If you like to constantly check for new content on your favorite sites, you may have come across RSS before. RSS, which stands for either Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication, is a simple way for a web site to post updates, and for you to get those updates all at once using a reader program. The best-known RSS reader is Google Reader, a free product that lives in the cloud and has many powerful features for sorting and organizing multiple RSS feeds. I've been a loyal Google Reader user for years, but I've recently decided to trim down my enormous list of feeds and focus on just a few essentials. Instead of outright deleting the feeds I read less often, I've moved them over to Slick RSS, a free feed reader that works as an extension in Google Chrome. Slick RSS's most notable feature is the fact that it is entirely self-contained. It is not a front-end to a web-based RSS reader, and does not synchronize with any online service. Instead, it is a full-fledged reader, entirely implemented as a browser extension. It can import an OPML file with a list of feeds, or you can provide it with individual feed URLs. It took just a few seconds to import my OPML file (which holds the list of RSS feeds I subscribe to), containing over 120 feeds. Once you subscribe to feeds, Slick RSS will check for any new items on each feed, download them, and show an Unread Item count on its toolbar icon whenever you open the browser. Next, it's reading time. Slick RSS has a very simple interface, which lacks many of the convenience features Google Reader has. The biggest thing missing are keyboard shortcuts: There is no way to quickly skip to the next post within a feed. There isn't even an on-screen "next" button—you just need to keep scrolling down until you get to the next post. On a more positive note, Slick RSS features an interesting two-column default layout. Instead of viewing just a single post at a time, the display looks more like a newspaper. This is configurable, so you can have anywhere from one to four columns on the screen at any time.
Figuring out the charges on a cell phone bill requires a special type of patience. From third-party charges to data overages, the monthly statement can look like Greek to even the tech-savvy. that aims to better explain what charges are for. The three-minute video bills are e-mailed to you and provide personalized, line-by-line rundown of charges. (see video example below) The carrier is currently testing the new service for subscribers in the Mountain Time Zone, with plans to roll out video billing nationwide by early next year, AT&T says. New customers or existing subscribers who make changes to their wireless plans will be the first to receive the video bills. in July told the Federal Communications Commission that wireless carriers should allow customers to block third-party charges from their bills.
Does the world really need another social network? , to users with Microsoft and Facebook accounts. Socl launched last year but was in beta for Microsoft employees and college students until Wednesday. was decidedly less image-heavy.) Socl was born from Microsoft Research FUSE Labs’ research into social search for students. Now, anyone can sign up for the site and find content either generated randomly on Socl’s homepage or do a Bing-powered search by topic. To create a post, you can pull content from other parts of the Web—photos, videos, links, etc.—and the site puts together a collage for you.
Do you spend a lot of time hopping around between various Web-based productivity apps, like Basecamp, Dropbox, Google Calendar, and Twitter? What you need is an aggregator, a centralized hub that gathers all your Web apps under one roof for faster, easier access. That's . Let's start with Hojoki itself. The service can connect you with some 25 other services, everything from Beanstalk and Chatter to Pocket and ZenDesk (plus the various heavyweights mentioned above). The only really glaring omission is LinkedIn. Once you've created an account, which you can do via Facebook, Google, or just your email address, you simply pick and choose the apps you want to connect. After a one-time approval for each app, you'll find yourself with a simple, straightforward dashboard for switching between them, launching them, and viewing all recent activity via a social-style newsfeed.
If you're having trouble keeping up with email, events, and multiple social networks, you might be considering an all-in-one solution. Free and simple options such as MultiMi or Fanmix turn your social networks into one big inbox, but if you're running a business, have a team to manage, or simply like to see all your activities in one place, give Nimble ($15 per month per user, feature-limited free version for personal use only) a try. , Nimble puts emphasis on interaction and individuals, and not on your social streams. Nimble is a Web app, so there's nothing to download. After signing up, start by adding your email and social accounts. You can choose to import up to 30,000 contacts from different networks (3,000 contact for Personal accounts), or simply connect your accounts without importing. The import process is surprisingly quick, and by the time you finish going through the introduction tour, all your contacts will be available in Nimble. Nimble's dashboard includes five main tabs: Activities, Contacts, Deals, Messages, and Social. In Contacts, you will find a full list of all your contacts from all the networks you added to Nimble. Duplicate contacts are pretty common despite Nimble's automatic merge feature, but you can easily merge them manually. When looking at contacts, you can read their social streams, see related contacts, read your personal history with the contact and sometimes find other social profiles you're not yet connected to. If you're running a business, this can give you easy background information and remind you of previous conversations.
. Today let's talk about another iTunes 11 curiosity: the software no longer includes the option to find duplicates in your song library. That's a bummer, because it definitely came in handy when working with large libraries accumulated over the course of many years. , which can not only find and eliminate duplicate tracks, but also fix mislabeled songs, find missing cover art, show song lyrics, and much more.
, won't be a major factor until at least 2016, according to an online report. Slates running Microsoft's operating system are expected to account for just 2.9 percent of the worldwide tablet market by the end of 2012, rising to 10.3 percent in 2016, according to market research firm IDC. IDC recently increased its overall tablet market forecast, predicting worldwide shipments to hit 122.3 million units, up from the previous forecast of 117.1 million devices shipped. By 2016, the research firm expects tablet shipments to reach 282.7 million units, up from the previous forecast of 261.4 million. tablet.
Time Warner Cable subscribers might notice that their Internet bills are about $4 more expensive this month, thanks to a new modem rental fee. Time Warner now charges $3.95 per month to rent cable modems, which the company had included at no extra charge in the past. This charge is for the modem itself, not to be confused with the optional fee for renting a wireless router. to charge for modems in October, in many markets the new charge took hold in November, which means customers are just starting to notice that their bills are $4 heavier. (I just looked at my bill in Cincinnati, and sure enough, the new charge appears on my latest statement.) on the University of North Carolina campus, where students are already strapped for cash: “That’s almost $48 a year, which is essentially two bar tabs,” UNC junior David Wilkinson told the paper.
device yet. With an estimated pricing of $250 contract-free, the Lumia 620 is the company’s budget Windows Phone 8 smartphone, although for just $50 more you might have better options. The specs on the Lumia 620 are in line for a budget phone: it has a 3.8-inch display with 800-by-480 pixel resolution, a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor. It has 512MB of RAM and 8GB of built-in storage (expandable up to 64GB via MicroSD), and 7GB free Microsoft SkyDrive storage. and 820. Meanwhile, the front-facing camera is a standard VGA sensor, and this phone also has NFC connectivity on board for accessories such as portable speakers and payment apps. As with most Windows phones, the Lumia 620 comes in a range of colors, including lime green, orange, magenta, yellow, cyan, white and black. Nokia used a new dual-shot color technique that adds a second layer of colored, transparent or translucent polycarbonate on top of a base layer to produce secondary color blends and depth effects.
Hewlett-Packard is bringing a twist to its business laptop design with the new EliteBook Revolve, which is the company's first Windows 8 touchscreen laptop that can double up as a tablet in some circumstances. The Revolve has an 11.6-inch display that can swivel and be placed on the keyboard to turn the laptop into a tablet. The screen displays images at a 1366-by-768 pixel resolution. The laptop has a classic convertible design, but is thin and has more of a tablet feel when used in that mode. But at 1.36 kilograms, the laptop is heavier than pure tablets, which generally weigh under a kilogram. The laptop has 256GB of SSD (solid-state drive) storage. Chip options are Intel's Core i3, i5 or i7 processors based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture.
Early science results from NASA's mission to study the lunar interior are in -- and the data are great. The moon still holds many mysteries, though.
Snow reports are a mess. What the industry -- and more importantly, the community -- needs to do is take a page from the surfing world. It needs a Surfline for snow reports.
The R18 Ultra Chair is an exercise in design ¿ Audi engineers used carbon fiber and aluminum to help designers Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram make it super lightweight, just under five pounds. It's on display at the Design Miami forum this week.
The tablet has replaced the desktop computer as the family computing device for many families. Amazon acknowledged that trend when it added the kid-friendly Kindle Free Time account system to the new Kindle Fire HD line. Now the online retailer is stepping up its game with unlimited access to children's content on the Kindle Fire.
Photobooth.js makes it dead simple to add a Photobooth-style webcam to any webpage. The magic behind Photobooth.js is WebRTC, a set of APIs being developed by the W3C that allow web developers to access device hardware -- your camera, microphone, accelerometer and more.
A bug seems to be serving up some unexpected XXX content for Russian iTunes users.
Comics fans on Tumblr take a look at crazy superheroine poses by redrawing them all with the hero Hawkeye.
There are plenty of debates about the best seat on a plane. But for an aviation geek, the choice is easy: in the cockpit. And Boeing has a new way to experience the thrills of take off and landing without having to leave the comfort of your office chair.
This looks adorafun. Indie developer Pixle is releasing a tool for the iPad to make designing your own papercraft figures super easy.It's called Foldify, and uses a mixture of pre-build patterns and finger painting tools to allow you to create designs while previewing them in 3-D on the fly. Once you're done, print them out on card stock, cut and fold. As easy as that, more weird things for your desk.
The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a Senate resolution calling on the United States to oppose the United Nations gaining control of the internet. The resolution vote by the House, which follows a similar move by the Senate, comes as the World Conference on International Telecommunications opened Monday in Dubai with some 190-plus nations discussing the global internet's future.
When Twitter and Instagram duke it out for short form social media dominance, no matter who wins, you lose.
A tiny robot capable of bending and flexing into a huge range of shapes could pave the way for real-life Transformers. The milli-motein -- so called because it is essentially a millimetre-scale motorised device inspired by the natural complex folding of biological protein molecules -- uses watchmaking techniques to reorganise itself into different forms.
Want to know how you'll be styling web pages a year or two from now? Take a look at the improvements and new features in CSS -- coming soon to a web browser near you.
A team of paleontologists thinks it may have identified the earliest known dinosaur¿a creature no bigger than a Labrador retriever that lived about 243 million years ago.
Atlassian is now offering a Git-based code collaboration and management tool designed specifically for enterprises -- i.e., big businesses. It's called Stash, and on Wednesday, Atlassian is rolling out a new version of the platform that adds more collaboration tools, such as Twitter- and Facebook-style "@ mentions" and finer-grained permission controls. It's a direct challenge to GitHub.
To convince you to sock away enough gold for your golden years, Merrill Lynch has launched an online magic mirror to remind you that you won't be forever young.
ProForm's new Le Tour de France exercise bicycle is a mechanized, micro-adjustable training bike that provides a workout almost as intense as the real deal.
On this episode of
Whether your fancy is the M248 SAW or the FN M240B, which is the U.S. armed forces current-issue medium machine gun, there's a firearm for everyone at the Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot & Trade Show. There's also a dynamite crew on-hand to beef up the explosions.
Animation pioneer Walt Disney and nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg are born. So, if you¿ve ever thought the Uncertainty Principle was a bit goofy, you may be onto something.
Folks who aren't motivated by wealth will preach that money can't buy happiness. Any Googler who made millions when his company stock went public might disagree. No matter which side you stand on, a new study shows that money can buy happiness.
CouchDB creator Damian Katz wasn't inspired by Google or Amazon or any other web giant. He was inspired by Lotus Notes, an online collaboration platform originally developed in the 1970s and 80s.
Figures contained in scientific reports are a neglected area of the design world. Typically intended for display to academic audiences in the cramped confines of a journal, they tend to be utilitarian and esoteric -- yet while looking through hundreds of articles in the course of 2012, certain figures transcended the technical. From tomato taste to accelerating human evolution to a goose that flies over the Himalayas, here are our favorite scientific figures of the year.
Stratasys Ltd., a merger of 3-D printing companies Stratasys and Objet, will be the largest in the industry, with Stratasys accounting for just over half of it, though Objet's CEO, David Reis, will take over as CEO of the new company. Together, the two expect to be valued at $3 billion.
The Hanebrink X-5 might look like another all-electric crotch-rocket, but after the lithium-ion batteries run out of juice, it converts into an unconventional bicycle that might have the fuzz looking at you crosswise.
The elite commandos in Afghanistan just got a new base of operations. And it's owned by Blackwater, thanks to a $22 million no-bid deal.
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
James Dyson leaps out of his chair like a restless child and picks up a big yellow-and-gray vacuum¿one of several Dyson contraptions congregated around the podium at the Wired Business Conference last May. The audience laughs uneasily. Will he break into song? Start vacuuming the stage?
The 12 greatest books from the heyday of the influential DC Comics imprint, as its founder bids farewell.