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4:50 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 …
Kas Thomas / assertTrue:
Here's what Opera is about to unveil  —  I love a good mystery as much as the next guy, but many people (myself included) are finding Opera's latest mysterious claim a bit over-the-top.  In case you haven't been following this story, the Opera folks are saying that on June 16 they will unveil something that will “reinvent the Web.”
AnandTech:
Apple's 2009 MacBook Pro: Battery Life to Die For  —  Buy the Speck MB15-PUR-SEE-V2 Products  —  I was so focused on the iPhone 3GS and Snow Leopard announcements from this year's WWDC that I almost missed the gravity of the MacBook Pro announcements.  —  Apple announced price drops on nearly all of its laptops.
Discussion: MacRumors and ParisLemon
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
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:
Agence France Presse:
Mobile phones, Facebook, YouTube cut in Iran  —  The main mobile telephone network in Iran was cut in the capital Tehran Saturday evening while popular Internet websites Facebook and YouTube also appeared to be blocked, correspondents said.  —  The communication cuts came …
Discussion: Gawker
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Steve Jobs' health status in 13 words  —  “We look forward to Steve returning to Apple at the end of June.”  —  How often have you heard that?  A Google search for the exact phrase turns up roughly 400 instances, most of them attributed to Apple (AAPL) spokesman Steve Dowling, who is nothing if not disciplined.
Discussion: Times of London
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).
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Holocaust Museum Death Won't Change Facebook's Mind On Hate - But Advertisers May Be Able To  —  Earlier this week a Holocaust denier shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.  Facebook didn't change its policy on allowing Holocaus denial groups …
Discussion: THE CUBAN REVOLUTION
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
 
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 More Items: 
Gina Trapani / Lifehacker:
Google Wave Questions and Answers
Discussion: GottaBeMobile.com
Richard Waters / blogs.ft.com:
Mozilla casts doubt on Microsoft's browser gambit
Discussion: ITworld.com and iTnews Australia
Charles Starrett / iLounge:
Lightning Review: What Happened to Gizmodo's iPhone 3G S Hands-On?
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Pentagon Cyber Unit Prompts Questions
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
MMS and tethering functional on some AT&T iPhone 3Gs running 3.0?
Discussion: iPhone Buzz and Engadget Mobile
Tyler Tschida / AppAdvice:
iPhone OS 3.0 Re-Download Message A “Bug” Says Apple
Discussion: Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac and The iPhone Blog
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Find Creative Commons Images in Google Image Search
Discussion: MarketingVOX
 Earlier Items: 
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Andreessen and Horowitz Complete Raising Dough for $300-Million …
Discussion: Pulse2 and VentureBeat
Pete Cashmore / Mashable!:
Twitterrific, TweetDeck and Destroy Twitter: 1st Victims of Twitpocalypse?
Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Facebook Nabs The Man Who Engineered Google AdSense For Many Years
Larry Magid / CNET News:
Bing modified to enable porn filtering
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and Bing Community
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Why Dell Can't Buy Palm