Hasta La Gadget!

Google announced two days ago its semi-regular spring cleaning would result in the discontinuation of its Google Reader service, which resulted in a petition being created asking the search giant to reconsider doing away with the apparently popular service.

It’s only been two days since the petition was first started, and it has already amassed over 100,000 signatures. We’re not sure if that’s enough for Google to reconsider their decision of doing away with Google Reader, but it certainly should tell them there is a dedicated following of this particular service who have been enjoying it since its first debut, ourselves included.

Regardless if Google is listening to its users or not, you should probably expect for Google Reader to shut its doors on July 1. A number of companies are already working to take its place, with Digg recently announcing it would like to take a shot at creating its own RSS reader . Maybe that will be the spark to make Digg a relevant name in technology once again. Only time will tell who exactly takes over the RSS reader throne since there’s an obvious market for such a service.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Google Reader To Be Discontinued On July 1, Facebook Details How They Came Up With The New News Feed Design,

Microsoft remains convinced that you’ll like Windows Phone if you only give it a try. Accordingly, it just recently updated its web-based demo to reflect all the changes in Windows Phone 8. If you let the web app access Facebook, you’ll get a personalized sample of the OS on your desktop or mobile browser that includes resizable home tiles, Kid’s Corner and other newer additions. No, it’s not a full-fledged simulator, but it does give about as good a taste as you’ll get without the real hardware in your hands. We also can’t say that everyone will be sold on the concept — still, it’s worth a spin for anyone keeping their smartphone options open.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft

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Via: Windows Phone Blog

Source: Windows Phone

Last week it was announced that Facebook would be announcing an update (or improvement) of its News Feed design, but have you ever wondered how Facebook came up with the idea? Well according to a post by Facebook (source link below), it seems that the social networking giant has gone a bit old school in coming up with its design, and it was by utilizing Post-It notes on a wall, categorizing posts into updates from friends, funny posts, photos and etc. Looking at an excerpt from the blog post:

We came up with the idea of multiple feeds, each with its own focus on a particular topic, type of content, or type of friend. It was a good start, but crucial questions remained: which feeds to offer, and which stories to put into them?

I gave each participant a stack of recent stories from their feed, printed out on paper, and asked them to pick out the ones that interested them and discard the rest. Next, I asked them to sort the remaining, interesting stories by putting them into piles separated by what they liked about each. An analysis of participants’ piles and the stories they’d put into them yielded clear themes.

In any case if you’re interested in what goes on behind the scenes and how ideas are developed, you should check out the post in the source link below. As it stands Facebook’s new News Feed will be rolled out slowly and overtime, so don’t worry if you haven’t received the updated look yet. However if you’re too impatient, you can sign yourself up on their waiting list over here.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Google Reader To Be Discontinued On July 1, Twitter Troll Messes With Pro Boxer, Nearly Gets His Just Deserts,

Microsoft services such as SkyDrive, Hotmail and Outlook have been inaccessible for hours due to the ongoing migration process. Hotmail users might not be able to see all the emails and the issue has not been resolved. This has caused a massive backlash by frustrated users on Twitter #hotmail.

On Mar 12 at 3:41PM PDT, SkyDrive experienced issues with adding, editing and removing files. Users also received errors while publishing content with Windows Photo Gallery in an online album. The issue was resolved on the same day at 6:40 PM. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: New Dropbox Menu For Computers, BitTorrent Intros Live Streaming Service That Makes Buffering A Thing Of The Past,

Torrents have been used over the years mainly as a way to effectively share content with other users who are also interested in that piece of content, using all the bandwidth of the connected parties in order to deliver that content to one another. Videos, photos, e-books and software have all be download and uploaded on torrents for years, but a new service may change how we look at torrents forever.

BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen is announcing today a live streaming video service that he believes will revolutionize the online streaming world. BitTorrent Live allows people to stream content through BitTorrent and the more people that tune in, the better the quality becomes, which is the complete opposite of traditional online video streams.

Since the service will use those watching in order to help strengthen its broadcast, this will effectively eliminate the need for the person who is hosting the video to worry about bandwidth costs as well as infrastructure barriers. This is quite an important technology as, in theory, it could make the days of buffering online videos a thing of the past, that is, as long as there are enough people watching the same thing you are.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Netflix Launches ISP Speed Index Site To Rank Global Video Streaming, YouTube Co-Founder Teases Launch Of New Video Service,