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.
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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.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Guardian, WebProNews, blog.seattlepi.com, Lawgarithms, CNET News and digg.com
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.”
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 …
Discussion:
Kotaku, Engadget, VG247, SlipperyBrick.com, Gizmodo, Joystiq, CrunchGear, Crave, DigitalBattle.com, bit-tech.net, Edge Online and digg.com
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.
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.
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.
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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
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).
Gina Trapani / Lifehacker:
Google Wave Questions and Answers — After whinging loudly about not having access to the Google Wave preview, Santa GOOG dropped me an invite. Last night I held a Wave Q&A on Twitter; here are the results, complete with screenshots. — I'm no Wave expert, but now that I've got …
Discussion:
GottaBeMobile.com
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 …
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.
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 …
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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
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 …
