We're still weeks away from Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 10-14, but one thing's for sure: Plenty of iPhone and iPad users are hoping for a fresh design and a more open, customizable experience. 

Last week, ReadWrite asked our esteemed readers what you're hoping to see in iOS 7. The two biggest take-aways:

1. ReadWrite readers want iOS to be more customizable.
2. ReadWrite readers would really like Android-style widgets on their iPhone and iPads.

(Before we go any further, though, let's be totally clear: These results are not statistically representative of iOS users generally, but they do illuminate what many ReadWrite readers would like to see in iOS7.)

Make iOS More Customizable

When asked if iOS should open up and become more customizable, almost two thirds (64%) of respondents said Yes. Just 28% - less than a third - thought Apple should retain its strict, top-down control because this is how the company ensures a bulletproof user experience. 

That justification might be historically true, but it's becoming harder for Apple to ignore just how effectively Google is managing to catch up in terms of Android's UX design, while not sacrificing the flexibility Android has traditionally granted its users. For years, Apple fans could laugh off Android as a rusty, imperfect copycat with a lot of growing to do. And they were mostly right.

But grown it has, and now Android is a more potent competitor to iOS than ever. With its chief competitor offering a far more customizable experience, Apple faces growing pressure to loosen its grip on iOS and give more control to its users. There's no guarantee that Apple will do that (and even if it does, the changes will no doubt be gradual), but the user demand seems clear. 

No Wonder Jailbreaking iOS Is So Popular 

This desire for greater control is exhibited in the growing popularity of jailbreaking - the unauthorized removal of Apple's limits on how people can use iOS. Even though there is no jailbreak available for the latest version of iOS, there are at least 30 million jailbroken iOS devices, according to Cydia creator Jay Freeman's website (Cydia is the "alternative to Apple's app store for 'jailbroken devices' "). Granted, that's a small percentage of the more than 500 million iOS devices Apple has sold to date, but the demand appears to be growing. When the evasi0n jailbreak tool for iOS 6 launched earlier this year, it was so popular that not only did people trying to access crash the site hosting it, but they crashed the Cydia app store and caused performance issues that lasted for days. With 7 million devices cracked in four days, evasi0n was the most popular iOS jailbreaking tool yet. 

Typically, when we write about the jailbreaking phenomenon here on ReadWrite, the chorus from Android-loving commenters is consistent: Google's mobile OS has been able to do XYZ for years, you doofus. Get a clue. Switch to Android. Snark aside, these folks have a point. Many of reasons people jailbreak their iPhones and iPads are indeed features that come natively on Android, or are at least a Google Play app download away.  

In our survey, ReadWrite asked readers to list the features they'd most like to see in iOS 7. The second most-used word in the responses was "customization." Other popular requests included improvements to iOS's multitasking, quicker access to settings, multiple user profiles and improvements to the Notification Center. 

Give Us Widgets Or Give Us Death!

Overall, the most commonly requested feature was the inclusion of widgets on the home screen. The use of icons displaying live data has long been familiar to users of other operating systems and has even found its way into at least one iOS 7 preview mockup. Apparently, lots of iOS users are sick of looking at the Weather app icon and seeing the same sun that's been shining since the iPhone first launched in 2007. 

In total, 734 people responded to our survey. Are these just a bunch of Android fans flooding our Poll Daddy widget with pro-Google sentiment? Hardly. Not only did we give Android die-hards a chance to reveal themselves in the first question, but 61% of responses were made from iOS devices. Another 13% came from Mac computers. 

Anything else you're dying to see in iOS 7 when it's announced next month? Let us know in the comments. 

Related Reading: 

• Why Jailbreaking iOS 6 Is Popular Enough To Break Cydia
• Why Apple Really Needs To Kill It With iOS 7
• Apple's iOS Design Changes Threaten To Delay The Next iPhone
• Will Apple's New Design Changes Kill The Luster Steve Jobs Loved? 

Google Maps is about to get a lot smarter. The company unveiled the next iteration of its beloved geographic exploration apps at Google I/O this afternoon, sporting a visual overhaul and lots of new features. 

In addition to a redesigned, vector-based browser UI built in open Web standards, the new Google Maps will incorporate information about the user to build out a far more personalized experience. Using much of the same data that Google Now employs, Maps will deliver personalized recommendations, social tagging and smarter insights into where its users should go next - and how to get there. Indeed, the way Google Maps gives directions has also been redesigned with more intuitive, landmark-based querying and more thorough and accurate transit directions. 

Another significant addition to the Maps UI is what they're calling Cards. For each location, Google Maps will display a Card highlighting key information, photos and pertinent social data. 

The most vocal ooh's and ahh's came from the crowd at Google I/O when Maps Product Manager Bernie Seefeld unveiled the new immersive and 3D experiences through which Maps can zip. This includes indoor StreetView-style views of restaurants and other local businesses, as well as 3D flyovers of cities and landmarks built in part from crowdsourced user photos. 

Users can also zoom all the way out to a planet-level view, displaying and rotating the Earth, which shows clouds and sunlight - and night views - in real time. 

The updated Google Maps experience will be available on iOS and Android in June. Starting tomorrow, eager early adopters can test it out on the desktop. You can request an invitation to the new Maps by clicking this link.

Photo by Nick Statt for ReadWrite

As predicted, Google unveiled its own all-you-can-stream music subscription service to compete with Spotify, Rdio, Deezer and MOG. It's a crowded space with challenging economics, but if anybody is well-positioned to win this game, it's Google. 

Google Play Music All Access will offer on-demand access to millions of songs for $9.99 per month, which is the same as every other music subscription service's premium tier. Unlike the existing market leaders, though, All Access won't include a free tier of access, a fact originally reported by the New York Times.

All Access will include "millions" — Google didn't say how many — of songs within 22 genres, a Google-powered recommendation engine, Pandora-style radio stations, editor-curated playlists and the ability to blend your own library with Google's. 

At first glance, it's a pretty compelling offering. If you sign up before the end of June, it will cost $7.99 per month. And that's just the first competitive advantage Google has over the incumbents. 

Google Is Already A Streaming Music Giant

Spotify is virtually synonymous with streaming music, but it's worth noting that Google is already plays a massive role in the discovery and consumption of music. These days, when teenagers want to hear a new song, they don't turn on the radio or buy a CD. They go to YouTube.

That's because the Internet's biggest repository of videos also happens to host millions of songs, which are readily available to stream for free. It's the world's biggest accidental music streaming service. 

With All Access, Google is making a far more official foray into  the streaming music space, having recently signed licensing deals with all three major labels in the U.S. It's not linked directly to YouTube and its massive repository of free music, but rumor has it that the video giant could get its own paid subscriptions for on-demand music. In the meantime, All Access is another attractive gateway into Google's content ecosystem, which hosts a hell of a lot of music. 

Google's Biggest Advantage: Being Google

The only reason we're talking about this new music service is because of who made it. By virtue of being a Google product, All Access has the potential for massive cross-promotion throughout Google's array of popular Web services.

More important, All Access will be built directly into the world's most popular mobile operating system. That's where the magic of streaming music really lies: In our ability to take it with us. It's why Spotify, Rdio and MOG all wager that the simple ability to access all that music on our phone is enough to convince people to shell out $10 per month. Spotify has done a decent job of proving that thesis by amassing 6 million paid subscribers at an impressive 25% conversion rate. 

Of course, Spotify, like Rdio and the rest of its competitors, has to compete for users' attention via app store rankings, social integrations and plain old marketing. All Access, by contrast will be much more front-and-center within the Android ecosystem. That's huge.

Who Needs A Business Model? 

Another advantage of being a Google product is that All Access won't have quite as much pressure to make money. Spotify and Rdio will ultimately need to find a way to profitability (or get acquired by a giant), something that isn't easy under the current economics of the streaming music business.

A company like Spotify will have to find a way to minimize its enormous music licensing costs, which are easily its biggest expense. Google's entrance into this space might make that harder, since the company can afford to pay out huge sums without investors holding the profitability gun to its head. 

Spotify and Rdio's other biggest challenge is converting paid subscribers. The streaming model, the theory goes, will work much better when there are many millions of people paying for services like this.

So far, Spotify has done the best job of converting those free listeners to paying subscribers. But with a competitively price competing service now shipping on hundreds of millions of handsets, the incumbents may have to get much more creative about courting subscribers. 

In a recent interview on WYNC's On the Media, technology journalist Tim Carmody suggested that this might be how the streaming music business will work:

Probably the most likely thing that will happen is that someone, whether it's an Apple or a Google or an Amazon or a Sony, comes along and essentially agrees that we’re gonna run music at a loss and we’re going to support it with these other businesses. How do you make money on the music business? Don't make money on the music business. That's the answer to that question.

That may well turn out to be true, but it's probably not quite what Spotify, Rdio and their ilk had in mind. 

All Access: Merge Your Library With Google's 

Last week, I wrote that as good as Spotify and Rdio both are, neither is perfect. Spotify's user experience could be better, while Rdio doesn't let its users upload or merge their own music. What I described as the ultimate streaming service would need to nail both design and music selection, at the very least. From the Google I/O stage, the All Access interface certainly looked nice, although I have yet to get my hands on it to try it out.  

The second part of that equation — the ability merge one's own library with a cloud-based repository of music - appears to be a feature that All Access subscribers will indeed enjoy. By launching alongside the Google Music cyberlocker first unveiled in 2011, All Access effectively allows users to blur the line between Google's library of licensed music and their own collection of tunes. 

One detail that was glossed over at Google I/O was exactly how wide of a selection All Access users will have. Rdio and Spotify both have about 20 million tracks in their libraries, which includes not just the major labels, but a partnership with indie label rights body Merlin and countless smaller labels. How many tracks does All Access have? The Google Music integration makes that question a little less crucial, but more casual listeners without hard drives full of MP3s will want to know when they're eyeing up $10 music services. 

Related Stories

• Why Google's Rumored Spotify-Killer Makes Perfect Sense
• 6 Million People Pay For Spotify - Is That Good Enough? 
• Next Round In The Google-Amazon Death Match: Streaming Music
• The Ultimate Streaming Music Service: Just Merge Rdio and Spotify

Images by Nick Statt for ReadWrite

The unofficial leaders of the streaming-music market, Rdio and Spotify, are both awfully good services. But neither is close to perfect, which led me to wonder just how you'd create the ultimate online music service.

The answer isn't hard: Just merge Spotify and Rdio. Alternatively, the two sites should just copiously steal features from one another. Or someone could found a new service that blends the best of both. Whatever. I want the best of both, and I want it now.

Allow me to explain. Almost two years ago, when Spotify finally launched in the U.S., I signed up. Within 48 hours, I had canceled my Rdio subscription and agreed to pay Spotify $10 per month to access its service on my phone, ad-free. 

(See Also: How To Choose The Right Music Subscription Service)

But for the last few weeks, I've had the luxury of using a premium Rdio demo account, and I've gotta say: It's sometimes tempting to switch back. As impressive as Spotify is, Rdio is much, much better designed. On the other hand, Spotify has a few excellent features Rdio lacks. (Both sites offer approximately the same amount of music, which is often available via high-quality 320 kbps streams.)

Frankly, I'm torn. But I'd rather not have to choose at all. I suspect many other music fans — whether they know it or not — feel the same way.

What Rdio Gets Right: Design and Music Management

When it comes to design, Rdio wins, hands down. Spotify's apps aren't terrible, but Rdio sports what feels like a cleaner, more minimalist design. The blue and white color scheme is more refreshing and it feels like the company put some thought into typography. 

More importantly, Rdio organizes your music much, much better than Spotify does. It has long blown my mind that Spotify refuses to display your music library in a way that's at all analogous to how you'd organize music in real life. There's no collection. There is no "Albums" tab.  It's just playlists, starred tracks and search. If I find a new album I want to routinely listen to, I have to star the whole thing or add it as a playlist. It's bizarre. 

By contrast, Rdio lets me easily add albums to what is intuitively labeled my "Collection," which is organized by artist. To anybody who's ever used an iPod, scrolling through a list of artists is an familiar, almost expected interface. Spotify users, for whatever reason, don't have this simple luxury. 

Rdio's built-in music discovery is also superior. The "Heavy Rotation" tab recommends music to me based on what I listen to and who I follow on Rdio. Depending on those two details (especially who one chooses to follow), the suggestions can actually be pretty spot-on. I don't know what powers the "Recommended Albums" carousel in Spotify's "What's New" tab, but the fact that it thinks I'd enjoy Kelly Clarkson's new album suggests it's not paying very much attention.

What Spotify Gets Right: Add-On Apps & Infinite Music

What Spotify lacks in native recommendation features it makes up for via third party add-ons available through its built-in app platform. Spotify might not be aware of what I actually like, but Last.fm is — and its Spotify app is a mere click away. If I want music to match my mood, there's MoodAgent, which builds playlists based on things like tempo and the emotional qualities of a given song. 

For less robotic, more human-curated recommendations, there are apps like Hype Machine and Shuffler.fm, both of which corral the best new stuff from influential music blogs, broken down by genre. Then there are good, old-fashioned hand-picked recommendations from individual critics via the Rolling Stone, Guardian, Pitchfork or NME apps. 

Spotify's third party app platform is by far its most promising feature, aside from the music itself. Realizing that it can't build the end-all, be-all music service for every listener, Spotify has smartly opened up its platform to developers, who can use HTML5 and related Web technologies to build applications that plug into Spotify's vast music library.

These add-ons have yet to find their way into Spotify's mobile apps, but they continue to push the desktop experience forward in a way that makes it hard to break the Spotify habit. 

And Another Spotify Win: Imports

The other chief advantage Spotify offers — and that Rdio and others should just steal outright — is the ability to import your own MP3 collection into the service. This is a huge perk.

No matter how many licensing deals these companies strike, their music libraries are never going to include everything. There will always be big-name holdouts like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, not to mention a score of smaller, independent artists who either haven't done the leg work to get their music onto streaming services or simply don't want to. 

Allowing users to effectively merge their personal music collections with Spotify's music library makes for an experience that feels more comprehensive and focused. As more of our music consumption moves online, the listening experience inevitably becomes fractured across sites and apps. We might not be able to avoid this entirely, but Spotify's integrated approach makes it easier to at least minimize the problem.  

There are, as always, technical limitations to implementing this feature. Since Spotify primarily exists as a desktop app, it can easily scan your hard drive for music tracks and index them, iTunes-style. The alternative would be to allow users to upload their tracks directly to the service, a la Google Music and the Amazon Cloud Player.

Waiting for thousands of songs to upload doesn't present the most compelling user experience, but it is one possible technical solution. For the most part, Spotify's local indexing approach works pretty well. 

Rdio has desktop apps, but they're more or less a clone of its Web interface without much extra functionality tacked on. If Rdio were to include the ability to import and manage music, I'd be that much closer to ditching Spotify. The desktop app is also a crucial component to syncing local MP3s to users' phones and tablets, another feature unique to Spotify in the U.S. (Deezer does this, too). 

Toward The Ultimate Streaming Service

Music is a pretty personal thing. If these companies want us to shift our listening habits into their respective clouds, they need to be particularly sensitive to what works for users. I've presented one framework here. Perhaps you have your own ideas, which I encourage you to leave in the comments. A flawlessly-designed, super-comprehensive, extensible and flexible music subscription service would be well worth the money. 

It's a little frustrating, because Spotify and Rdio collectively have most of the pieces required to build the ultimate streaming service. It's almost as if the two could merge and we'd be set. It'd be unlikely, but if this new hybrid music dream service could steal a page from Tomahawk's playbook and integrate additional music sources like SoundCloud and YouTube, it'd be even better. 

Whether or not Rdio, Spotify or any of its current direct competitors deliver this mythical dream service, somebody will. The music subscription space is going to heat up substantially this year, as Google and Amazon are both rumored to be entering this market. Meanwhile, MOG will be reborn as Daisy and Deezer is expected to launch in the U.S. 

We already have a few very awesome, yet imperfect music subscription services. As the space gets more crowded, there exists a real opportunity to launch something truly, thoroughly compelling. Who will it be? 

With the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) mere weeks away, anticipation for the next version of Apple's mobile operating system is about to reach a fevered pitch. As the rumor mill revs up in preparation, we thought we'd ask you, dear readers, what features you'd most like to see in iOS 7? (Take our survey below.)

The pressure on Apple to push out a substantial iOS upgrade hasn't been this intense in some time. After all, this will be first major release since the Great Maps Debacle of 2012 and, more important, since Jony Ive took over as the head of Apple's Human Interface Design team. 

(See also: Why Apple Really, Really Needs To Kill It WIth iOS 7)

Indeed, most of the chatter about iOS 7 so far has been about what it will look like. Flatter. Fewer skeuomorphic design elements. A total overhaul, some have suggested. iOS could certainly use a visual refresh, but there's a far more important question: What will it do? 

Screw The Skeuo-Whatever. What Will iOS 7 Do?

Common requests include multi-user login, more robust security options, an overhaul of the dull Mail app and enhanced enterprise and BYOD features. Inevitably, we'll see Siri learn a few more tricks. Apple Maps will continue to improve.

As always, there's a lesson or two to be learned from the jailbreaking community. Expect to see a few features lifted from Cydia when iOS 7 is unveiled in June. Plenty of us would love to have the ability to choose new default apps for things like email, maps and Web browsing, but such a move would probably play too much to Google's benefit for Apple to stomach. 

More generally, there's a certain pressure on Apple to remain competitive with Android. In the early days, Android was rusty and small enough for Apple to largely ignore in its product development. Now the competition is very real, with Android-based phones and tablets getting sleeker and more functional all the time. If nothing else, this might mean that Apple will need to consider making iOS more customizable and less restrictive. 

Be heard! Take our survey, below, and be sure to elaborate further in comments if you'd like.

Dear Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, 

I write to you not as a know-it-all tech analysis pontificator or even a hardcore gamer. I'm just a guy who spent his childhood Saturday afternoons hunting for 8-bit Warp Whistles and Tanooki Suits in Super Mario Bros 3 for Nintendo. And I have a simple idea. 

As you know, Nintendo hasn't been doing so well lately. Your recently-revealed plans to bring smartphone-style apps to the Wii U represent a step in the right direction. If you want Nintendo to truly thrive in age of mobile computing, however, I'd suggest a willingness to go even further: bring Super Mario to my iPhone.

That is to say, Nintendo should let casual gamers like me have the option of downloading old NES and Super Nintendo games to our iOS and Android devices. Mario. Zelda. Kirby. Metroid. Charge us a few bucks for them. We'll pay. And you'll have our undivided attention on the devices to which we're already glued. Those of us who are semi-serious enough to consider buying stand-alone gaming consoles would be even more likely to do so. Just delight us. You see, competition for our collective attention span has never been more fierce. Now's your chance to grab a chunk of it. 

The Wii Is 7, And Nintendo Is Struggling

One year ago, your company posted its first-ever operating loss,  shedding $458 million due to lackluster hardware and game sales. Nintendo was fortunate enough to return to profitability this year, but sales of the new Wii U and 3DS consoles haven't been nearly as high as anticipated. 

It's a sharp contrast from 2006 when the first Wii launched. Much to my delight, my brother gave me one for Christmas only after hunting one down for weeks by going from store to store. Demand was huge and business was booming, you'll recall. These days, finding a Wii U is easy. The problem is that fewer of us want them.

Over time, sales of the original Wii naturally declined, as they will for the Wii U. Seemingly, the best conventional hope you have of driving those numbers north lies in slashing the price (which won't help profits) and releasing must-have games for the console and hoping that they're good — and well-publicized — enough to pique the interest of everyday consumers, whose attention is now firmly fixated elsewhere. 

Shortly after the original Wii's hugely successful launch, another sought-after piece of hardware was unveiled. When Steve Jobs first held up the iPhone on stage in 2007, it marked the beginning of a revolution in personal computing and a shift in how casual gamers discover and play video games. Many of the very same people enthralled by the mainstream appeal of the Wii were now unboxing iPhones and downloading Angry Birds. Apple has since sold more than 500 million iOS devices, a number that only continues to grow alongside similarly impressive figures from Android. 

Bring Mario And Luigi Into The Smartphone Age

As the the mobile age has unfolded, Mario and Luigi have been nowhere to be found, remaining stubbornly locked up in your company's proprietary hardware. Unless one jailbreaks the device and downloads an emulator, playing classic NES and Super Nintendo games on iOS is out the question. It's unfortunate for consumers and it seems like a huge missed opportunity for Nintendo. 

Since I bought my first iPhone in 2008, I've had this discussion with more people than I can count. If only you could buy the original Mario games, the Legend of Zelda and other NES classics on iOS, it would be so awesome. Yes, the other person and I always agree, we would pay for that. The more games, the more money we'd plunk down. It's not just gamers and geeks, either. People who have absolutely no discernible interest in video games generally still harbor a nostalgic attachment to the side scrolling adventures they grew up playing.  

Take Super Mario Brothers 3, which was released in the U.S. in 1990. Like most kids I knew at the time, I was positively addicted to that game. To this day, it remains the highest-grossing non-bundled video game in history. The only way to buy it now is by downloading it to the Wii or Wii U via Nintendo's online marketplace. That's great if you have a Wii, but not everyone is going to buy a gaming console, even one as mainstream-friendly as the Wii or Wii U.

Indeed, the original Wii has sold just shy of 100 million units since its launch. That's less than one-fifth of the number of iOS devices in the world. Meanwhile, Android is on track to hit 1 billion activations later this year.  That's a lot of potential customers, and Nintendo is ignoring them. 

Make It A Hardware Play 

I know what you're going to say, Mr. Iwata. We're Nintendo. That's just not how we do things. If people want to play our games, they have to use our hardware. End of story. 

I'm not proposing that Nintendo abandon its gaming hardware business or even open up its new games to alternative platforms. But the mobile ecosystems of today are too massive to sanely ignore. A company like Nintendo could find a healthy new revenue stream by making already-popular titles available in these enormous marketplaces, where millions — and before long, billions — of potential customers are waiting. 

Another obvious (and totally fair) objection is that these old school games aren't made for touch screens. And it's true. Playing Zelda on an iPhone could be a potentially annoying experience. Here's where another opportunity exists for Nintendo: Design a sleek, fold-out smartphone case that doubles as a vintage NES gamepad that works with Nintendo-developed apps. For tablets, sell us something similar that fits the form factor and makes gameplay a pleasure. Make it an attachable accessory or a wireless Nintendo-branded controller. Either way, we'll happily give you our money for it. 

Rake In New Cash — Maybe Even Console Buyers

Will mobile games and smartphone-compatible hardware rake in as much as $300 consoles and $50 games? Probably not. But such a strategy could add a potentially healthy revenue stream that could help supplement what Nintendo brings in from its own hardware sales without cannibalizing them.

In fact, by tapping into these ecosystems and making a play for our attention spans, Nintendo could reel in new customers, giving them a taste for its characters and gameplay (or reigniting their love of the Mushroom Kingdom). 

Such a move would represent a bold departure from Nintendo's well-established strategy of tying games exclusively to its own hardware, but it only has to be as radical as Nintendo wants. Start with a few NES titles for iOS and if the results are strong, expand to other titles and platforms. If not, let these iOS games bring in a few extra bucks while you focus on recapturing the living room. 

Bold, yes. But as plenty of other industries have learned, the proliferation of mobile devices has upended the way things used to be. Thriving sometimes requires rethinking old paradigms. Besides, if Super Mario Brothers 3 wouldn't skyrocket to the top of the App Store charts over night, I'd be totally shocked.  

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Countless students, artists and overall cheapskates who have long enjoyed using Adobe's Creative Suite software without paying for it will soon have to pony up. Adobe is formally moving the latest versions of Photoshop and related design and production software to the cloud — specifically, to Adobe's newly dubbed "Creative Cloud" — where they will only be available via monthly subscription. 

It's a smart business move for Adobe, who stands to receive a steady stream of revenue from customers who otherwise might take their sweet time shelling out several hundred greenbacks for each major upgrade. Instead, those folks can just dole out $50 per month for access to the entire collection of Adobe software, which is all tied together with the company's cloud-based storage and offers other Web-based features.

With this move, the software we still fire up our laptops to use makes a significant shift toward a cloud-based, mobile world. Makes sense. 

Uncracking The Creative Suite 

Switching to a subscription model also makes it much harder to pirate the software. This is something Adobe has struggled with for a long time, routinely coming up with new ways to verify the authenticity of new installs.

Of course, each new form of copy protection also triggered a workaround from hackers who would crack the software and then make it available on file-sharing sites. The latest version of the Creative Suite Master Collection, for instance, can easily be torrented and, using easy-to-follow instructions, cracked to feign authenticity and block Adobe's servers from discovering that you did not in fact pay $1,300 for it. 

Pirating Adobe's software — especially Photoshop — has become very common among consumers who can't or won't pay several hundred dollars for it, but who nonetheless rely on its state-of-the-art image editing features for school, work or personal projects.   Older versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and the rest of the Creative Suite will still be available from Adobe — as well as the Pirate Bay — for some time to come. 

But from now on, Adobe's product development will thrive behind a subscription paywall. Using Adobe CS6 will be sufficient for quite a while, but eventually anybody wanting to take advantage of the latest and greatest in photo-editing, Web design and other creative production will have to pay up.

An Opportunity For Competitors — And Consumers 

For those not willing to subscribe to Creative Cloud, there's a growing list of alternatives. Nobody offers a suite quite as robust as Adobe's, which handles photos, graphic design, print layouts, Web development, video editing, animation and more. But for each of the creative needs that Adobe meets, there are other offerings. 

The most sought-after alternatives will likely be to Photoshop. Again, the original CS6-and-earlier versions of Adobe's apps will still work. But if one ever tires of the feature set and wants to try a product that continues to evolve, desktop apps like Pixelmator and Inkscape are pretty impressive. For basic photo-editing, tablet-based apps like PhotoGene, Photoshop Touch and Apple's iPhoto for iPad are all surprisingly capable. 

For each app in the suite, there's a different list of competitors. There's Final Cut Pro for video, Maya for animation and um, actually learning to code for Dreamweaver. 

Perhaps most important, Adobe's shift to a subscription model presents new opportunities for other companies and developers to build new capable, competitively-priced alternatives. As for the software-crackers, we have no doubt that they'll be busy trying to find ways to trick Adobe's new system. 

For such a seemingly minor detail, the Instagram hashtag is remarkably powerful. Anecdotally, the hashtag has long appeared to lead to a flood of "likes' from fellow Instagram users. Now there's data to prove it.

By analyzing over 1 million Instagram photos, self-described social media scientist Dan Zarrella found a strong correlation between hashtags and likes. The more you tag your photos, the more likely you are get a virtual hat tip from your fellow Instagrammers. 

(See also: Instagram Now Lets You Tag Friends, Brands and Selfies)

How Instagram Hashtags Work

As the contextual connective tissue that ties related images together, hashtags grease the wheels of photo discovery and get your pouty-faced mirror selfies and vintage-tinted lattes seen by more people. That exposure, in turn, results in more taps of the "like" button.

If you've ever taken the time to go back and tag your older photos, you've seen this in action: one after another, a parade of strangers will instantly start tapping the heart-shaped 'like' button under the image, sending a flood of virtual love your way. 

Of course, the results will vary depending on which hashtags are used. Super-popular tags like #love, #me, #cute and #instagood are naturally going to lead to more exposure, simply by virtue of the fact that those tags are popping up all over Instagram and a higher volume of people will wind up tapping on them. 

Driving Photo Discovery on Instagram

Along with geolocation tag pages, the pages for individual hashtags are one of the few areas of Instagram that let you break out of your own immediate network and peruse photos you wouldn't otherwise see. When you add a given hashtag to your photo, the image winds up on that tag's page, where it's seen by hordes of new people. Since most tags are at least somewhat descriptive, the images one finds by tapping on them are more contextually relevant than, say, the tween selfies and cat pics found on the app's Explore tab. That relevancy is what drives so many of those likes. 

Of course, like everything on the Internet, Instagram hashtags can be gamed for self-promotional purposes. Tags like #followforfollow, #like4like and #followback are used quite frequently as a sort of logrolling currency. If you like my photo, I'll like one of yours or better yet, I'll follow you.

Tactics like this might seem a little slimy, but they're incredibly effective, accordion Zarrella's data. The 11 top tags that garner the most likes seek some kind of reciprocal behavior. Nature-related tags like #sky #clouds #sunset and #nature are also highly correlated with frequent taps of the "like" button. 

See Also: 

• How To Get More Followers On Instagram
• Top 10 Most Popular Tags On Instagram
• When Is The Best Time To Post On Instagram?
• #Me: Instagram Narcissism And The Scourge Of The Selfie

The next time you're thinking about buying a new smartphone, there's one more spec you might want to consider. If the FBI or the IRS wants to read your texts, will Apple hand them over? Would it require the feds to get a warrant first? And would it even bother to let you know that federal agents made the request in the first place?

If you're looking at a shiny new iPhone, the answers are not comforting. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's latest digital privacy report, Who's Got Your Back?, awards Apple its secondthe Electronic Frontier Foundation gives Apple a paltry one out of six stars. While Apple got credit for supporting efforts to defend users by modernizing electronic privacy laws, its apparent willingness to hand over your personal information to the government without a warrant and its failure to tell its users how it handles such requests put it in the dock.

Worse Than Comcast: Apple's Privacy Black Box

Apple came off much, much worse than most of its peers — here defined as major non-ISP mobile-computing players. Apple fared worse than Amazon (two stars), Facebook (three), Microsoft (four) and Google (five). Even Comcast, the cable conglomerate consumers love to hate, scored one star higher than Apple. 

The EFF chides Apple for not publishing a transparency report as companies like Google and Twitter do. Without that, users have no idea what kinds of information the government asks for, because Apple won't tell them, nor does it let them know what its guidelines are for dealing with law enforcement data requests. 

(See also: EFF: Twitter Scores, Verizon Fails At Protecting User Privacy)

Apple certainly wasn't the worst-ranked company overall. The major telcos and ISPs almost always get raked over coals on privacy. In this report, Verizon got no stars, while AT&T racked up a grand total of one. MySpace also got no stars and Yahoo only got one. Amazon's showing is also pretty disappointing, especially considering its vast storehouse of consumer-purchase data and its rumored plans to enter the smartphone market. 

But Apple dominates mobile computing in a way few other companies do. And as the proprietor of a mobile operating system that runs on more than half a billion devices, Apple has its hands on a lot of data. Its approach to privacy matters to an awful lot of people — and its lousy performance is a big deal considering how deeply its devices are embedded into our lives.

That integration is only getting deeper as Apple prototypes wearable devices and dreams up more screens to dominate. 

Not Just A Computer Company Anymore 

It's not all together shocking that Apple has some catching up to do in the privacy realm. Until recently, it didn't deal with all that much information about its customers. For most of its history, the company was called Apple Computer, because that's what it sold: computers.

In the early days, the only way for the government to snoop through your MacIntosh was to get a warrant to search your apartment. Today's Apple's computers are smaller, constantly connected to the Internet and, increasingly reliant on iCloud to sync and share data across devices.

Whereas Google has been handling (and profiting from) user data since day one, Apple is only just getting started. If you use iCloud, its servers house your calendars, email, photos, notes and any other data you choose to feed it. If you're using iOS 5 or higher, you're also entrusting Apple with whatever percentage of your personal text messages go through its iMessage protocol.

To its credit, Apple built iMessage using end-to-end encryption that makes its harder for others to snoop on the contents of messages. Of course, if the FBI — or the local cops — really want to know what you're iMessaging back and forth, they can go directly to Apple, with or without a warrant. 

Of course, if the texts in question aren't iMessages, the authorities could just do what they've always done: Ask the mobile data provider to see them. Such requests have seen a dramatic uptick in recent years, and the major ISPs don't approach them with the same level of transparency that a company like Twitter or Sonic.net would. 

Why Consumers Should Care

Apple has never been lauded for having a forward-thinking and open approach to user privacy issues. That hasn't stopped millions of people from trying to predict the company's next gadget and then eagerly standing in line to purchase it. 

Part of that may have to do with awareness. Digital privacy reports excite a certain breed of data nerd (OK, guilty as charged), but they don't approach the media attention lavished on Apple product announcements. Nor is the EFF's chart plastered all over billboards, bus stops and television sets. 

Even for those of you who already knew that Apple doesn't treat your privacy with kid gloves, the risk of the government peeking into law-abiding texts and calendars is too remote to worry about. To some, this is just a side effect of the hyper-connected, digitally-immersed society we're becoming. Even if they don't particularly like it, it's just not their battle to fight. 

Trouble is, that sort of complacency puts no pressure on Apple to get more proactive about keeping your digital life safe from prying eyes.

If you fall in this category, you might still luck out, of course. Even if there's some major privacy gaffe down the line, it might not affect you. And if you're fortunate, IRS agents aren't currently reading your Apple email or iMessages, looking for possible evidence of tax evasion.

But given Apple's current practices in this regard, if they are, you'd never know. Maybe ignorance really is bliss.

Something huge is happening in online TV this year. No, it's not a new streaming set top box or Web-exclusive video series. It's not even an app. It's a milestone: 2013 is the year that Internet-first TV became truly normal. 

People have been watching TV programs online at places like Hulu and Netflix for years. But until recently, most that viewing has involved programs that had previously aired on broadcast or cable TV. There have long been geek-centric webisodes of TV-esque programming online, but nothing that everyday people would watch. This year, things are changing. 

"An Inflection Point For Online Television"

For evidence of the mainstreaming of Web-first TV, look no further than the online revival of All My Children and One Life to Live. The classic TV soap operas are returning not to a broadcast network, but to Hulu and iTunes. It may sound like a distribution strategy fit for a tech video podcast or no-name Web TV series, but these are soap operas. TV doesn't get more mainstream than this.

(See also: The Internet's Assault On Traditional TV Is Working)

Citing an "inflection point for online television", the shows' backers are betting big on the notion that enough people watch TV online these days to make this a profitable endeavor. If recent history is any indication, it's a safe bet.

The first sign of Internet TV's legitimacy among mainstream audiences came earlier this year with House of Cards. We still don't know precisely how many people tuned into Netflix's TV-quality political drama, but it's clearly been popular among the service's 29 million subscribers, as well as many critics.

Most importantly, the show got people talking. Not just tech-savvy people living their lives online, but normal, everyday people. Suddenly, you could hear House of Cards being chattered about at parties as though it was the latest drama on HBO, whose U.S. subscriber count Netflix just surpassed. (Sort of, at least.)

At 4 million subscribers, Hulu is markedly smaller than Netflix, but it's growing fast. And unlike Netflix, Hulu lets non-subscribers stream shows for free from the desktop, so the potential reach of shows like the new All My Children isn't capped at 4 million, or even 29 million, for that matter. Then there's iTunes, through which viewers will be able to purchase individual episodes.

The Imperfect Science of Measuring Web TV

Even on these popular online services, these soap operas will almost certainly fall short of the kind of ratings numbers they used to see on daytime TV. It's impossible to know for sure, since each of these services has different viewership metrics and they're not particularly eager to share. Even Netflix, which proudly boasts the success of House of Cards, won't say just how many people actually watched the show. 

The measurement challenge might begin to change soon, as Nielsen moves toward measurement tools that Internet sources into account. Next month, a temporary pilot run of its Nielsen Digital Program Ratings will track online views from the networks' own websites. In time, the tracking method could become a standard utilized by an array of online video services, finally painting an accurate picture of what's getting watched. 

Nielsen has a long way to go with Internet TV measurement, but the fact that it's tinkering with a decades-old formula is a sign that online TV viewership is now too enormous for it to ignore if it wants to stay relevant.

Before the year is halfway over, we'll have another test of Internet TV's mainstream appeal when Arrested Development's fourth season lands on Netflix. Like the soap operas, Arrested Development is making the leap from TV to online, but in this case the show is backed by eight years of anticipation and the same data-driven smarts that all but ensured House of Cards would be a hit. 

Again, we won't know how many people will actually tune in to the new season of Arrested Development unless Netflix decides to share that data. In the meantime, we'll have only limited, largely anecdotal clues to go from. Perhaps the most important: Are people talking about this? I don't mean on Twitter, but at the bar. That's how we'll really know that a new era in television's history is underway. 

Whether we want one or not, Amazon is building a connected TV set top box for us, according to BusinessWeek. The so-called Amazon TV device will stream Internet video to our televisions, presumably with a bias towards the company's own Instant Video selections. It may not be something consumers are clamoring for, but then again, neither was Amazon's Kindle Fire. 

Indeed, Amazon's tablets offer a useful analogy for what we should expect from Amazon TV: an affordable device that mimics  existing offerings with direct connections into Amazons products and services. The idea is to provide just enough value to carve out a respectable slice of the market. In the process, Amazon sets up another entryway into its universe of content and goods. As The Verge smartly put it, it's all about the ecosystem. 

See Also: What The New Kindle Means To Amazon

The Kindle Fire didn't turn out to be the "iPad killer" some predicted, but it appears to be selling fairly well. The class of 7-inch tablets it helped popularize were popular enough to induce Apple to release the iPad Mini. For Amazon, the Kindle Fire isn't a huge money maker, but it plugs millions of people (and their credit cards) into Amazon's storefront. Expect the Amazon TV to do the same. 

Another Streaming TV Box? Really? 

This makes total sense for Amazon as a business, but why do we, the buyers, need another set top box?

Each of the devices on the market has its own benefits, but none of them are a slam dunk. Boxee's buzz has given way to an identity crisis, while Google has yet to apply the proper amount of polish to Google TV. The Roku has tons of content, but Apple TV's AirPlay feature offers even more, letting iPhone and iPad users stream anything from their devices onto the big screen. It's really the Apple TV that Amazon is taking aim at here. And the Apple TV, it's worth noting, has not generated iPad levels of popularity or excitement. 

Maybe that's the point. This could be a preemptive strike on Amazon's part. Whether Apple launches an HDTV set or not, the company is widely expected to make a splash in the Internet TV market sometime this year. By launching something with a TV app store, or at least an AirPlay equivalent, Amazon could beat Apple to the punch. That sounds a lot better than launching an inferior (albeit still good and, crucially, cheaper) competitor after the fact, as Amazon did with the Kindle Fire. 

How Amazon Can Nail This - And Apple 

In that sense, this is a huge opportunity for Amazon. A super-cheap device with a bulletproof user experience (this is TV, after all) that taps into a rich app development ecosystem could blow away the Rokus, Boxees and Apple TVs of the world. For consumers, the goal is to get as much content as possible on the new device, including a Web browser. If Aereo survives, Amazon should have an app for that, right alongside Hulu, Netflix and all the little guys building innovative video apps with awesome user interfaces.

See Also: The Internet Assault On Traditional TV Is Working

Whatever shows it plays, the Amazon TV box has to be absolutely painless to operate. Television has been dead-simple to use for decades, a fact that the makers of many Internet TV products seem to forget. None of these boxes will truly take off TV watchers find them the slightest bit confusing or intimidating.

Don't Mess This Up, Amazon

Here's what we don't want: A half-decent piece of hardware that pushes you toward Amazon's content but doesn't let you stream Hulu Plus or YouTube videos. The things most people want to watch are fractured across these devices as it is. The reason Apple's AirPlay is so promising is that I can get almost everything I want to see on my iPad - and then beam it to my TV. 

You know what doesn't work with AirPlay though? The Amazon Prime iPad app. There's no good reason for that other than the fact that Apple and Amazon are rivals. We consumers shouldn't get caught in the middle of a corporate spitting match and get stuck with a crappier experience as a result (I'm talking to you, Apple Maps). 

It's clear why Amazon is working on a device like this. It makes total sense from the company's perspective. As long as Amazon also takes the consumer's perspective into account ours, this could be huge.  

Compared to the music and news industries, the television business has so far managed to avoid being upended by the disruptive forces of the Internet. That's about to change.

Despite the industry's furious efforts to starve or shut down its online rivals, the Internet is starting to carve out a respectable slice of TV's future. The good news is that while the coming transistion is likely to be rough on many established networks and providers, it's going to be great for consumers and developers. Here's how.

Netflix Bounces Back, Surpasses HBO 

Case in point: Netflix. The video subscription service has bounced back from its 2011 faux pas to not only regain members, but surpass HBO in U.S. subscribers for the first time ever. As Quartz's Zach Seward points out, Netflix now commands more daily attention than any cable channel in the United States. 

See Also: Do We Really Need Amazon TV? No, But Amazon Does

Netflix's dominance over HBO in particular makes for some pretty symbolic future-of-TV discussion fodder. It is, after all, HBO that refuses to offer its programming as a stand alone subscription service, despite growing demand for such a option. It is precisely its old media business relationships and norms that are holding HBO back from letting non-cable subscribers use its HBO Go app, a fact that seems worth recalling at this particular moment in history. It's no wonder that the company's CEO is publicly rethinking that strategy and admitting to reporters that cable-free access to HBO Go may be an inevitability.

It's also interesting to note, as Seward does, that HBO started out much like Netflix did, by first making out-of-theater movies available to subscribers, and then moving into original programming. 

The Internet Masters What Matters: Programming

For the last few years, it was the hardware, distribution and overall experience of watching TV that started to change at the hands of the Internet and mobile tech. Now, crucially, we're getting down to what matters most: the stuff that actually draws viewers. 

The trend toward original, Internet-only, TV-style programming is something we tech blogs have watched and opined about for the better part of a year. In the first half of 2013, the theoretical promise of original Internet TV has morphed into a confirmation that it is, in fact, something normal, non-techie people care about.

Netflix's Lilyhammer may not have changed the landscape, but it was an important precursor to House of Cards, which appears to be doing exactly that. Meanwhile, Hulu, Amazon and YouTube continue to make their own investments in original programming to compete with cable and network TV. 

The success of House of Cards has led to a great deal of discussion about the rise of data-driven TV programming and what it means for TV's future. Unlike the people who have traditionally made TV programming decisions, Netflix is sitting on a mountain of data about its users. That includes 30 million plays and 4 million ratings per day, in addition to details about when people watch, from which devices, which parts they rewind and more.

By looking at this trove of data, Netflix was able to place a pretty safe bet on the notion that a remake of this particular BBC show starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher would do well. 

Netflix isn't the only company tapping its users to help with video programming decisions. This weekend, Amazon asked viewers to rate the pilot episodes of 14 different Web series, which apparently resulted in quite a few views for the original programs. The company hasn't launched a stand-alone Netflix competitor, but Amazon Prime appears poised to evolve into such an offering. There's even an Amazon TV set top box rumor, hot off of the presses.

Aereo: Please Excuse This Interruption

Next month, people living in and around Boston will be able to join New York's early adopters in subscribing to Aereo, an innovative and controversial Internet TV service. Since its launch, Aereo has under assault by much of the TV industry, which claims its antenna-renting and re-broadcasting model of mobile and Web TV amounts to copyright infringement. That may or may not be true, but it's certainly threatening their business model, which is why they wasted no time in trying to sue Aereo out of existence. 

So far, Aereo has prevailed. That is, early court rulings have sided with the startup's claims of fair use and thus declined to shut it down before the lawsuit goes to trial, which will undoubtedly be an interesting affair to follow. 

If Aereo survives this litigious onslaught, it's poised to be one of the most disruptive forces the industry has seen in awhile. And while that would be bad news for network executives, it's actually pretty great for consumers, who will be able to tune into broadcast TV online without dealing with rabbit ears or a cable provider. It would also be a huge win for the Internet in the battle for TV's future.

The Original Web Programming Revolution Continues

The next big test for Internet-only TV will be the return of cult classic Arrested Development, a new season of which will land on Netflix next month, eight years after Fox dropped the original. If the show's enduring popularity and House of Cards' recent success are any indication, May will be a good month for Netflix. 

We won't actually know how well Arrested Development does, though. That's because like House of Cards and everything else on Netflix, it isn't tracked by the same TV ratings system that has measured TV viewership in the U.S. for six decades. The only numbers we get from Netflix are the ones it chooses to share. The company isn't typically generous with that data, which is somewhat ironic considering how much its users willingly hand over.

That all might be about to change, as Nielsen gets ready to update its TV audience measuring methodology to include Internet sources. It's not clear whether the long-overdue update will track views on Netflix when it gets rolled out this fall, but the normalization of TV measurement should help paint a clearer picture of what's getting watched, regardless of the distribution channel. 

If nothing else, the Nielsen update further illustrates the extent to which TV is changing in the age of streaming services and mobile devices. 

Every time you ask Siri a question, the data remains on Apple's servers for two years, Apple told Wired earlier this week. It's a revelation that raises concerns about privacy, which isn't exactly Apple's strong suit to begin with. But is this really something to flip out about? Nope.

For six months, Siri's servers retain a record of the things you ask it and associates that data with you, the user. For the remaining 18 months, it's anonymized. That way, Apple can use the data to improve its service over time without knowing that it was in fact you that asked what the rash in your nether regions is all about.

(See also: Siri Jokes Aside, Voice Control Will Make Computing Better)

The ACLU rightly faults Apple for not making its Siri data retention policies clearer or easier to find. The worry here is that the often private information we utter to Siri could wind up in the hands of marketers, the authorities or lawyers in civil suits.

These are valid concerns, and Apple should clarify whether — or how — this information is used for marketing purposes, for example. But in the process of reining in Cupertino, we should be careful not to handicap the evolution of such a promising technology. 

Artificial Intelligence Needs Data To Learn

Here's the thing: Siri is artificial intelligence. Like the human mind it attempts to emulate, AI improves as it learns. To teach machines, we need to feed them data. Every time we ask Siri where the nearest Italian restaurant or strip club is, we're also teaching her, not just about our own tastes and curiosities, but about human language, sentiment and intent.

Some of those lessons she can apply to us individually. Much of it, crucially, is used to improve the service for everybody. Without this progress, Siri will never lose the "beta" label for which it is so easy to ridicule.  

For most of its lifespan on Apple's servers, this data is anonymous. That means there's no way to tie your filthy inquiries back to you, should anybody ever inquire. You could, of course, argue that Apple should keep the data anonymous from the moment it's created, as Google proclaims it does with Voice Search. It might not be a fair comparison (given how much Google learns about us via other channels), but perhaps Apple should take a cue from Google and keep this data anonymous from the outset.

But if temporarily tying my questions to my voice helps Siri fine-tune my experience using the service, I'm fine with that. That's the bottom line here: Apple should hang onto data like this only as long as technically necessary. If it stops being useful to the product's evolution, the data should disappear. 

For The Privacy Concious, Alternatives Abound

I'd be more concerned about what Siri does with my queries if the access it offered to information was unique. You don't have to use Siri. It's just a more convenient tool to use in some contexts. For truly private inquiries, people can (and likely do) continue to use traditional methods like a Chrome incognito tab or any other browser in private mode. 

Now, if Apple wants us to turn to Siri more often, it's going to have to add better privacy controls. Much like Web browsers and Google Web History offer us toggles to keep certain (or all) activity private, the voice-controlled personal assistants of the the future will need to do the same. If they don't, people will continue to use alternative, more privacy-friendly tools, whether Web browsers or competing voice assistants. 

Apple has a responsibility to be transparent about this type of thing. And it really ought to scrap this data as soon as it's not technically beneficial to keep it. But insofar as it fuels the core functionality of an evolving technology, if Siri needs to remember my questions for awhile, go for it, Siri. Just give me a heads up.

It's going to be an interesting year in online music. The all-you-can-stream music subscription space is set to heat up, with rumored Spotify competitors from Google and Amazon potentially in the offing and an already-huge European service called Deezer planning to launch in the U.S. 

In the meantime, there are already a number of music subscription services to choose from, depending on where you live. None of them are perfect. Spotify and Rdio generally the lead the pack, each with its own impressively massive library of music. Spotify wins points over Rdio for letting you import your own MP3s, whereas Rdio's interface design, especially on mobile, is vastly superior to that of any other offering.

Then there are solid offerings from Grooveshark and MOG, both of which face an uncertain future, for completely different reasons. MOG was acquired by headphone maker Beats Audio, which plans to launch a new service called Daisy this year. Meanwhile, Grooveshark has faced a barrage of lawsuits from record labels, who accuse the startup of copyright infringement, but remains standing... for now.

Which service is right for you? It depends on how much you value things like audio control, design aesthetics, music selection and user control. 

A year from now, the landscape may well look totally different and we'll be updating this post accordingly. For now, here's a comparison of the major all-you-can-stream music services. 

Spotify

Rdio

Deezer

Rhapsody

Grooveshark

MOG

ReadWrite celebrates its 10th anniversary on Saturday, April 20, 2013. For the occasion, we're running a series of articles  looking back—and looking forward.

It's hard to believe that ReadWrite went live an entire decade ago. Since founder Richard MacManus first hit the "Publish" button, an impressive roster of writers have contributed to the site in a wide variety of ways. Some have continued successful careers as technology journalists, while others have shifted their work and lives into entirely new directions. 

To mark our 10th anniversary, we reached out to a handful of past writers and ask them about their experience with ReadWrite. What follows is a sampling of the thoughts, recollections and current situations of some of our most noteworthy alumni who responded. We encourage everyone who's been involved with ReadWrite to chime in on the comments and let us know what they're up to.

Richard MacManus (founder) 

Years active: 2003 - 2012
What he's up to now: Writing a book about consumer health technology. 

(See also: RW10: A Decade of Spotting The Future Taking Form.)

What's your most memorable ReadWrite moment? 

There are too many memories to mention—perhaps I'll write a book about it someday! But I'd have to say my favorite moment was meeting Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, in Boston in mid-2009. I interviewed him about a variety of topics, from the Semantic Web to the then nascent Internet of Things.

As I wrote in that post, Berners-Lee's pioneering work and philosophy was a direct inspiration for me when I launched the site as ReadWriteWeb back in 2003. Immediately after shaking hands, I told him that ReadWriteWeb's name was in part inspired by the first browser, which he developed, called "WorldWideWeb." That was a read/write browser, meaning you could not only browse and read content, but create and edit content too. So it was a special moment meeting him in person.

How has ReadWrite changed you?  

ReadWrite has changed me in so many ways. It's fitting, though, that the key lesson I took from ReadWrite is the one that made me start the blog in the first place: to write about things I'm passionate about. Ten years ago, my avenue for writing was a blog called Read/Write Web. Now, it's a book project. But either way, I'm doing what I love: writing.

As ReadWrite starts its next decade, what do you hope to see? 

The DNA of ReadWrite is passion for technology and forward-thinking analysis of it. So I was thrilled to see that the new editor-in-chief, Owen Thomas, had embraced those principles. Also, the Web of 2013 is no longer just about what’s happening on your computer’s Web browser, as it was in 2003. As Owen noted in his debut post, the Internet is everywhere today—in our pockets, on our bodies, in the physical world. So I’m thrilled that the blog I founded will chronicle this new era of the Read/Write Web. Hopefully for at least another 10 years! Because I’m certain the next decade will bring many more exciting innovations and Web developments.

Marshall Kirkpatrick

Years active: 2007- 2012
What he's up to now: CEO and founder of Little Bird, a tool that uses social data and other online signals to identify influencers. 

How did you end up writing for ReadWrite? 

After I was at TechCrunch, I joined a small startup in Portland, writing on their company blog and producing content using their technology.  I was also doing some consulting on the side and some of that took the form of "blogger placement" with other companies seeking people to write on their blogs.  (Mint.com was my biggest success story in that.)  I was getting enough interest in both directions (though admittedly more from people wanting a job) that I put up a post on my own blog saying "OK, everybody, form two lines!  Who wants to hire a blogger? Who wants a job blogging for a company? I will connect you!"  And Richard MacManus reached out to me, asking "how much would it cost to hire someone of ... your caliber?" And I said "oh let's not beat around the bush—here's what it would cost to hire me myself!"  I knew even back then, when ReadWriteWeb had a staff of three, that it was one of only a small number of publications I'd be proud to write for (PaidContent, GigaOm, VentureBeat being among the others). Because Richard is a man who identifies deeply with intellectual exploration—and that's awesome.

Richard said, "I'm looking for someone who can hit the front page of Digg on a regular basis."  That used to be the standard by which blogging success was judged!  And so that's just what I did, even as I was sometimes critical of the culture at Digg.  This was one of the stories I was most proud of.  And what other tech blog wrote explicitly and critically of Kevin Rose's ignominious introduction of Digg to the world?  But we got on the front page of Digg a lot and we just kept growing beyond the time when that mattered.  After some time working as a contracted blogger, Richard brought me on full time.  I announced that on my blog in the same post I announced that I was getting married to my wonderful wife and now Little Bird cofounder Mikalina.  Our news hit Techmeme and that's something we'll always be a little proud of. 

What's your most memorable post or moment from your ReadWrite days? 

There are far too many to recount.  Every day was an adventure.  

One of my favorite stories was when I was talking with Mike Melanson about a story we were hours late covering after it hit Techmeme and he said, "I don't know why, we've covered that company several times in the past."  I thought that was a great structured criterion for elevating a source's importance, and so we went over to a startup called FluidInfo that said it had a cloud database of all the outbound links in the history of ReadWriteWeb.  I asked if they could populate a field that counted the number of times a particular domain had been linked to over the years. They said yes, so I asked staff hacker Tyler Gillies if he could hit their API and pull down that list.  We got 2,000 domains that ReadWriteWeb had linked to more than two times in the past, we eyeball-edited out 500 competing news sites and personal blogs, and were left with 1,500 companies.  There wasn't a standard place to find their RSS feeds, everybody's blogs were in different places on their site, so we tossed the list up onto Amazon's Mechanical Turk and for $50 overnight got a set of 1.500 RSS feeds from companies we'd written about two or more times.  

Then Tyler wrote a bot that would ping those feeds every five minutes to see if they'd posted anything new, and if they had the bot would send the link into a group Skype chat we called the Bot Room, filled with bots like that and more.  All of our competitors had been getting real time push notifications from 20 or 30 company blogs (since I wrote about the ability to do that when I left TechCrunch). But we found a rational way to identify 1,500 companies worth tracking in real time.  So we ate everybody's lunch for months with real-time notifications of all these high-quality sources.  It was awesome.  We broke a lot of news like that. A lot of people thought that automated data-driven methods of breaking news were somehow less legitimate than other forms of journalism but I think they are wrong.  It was a lot of fun, too. 

What's one lesson or idea that's stuck with you since you left ReadWrite?

I learned that saying "Just go out there and be awesome" is not an effective way to manage people.  It leaves them feeling frustrated, angry and like they don't want to be your friend anymore.  I'm really thankful for learning that and wish I had earlier.  My wife Mikalina was instrumental in helping me learn that, based on our experiences together with ReadWriteWeb staff.

As ReadWrite starts its next decade, what do you hope to see more (or less) of? 

I hope it's epic, risky and filled with thoughtful integrity.  I hope it sticks up for social justice and existential meaning.  And I hope it monetizes well, so everyone engaged in epic, risky and filled with thoughtful integrity can get the double win of being well compensated for it. 

Jolie O'Dell 

Years active: 2009 - 2010
What she's up to now: Writing for VentureBeat, freelancing elsewhere and publishing poetry books at Juniper Press

How did you wind up writing for ReadWrite? 

I had been freelancing for a few tech sites and other blogs—I worked with Allen Stern (God rest his soul) at Center Networks and Steve Hall at Adrants. I was building up my portfolio of professional blogging after being a print journalist for several years. I was introduced to Richard by a mutual friend, and after exchanging some emails, he decided to take a chance on me. I started out at a rate of $25 per story and worked my way up to a full-time position, thanks to lots of coaching from Richard and [co-editor] Marshall [Kirkpatrick]!

What's the most memorable moment from your ReadWrite days? 

Definitely the time the staff met up in Palo Alto and went to Facebook in 2009. There were five or six of us—all alums now—and we had an amazing time riding [public transit] and eating at a cafe outside. But I will never forget how during our Facebook visit, the ever-feisty Marshall Kirkpatrick got "called in to the principal's office" to talk alone with Mark Zuckerberg. He seemed rather abashed when he came out; I can only imagine he was getting chewed out majorly for being one of the first and best writers to really discuss Facebook's privacy issues, especially when it came to children and commercial entities using the service.

What's one lesson from those days that has stuck with you? 

You can't always be first, but you can always try to be best. And sometimes, you can be first and best.

Always think deliberately about what you write, and give every story an extra paragraph or two of analysis, context or background.

ReadWriteWeb changed my career forever. I wouldn't be where I am today—making an obscene amount of money, sitting at the top of a skyscraper in San Francisco, happily married to a technology company founder—if it weren't for Richard MacManus and his willingness to take a chance on me.

As ReadWrite starts its next decade, what do you hope to see? 

I really hope that the ReadWrite spirit of beating the competition by writing better continues. The Internet is so saturated with "breaking" news and briefs and copy/paste fake journalism. ReadWrite has a reputation for being above that, for providing insight, depth and a unique point of view.

I dearly love Owen Thomas. He's a personal friend; he's also surprisingly intelligent. When we end up chatting about tech, he invariably brings up angles I would never have considered otherwise. In that regard, he reminds me a bit of Marshall. I'm so very excited to see what he does with the old place.

Jon Mitchell 

Years active: 2011 - 2013
What he's up to now: Launching an online publication called The Daily Portal.

How did you come to write for ReadWrite? 

In 2011, I was working for a news tech startup experiment that seemed to be winding down, so I was moonlighting as managing editor for a local news site in Portland. Through working on that, I ended up attending events for Portland journalists hosted by Abraham Hyatt, long-time managing editor for ReadWrite. When Abraham posted a new writer job, I saw it very early, and I had the ability to say, "Hi, Abraham. I'm Jon. I helped you clean up after your PDX journo conference a couple months ago." So that got me the interview, and being a bearded dude in Portland sealed the deal.

What was your most memorable ReadWrite moment? 

At SXSW 2012, I caught wind early on of Homeless Hotspots, the ill-advised marketing experiment that became the only story to matter from the whole conference. I bashed out a reaction late at night and the momentum of that post carried me through to the morning. I went out and interviewed one of the homeless workers wearing a Wi-Fi hotspot around his neck, and posted a big second-day update to the post. 

I got the link in Tim Carmody's Wired post because I took a stand, and that pretty much made the week. I did a BBC World News radio interview, I got all kinds of links, it was a great moment. I was happy to be making an impact on a story that wasn't about computers and telephones. 

What's one lesson from those days that has stuck with you? 

"Blogging is a footrace and a beauty contest at the same time," Marshall Kirkpatrick once said in the chat room. That sums up what I learned at ReadWrite. I learned to be plugged into the beating heart of the present, get the story, but never forget to tie it into the past and what it means for the future. A journalist's number one job is to put the facts into context, and ReadWrite was known for that.

What would you like to see more of from ReadWrite in the next decade? 

I want to see more features about the meaning of technology and the people behind it. The ReadWrite team is a bunch of philosophers. I want to see the site use that curiosity to push the medium forward.

Josh Catone

Years active: 2007 - 2008
What he's up to now: Executive Director, Editorial Projects at Mashable.

How did you end up writing for ReadWrite? 

Whenever anyone asks me how I got my start in blogging, I like to say I conned my way into it. While that's not exactly true, it's not far off. Somehow, I was able to go from toiling away at a mid-sized political website, for which only about a third of my writing actually carried a byline, to being lead writer for one of the sites that shaped the early blogosphere. And it all started with a comment.

In January 2007, I left a comment on a ReadWrite post that included an analogy Richard MacManus apparently liked so much that he turned it into a follow-up post a few days later. A month later, I reached out to Richard and offered to write some guest posts.  All three of them hit the front page of Digg (back when that meant something), and in April 2007, Richard offered to let me run the entire site for a week while he was on vacation. When he got back, I hadn't gotten him sued ... so he gave me a job. 

What was your most memorable post? 

My favorite post is one entitled, "There Is No Web 3.0, There Is No Web 2.0—There Is Just The Web." Anyone around the Web in 2008 will remember that defining what made a site "Web 2.0" was a popular pastime. I decided that while the discussions and debates about those definitions were helpful in figuring out where the Web was going, the actual attempt at assigning version numbers was not. This was my well-received rant. 

Perhaps the most fun I had at ReadWrite was when I convinced Richard we should devote an entire week on the site to Facebook in the summer of 2007. I'm not actually sure if Richard was even on Facebook at the time. We spent an entire week writing posts about Facebook—resources, analysis, lists and news. We would later run other themed series as part of a program we called "ReadWriteWeb Files," but Facebook stands out because it was first, and because we were one of the first major tech blogs to really devote significant virtual column inches to exploring the company.

What's one lesson you've carried with you since leaving ReadWrite?

The most important lesson ReadWrite taught me was that it's okay to take your time. It's no surprise that when I was hired at Mashable, I started as Features Editor. That's the ReadWrite influence at work. ReadWrite was built around the idea that thoughtful, deliberate and careful analysis has a ton of value. 

What do you want to see more of on ReadWrite? 

Get back to those roots as the best place for the smartest analysis of Web tech news and trends. News is a commodity; it's an appetizer. ReadWrite should be serving the main course.

Mike Melanson

Years active: 2009 - 2011

How did you wind up writing for ReadWrite? 

I hopped in a van to the Northwest with a guy at a festival and ended up in Marshall's back yard in a tent for several weeks. Marshall and I walked around talking about technology a bunch and then I returned to my life in Austin to finish journalism grad school. When I finally graduated the next winter, I posted something on Facebook to the effect of "I hope this $3 I just spent on the Writers Market was the best $3 ever," and Mikalina [Kirkpatrick] commented saying that Marshall just happened to be looking for a writer. And there it was.

What was your most memorable post for ReadWrite?

My most memorable post is quite obvious: Facebook Wants to be Your One True Login. And its corresponding post: How Google Failed Its Users and Gave Birth to an Internet Meme which sorta tells the story. That morning, when the traffic spike hit (we're talking several hundred thousand pageviews over a couple days, if I remember correctly, with the post continuing to pull traffic for months) we were all in a Skype chat room trying to figure out what had happened. I think one of us had written about 4chan that day or the day before, so we thought perhaps /b [a message board devoted to mischief] was DDOSing us, attempting to bring the site down with an excess of traffic. Frederic [Lardinois] poked around in the stats and finally showed what was really going on—everyone was looking for Facebook. That's when Marshall added the "Dear Facebook Users" message to the top of the post. And here I thought I was just writing an analysis of Facebook. 

How did ReadWrite change you? 

ReadWrite likely changed me in an unexpected way for a tech writer—it drove me back to my roots. When I left ReadWrite in 2011, I moved back to Austin and stopped looking at the Internet almost entirely for a couple months. My main focus on the Internet since those days is managing its ever-present draw. I've turned off the data plan on my phone, I've installed browser plugins to keep me from staring at Facebook and Reddit all day, I've turned off Twitter notifications, all sorts of things. ReadWrite taught me that while technology has its place, it also has a dark, ego-driven, addictive side that lots of the tech world has yet to really acknowledge.

What would you like to see more of on ReadWrite? 

I'd like to see what I always liked to see—more well-sourced analysis and [real] journalism. Less of that other crap people try to pass off as journalism. 

Audrey Watters

Years active: 2010 - 2011
What she's up to now: Freelance writing and running Hack Education, a site about education technology. 

What's one lesson you've kept with you since leaving ReadWrite? 

My most important takeaway from the time I spent at ReadWrite is that being "first" isn't the goal. Rather you should strive to be "best." 

Being "best" doesn't come from rewriting a press release or a company blog post (even if your rewrite hits Techmeme). Being "best" doesn't mean creating a link-baity headline that garners the most clicks or retweets. Being "best" means adding value for your readers—that is, you want to help contextualize the news. You should talk to domain experts. You should add analysis. 

You want to be the tech writer that people want to read on a topic ... because they know that what you'll say will be interesting and smart. "Interesting and smart" were always how I'd describe ReadWrite before I joined the team. It's the lesson that I've carried with me after I left.

Where Are They Now? 

These are only a few of the many great writers who have built ReadWrite over the years. We couldn't possibly include everybody at length, but we would be remiss not to mention Sarah Perez, who  wrote some excellent and widely-read stories during her tenure at ReadWrite. Today, she continues writing about mobile platforms and social media for TechCrunch, a site that also publishes work from ReadWrite alums Frederic Lardinois, Alex Williams and Klint Finley (who also writes for Wired). 

There are many, many more who we couldn't reach or didn't have room to feature. We're hoping to hear from them in the comments.

Twitter put months of speculation to rest this morning when it launched its own music-focused service for iOS and the Web. Twitter #Music is a standalone app for discovering, following and listening to artists that draws its intelligence from Twitter's own user activity data. At first glance, it's a win for artists, but the value it adds for fans remains to be seen. 

First and foremost, Twitter #Music is undoubtedly good for Twitter. The app takes something that is hugely popular among consumers — music — and intimately ties it to its own service. It also integrates with Spotify and Rdio so tracks can be streamed in their entirety from within Twitter #Music. That feature, the company is betting, will keep listeners glued to the app, where much of what they do is tied to Twitter's core functionality: tweeting songs and following artists. 

Putting Artists Front and Center 

For artists, the potential advantages here are huge. At every turn, Twitter #Music encourages you to follow bands and musicians, which of course can lead to longterm engagement and even sales. Whether they're already trending or Twitter thinks you might like them (based on your existing follows), this app puts artists and their Twitter handles front-and-center, never missing an opportunity to stick a "follow" button in front of the user. 

Twitter #Music also lets users buy tracks directly from iTunes, which is a major plus for artists who still aren't making all that much money from those Spotify and Rdio streams. 

If widely adopted, Twitter #Music could become a potent source of exposure for up-and-coming musicians. And while there a million services that promise to enable music discovery, seldom do they directly make money for artists. 

We Are Hunted, R.I.P.

Twitter #Music is built on top of the guts of We Are Hunted, a service that ranked the popularity of online music so effectively that some people wondered whether it could replace Billboard. Twitter gobbled it up to build this, and you can tell. Twitter #Music's design is strongly reminiscent of We Are Hunted's, even if Twitter appear to have gutted much of the service's original functionality. 

We Are Hunted's flagship feature was its Emerging Music chart, which analyzed a wide range of data signals to determine what music was most popular online. Twitter #Music appears to replace that more complex algorithm with something that more heavily favors Twitter's own data. That's not surprising, but it makes for a less thorough analysis and for music fans, a less useful experience. 

In the process of launching this new product, Twitter also appears to have gutted some of We Are Hunted's core recommendation technology in favor of a more Twitter-centric approach. Whereas We Are Hunted used a complex array of data to associate artist to one another, Twitter #Music appears to be relying heavily (if not exclusively) on data about the relationship between artists on the service, such as who follows who.  When I look at The Flaming Lips on Twitter's new service, it recommends Taylor Swift. Really? 

Do We Need This? 

With We Are Hunted effectively neutered and Twitter entering the digital music space with a big splash, the big question remains: How useful is this new app for users? 

It depends. Let's consider Twitter #Music's key selling points: You can discover music that's popular on Twitter, get new music recommendations and listen to it all within the app. Those are all useful things, although to varying degrees. 

The music-listening part is only really worthwhile to those of us who pay for premium Spotify or Rdio accounts. Otherwise, we're left with a mere iTunes snippet and the option to buy the whole track. And if you do have Rdio or Spotify, you're going to continue to use those services' apps for the majority of your listening. Listening to music isn't the main draw of Twitter #Music, just a very nice touch. 

The most compelling aspect of the app is Twitter's data about artists, songs and the social relationships between them. If you can get over the fact that We Are Hunted pulled in much more data and was thus much more interesting, this is useful, especially if you happen to be active on Twitter.

Where Twitter-Based Music Discovery Fails

But just being a voracious tweeter isn't enough. As many users have pointed out, the "Me" and "Suggested" tabs of the app are of limited value if you don't follow a lot of musicians on Twitter. Indeed, using Twitter follows as a barometer for one's music taste is a curious choice. Sometimes musicians have worthwhile Twitter accounts, sometimes not.

Either way, most people probably don't follow all the artists they like. Unlike the Facebook "like", the Twitter "follow" is not an explicit statement saying "I enjoy listening to this band." Instead, it's saying, "I think this band, whose music I happen to enjoy, might have interesting things to say, so I'm listening."

Of course, if you're not following a lot of artists, that's something Twitter #Music is explicitly designed to change. But out of the box, this is a real handicap for some users.

It's also worth mentioning that at launch, Twitter #Music only appears to acknowledge verified artist accounts, at least as far as the "Me" tab is concerned. When I click on my own profile, it shows eight bands that I follow. There are certainly more artists that I follow, but they're less well-known and thus have no official designation from Twitter. As a result, they are presumably not factored into my recommendations. 

Personally, I'm not all that interested in what music is generally popular on Twitter. You mean to tell me that lots of people are listening to Psy, P!nk and Maroon 5? No kidding! The "Emerging" tab is a bit more interesting, as this is where a hidden gem or two is bound to surface. 

The other tabs are more personalized, and thus likely to be more relevant to users. It's not clear exactly what kind of data is fueling he "Suggested" tab, but it does a reasonably decent job of recommending artists. Many of its suggestions are spot-on. Some are questionable. It's not terrible, but it could be better. I've tested a lot of services that utilize music recommendation engines.

For my money, algorithms like the ones behind Pandora, Last.fm and the Echo Nest do a much better job of making music suggestions than this app does. Twitter #Music is also competing against beloved and impressive music recommendation apps like Shuffler.fm and Hype Machine. 

On the whole, Twitter #Music is a decent app. If you like music enough to subscribe to a streaming service and are interested in finding new music, this is a pretty good, social-fueled way to do it. If your tastes are more particular and nuanced, tools with more complex algorithms and granular data points are likely to be more useful to you. Either way, it's worth taking it for a spin.

Watching Coachella from your phone just got easier. At long last, iOS users can tap into YouTube's live video streams, thanks to an update pushed out to the app yesterday. 

It may seem like a minor thing, but the addition of livestreaming support to YouTube for iOS is a pretty nice touch, especially if you're getting your "TV" content from your tablet or smartphone. This is a win for cord cutters. 

As somebody who relies exclusively on Internet streaming boxes and mobile devices to fill their 48" HDTV screen with moving pictures, I've long wished YouTube's native app would give me access to the live-streamed stuff. In recent years, YouTube has been making live video feeds available for whatever major political and entertainment events they can get the rights to stream. This includes music festivals like Coachella, sporting events and just about every major televised event in the course of each presidential election. You know, exactly the kind of thing for which we tune into live TV.

Internet TV User Experience: It's Getting There...

The problem with relying on the Internet for TV content is that the user experience is unpolished. As exciting as all this new TV tech might seem, there's still something to be said for sitting in front of a television set, pressing a button and leaning back. You can't really do that with Internet TV, but the experience is getting there. 

Part of the equation is smart app design such as that found in iPad video apps like Frequency, ShowYou and Vodio.  YouTube's own four-month-old iPad app is the best the service has ever looked on Apple's market-leading tablet (it's naturally quite at home on Android as well).  Still, while a great mobile app UI is important, it's useless without the means to get it to the TV, which is where technologies like Apple's AirPlay come in. And of course, the most crucial part of all is the content itself. This update stands to make YouTube a much better source of that content. Meanwhile, if Aereo survives the TV industry's litigious onslaught, it will be, if you'll pardon the buzzword, a total game-changer for this type of TV-viewing experience. 

YouTube's Role In TV's Future

On the content front, YouTube has been ramping up its original, TV-style content for awhile now, even opening its own TV studio in Los Angeles. Like Hulu and Netflix, YouTube knows that people are going to be turning to the Internet for more and more  of their TV-viewing, and they want to stake out as big of a slice of that pie as possible. 

But while binging on Arrested Development on Netflix is great and all, certain shows and events are best enjoyed live. Trying to tune into those things via tablets and streaming boxes is a pretty clunky experience. As the interfaces mature and content selection widens, it's going to get better. YouTube is one of players that will be right at the heart of this evolution, which will lead to the future of what we now think of as "TV." Adding live streaming support inches us toward that future just enough that it's worth noting. 

This is not a blockbuster, life-altering feature for cord cutters - It's not like HBO just gave us all HBO Go access for free out of the kindness of their hearts - but it's an important step toward making mobile devices more suitable sources of television-style content. Combined with apps like Aereo and Hulu Plus, YouTube makes "TV" something that increasingly comes from the Internet, not from cable providers. 

If you haven't filed your taxes yet, you might want to triple-check your math before you do. That's because the IRS employs a more watchful eye than ever, thanks to Big Data analysis and digital information-gathering tactics. 

With the ongoing budget crisis, pressure for the IRS to recover lost revenue has never been higher. Conveniently enough, the agency has made massive investments in its computing power and tools for crunching big data, allowing for more automation and rapid analysis. That means a greater capacity for robo-audits and less room for honest mistakes.

It's not just the tools that have improved. The data itself is richer and more varied than ever, drawing increasingly from whatever details about our digital lives the IRS can get its hands on, including information that isn't publicly accessible. We don't know the full extent of the IRS's data-mining capabilities, but recent reporting has revealed new details. 

1. Analyzing Your Social Media Updates 

The social Web has been a boon for IRS investigators, who can use updates from Facebook, Twitter and other services to bolster its cases against alleged tax cheats. Information about work history, one's physical whereabouts and even purchases can be gleaned from social networks. Some of it, like tweets and certain details from Facebook, are public. But should the IRS want to take a closer look, it supposedly has the means to do so, with or without a warrant. 

According to recent reports, the IRS cross-references data from social networks with Social Security numbers and then works in a host of other private data to look for suspicious patterns. 

2. Monitoring Digital Payments and Credit Card Activity 

The rise of commerce and digital payments have also given the IRS new sets of data to mine and analyze. The agency has long looked at taxpayers' activity on ecommerce sites like Ebay, but are now going deeper and getting a look at credit card transactions and other online payments. 

The agency looks for potential auditing targets "by matching tax filings to social media or electronic payments," according to MSN Money. The exact mechanism of this monitoring isn't known, but MSN Money indicates that it includes examining credit card transactions "for the first time ever." 

It's not clear how detailed or widespread this monitoring is, and the IRS isn't likely to spill the beans (lest they tip off tax cheats), but suffice it to say that if the agency feels it has cause to take a peek at your online payment data, it won't have a problem doing so. 

3. Peeking At Your Email Usage 

Exactly when and how the IRS looks at email usage isn't entirely clear. The MSN Money report says the agency's big data analysis tools are used in part for "tracking individual Internet addresses and emailing patterns." That's pretty vague. In theory, the IRS could glean some details about email usage simply by looking at browsing activity, whether that insight comes from an ISP or email service provider. 

Does that mean that the IRS has blanket access to everybody's Gmail account for the purpose of feeding its data-crunching behemoth? That seems pretty unlikely. Instead, what it likely does is request access to individual accounts for people who are already suspected of wrongdoing. The American Civil Liberties Union recently uncovered documents that suggest the IRS doesn't feel a warrant is necessary to get such access. Good to know!

The first time you launch Aereo, you start to see why TV network executives are losing their minds. It's not because the service feels like it's doing anything wrong. Quite the opposite. For the consumer, it's doing almost everything right.

When you log in, you're shown a TV Guide-style listing of shows that are currently airing. It's not just the four or five obvious options, either. In the New York market, there are 30 broadcast channels that Aereo grabs and rebroadcasts to your account via the tiny antenna you're effectively renting from the company when you sign up.

See Also: To Truly Stop Aereo, Broadcasters Need To Innovate Like Hell

It's mostly typical broadcast fare: local news, daytime soap operas, people having meltdowns on Maury, prime time sitcoms, PBS and so forth. All the standard broadcast networks are augmented with local channels, foreign language networks and an inordinate amount of religious programming. The selection may not be as robust as that of cable, but some of the most popular shows on TV are waiting there, ready to be watched or DVR'ed to the cloud for later.

TV On Any Device, Second Screen And All

Aereo doesn't have native mobile apps yet, but it makes up for that with a very capable, cross-platform Web app. It works in the browser on my iPad and iPhone, from which it can be AirPlayed directly to my television via Apple TV. I didn't get the chance to test it, but I'm presuming Aereo works on most other modern browsers and platforms.

Thanks to iOS multitasking, I can close the browser and do other things like check email, browse the Web and tweet. You know, the second screen stuff we all do anyway. It all still works, even if we use our second screens to feed content to the first screen. The only drawback is that the transition from video to video is not entirely smooth with AirPlay. That experience should get better once Aereo develops native mobile apps and, eventually, lands on smart TV platforms. 

I am admittedly not a huge TV person. Still, as I use Aereo's Web app from device to device, its value starts to feel more and more obvious. I can watch my favorite PBS shows, tune into the local news (for whatever reason) and watch popular prime time shows like 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, all using the Internet, which is what I use for just about all other media consumption. 

Indeed, after a few days of testing Aereo, I'm left with the distinct impression that this is not only a useful service, but something that needs to exist. I understand why it frightens the TV execs, but I wholeheartedly disagree with them. This is a hugely innovative service that hands control back to the TV-viewing consumer in a way that wasn't possible before. I'm not a legal scholar, but the copyright infringement claims made by the big media conglomerates against Aereo seem like a stretch. So far, the courts have agreed. 

The TV Antenna Of The Future

Since Aereo launched, the television industry has been hoping to sue it out of existence. Early attempts to have the service shut down have been unsuccessful, thanks to legal logic that may well wind up saving Aereo in the end. Meanwhile, the networks are clamoring for a plan B, which, if you believe the claims of network execs, includes threats to pull out of broadcast TV all together. (Said threats are, of course, unbelievably stupid.)

Aereo does not disrupt the core broadcast business model. When I'm watching TV shows on my iPad using Aereo, I'm still seeing all the commercials, just like I would if I tuned in via an antenna on my television set. The problem is, my antenna sucks. On a good day, I can get four or five channels to display clearly on my TV, and even that involves some finagling. It feels decidedly old-fashioned to be tinkering with an antenna just to watch NBC. 

By contrast, Aereo feels right at home in the 21st century. When you watch it, it doesn't feel like you're stealing anything. Instead, it feels like the service has restored your ability to conveniently tune into broadcast TV — an ability that's atrophied for years thanks to changing viewer habits and, consequently, expectations for picture and sound quality.

Broadcasters and TV service providers didn't come up with a good solution, so Aereo rose to the challenge. Aereo isn't stealing anything. It just wants to sell you the TV antenna of the future.

Why Broadcasters Hate Aereo

This infuriates broadcasters because it could eventually threaten the lucrative fees they get from cable providers, whose all-or-nothing, bloated content bundles suddenly look a little less attractive once a service like Aereo is available for $13 per month. Combined with Netflix and Hulu, Aereo makes cable look less necessary than ever and all three combined are still cheaper than most cable bills. 

I have no interest in subscribing to cable. It's expensive and the vast majority of what I'd be paying for is, so far as I can tell, complete garbage. Instead, I catch up with favorite shows via the Internet, where I can also find a growing selection of perfectly worthwhile non-TV video. Aereo is perfect for people like me.

More importantly, it could be an easy sell to many in the upcoming generation of "cord never getters" who are now totally accustomed to getting their TV online. We like to think about what the future of TV might look like. If it survives, Aereo seems very well positioned to be a part of that picture.

More than ever, companies need coders. And while tech firms do the bulk of the hiring, the demand for programmers spans industries and only seems to be growing.  

From writing basic HTML to building complex logic into mobile applications, the ability to smartly craft lines of code continues to be one of the most in-demand — and often, well-paying — skill sets one can have. 

(See also: Why This Guy Quit His Sports-Radio Dream Job... To Write Software)

So what skills are the most sought after? That's an ever-fluctuating, somewhat difficult thing to track. Normally, we'd avoid turning to a single source for such data, but its very nature makes Indeed.com an ideal place to look. The job search site aggregates more than 16 million listings from a wide range of sources, so it's fairly comprehensive. 

15. Ruby 

It may be almost 20 years old, but the object-oriented scripting language is still going strong. After existing for years as a general purpose programming language, Ruby got a huge bump from the advent of Ruby on Rails, the hyper-popular Web development framework. Since the rise of Rails, the two have practically become synonymous, but Ruby has plenty of applications as a general scripting language. 

14. ASP.NET

Microsoft's server-side Web development framework is more controversial than many of its peers, in part because it's a Microsoft product. Still, its ability to build dynamic sites and Web applications is favored by many programmers and, more importantly, the organizations who hire them. 

13. AJAX

AJAX is actually multiple technologies bundled into one. Asyncronous JavaScript and XML was first popularized by Web applications like Google Maps and Gmail. The ability of websites to retrieve data in the background without reloading the page is something we now take for granted, but it was groundbreaking stuff a decade ago. Today, using a conglomeration of HTML, CSS, JavaScript (or JSON) and XML to build asynchronous Web apps is still popular, and the job listings prove it. 

12. Objective-C

For a 30-year-old programming language, Objective C is looking pretty good. It's the core of development for both of Apple's operating systems. Its roots in Mac OS X go back to Steve Jobs' days at NeXT and it's at the heart of iOS. Considering the  the platform's enormous popularity, it's no wonder that Objective-C is coveted by employers across industries. 

11. PHP

PHP is huge. The open source, server-side scripting language runs on more than 20 million websites and powers high-profile sites we deal with every day, including Facebook and Wikipedia. Any blog, news site or other website built using Wordpress or Drupal is making use of PHP as well. It's all over the Web, even if you can't see it by clicking "view source." 

10. Python

Python is a general purpose programming language that can be used in a variety of ways. Known for its clean and efficient code, Python is used by players as notable as Google and NASA. It's also what Dropbox is written in. In fact, the technology is so important to Dropbox that the company hired Python author Guido van Rossum away from Google late last year.  

Dropbox isn't the only one hiring Python talent. There are currently 19,455 Python job listings on Indeed.com. 

9. Perl 

Perl was very popular in the 90s for its ability to create CGI scripts that beefed up the functionality of early Web pages. But the dynamic programming language — sometimes called the "Swiss Army chainsaw" of languages — is capable of a wide range of feats. In addition to Web development, it's used for things like system administration, building desktop apps, game development and even bioinformatics. 

8. C

C has been around since the early 1970s and remains one of the most widely-used programming languages. It may lack the sexiness of the latest Web development frameworks, but C is what lots of operating systems, kernel level software and hardware drivers are made of.  

7. C#

Not to be confused with C or C++, C# is an object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft in 2000 to compete with Java. Programmers will debate the merits of one language versus the other until the end of time, but tyhe fact remains that employers are hiring C# programmers like crazy.

6. XML

XML is everywhere. The markup language is used to define structured information in a wide variety of contexts. On the Web, it forms the basis of RSS and XHTML, it talks to databases and is paired with JavaScript for AJAX interactivity, among much else. It's even extended beyond the Web and has found its way into the heart of desktop applications like Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign. The list goes on and on. And so do the job listings. 

5. C++

Like its predecessor C, C++ is used widely in operating systems,  desktop apps, developing games, hardware drivers and much else. C++ has a reputation for being more complex and inefficient than some of the alternatives , but it is nonetheless an incredibly widely used and important programming language. 

4. JavaScript

 On the Web, JavaScript is what makes things interactive. This is especially true now that the rise of tablets and smartphones has bumped Flash from its once-prominent perch. Whether it's trendy frameworks like jQuery or the JSON data interchange standard, companies need JavaScript-focused talent like never before. 

3. HTML

It's only natural that the language at the heart every Web page would be in high demand, even as native mobile app development and back-end cloud technologies command bigger ad bigger chunks of IT budgets. In fact, as tablets, smartphones and cloud-hosted services proliferate, the importance of the Web grows along with it. The conglomeration of Web technologies known as HTML5 is all the rage at the moment, but hypertext markup is more than a fad. It is, and will remain, the skeleton of the Web for the foreseeable future. 

2. Java

Java certainly has its critics, not to mention some well-publicized security issues.  But the object-oriented language remains in heavy demand and used for a wide range of purposes. It can't possibly hurt that Google uses Java as the basis for Android application development, a sector that isn't likely to slowdown anytime soon. 

1. SQL 

NoSQL databases might be getting all the attention as of lately, but more traditional, structured databases are still going strong. Thus, SQL, the programming language for querying, manipulating and managing relational databases is in high demand. Considering the sheer volume of data being generated everyday, it's no shock that having the ability to help manage it is such a marketable skill. There are currently more than 98,000 SQL jobs indexed by Indeed.com.