They seem to be about 2% behind on MtGox, so I'm not sure it is that great a deal.  Given the new legislation if you are US based it seems all the exchanges are going to have some friction with getting dollars in or out.

Bump cause I want blockchain.info to address.

What?  This isn't accurate.  The protocol will happily support sending transactions without fees, it just may take forever to confirm.  I sent once just yesterday, took eight hours to confirm.

It is generally better to include transaction fees if you want timely confirmations, but there is nothing preventing sending without one and you will eventually be picked up.

I agree this would be useful, I'm always nervous that I missed a character when sending my address around.  Having a human-friendly alias system would help alleviate those fears.

Just out of curiosity, do you think this was user error or something wrong with Blockchain?  Have quite a few coins there so I'm curious.