It’s June 1, so we only have a month before Google Reader shuts down for good. Here are the services I’m looking at as a replacement.
Software
Newsblur
Gabe Weatherhead:
Rather than throw out a bunch of alternatives that I’ve never used more than five minutes, I’ll give you my opinions from the ground up. This post begins with the winner, Newsblur.
Great in-depth review.
Creative Cloud feedback update from Adobe
It’s good to see Adobe communicating openly about what’s going on with Creative Cloud.
OmniPresence
OmniPresence is the best way to sync all of your documents across all of your devices. And it works on most web hosts, including OS X Server, which means you can store all of your data yourself.
The folks at The Omni Group are some of the best developers around.
Adobe Creative Cloud from a freelancer’s perspective
Jon Hicks isn’t happy with Adobe’s decision.
When Apple gets iCloud right
Gus Mueller gives us a list of four points when we’ll know that Apple got iCloud right.
New-look Flickr
Yahoo has been busy. I like this look better.
Marco Arment on Tumblr
Congrats to everyone involved. This is a great look at Tumblr from the inside.
A look at Tumblr
Anil Dash gives his perspective of Tumblr as it grew.
Tumblr users flee to WordPress
Matt Mullenweg:
Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000.
I understand why people are worried — Yahoo has a terrible reputation for screwing things up, but I don’t think it will happen this time. Maybe I think too highly of Marissa Mayer, but I think Tumblr will be okay.
10 photo editing apps that aren’t Photoshop
Ten alternatives to Photoshop; most work on the Mac.
Yahoo board considering $1.1 billion Tumblr buyout
Yahoo has been mulling some kind of deal with the hip New York-based blogging site, from a strategic investment to an outright acquisition. Sources said that the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s CEO Marissa Mayer has decided that buying Tumblr was going to be “the stake in the ground of what her strategy is going forward for Yahoo.”
This would be very interesting.
Pixelmator 2.2 tops 500,000 downloads in one week
The Pixelmator Team on Thursday said its latest release, Pixelmator 2.2, topped 500,000 downloads in its first week on the Mac App Store, making it the most successful release in the company’s history.
Google revamps Maps
Eight years after Google launched Maps as a beta product, the search giant is reinventing the map for a new data rich web that lives on fast broadband, and runs on computers with oomph to spare.
Glad to see it.
Google’s All Access subscription music service
Jon Seff for Macworld:
Like Spotify and its ilk, All Access offers millions of tracks (although Google didn’t say how many millions, or which music labels for that matter) for streaming on Android phones and tablets, as well as from a Web browser. And in the process, Google has also taking a big swing at its Android app partners like Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody.
It seems suspicious to me that Google won’t tell us which music labels they have or how many songs they have. That immediately leads to the assumption that it’s not that good.
I’m not at all surprised that Google is taking a swing at its competitors. The third-party app developers and services are making money from Google’s operating system and users — it makes sense that Google would want to cash in on some of that.
Google shows off Chrome improvements
Turning back to the browser, Pichai said that Chrome now has 750 million active monthly users—an increase of 300 million users from last year. Much of that growth is happening on phones and tablets: Chrome works on both Android and iOS, and Pinchai stressed that its goal is to “move the mobile Web forward.”
It will be interesting to see what Google is going to do with Chrome, but I did see it as an operating system alternative right now.
Ghost blogging platform
I supported this. It’s always nice to see what how people can move things forward.
Pixelmator 2.2 adds new shape, move, paint selection tools and lots more
Pixelmator, the excellent image editing software, has gotten a major update with its new 2.2 release.
About those 100 million Windows 8 sales
Gene Steinberg:
Microsoft earns most of its keep selling software licenses to OEMs, who bundle Windows with a new PC, any PC. So, yes, I suppose it’s possible that Microsoft has booked 100 million sales into its ledgers. But that doesn’t mean that 100 million copies of Windows 8, or anything close to that number, are in the hands of end users. It may also be true that there are tens of millions of unsold PCs in the channel. But that doesn’t matter to Microsoft, since a sale is a sale even if nobody is actually using the product.
That puts a whole different spin on things.
Paragraphs: A desktop blogging app
This is a very interesting looking app. I just downloaded it.
The future of Adobe Fireworks
While we are not planning further feature development for Fireworks, we will continue to sell Fireworks CS6 as well as make it available as part of the Creative Cloud. We will provide security updates as necessary and may provide bug fixes. We plan to update Fireworks to support the next major releases of both Mac OS X and Windows.
Google shuts down 35% of its services
I think the only service anyone cared about was Google Reader.
Adobe shifts from Creative Suite to Creative Cloud
Adobe’s kicking Creative Suite 6 development to the curb to focus purely on Creative Cloud.
YouTube says it won the battle with the TV
YouTube vs. TV? YouTube says the battle — if there ever was one — is over.
In a flashy presentation to advertisers Wednesday night, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt declined to forecast that Internet video will displace television watching. Instead he declared: “That’s already happened.”
I agree that habits are changing and there is a huge shift coming, but I don’t believe YouTube has won.
Backblaze iPhone app
Shawn Blanc takes a look at Backblaze’s new iPhone app for managing the off-site backup of your desktop computer.
Adobe shows off Lightroom-style photo editing on iPad
Adobe showed off a prototype software app on the iPad capable of doing some pretty high-level tasks that pro photographers would love to have.
Barley web content editor available
I’ve been watching Barley for the past couple of months and it looks really nice. Watch the video to see how it all works.
Instacast for Mac public beta
It’s available now for download.
Tech Talk Alert
A service to be alerted when Apple’s Tech Talks are announced.
Feed Wrangler wants to take over from Google Reader
Great idea and I don’t mind paying for a service, but to be honest, having Reeder support is vital for me. Federico Viticci has a more in-depth look at the service.