As the shutdown of Google Reader nears, one reader has created a simple and free tool to replace Google’s soon-to-be discontinued tool.

You can explore the demo online or visit the simple sign-up page. CommaFeed inclues an easy organizational structure and simple settings. The interface will be easy for most Google Reader users to pick up quickly.  Here’s more about the free app:

When Google announced Reader shutdown, I started to work on a clone. It is now available. It’s simple, bloat-free, and it’s open-source. Say hello to CommaFeed … CommaFeed is a bloat-free feed reader. It aims to replace Google Reader while keeping things simple.

Google’s latest vision for Google Plus is focused on images – and the use of artificial intelligence. Imagine a team of Google robots meticulously fixing your wrinkles, making everyone smile in photos they didn’t actually smile in, and changing the sky to make it a tad more perfect. Am I the only one who thinks it’s borderline creepy?

Let’s take a closer look at the major changes coming to Google Plus Photos.

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Google is expanding its free data storage and that’s a great thing. Just like Gmail, the company is using its vast supply of servers to maintain your data for you, and if you are comfortable with that, you can get it 15GB for free (with free backup). Given the increase in resolution of new phone cameras and digital cameras, 15GB might not be a lot for serious photographers. Read more

Users on iOS devices can finally start using a Google app for Google Chats. Google’s new chat app, appropriately call Hangouts, allows you to do what you’ve always done with Gmail’s desktop experience: text friends, start videos, and share photos in seamless conversations across multiple devices.

Google took note of an important aspect about notifications when creating this app – you only get one alert per new item that’s synced across all of your devices. If your notifications get too noisy, you can turn them off and check back later. Perhaps the company has heard complaints about Google Plus notifications. Read more

Now that Twitter Music has slowly slipped away from the collective consciousness, Google is introducing its own radio and music discovery program. It’s call All Access and it costs $9.99 per month. At first glimpse it seems revolutionary and comprehensive.

Google’s radio allows you to do what most other radio services don’t – easily change the order of songs, easily remove songs, and add songs to personal libraries. There’s a lot of customization built in, but the most important key to digital radio isn’t necessarily the usability of the service, but the quality of the music itself. All Access is launching today so I did a quick search for my favorite new album, Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City and it wasn’t available. Sure, I have it in my personal library, but what’s the use of paying for a music service that doesn’t have the music I want to pay for? Read more

Google announced Google Play for Education at the Google I/O conference this morning. This new section of the Android app store which sells apps aimed at schools and teachers.

Google Play will let teachers and schools buy multiple copies of an app in bulk. When a teacher buys an app it will automatically download on their own device, as well as onto the devices of all of their students. In addition, schools can make credit cards available to teachers, so that a teacher doesn’t have to use their personal credit card to buy an app for students.

Google will begin accepting K-12 app submissions for this educational category this summer. Follow this link to get details on how to submit your app for this category.

Mother’s Day is Sunday and the least you should do is call your mother - said Twitter. The social media site issued a witty public service announcement boasting about Twitter’s sharing platform quickly after Google’s Mother’s Day tribute this week.

Hopefully moms everywhere will enjoy breakfast in bed, a steady stream of thank-you’s and family fun. While moms are enjoying these and many other Mother’s Day traditions, it’s a safe bet they’ll also sneak a peek at Twitter. After all, moms (and moms-to-be) are doing everything from securing Twitter accounts for their babies to live-tweeting their C-sections to sharing funny motherhood experiences.

But even as much as moms love Twitter, we know that mom loves you the most.

While Google opted for a sweet, syrupy promotion for Google Plus, Twitter opted to tell users that social media doesn’t replace everything. That said, if you don’t have time to visit your Mom this Sunday, video hangouts with her on Google Plus is pretty great every day. Click here to compare the two ads. Read more

Google’s latest project with NASA, Times and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) allows you to view time lapses of aerial photos – it’s a pretty animated, interactive time-lapse. The joint venture started in 2009 to cover every inch of the earth. In the process, the team ” sifted through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 terabytes of data” and the results are high quality images devoid of clouds whenever possible.

Built from millions of satellite images and trillions of pixels, you can explore this global, zoomable time-lapse map as part of TIME’s new Timelapse project. View stunning phenomena such as the sprouting of Dubai’s artificial Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon and urban growth in Las Vegas from 1984 to 2012.

Read more

Google, PayPal, and Lenovo have all joined technology consortium, FIDO Alliance, whose mission is to use devices as security authentication. This feature would mean laptops, phones, and even Google Glass having voice, eye, or fingerprint matching capabilities in a security chip specific to each user.

The Mission of the FIDO Alliance is to change the nature of online authentication by:

• Developing technical specifications that define an open, scalable, interoperable set of mechanisms that reduce the reliance on passwords to authenticate users.

Read more

Google has updated its iOS app, adding Google Now, a virtual tool that works a little bit like Siri.

Googlers can speak to the app to ask questions prepare and the app will do a Google search to respond. For example, a users can speak “What’s the weather like in San Francisco,” to get an update on weather conditions or they can say, “who won the Giants game last night” to find out details about the latest sports news. Users looking for directions can ask Google Now and the tool will make a map for the user.

Google’s Now tool is the same feature that lets you make an estate plan for your Internet data for after you die.

The number of paid app downloads in Google Play is 2x that in the Amazon Appstore , according to Distimo AppIQ data.

The latest research compares the trends in app downloads between Amazon and Google during March 2013. Check it out: “The Amazon Appstore competes aggressively with Google Play in terms of the top 1000 paid applications: the number of paid downloads is roughly twice the size in Google Play.”

The research also revealed that across both app stores, the top 200 free apps had a total of 16 million downloads during the month and the most category was games. In addition, Temple Run 2 was the most downloaded free app in both of the stores. Fruit Ninja also did well during March, when it had 2.3 million installs from Google Play and 250,000 downloads from the Amazon Appstore. According to Distimo, Rovio Entertainment was the top publisher in March. Its app The Croods ranked well.