Windows software

Google is on the cusp of fixing some initial shortcomings of its WebP, an image format it hopes will speed up browsing.

A new version of libwebp, the library that software can use to display and create WebP images, adds support several features, some of which were the subject of criticism when Google announced WebP in 2010:

When Adobe Systems revealed yesterday that Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch is leaving for Apple, it was only the latest example of an unusual combination of alliance and rivalry that has linked the Silicon Valley companies for decades.

Lynch, who came to Adobe via its acquisition of Macromedia in 2005, is notable for leading the company's battle against Apple to spread its Flash Player programming technology to Apple's iPhone and iPad. He lost that battle at Adobe, but evidently managed something more than a frosty detente with Apple.

Apple and Adobe have a long history of both agreement … Read more

The 868,163 people who've installed Google's RSS-handling extension for Chrome can breathe a sigh of relief, because Google has resurrected it after its deletion last week.

"My RSS extension was removed by mistake, but it is now up again," said Finnur Thorarinsson, the extension's author, in a comment to a Chrome RSS-handling feature request. The extension detects RSS and Atom feeds on Web pages and lets people subscribe to them with feed-reading software; it's been updated so it no longer offers Google Reader as an option for subscribing.

Google's RSS extension for Chrome disappeared last week … Read more

Google Drive was having some hiccups earlier today but apparently has since recovered.

The online file storage site had been inaccessible for a large number of users today. On its status page, Google initially said that it's "investigating reports of an issue with Google Drive" as of 7:17 a.m. PT and that it will "provide more information shortly."

A second update on the status page offered a bit more information:

The shift by Adobe Systems toward its Creative Cloud subscription plan looks to be popular with customers, a Jefferies survey of some of them shows.

Adobe is making its entire Creative Suite of software available for an introductory price of $30 per month for annual commitments, with a regular $50 monthly price to kick in later. The subscription also includes services, software that's not part of the CS products, and early updates that traditional perpetual-license customers won't get until CS7.

Jefferies asked customers about their sentiments in a follow-up to a 2012 survey with CNET.

"The majority … Read more

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

It's no surprise to Google obsessives that the company announced yesterday that it will draw the curtains on its popular RSS-managing Reader service. So what are you supposed to do with your 60 bazillion feeds?

First off, you can export them using Google Takeout. That's an important step to take so you don't lose track of any of the sites you're following. It lets you download your feeds output, called OPML, as a ZIP. Then you extract it all to a folder, and upload them to your prefered Reader replacement service. But which one do you … 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

We Dropbox users have gotten very accustomed to our boring yet reliable Dropbox desktop clients (download for Windows, Mac, Linux 32-bit, and Linux 64-bit) chugging along tirelessly, syncing files and folders between computers and devices with no muss or fuss, that it was with some trepidation yesterday that I updated to version 2.0, the brand-new release from the online-hosting service. The new update gives the system-tray-based app a slight cosmetic makeover--the utilitarian menu as been supplanted with a more modern UI that includes links to your Dropbox folder, the Dropbox Web site, three "recently changed" files, and … Read more