  —  Only a handful of people can start a sentence anything like that.  —  Today, Vint Cerf, one of the godfathers of the Internet …
Twittereng / Twitter Engineering:
SpiderDuck: Twitter's Real-time URL Fetcher  —  Tweets often contain URLs or links to a variety of content on the web, including images, videos, news articles and blog posts.  SpiderDuck is a service at Twitter that fetches all URLs shared in Tweets in real-time, parses the downloaded content …
 
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 More Items: 
Bloomberg:
Google Is ShopCity Target for Complaint to U.S. Federal Trade Commission
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Gimme Bar: Link Saving With Dropbox Integration, Screenshots & an API - If This Doesn't Work, Maybe Nothing Will
Discussion: Gimme Bar
Reuters:
Huawei buys Symantec stake in JV for $530 million
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Quora Gamifies: Credits And “Ask To Answer” Suggestions Live For Everyone
Discussion: The Quora Review
 Earlier Items: 
W3C:
W3C Announces First Draft of Standard for Online Privacy
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
Jolie O'Dell / VentureBeat:
Got big data? Crunch it with Google's BigQuery
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
iPhone 4 and 3GS Continued to Lead U.S. Smartphone Sales in Q3
Ben Parr / Mashable!:
Foursquare Badges Now Level Up
Zach Honig / Engadget:
Sprint undercuts AT&T and Verizon with new Mobile Broadband data plans