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10:35 PM ET, June 20, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Kellex / Droid Life:
Exclusive: Tiered Data Plans Headed to Verizon July 7, Packages Start at $30 for 2GB  —  We knew that July 7 was going to mark the beginning of something after Verizon extended out the free 4G hotspot promo one more time to the 6th, but what we weren't 100% sure of was if it would have to do with tiered data.
RELATED:
Jordan Golson / MacRumors:
Verizon Dropping Unlimited Data Plan Next Month
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Dropbox Security Bug Made Passwords Optional For Four Hours  —  This morning a post on Pastebin outlined a serious security issue that was spotted at Dropbox: for a brief period of time, the service allowed users to log into accounts using any password.  In other words, you could log …
Discussion: Geek.com, Neowin.net and Pastebin
RELATED:
Arash Ferdowsi / The Dropbox Blog:
Yesterday's Authentication Bug  —  Yesterday we made a code update at 1:54pm Pacific time that introduced a bug affecting our authentication mechanism.  We discovered this at 5:41pm and a fix was live at 5:46pm.  A very small number of users (much less than 1 percent) logged in during that period …
Fred Oliveira / @f:   the fact that @dropbox only mentioned their authentication incident (affecting everyone) after the press picked up on it is disappointing.
Omar Shahine / The Windows Blog:
Introducing SkyDrive for the modern web, built using HTML5  —  We're committed to making SkyDrive the best place to get access to your content from anywhere, collaborate on Office docs, and share photos.  Mike recently talked about how we're delivering access to your information seamlessly across devices - starting with Windows Phone.
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Caterina Fake Raising $2M for New Social Start-Up  —  Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch and an investor in companies like Etsy, has a new start-up that she says will be consumer-facing and social.  —  She's raising what looks like a $2 million round, according to an SEC filing …
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Why We Often Blindside Companies  —  A couple of weeks ago I apologized to the CEO of AdMeld for writing about their acquisition without even contacting him to let him know beforehand or ask for a comment.  He wrote back “the call would have been nice.”  —  I know how frustrating …
Foursquare Blog:
Wow!  The foursquare community has over 10,000,000 members!  —  And, to commemorate this pretty crazy occasion, we put together a little infographic.  Be sure to click through to see it bigger; if you're anything like us, watching the full-size animated map puts butterflies in your tummy.
RELATED:
Frederic Lardinois / @fredericl:   good for 4sq that they managed to register 10 million accounts. But that number is meaningless. How many are active? http://shrty.us/kgTwTp
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Consumers Don't Want Tablets, They Want iPads  —  A theory: Though consumers desire the iPad for the functions it performs, they want it more for what it is.  Just as many preferred the iPod to the generic MP3 player, so too do they prefer the iPad to the generic “tablet.”
Kashmir Hill / The Not-So Private Parts:
Now Your Embarrassing/Job-Threatening Facebook Photos Could Haunt You For Seven Years  —  These privacy sunglasses are seeming like more of a necessity  —  Last week, the Federal Trade Commission gave a stamp of approval to a background check company that screens job applicants based on their Internet photos and postings.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
What The New ICANN Domain Names Mean For Google Rankings & SEO: Nothing  —  ICANN - the organization in charge of internet domain names - has approved plans that may create hundreds or thousands of new “top level domain names.”  I've seen some reports already that this will help with search engine optimization.
RELATED:
CircleID:
New Top-Level Domains Approved by ICANN
Jordan Golson / MacRumors:
If You Use All Your iCloud Storage, Apple Sends You This Email  —  A reader sent us this email he received from the “MobileMe Quota Service”, informing that he was using 4.2GB of his 5GB of free iCloud storage.  —  The email notes that once the storage is full, iOS devices will no longer …
Discussion: The Next Web and TUAW
Matt Rosoff / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
THEY STILL EXIST: Startups That Survived The Dot-Com Bust And Are Ready To Cash In On The New Boom  —  Pandora's recent IPO is a good reminder that the tech industry is sometimes a game of attrition.  —  The company was founded in 1999 and struggled for years — founder Tim Westergren went through …
Charles Newark-French / Flurry:
Mobile Apps Put the Web in Their Rear-view Mirror  —  Although the Internet entered the mainstream a mere 15 years ago, life without it today is nearly incomprehensible.  And our use of the web has rapidly changed as well.  In simple terms, it has evolved from online directories (Yahoo!) …
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Hulu Plays Along With Apple's New Rules.  Who's Next?  —  Apple's new subscription rules could have posed a problem for services like Hulu.  But when Steve Jobs changed his mind earlier this month, life got a lot easier.  —  Here's the old version of the Hulu Plus subscription app for the iPad:
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
‘Reminder: Call Dad’ Is Another Notch In Google's Belt Of Social Fail  —  Google, Google, Google ... I don't know if it's that you just don't understand the intricacies of interpersonal relationships or if getting the social stuff right is just extremely difficult ...
Kevin C. Tofel / GigaOM:
Seesmic dumps BlackBerry: Start of a stampede?  —  Seesmic, a popular third-party Twitter client for desktop and mobile devices, today announced it would end support for BlackBerry handsets at the end of June.  In a blog post today, the company shared the news, saying the reason for the decision is …
Thea / Groublogpon:
The Groupon Guide to the “Quiet Period”  —  At the bottom of each Daily Groupon feature, users can find Groupon the Cat, slouching majestically across a cloud of pure wisdom.  Groupon dispenses ancient truisms that still have relevance to our modern lives, as evidenced by today's entry:
RELATED:
Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
RIM is black-burying carriers with half-baked BlackBerrys  —  Launching new products is always difficult.  Launching new products with hundreds of different carriers is exponentially more difficult.  Apparently there is an easy way and a hard way to do things, however, and RIM has been making carriers offers they can't refuse.
Tim Conneally / BetaNews:
LightSquared cuts base station power by 50% to halt GPS interference  —  Mobile network LightSquared today said it has a solution to the problem of interference with Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers that will allow the company to proceed with the construction of its new hybrid satellite/cellular data network.
Discussion: Electronista and Engadget
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
What's Really Going on With Facebook's Mobile Plans?  An Explainer for the Rest of Us.  —  The hullabaloo around Facebook's upcoming mobile products in the past week was probably bigger than the news itself.  But if you clear away the fuss, we now know a bit more about what the largest social network …
Discussion: digiday:DAILY
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Revealed: Facebook's music plans involve Spotify, others  —  For the past few months, I have been hearing about Facebook and Spotify getting a lot closer as companies, with a much tighter integration between the two services.  However, Facebook's musical ambitions go beyond Spotify and include other music services and applications.
Dieter Bohn / This is my next:
Nokia N9 Lankku leaks out in images and renders  —  If you're among those waiting for Nokia to lay down a proper MeeGo powered phone, take a good long look at the two images above.  On the left, one of two renders Pocketnow identifies as press images of the Nokia N9, a replacement for the likely-canceled N9-00.
Rick Osterloh / The Big Blog:
Skype Gets More Social with Deeper Facebook Integration  —  We are excited to announce the new Skype 5.5 Beta version for Windows, which enhances the user experience and features new updates to Skype based on user feedback.  Skype is also continuing to bring people together whenever …
 
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 More Items: 
Robert McMillan / Computerworld:
Google disputes possible $6B Java lawsuit price-tag
Gautham Nagesh / Hillicon Valley:
FCC to fight ‘cramming’ on phone bills
Thanks:stiffjab
Brian / Uber Blog:
Uber Drops Fares 50% For SF Taxi Strike
Discussion: TechCrunch and @marshallk
David Kravets / Threat Level:
Righthaven Loss: Judge Rules Reposting Entire Article Is Fair Use
Erica Ogg / CNET News:
Hackers claim 177K e-mails from Sony Pictures France
David Kocieniewski / New York Times:
Companies Push for Tax Break on Foreign Cash
Discussion: The Microsoft Blog
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Apple Officially Acquires “AirDrop” & Files for “Photo Stream” Trademark in Canada
Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, RazorianFly, The Loop and TUAW
 Earlier Items: 
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google To FCC: Stop Letting The Voice Network Tail Wag The Internet Dog
Paul Thurrott / Windows Phone Secrets:
Microsoft is porting Zune HD apps to Windows Phone
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
Lulzsec and Anonymous Declare Open War Against All Governments and Fat Cats
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
The Android Market: 'It's a loud, obnoxious baby'
Discussion: The Next Web, Gizmodo and Electronista
Miguel Bustillo / Wall Street Journal:
Best Buy Battles Over Use of ‘Geek’
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
James Harding says the Tortoise-Observer deal could create a profitable media group and there isn't a guaranteed future for the Observer with the Guardian

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Substack, very deliberately, tries to have it both ways by saying publications on their platform are independent while presenting them all as parts of Substack

 
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