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My Paper is a simple and easy to use RSS reader that is compatible with Feedly and Feed Wrangler.

And it’s free.

A little shocked about the National Helium Reserve part of the story.

This is such a great story, told by hockey tough guy and NHL referee, Paul Stewart.

It’s good that Apple is having a shopping event, but don’t expect half-price savings on devices or Macs.

Barley has brought its inline editing abilities to WordPress, giving a lot more people the chance to use this software. This is pretty slick.

I rather enjoyed this article. The app was made out of necessity, which is the best kind.

Anchorwoman Katie Couric, who has hosted high-profile programs on all three major U.S. television networks, will head a team of global correspondents and help shape news coverage at Yahoo Inc., the Internet company announced on Monday.

Marissa Mayer is making some bold moves. I like it.

If you’re going to interview someone for a design job that involves CSS, you should take a look at this. As much as I love what designers do with CSS, I’d fail this quickly.

Ars Technica:

“We’ve heard a good bit in this courtroom about public key encryption,” said Albright. “Are you familiar with that?”

“Yes, I am,” said Diffie, in what surely qualified as the biggest understatement of the trial.

“And how is it that you’re familiar with public key encryption?”

“I invented it.”

Nice.

Scott Adams Blog:

My father, age 86, is on the final approach to the long dirt nap (to use his own phrase). His mind is 98% gone, and all he has left is hours or possibly months of hideous unpleasantness in a hospital bed.

I’d like to proactively end his suffering and let him go out with some dignity. But my government says I can’t make that decision. Neither can his doctors. So, for all practical purposes, the government is torturing my father until he dies

I can’t imagine how painful this must be for Adams and everyone else in this situation.

Wired:

At this point, the smartwatch is a category getting ahead of itself. It’s a device that precedes its purpose. But that’s not necessarily a problem. No one really knew what Twitter was for when it started, either.

And no one really has yet, have they?

United We Ball:

Buckyballs are tiny, powerful magnetic balls and cubes that were sold as an adult desk toy. They became wildly popular after coming to market in 2009 and sold more than 2.5 million sets—until the CPSC banned future sales and, through a recall request, tried to force the product out of consumers’ hands.

This whole Buckyball saga is really odd. As the story points out, there are all kinds of products available that are “harmful” to children that the US Federal Government hasn’t banned.

The Verge:

To watch a football broadcast is to see much more than a football game. There are only about 11 minutes of actual action during a three-hour game, which means 95 percent of the time there’s something else going on. The graphics, replays, highlights, and analysis that make a football game into the at-home experience millions of people know and love — it’s all from Fox, and it’s all done on the fly. Nearly everyone on the crew says that while they broadcast the game, what they really do is make television.

I’ve seen a little of the behind the scenes chaos of an NFL game broadcast and it’s remarkable that, with so many moving pieces, it comes off as smoothly as it does.

Glenn Fleishman is going to release a book about The Magazine’s first year. You can support the effort on kickstarter.

He goes on to describe Android’s interface as being “more intuitive” than Apple’s and suggests gifting iPhone users with devices running an entirely different operating system for the holidays in the hopes that they will go along with your not-so-subtle hint and switch their entire mobile ecosystem to Google’s.

This man is out of control. For the record, Bozo has more credibility.

Velocity is the only speed reading app designed and developed exclusively for iOS 7. Using a well-researched speed reading technique, you can breeze through your Instapaper or Pocket queue at superhuman speeds of up to 1,000 words per minute. Speed read websites, documents, or just about any text in one of Velocity’s 3 gorgeous themes and save more time than you know what to do with. See Velocity in action.

Tim Bajarin:

I think Samsung is working toward ditching Android completely sometime over the next three to five years to take complete control over its future. And this is where the backing of Tizen becomes interesting and important. Although Tizen has not attracted a lot of app support to date, if Samsung gets behind it and is able to prove to the market it will continue innovate around the platform, delivering hundreds of millions of smartphones and tablets annually under its brand, software developers would be crazy not to develop for it.

I’ve said it before—I think this is exactly what is going to happen. Without Samsung, Google’s importance in the mobile industry will be nowhere near what it is today.

This.

Get real writing done with iPads, iPhones, Android devices, Chromebooks, and other mobile hardware (including Microsoft Surface). Learn how top journalists, authors and public-relations professionals write using an array of mobile gadgets. Get recommendations on the best mobile hardware, software (apps!), and accessories.

All from one of the top technology journalists working today, Julio Ojeda-Zapata from Twincities.com and the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Writing on mobile devices is something we’re all doing more of these days.

It’s a simple question that we often forget to ask ourselves. We’ve found that when we do, it helps us feel positive and remember the things that matter most. We built Grateful in the hopes that it helps you remember too.

The concept is simple: every day enter what you are grateful for. Over time you will have a delightful collection of memories and reminders that we all have something to be grateful for.

Great timing for releasing this app.

Just an incredible amount of money—$12.8 million all told. I just wish I had enough to bid on some of the products.

Om Malik:

Well-placed sources tell us that the company is gearing up to launch new private messaging features inside its still red-hot photo and video sharing service. It is also experimenting with the idea of group messaging, our source tells us. The new features are likely to find home in the next version of Instagram, which is expected before end of the year. An Instagram spokesperson (not surprisingly) declined to comment.

Om knows his stuff.

Many thanks to MightyDeals for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. This week MightyDeals is offering a great deal on MotoPress. It’s a WordPress plugin that replaces the default WP editor and makes content editing a snap. It uses a super easy drag-and-drop method, that works on all devices thanks to its responsive design. If you use WordPress, you’ll love this. See how it works.

Yesterday, after a period of engagement with the App Review Team from Apple, they informed us that TextExpander’s use of Reminders for shared snippet data storage is not an intended use of Reminders and will no longer be accepted. TextExpander touch will not clear review until this is resolved. Apps which implement the current TextExpander touch SDK may not clear review until their TextExpander touch SDK is updated.

I love the people at Smile Software and hate to this kind of stuff happen to them. They care about their products and customers.

LETTERS LIVE is a new series of public events organised by Canongate which will bring to life some of the most important, inspiring and entertaining letters ever written.

I would love to go to this event in London.

Byword is one of my favorite Mac apps—I use it everyday. It was just updated with a number of improvements.

Washington Post:

This has been a big week for Bitcoin. On Monday, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held the first-ever Congressional hearing on Bitcoin. Later in the day, the currency’s value reached an all-time high of more than $800.

That has left a lot of people scratching their heads. What’s Bitcoin? How do you use it? And why would anyone want to? Read on for answers.

Glad somebody asked.