Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 31, 2006 by CyberNet.

Apparently Pluck decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to continue their RSS reader services. They have announced to all of their users that they will discontinue the service starting January 5, 2007:

All versions of Pluck’s RSS readers for Internet Explorer, FireFox and Pluck’s web edition will be discontinued on 1/5/2007. The RSS Readers have served our community of end users well for several years, but with Pluck’s focus in other business areas, the venerable RSS readers are set to be retired from our product line.

They have removed all signs of the RSS reader from their site and all links redirect back to their homepage. I actually used Pluck for a little while but instead of being a standalone desktop application they offered add-ons for both Firefox and Internet Explorer users. The Firefox add-on was nothing near as powerful as the one available for Internet Explorer, and if the two were the same then I’m sure it would have been amazingly popular for Firefox. The problem is that most people who use Internet Explorer as their primary browser probably aren’t aware of RSS feeds, so their main focus should have been with Firefox.

I’m sure that it also doesn’t help with all of the great web-based feed readers entering the market. The best online feed reader right now, in my opinion, is the new Google Reader and once Google integrates it into GMail (without needing Greasemonkey) will be the day that it becomes very very popular.

News Source: Bitemarks

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As we begin to experience the post-Breaking Bad era, there are a few other options to check out on TV this week, including the start of Major League Baseball playoff games. That said, the series finale was good enough that we wouldn’t argue if you just kept replaying it every night this week. It’s fall premiere season, so new shows continue to arrive including CBS’ We Are Men and The Millers as well as NBC’s Ironside, Welcome to the Family and Sean Saves the World. Low Winter Sun wraps up its premiere season, along with finales for Hell on Wheels and The Bridge. Blu-ray and videogame highlights include NBA 2K14 for current-gen systems, The Wizard of Oz 75th Anniversary Edition and This Is the End. The biggest name that’s not on our list? GTA V‘s online features, which will debut tomorrow. Look after the break for our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and gaming.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Chalk one up for atomic force microscopy. As detailed in a paper published recently in the journal Science, researchers in China have used the imaging technique (as opposed to scanning tunnelling microscopy) to capture an image of a hydrogen bond for the very first time. As io9 explains, hydrogen bonding is common in nature — responsible for the properties of water and the link between the two strands of DNA’s double helix — and it’s something that chemists have long been able to visualize, albeit only on a theoretical level. According to Chemistry World, while there remains much to learn about the nature of hydrogen bonds, the researchers hope that this latest development will help lead to atomic force microscopy (or AFM) being used as a routine tool to examine molecules and offer a clearer picture of them.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: io9, The Verge

Source: Science

WASHINGTON — If Congress fails to fund the federal government to avert a shutdown, most investigations into workplace safety and discrimination will cease on Tuesday morning, when the overwhelming majority of Labor Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission employees are pulled off the job.

Of the Labor Department’s 16,304 workers, only 2,954, or 18 percent, would be permitted to work during the shutdown, according to a plan released by the agency on Monday. Of the EEOC’s 2,164 employees, only 107, or a mere 5 percent, would work through the furlough period, the commission said in a press release.

The Occupation Safety and Health Administration, the Labor Department office that performs the crucial function of monitoring workplaces, would have to stop inspections that don’t involve immediate dangers or deaths, the department wrote in the plan. That means the agency’s routine inspections — an already woefully underfunded responsibility — would generally grind to a halt during the shutdown.

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More on Government Shutdown

A government shut down has been warned as possibly taking place tomorrow in light of budget agreement troubles within Congress. If such a shut down does take place, a myriad of individuals and agencies will feel the effects, not the least of which is NASA. On Friday, the space agency detailed plans it has in […]