Content and publishing

Google's decision to kill its Google Reader service has caused some collateral damage: the end of a related Chrome extension that let the browser handle RSS feeds.

RSS and the similar Atom technology make it easier for people to subscribe to regular updates published on Web sites, and Google Reader was a popular way for people to read that content. Google announced that it's scrapping Google Reader on July 1, but it's already gone ahead and withdrawn the feed-finding Chrome extension.

The extension would detect Web sites' feeds then let people use a variety of RSS reader … Read more

How do you kill a FeedDemon? Apparently, all it takes is a decision from Google.

In a blog post, Nick Bradbury, the founder of the popular RSS feed manager FeedDemon, cites Google's call to shutter Google Reader on July 1 as the final "nail in the coffin" for his desktop and laptop app. Bradbury mentions numerous serious concerns, such as spending time with his family and recently being forced to take a day job, but he also talks about the inner workings of FeedDemon.

The software, he explains, relies on Reader for synchronization, "and there's … Read more

Outlook and Hotmail users can blame the recent outage on an overheated data center, Microsoft says.

On Tuesday at around 1:30 p.m. PT, the two online e-mail services suffered a service disruption, rendering them inaccessible to many users. Microsoft started to bring them back online the rest of the day and on into Wednesday. But access wasn't fully restored until 5:43 a.m. yesterday, according to the company.

Microsoft's status page confirmed that the problem was repaired but offered no details as to the cause. Now the company has revealed the source of the glitch … Read more

Outlook and Hotmail are up and running once again.

A problem had rendered both online e-mail services inaccessible to many users since yesterday. But Microsoft's status page now shows both of them are back in business.

The page gives no details as to what caused the outages or how they were resolved.

Hotmail, Outlook, and SkyDrive were all hit by downtime yesterday, starting at around 2:30 p.m. PT. Many users had taken to Twitter to report the outage and express their frustration over the inability to access their e-mail.

Microsoft's status page shows that the problem … Read more

A man charged with using Craiglist to lure three people to their deaths has been convicted of murder.

The jury in an Akron, Ohio, courtroom yesterday found Richard Beasley guilty of kidnapping and murdering David Pauley, Ralph Geiger, and Timothy Kern, according to Reuters. Beasley was also convicted of the attempted murder of Scott Davis, who was shot in the arm but managed to escape.

Beasley was found guilty of all charges against him, including aggravated murder, aggravated attempted murder, aggravated robbery, grand and petty theft, and ID theft. The jury will next meet on March 20 to determine whether … Read more

Is your Internet provider as fast as its rivals? A new Netflix page could provide the answer.

Launched today, the site's ISP Speed Index page displays the performance of certain ISPs in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. As such, it doesn't cover the entire world but simply those countries where Netflix is available.

In the U.S., Google Fiber took the top spot with an average speed of 3.35 megabits per second. Cablevision's Optimum service was No. 2 with a speed of 2.35Mbps, followed by Suddenlink, Cox, … Read more

Google appears eager to let other organizations use certain top-level domains that it wants to acquire and manage.

Last June, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Named and Numbers (ICANN) revealed which companies and organizations had applied for their own generic top-level domains (gTLDs). The effort is part of a move to foster competition on the Internet by allowing companies to use a greater variety of TLDs beyond just .com.

Google applied for 101 of the 1,900 available gTLDs, looking to score such obvious ones as .google, .chrome, .gmail, .goog, and .youtube. But along with those gTLDs were ones that … Read more

Want to sell that movie you bought on iTunes but never watch? You may be able to one day if a new Apple patent filing ever comes to life.

Published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and filed last June, an Apple patent application named "Managing Access To Digital Content Items" conjures up a system for legally selling or loaning iTunes items to another person.

The method involves transferring digital access rights from the original owner to someone else. Once those rights are transferred, the new owner would gain access to the content while the … Read more

YouTube may tune in to the online music world this year with its own streaming service.

The service would likely offer free music streaming paid for by ads as well as an ad-free subscription option, according to Fortune, which says it was briefed by sources in the record industry and by an unnamed person at Google.

A YouTube representative told CNET that "while we don't comment on rumor or speculation, there are some content creators that think they would benefit from a subscription revenue stream in addition to ads, so we're looking at that."

YouTube's … Read more