We'll see plenty of "Pre sells X units in Y amount of time; not as many as iPhone" stories in the next year—in fact, we already have. That may be the wrong way to look at it.

Charter Equity Research is now saying that Palm has pushed over 300k Pres into sales channels in June alone, setting them on a pace to sell a million units in the first quarter. Set in the context of the iPhone 3G and 3GS's million-in-a-weekend sales pace, this doesn't sound like a ton. Set in the more meaningful context of Palm's sales last quarter, it's huge. As John Paczkowski points out, the company sold just 351,000 phones total in the quarter preceding the launch of the Pre.

Palm may be waiting to release official numbers until supply issues are sorted out and they can claim a more flattering number, but this right here? Pretty impressive. If there was any lingering doubt that a single phone could salvage this ailing company (and assuming these numbers are right), it's gone now. [Barrons via AllThingsD]

We'll see plenty of "Pre sells X units in Y amount of time; not as many as iPhone" stories in the next year—in fact, we already have. That may be the wrong way to look at it.

Charter Equity Research is now saying that Palm has pushed over 300k Pres into sales channels in June alone, setting them on a pace to sell a million units in the first quarter. Set in the context of the iPhone 3G and 3GS's million-in-a-weekend sales pace, this doesn't sound like a ton. Set in the more meaningful context of Palm's sales last quarter, it's huge. As John Paczkowski points out, the company sold just 351,000 phones total in the quarter preceding the launch of the Pre.

Palm may be waiting to release official numbers until supply issues are sorted out and they can claim a more flattering number, but this right here? Pretty impressive. If there was any lingering doubt that a single phone could salvage this ailing company (and assuming these numbers are right), it's gone now. [Barrons via AllThingsD]

Thanks to all our Chicago readers who sent in their speed test data from their iPhone 3G and 3GS. Here's our conclusion: the 7.2Mbps AT&T's testing in Chicago doesn't really make any difference right now in speeds.

The 3GS turned out to be slightly faster in downloads (1202kbps vs. 1161kbps), but just about the same in uploads. Its latency was much better 175ms vs. 210ms, which reflects the same thing we found in our iPhone 3GS review and is probably attributable to its faster processor.

Either AT&T's 7.2Mbps isn't really widely deployed yet even in Chicago, a city they've been running deployment tests on for a few months now, or it makes no real difference in everyday usage. We'll test this again once 7.2Mbps gets rolled out to more cities to find out which.

And if you're still not sure about what 3G speeds mean, or the differences between different phone techs, see our Giz explainer on all the mobile terms. And the next generation technology? 4G? See what's coming up in that explainer. [Thanks to all our readers who participated!]

The bottom line of Bill Howard's epic consideration of a new color laser printer is that cheap printers can cost more over their lifetime than nicer, slightly pricier printers, so you might as well get a good one. [Gearlog]

TreeHugger explores just what goes in to automating your house for Twitter, the practicality of solar powered lighting, if iRobot is serious about e-cycling, and how home water makers work and which models are best.

So just how does one got about setting up their house to Twitter its energy and resource consumption? An IBM Master Inventor, Andy Stanford-Clark dishes on insider tips.

The easier we make setting up solar power on lighting, the better. Visible Light Solar is working on cutting energy costs by as much as 85% thanks to their retrofittable tech.

iRobot responded right away after we called them out on their shoddy e-cycling practices. But how are they doing on following through?

And with the water crisis upon us, are home water makers about to be part of every home? We lend a hand on understanding how they work, and what models you'll want to check out if you decide you're in the market.

TreeHugger's EcoModo column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

It's not on Mozilla yet, but Softpedia and others are already pushing out the final version of Firefox 3.5. It's worlds better than 3.0 with powers like geo-location and some serious speed, so grab it nownownow. [Softpedia via Download Squad]

It's not a formal wall socket replacement, but this Elecom U2H-TC410B 4-port USB hub will look sharp (and a bit misleading) when mounted to a desk or table.

In all actuality, it's just a typical 4-port USB hub with a tad more style and a lot of extra space for larger USB devices to plug in. Yes, the hub is a bit expensive at $40, but when a friend electrocutes himself trying to stick a USB dongle into a wall socket because he saw you do it, the price will seem minuscule next his the medical bills and the subsequent lifetime of misery as his bowels no longer have the patience for toilets. [AudioCubes via OhGizmo!]

Your worst fears about The Pirate Bay acquisition might be coming true: Peter Sunde told Torrent Freak that they are indeed closing down TPB's tracker and decentralizing to the point listed torrents won't be hosted on the site anymore.

There's an update at the end of the post from Global Gaming Factory X CTO Johan Sellstr

Are these photos of the HD video-shooting D300s and non-video-shooting D3000 real? That's what I love about leaked camera shots—fudge a badge, add a mic hole, who can ever tell?

That said, on the D300s front, we've seen some specs and the back of the camera, and Nikon is just about the leakiest company this side of the Titanic, and they have a certain fondness for August, so you can probably expect it's a-coming.

The D3000, discovered by Lens Tipss is supposedly a video-less version of the D5000 that'll be Nikon's new bottom of the barrel.

Or maybe everybody's totally wrong and the D300s and D3000 are just the first in Nikon's new line of magnificent planters. [Nikon Rumors, Lens Tip]

Hint: It involves South Korea, agriculture, television, and the geopolitics of love.

What you see above is the home of one Mr. Lee Si-kap, a farmer in rural South Korea, who is said to have the most operational satellite dishes in the whole country—85, which net him over 1500 channels. Clusters of neglected satellite hardware are a common feature across the globe, piping international television into much of the developing world. But this isn't the developing world—it's South Korea. What gives?

As it turns out, satellite dishes are undergoing a sort of renaissance in the country on account of a recent influx of young ladies from Vietnam, China and the Philippines. Here's the deal: the apparent trend is for South Korean women born in the countryside to move toward larger cities, leaving rural towns without a young female population, and by extension farmers, tethered to their land, without any ladies to marry. Immigrants are filling the void, and they want TV channels from home.

Lee Si-kap, aside from having an absurd number of dishes himself, is spearheading a campaign to get all these recent arrivals the equipment they need to remain connected to their home countries via television, and has become something of a national celebrity for it. If the whole situation weren't a bit strange in the first place, this would be a sweet story. Ah, forget it—it is. [NYT]