Google+ has never looked and felt as it good as it does right now. Alas, looks aren't everything.

A massive overhaul of the service, announced Wednesday during a keynote at Google's I/O conference for developers, has brought it in line with the most modern and functionally powerful Web design principles. It now has a multi-column layout, scrolling menu bars, and enormous images. Google also rolled out an umbrella messaging service called Hangouts, a standalone app for Web and mobile that neatens up the sloppy mess that was Voice, Talk, and Google+ messaging.  

All of this is great news for heavy users of Google+ who have been awaiting a design push that looks and feels like 2013. But there's still one giant problem plaguing the service and Google's entire social platform at large: the hub of your Google life is still an email address, and that's a nightmare for users with multiple Gmail accounts.

Since taking over as CEO in 2011, Larry Page has been talking up the notion of "One Google" to unify the search giant's disparate services. But the reality is that it's very hard as a user to experience a unified Google until Google realizes that a person is a person, not an email account.

At best, the complex process of trying to manage multiple Gmail accounts with Google+ and all the various apps involved slows users down. At worst, it could keep some users from adopting the beautiful new services altogether. 

Two Accounts, Twice The Pain

"For me personally, I have two Google accounts: I have a corporate and personal [account], and it is a pain," admitted Seth Sternberg, director of product management for Google+, in a roundtable discussion with reporters in San Francisco Thursday. And Sternberg is definitely not alone. Many people have two Google email accounts—a personal Gmail and a corporate Google Apps account. Those ought to be Google's best users. Instead, they're the most frustrated ones.

And many people set up multiple email accounts for other reasons. Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn let them associate multiple email addresses with a single personal or professional identity. Google doesn't.

What that ends up doing is disrupting the entire process of laying the Google+ social net atop the Web. Every time a user tries to +1 a link, log into a website with Google+ sign-in, or personalize search, they're confronted with Google's fragmented view of online identity.

So for Google, the email-as-account concept disrupts users' ability to seamlessly use Google+, which in turn makes the network's constantly increasing integration with the rest of the company's apps and services more and more painful with every turn. And for users, it's just plain obnoxious having to use incognito browser windows and all sorts of other workarounds to try and simply manage their online identity.

No wonder Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are the go-to networks for finding friends and sharing information.

Identity, If And When You Want It

Google says it's trying to get better.

"We sanded off all the rough edges," David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google, said in the recent roundtable event. Google, to its credit, has introduced an account chooser that makes it easier to stay logged into multiple accounts.

But those fixes don't address the core problem—Google's email-linked identity model.

What Google really needs is something above an email address that could be used as an identifier for all of a user's various accounts. This higher-level identifier could be something akin to a Twitter handle or a Facebook username.

This new Google login could have a registered primary email address—the way Apple and Amazon handle logins to their online accounts—but it should sync up your other Google+ accounts.

Separating personal and professional sharing could be simply handled with a strongly established Google+ concept: Circles, or lists of contacts.

(And, of course, you should still be able to establish a Gmail account for an unlinked, throwaway identity—for, say, a Craigslist posting or mailing lists.)

Umbrellas Are Good

Google showcased its ability to neatly fold up services with Hangouts, and the strategy is a no-brainer. It resolves so many problems users face when a company's products are all around them, yet they have no idea how to manage them all and end up just turning away from what they feel they don't need. 

An umbrella strategy to Google+ and Gmail is a much taller order, but it's one of the biggest impediments standing between the search giant and a more steady, fuller-scale adoption of its social network. So Google, please give us that umbrella, and you'll likely see more people standing underneath it if its done right. 

In one of the more popular Google I/O sessions of Day 2, two members of the Google [x] team behind Project Glass explained how to enable root access on your expensive eyewear — a step that will also void your warranty, just like it does when you root an Android smartphone.

What does root access do? It lets you tinker under the hood of Glass, allowing you to, for instance, install Linux and run apps tailored to the open-source OS. 

Google software engineers P. Y. Laligand and Hyunyoung Song started with the warranty warning and a quick presentation on how to enable a debug mode that lets you load Android applications (APKs) on Glass. The two stressed that Google recommends this method for tinkering with Glass, as the debug mode doesn't void your warranty. 

It being Google though, the duo hurriedly brushed past the warning. Using a Bluetooth trackpad-enabled keyboard synced to Glass, the engineers outlined five steps involved in rooting Glass: 

1. Access the bootloader
2. Unlock the device & erase personal data
3. Swap out and override boot partition
4. Reboot into normal state
5. Access root mode

Laligand was nice enough to run through a demonstration in real-time. Below are the screens from his fast hack. 

Accessing The Bootloader & Unlocking Device

Reboot To Root 

Success!

Google bombarded thousands of attendees at its I/O 2013 Keynote with enough information to force that hi-res photo of Vic Gundotra's forehead into their dreams tonight. Here are the eight best moments:

Google Variant Of The Samsung Galaxy S4

One of the briefer announcements at I/O was the introduction of a variant of the Samsung Galaxy S4 configured with the look and UI feel of a 4.2 Jelly Bean Nexus phone. In a sense, it strips all the Samsung bloatware from the phone to deliver a much purer Google/Android experence. The phone will hit the Play store June 26, with a no-contract price of $649. 

Google's Music Streaming Service

The news was out yesterday, so it wasn't a huge surprise when Google's Chris Yerga announced the company's plans to enter the music streaming service battleground with Google Play All Access. Despite the few missing details, ReadWrite's John Paul Titlow writes, "It's a crowded space with challenging economics, but if anybody is well-positioned to win this game, it's Google."

(See also: Google Just Launched A Grenade At Spotify — And It Just Might Work)

Free Chromebook Pixels

Google didn't disappoint with its Oprah moment. While a free Google Glass device was obviously the longshot giveaway in the back of everyone's mind, the company opted instead for a free Chromebook Pixel laptop for every attendee. Not bad. 

Linking Device Displays Into A Multiplayer Game

While the first attempt at demoing a live multiplayer game at the keynote failed, Google managed to get it right the second time in a more impressive setting. On a stripped down racing game, four players competed all using different devices that synced together to form the race track. 

Google Realizes Its Star Trek Dreams

Senior VP Amit Singhal opened by recalling childhood hopes of bringing his Star Trek-influenced dreams to life, and segued to how Google is bringing that to pass with devices that you can talk to. The goal is to make search a natural language conversation, and Google's examples were pretty convincing — both a Chromebook and Nexus were able to accept spoken commands and turn them into personalized search results without a single hiccup. 

(See also: Google Search Learns To Listen & Understand Context)

Google Delivers Impressive Photo-Editing Tools

After debuting a Google+ design overhaul, SVP of engineering and social Vic Gundotra also took keynote attendees through a demonstration of Google's new capabilities in photo editing. Some especially notable features include the ability to auto-edit an entire batch of photos to the best moments and to enhance photos automatically. 

Google Maps Escapes The Stratosphere

While the overhaul of Google Maps certainly wasn't the most exciting presentations of the keynote, the presentation ended with stunning scenes of the Earth from space — both daylit and at night. That view and others that used to be limited to the Google Earth service are now baked right into your browser as part of the new Maps refresh. Desktop users will see it first, with mobile users to follow soon after. 

Larry Page Ends His Speech With A Q&A Session

Larry Page's speech was notable both for its oddly vulnerable quality and for the hoarseness of Page's voice, which hovered slightly above a whisper — a consequence of what Page described yesterday as an unexplained case of vocal chord paralysis.

The big surprise here came when when Page turned the finale into a Q&A session. The highlight: Google's CEO telling Robert Scoble, who was first in line to ask a question, that he didn't appreciate his now-infamous Google Glass shower pic. 

Jon Hamm Of Mad Men Makes An Appearence (Not Really...)

Last but definitely not least is that guy who looked eerily like Jon Hamm (of Mad Men, you philistines) waiting in line to ask Larry Page a question... while wearing the greatest hat ever. Turns out it wasn't Jon Hamm (sigh), though from a distance (and over slightly grainy streaming video) the resemblance is truly uncanny.

Images by Nick Statt for ReadWrite

Bill Gates was the subject of last night's 60 Minutes and he and host Charlie Rose touched on a wide array of topics, primarily the billionaire's humanitarian efforts under the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

While the focus may have been on life after Microsoft, the interview also included emotional recollections from Gates as he recalled the last time he saw longtime rival Steve Jobs alive in May of 2011. He recalls Jobs being very forward-looking, focusing both on heavy subjects like where technology had failed education as well as personal ones, like finishing his 260-foot yacht Venus despite the somber realization from both he and Gates that it was unlikely he would ever set foot on the finished vessel. 

When asked, as he often is, what he think Jobs was better at, Gates immediately responds, "His sense of design, that everything had to fit an aesthetic...it shows that design can lead you in a good direction and phenomenal products came out it."

Watch the unaired footage from the interview below: 

Ahead of the slew of announcements to come out of its annual I/O conference later this week, on Monday Google released Google+ mobile recommendations, which allow publishers to include a discovery feature in any mobile news site. While discovery features are prevalent in native apps and in many news readers, the new mobile recommendations tool is aimed at closing the gap mobile sites face in keeping users around to read more than a single article. 

Google+ Recommendations: Just One Snippet Of Code

Placing a snippet of code in a website's main template enables Google+ recommendations on all pages of that site's mobile version. Users click on the mobile recommendations bar that provides articles from the same author, other popular articles on the site, and — if a user is signed into his or her Google+ profile — articles that people in their Circles have read and recommended.

All that's required beyond the free-to-use code is a Google+ profile to let publishers or individuals manage the recommendation tool. 

"We chose to launch this on mobile Web first because this problem for users and for publishers is most acute in mobile Web. It's the place where the user is least able to find interesting content in a property," Seth Sternberg, director of product management at Google, told ReadWrite. 

The feature will also be automatic from the publisher's standpoint, meaning a user will see the recommendations regardless of whether the user has a Google+ profile.  

Google+ Sign-In

Google+ mobile recommendations comes on the heels of the Google+ sign-in, which debuted two months ago. Like the more prevalent Facebook sign-in option, Google+ sign-in allows publishers to leverage the social network as a way of commenting and creating a profile on a publication website. The company says it has seen strong growth from its initial batch of 12 launch partners, and will showcase some 50 Google+ sign-in partners at I/O. 

The White House tapped Twitter legal director Nicole Wong as its first chief privacy officer, CNET reported. Wong, a Silicon Valley legal veteran, had only been at Twitter about six months; she was previously at Google for eight years.

It's not entirely clear what the White House chief privacy officer will do. Cabinet-level CPOs are generally tasked with ensuring that their departments follow federal rules for the handling of personal information (see, for instance, these authority and responsibilities of the Homeland Security CPO). It's fairly likely that the White House CPO would do likewise for the Obama administration, and might also serve as a presidential advisor on privacy-related federal regulations and legislation.

At Google, Wong managed a team of lawyers that reviewed products before launch and combed over everything from removal requests to copyright issues, earning her the nickname "The Decider." Her appointment is striking because, as CNET's Declan McCullagh put it, Wong is "a Silicon Valley lawyer who has been immersed in technology issues" and not a member of the Washington establishment.

A bill that would allow states to collect sales tax from Internet companies like Amazon and eBay passed the Senate on Monday by a wide margin of 69-27, in a largely bipartisan push to help level the playing field for brick and mortar stores vis-a-vis their online competitors.

The Marketplace Fairness Act, sponsored by Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois and Republican Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, would, for the first time, force Internet retailers to collect state and local sales tax. (Many states already force some retailers to collect sales taxes, though their rules don't apply equally to all online merchants.) It would also create a streamlined way for those companies to collect sales tax across 9,600 state and local jurisdictions.

Companies like eBay and anti-tax activists like Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform complain that the bill is just too complicated, although both have other reasons for opposing the measure — chief among them being the way it would formally end the Internet's (admittedly somewhat frayed) status as a tax haven.

The bill's detractors claim it will create massive confusion. The bill exempts online retailers who earn less than $1 million in annual out-of-state sales, although retailers like eBay are pushing to raise that cap to $10 million. EBay also complains that the bill's collection mechanism — which would require states to provide companies with software to help them calculate taxes in various jurisdictions — will significantly injure its many retailers and, by extension, eBay itself.

Amazon, by contrast, has thrown its support behind the bill. Since it already collects sales tax in many of the states where it maintains warehouses, the e-commerce giant would benefit if its competitors had to do likewise. The measure would also reduce any competitive disadvantage Amazon might face as it builds out its distribution network in pursuit of same-day delivery to major urban centers.

The bill now moves to the Republican-dominated House for an inevitable battle. But as the New York Times' Jonathan Weisman notes, "...the bill would now go to the House Judiciary Committee, not the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. That itself could ease the bill’s passage."

Is an Internet sales tax an idea whose time has come, or just more government overreach? Take our poll above, and let us know your thoughts in comments.

When Adrian Zuzic and Matej Robar set out to be entrepreneurs, the Slovenian friends had no clear idea of what they wanted to invent, much less how they'd go about inventing it.

Yet after an agonizing and largely undirected period of trial and error, what they ended up inventing was Blooki.st, a blogging platform that, oddly enough, lets visitors wander through photographs, essays and personal stories in much the same aimless yet rewarding way Zuzic and Robar created the site in the first place.

Meet Blooki.st

Blooki.st is a blogging platform stripped almost to the bone. Open a "blook" — supposedly what you get when you cross a blog and a book — and it suddenly consumes your entire browser screen. Scrolling down actually moves you from left to right in typical Western reading fashion. With this full-screen approach, photography is blown up to stunning, enveloping proportions. The only other feature you can tack on is text in a single font. 

"What we wanted was to offer anyone a piece of their own land," Zuzic says. "With Blooki.st, we reverse engineered the whole process. We knew where we wanted to end up and then stripped it down to the bare essentials." Not surprising given its straightforward focus on images and text, Blooki.st has created a small but dedicated niche for itself as a place to showcase portfolios and travel photography. 

So how did a couple of post-grads with ambitions set on the IT industry transition to a serene blogging platform perfect for cutting out the noise?

"We always wanted to build something that would give back to the community," Zuzic says. Initially, the pair thought the music world was their calling, but were drawn more and more towards publishing platforms as their idea machine kicked into high gear. "We were changing ideas week by week until we ran out of everything. A "blook" was just a concept we had lying around until one day we realized that was it."

The fact that each blook moves left to right is a nifty touch. But from a self-publishing philosophy standpoint, a blook contains a myriad of possibilities reduced to the simplest of forms, with potential far beyond portfolios and photography. As more blooks get added to the site, the way people use it begins to change, noticeably, day by day. 

A Good Wander Spoiled

When the Blooki.st cofounders initially hopped a plane out of Slovenia, they had high hopes. Zuzic had studied law and Robar media communications, but both were convinced the world's most desirable opportunities lay elsewhere.

"I thought there must be something better than ordinary life in the office," Zuzic says. "We had big egos, and lots of optimism...so we took the plunge." The plunge was London, where Zuzic and Robar flew without a return ticket.

The plan was ambiguous: start a company, expand an idea, create something unique. The focus was originally on IT, but it was broad, and without ever having crafted a single line of code, the pair knew that their loose roadmap was a bit of a risky undertaking. 

That was in April of 2011, and it did not go well. 

"All projects or ideas we had were disastrous," Zuzic admits. "We were looking for that perfect idea, looking for people to join our team, facing high costs of living and had no success." When it starting becoming clear that it wasn't going to be as easy as the duo had hoped, they were forced to recalculate their approach. "We realized that optimism without a bit of realism won't work."

So Zuzic and Robar started from scratch, and kept the ball rolling through failed idea after failure idea. Not until a good friend of theirs, developer Jani Gorse from the Slovenian village of Kot pri Ribnici, showed interest in participating in something outside of his day job did the team find that they were ready to get an idea off the ground. And thus Blooki.st was born.

Blooking Ahead

The team has now expanded to four people; in October of last year, Luka Locniskar joined as a front-end developer. But the platform is still in a stripped-down alpha phase.

"The good news is the platform is already publicly available," Zuzic says. Blooki.st launched on April 3, and began quietly will a select few invites. The team let it grow organically from there, and by mid-April it had garnered around 600 users. That met the requirements the team needed to test all the aspects of the platform properly.

"We were a bit 'evil' and did not include any guides, because we wanted to see how our users will respond," he adds. "Regarding the content, we have seen various styles, from poetry to photography, short cute blooks to massive ones, showing the variety we have to promote and work on." This variety has given the Blooki.st team some ideas about moving forward, especially in a rather unchartered space for blogging: user revenue models.

"We aim to start challenging the traditional platforms not only in terms of content distribution, but also revenue options for the users," Zuzic says. There are also plans to make Blooki.st as writer-friendly as it is photographer-friendly, with a focus on self-publishing everything from journalistic non-fiction to novellas and poetry.

What any of that will look like is still part of a fluid process changing week by week, but the Blooki.st team's attitude towards planning seems to have aligned with that of the very simple nature of the blook itself: it will happen when it happens, naturally, and without too much fuss. 

A prime example of this blookist attitude is with the site's beta release, which is Blooki.st's closest thing to an official next destination in the meandering roadmap that started two years ago in Slovenia. (The site is officially still in alpha, if you believe what you see when you visit it.) But there's no official timeline for a beta release, either. Zuzic says it might just come overnight whenever the team feels ready.

Facebook enabled a privacy feature Thursday called Trusted Contacts that allows you to select three to five confidants from your friend list to receive the virtual key to your account. If your Facebook is compromised by hackers or you forget your password, these people can supply the codes to get you back in. 

The feature was first announced as 'Trusted Friends' in October of 2011. "However, we were only testing for the first part of last year [2012], and the feature actually wasn't available for much of 2012," Frederic Wolens of Facebook Policy Communications told ReadWrite in an email. "The bulk of our work was making this more proactive (allowing you to select your friends ahead of time) than reactive (selecting your friends after you couldn't get into your account)," he added. 

The Joy Of Facebook Hacking

While there may be some benefits to this feature, Facebook already has two-step authentication, making Trusted Contacts unnecessary in the likely event you can access your email and just use the normal password recovery option. More to the point, Trusted Contacts also pose a big risk. How much can you really trust those Trusted Contacts not to abuse their power?

Remember, it takes only three of the Trusted Contacts' codes to get into your account. That's good, right?

Right.

Unless the friends you choose have an affinity for the art of the Facebook hack. In my college years, when shared computers were often accessible in dorm rooms and campus hangout spots, Facebook hacking wasn't just a prank, it was an art. The rules were simple: If anyone left their account open on any computer that wasn't their own that person's Facebook account was fair game. (Sometimes, even that simple rule was bent by the less honorable.)

What typically ensued was a chaotic, hilarious and often line-crossing exercise in testing the limits of friendship. The hack quickly transcended crude status updates and moved into true social media sabotage. Facebook hackers would change birthdays, send unwanted friend requests and write embarrassing notes on walls.  

For me, the whole ordeal culminated in a prank where I created a fake profile of my victim, replicated his post history for a week in secret, and then began friending everyone we knew. I mimicked his behavior so well no one figured out it was me for a good day or two. It remains one of my proudest Facebook hacks - and the epitome of my juvenile social media behavior. 

Breaking In

First off, let's run through how a trio of your Trusted Contacts could access your account without you knowing about it. 

After opening Facebook in a different browser or private browsing mode, a Trusted Friend would  click "Forgot your password?" From there, they would identify the victim by name in the Find Your Account field, saying that they no longer have access to the email accounts listed. That lets you put in any email address - and the process moves on without requiring further authentication.

By entering in only one of the Trusted Contacts' names — in the event that you're the one doing the hacking, it can be your own name — you can access the code portion of the page. With three codes collected by visiting Facebook.com/recover and claiming the person has reached you by phone, you're immediately brought to a new password screen where the Trusted Friend can reset the password and gain access to the account. 

Sounds like it would be a lot of work, and it certainly is when I tried it myself on my own account, but you are essentially handing over the ability for three people, or just one who convinces two others to give them the codes, to change your password without any new authentication required on your end. Granted, you can revoke access to a Trusted Contact, but only from your account.  

Who Can You Trust?

Obviously, the best precaution is to pick people you're confident won't prank you. But there are also a certain types of Facebook user who should never get this kind of access. 

For one, don't trust anyone who infrequently uses Facebook or who likes to condemn the social network and those who indulge too much in it. The first sign of a weakness for Facebook hacking is disregard for the damage a "Liking" spree can do, or downplaying the importance of Facebook birthdays. These people find it hilarious when dozens of people begin mistakenly wishing you a Happy Birthday. 

Conversely, people who use Facebook too much may be just itching to pull off the perfect Facebook prank - and they'll know the the best, most believable ways to impersonate you.

One smart approach might be to pick two people that dislike each other, making it unlikely that they'll work together to mess with you. 

The simplest solution: Don't use Trusted Contacts. The feature adds a layer of defense against strangers attacking your account, which could be reasonable considering this year's surge incidents of malicious hacking. But it also seems like a sly attempt to push the boundaries of Facebook's importance in our lives. 

But by "trusting" your friends enough to give them a key to your digital life, you may be taking an even bigger risk of being pranked, if not actually hacked.

Curiosity: What's Inside The Cube, the one-part-smartphone-game, one-part-social-experiment that launched last November, is getting its most substantial update yet. In a move aimed at bringing the contest to a faster close, UK studio 22Cans has accelerated the game to its last 50 layers, in effect erasing the months and months of players tapping away on the giant cube it would have taken to get to the center.

This World Is Predicted To End On May 21

The studio's current estimated end date - unless player participation unexpectedly spikes - is May 21, which coincidentally happens to be the same day Microsoft will announce its next-generation Xbox console. 

"It has been an elongated, protracted experiment in curiosity, but if I'm someone whose fingers are bleeding now, enough is enough," said 22Cans founder Peter Molyneux, known primarily for creating the Fable game series before leaving Microsoft last year to found the independent studio. "We decided that we could have just left it going and probably less and less people would be fascinated... or we could set a layer and it would be a race to the center," he added. 

The new update comes on the heels of last week's quiet addition to the game that let players pay to both remove and add cubelets to the current layer. This feature will remain for some, but not all, of the final 50 layers. 

The idea behind Curiosity is simple: one giant cube, with a secret prize at its center, was handed over to millions of players who all collaboratively chip away at its many layers by tapping one piece (or cubelet) at a time, of which there were 68 billion spread out over hundreds of layers. Only the lucky person to tap the last cubelet gets to see what's inside, and Molyneux has often described that mystery in grandiose fashion, referring to it as "life changing."

(See also: Gaming Legend Peter Molyneux: What Makes A Great Game?)

Curiousity was meant to be both a social experiment in massively multiplayer smartphones games as well as a learning experience for 22Cans, which announced its first multiplatform title Godus on Kickstarter shortly after launching Curiosity.

Curiosity Now About Learning Different Things

"Part of our motivation in doing Curiosity was to learn how to do these things for Godus, like learning how to connect people, how to scale up our servers," Molyneux said. Despite massive server issues hampering Curiosity's launch, the game picked up steam and garnered more than 3 million downloads within one month. Godus also surpassed its Kickstarter goal of £450,000 on the final day, securing 22Cans' future in cross-platform game development. 

With only 50 layers to go, the race to the finish will tight, raising valid concerns that the final tap that wins it all might not be recorded accurately. "When we get to the final five layers, we'll have something called Cube Watch," Molyneux explained. "We'll be watching it 24 hours a day and we'll be sitting in the office waiting for that end to come."

He stressed that the studio has taken substantial measures to protect against cheating and will be able to validate the tapper of the final cubelet as soon as it happens. Players will also get a real-time reminder in the white space around the cube of how many layers are left and what the estimated lifespan of the experiment is. 

"In our hyper-connected world, what happens when we put an objective that is so insanely far off that it becomes almost meaningless?" Now that the objective is almost within grasp, Curiosity is raising new questions about the player motivation and connectedness players await their chance to finally see what's inside the cube. 

Shazam, a company mostly known for its music identification app, has hired Rich Riley as its new CEO. Riley comes from high up on the corporate ladder (formerly Executive Vice President Americas at Yahoo), but he's only one piece in the company's larger roadmap, which includes going plans to go public. 

With a successful second-screen television app and its accompanying advertising platform, Shazam is no longer just that neat app that helps you identify the song that you happen to be listening to. Switching from CEO to Exectuive Chairman, Andrew Fisher, who has helmed the company since 2005, makes it clear that Shazam has "ambitions to deliver a successful IPO," he writes in the company's press release. 

Shazam, which now has more than 300 million users in 200+ countries, became known to U.S. consumers in the early days of iOS as the go-to music discovery and identification app. However, the technology behind the function was in fact far older.

Originally founded in 1999 and based out of London after a failed attempt to gain investment in Silicon Valley, Shazam launched its service in the UK in 2002. It required you to dial in and play the song into the phone receiver - you'd then receive a text message identifying the artist and track name.  

After the smartphone boom and its successful multiplatform app - alongside a slew of partnerships with international companies like Entertainment UK and the Indian streaming service Saavn - Shazam was able to branch out and secure further funding. In 2011, it launched its TV app, the backbone of which is its advertising arm generating revenue in the "double-digit millions" for the company.  

Image courtesy of Shazam. 

Ditto is a 15-person eyewear startup that utilizes remarkable software — a 3D modeling system that  replicates the buyer's face — to let customers try on glasses virtually before purchasing them. Unfortunately for Ditto, its innovative software has put the company in the crosshairs of Glasses.com. 

Glasses.com is owned by 1-800 Contacts, a much larger online eyewear retailer that recently purchased an old patent from a defunct company (U.S. Patent 7,016,824 covers selling glasses online based on 3D models) and announced its own version of 3D try-on software for glasses - while simultaneously filing a patent-infringement lawsuit against Ditto.  

1-800 Contacts claims that it plans to its own service as an iPad app sometime soon. But this plan was first publicized on April 17, 2013, while Ditto launched its version a year ago. 

David vs. Goliath

"It's a game-changing event, truly. It's terrifying," sighed Ditto CEO Kate Endress. "We've had to stop all marketing, every dollar has to go into this litigation." 1-800 Contacts refuses to license the patent to Ditto; instead it's seeking an injunction to stop Ditto from using the software. The only option, as Ditto sees it, is to lawyer-up and try and win the suit. 

Making things even more expensive, 1-800 Contacts is suing California-based Ditto in its home state of Utah. Whatever the outcome of the suit, the most likely result is the depletion of Ditto's cash reserves and the destruction of the company. 

That's because this battle is far from equal. 1-800 Contacts was founded in 1995 and took off thanks to a partnership with Wal-Mart started in 2008. In 2012 it was bought by WellPoint for close to $900 million. Yeah, that WellPoint, the largest for-profit, managed health care company in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, with revenue in 2012 of $61.7 billion and more than 43,000 employees.

"If we win this infringement case, we're still out the millions of dollars we spent winning. That's why it has become punitive for companies to innovate," Endress said. "The patent systems is structured in a way where it lets corporations act like patent trolls where they can buy things they didn't invent." And in this case, "we are literally going up against a giant corporation," Endress noted. 

1-800-Not-Our-Fault

When reached for comment, 1-800 Contacts told ReadWrite:

1-800 CONTACTS and its Glasses.com division have invested significant time and resources into the development of the interactive try-on platform technology and acquiring the appropriate patent rights to protect it. However, we do not comment on pending litigation.  

The EFF was not impressed: "1-800-Contacts says it is not a patent troll. Sure, the company is not a classic patent troll - a shell company that does nothing but buy patents and sue - but it's little better." 

What Makes A Patent Troll?

Could this entire issue be a misunderstanding, where 1-800 Contacts actually spent years pouring money into this concept, only to see a brash startup steal its lunch? Maybe, but 1-800 Contacts' history of aggressive litigation doesn't inspire confidence in that interpretation.

In 2002, the company pursued WellU.com over pop-up advertisements that displayed competitors' products. 1-800 Contacts was granted a preliminary injunction, but WellU won on appeal. In 2008, the company fought with Google over controversial search-related provisions of a Utah trademark law that were eventually repealed. And in 2010, 1-800-Contacts sued Contact Lens King, Inc. over key-word advertising. 

Despite the odds, Endress vows that, "We're going to vigorously defend ourselves. We're so proud of what we built. Maybe we can become cash flow positive and survive." The EFF is asking for help in trying to invalidate the patent in question, but no matter how the legal complications unfold, the road Ditto faces will certainly be long and expensive.

Images courtesy of Ditto.

Futurama, the animated comedy from Simpsons creator Matt Groening and writer David X. Cohen, is unparalleled in its ability to mix lowbrow humor with high concept science and technology. But after an initial run on Fox from 1999 to 2003 and a glorious revival six years later, Comedy Central has pulled the plug and will end the show with its seventh season this summer.

In keeping with ReadWrite's mission to map the programmable universe, we figured that a roundup of some of the greatest inventions from the year 3000 was most definitely called for. Futurama, after all, was always at its best turning some recent technological development or scientific notion into farce.

Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments.

Disclaimer: We decided to keep it light-hearted, so we apologize in advance to any fans of the infamous suicide booth.

1. Smell-O-Scope

In the show's first season episode "A Big Piece Of Garbage," the Smell-O-Scope was Professor Farnsworth's seemingly useless space smelling invention. As he explained, "If a dog craps anywhere in the universe, you can bet I won't be out of the loop." It certainly came in handy when it detected a giant ball of garbage — a last-ditch effort by New York in the year 2020 to stave off overflowing landfills — that was hurling towards the Earth. The ensuing antics involved continuous spoofs on the 1998 film Armageddon. 

Turns out that in 2011, a small company actually invented a handheld Smell-O-Scope, although it dubbed it  the Nasal Ranger Field Olfactometer. Killjoys.

2. Scooty-Puff, Jr.

When Fry was tasked with saving the universe from the Brainspawn in season four, he had to infiltrate their secret base, the Infosphere. Fry's allies against the brains, the highly intelligent yet adorable Niblonians, gave him the Scooty-Puff, Jr. for the task. A wind-up contraption resembling a children's toy, the Scooty-Puff, Jr. ended up falling apart when Fry tried to escape, leading him to request a more advanced vehicle — the larger, more impressive Scooty-Puff, Sr.

3. Fing-Longer

Invented by Professor Farnsworth in an alternative timeline — one he detected via the What-If Machine in the season two episode "Anthology of Interest I," the Fing-Longer allowed the wearer to reach farther than normal — say, to press buttons. Not exactly groundbreaking, but who couldn't love a name like the Fing-Longer? 

Not only does this device now actually exist as a Wii mote accessory, the idea of the Professor getting inspiration from himself provided an interesting philosophical conundrum. Can you be said to have invented something if the initial inspiration came from some external source, even if that external source is an alternate version of yourself? Yeah, we'll get back to you on that.

4. Mind-Switcher

The season six episode "The Prisoner of Benda" introduced this invention of Professor Farnsworth and Amy, the Mind-Switcher. After a dizzying number of mind switches, the whole crew is in disarray with everyone in someone else's body. 

This episode generated what was apparently the first mathematical theorem created for a television show. Futurama writer Ken Keeler, who holds a doctorate in mathematics, wrote the Futurama Theorem as both a real-world theorem and the solution used in the show that proves "that regardless of how many mind switches between two bodies have been made, they can still all be restored to their original bodies using only two extra people, provided these two people have not had any mind switches prior."

5. What-If Machine

The What-If Machine was a Professor Farnsworth device that could predict a scenario based on any "what if" question it was asked. After a series of events that pertain to each character on the crew and their respective "what if" questions, the Professor tosses the machine in the garbage, declaring it a failure due to the preposterous scenarios it generated. The whole episode turns on its head when everything is revealed to be one huge, layered simulation from the What-If Machine, generated when the Professor asks what if he had invented the Fing-Longer.

6. eyePhone

One of the few times Futurama took a swipe at real-world companies and products, the season six episode "Attack of the Killer App" introduced an obvious parody of a well-known Apple device. The writers envisioned a 31st Century eyePhone as an actual eye implant that projects a holographic screen in front of the user's face. 

7. Forwards Time Machine

Featured in one of the show's best episodes, "The Late Philip J. Fry," the Forwards Time Machine is a Professor Farnsworth invention that only lets you move through time in one direction, specifically to avoid temporal paradoxes (a topic the show has explored in past episodes). Fry joins Bender and the Professor to take the machine one minute into the future, though of course they screw up and get thrown thousands of years forward. Ultimately, they have nowhere to go except the end of time. 

In true high-low concept fashion, Bender, Fry and the Professor couch it on lawn chairs, crack some beers and proceed to watch the universe end, only to realize that a new Big Bang begins to happen all over again. Turns out that idea is an actual scientific model, called the Big Bounce, that posits that the universe is forever oscillating through a cosmic boom-bust cycle.

8. The Electronium Hat

Invented by the Professor to give animals super intelligence, the Electronium Hat was a wearable device introduced in the season one episode "Mars University." It used sunspots to produce "cognitive radiation," whatever that means. The monkey Guenter gets uplifted by the hat and spends much of the episode quarrelling with Fry and lamenting the fact that he can't live his natural life due to his unnatural super-smarts.

9. The Clone-O-Mat

In the season two episode "A Clone Of Mine Own," the Professor introduces his own 12-year-old clone, named Cubert. Created via the Professor's Clone-O-Mat, Cubert gets named as the Professor's heir.

The Clone-O-Mat makes a return in the season four episode "Jurassic Bark," one of the rare but emotionally powerful moments when Futurama shifted from comedy to animated drama. Nominated for an Emmy, the episode explores Fry's anguish after discovering his former dog Seymour's fossilized 21st century remains, a find that prompts Fry to agonize over whether or not to clone his long-lost animal companion.

10. The Spheroboom

Of all the Professor's many doomsday devices, the Spheroboom was his favorite and the one device that he couldn't part with when selling his stash to Hedonismbot in "Bender's Big Score," the straight-to-DVD film that became part one of season five. The Spheroboom appears to bend an object around its center until it implodes in an explosion of "doom radiation."

In a not-so-subtle jab at the National Rifle Association, the episode introduced the National Ray-Gun Association, which protested a three-day waiting period for mad scientists to purchase doomsday devices.

The University of San Francisco launched a clever advertising campaign last year that stated, "There's no 'Moral Compass' app." Turns out that's not exactly true.

I'm not even talking about the apps MoralCompass or Moral Compass: The former is a rudimentary flow chart and the latter is more of a daily delivery of famous quotes and self-help mantras. The real moral compass for your smartphone is Seesaw, an app that lets you crowdsource decision making. It launched back in February and Seesaw Decisions Corp. announced its first major update Thursday morning. 

Seesaw's strength lies in helping users with basic queries aided by photos: Which hat should you buy, or what should you eat for lunch? The update loosens the chains weighing down Seesaw's sign-up process (you now can sign up using social media instead of your phone number), and as Seesaw's user base grows its crowdsourced decision-making assistance is beginning to expand into tricky questions about right and wrong.

Case in point: on Thursday morning one Seesaw user explained his groundhog problem and asked whether he should release the offending varmints or "make them vanish from the earth." The crowd answered early on by voting for 'eliminate for good'  (emphasized with a picture of a rifle), but eventually shifted towards 'catch and release' by 22-18. Groundhogs may be annoying, but killing is not the answer - at least that's what Seesaw users say. 

Spanning Preference To Morality 

The original purpose of Seesaw was not to let you ask thousands of strangers whether should, say, put your dog to sleep or break up with your significant other. Its intended function was to help users get affirmation and organize advice based on the opinion and who supplied it. 

"Often times I'll ask my friends for feedback, and I'll already know the answer. You're just looking for moral support and encouragement. You need that reinforcement to do it," explains Aaron Gotwalt, Seesaw's founder. If you're really trying to make a tough decision, you want input from the people whose opinions you value. "There are the people that are important to you, and then there's everyone else," Gotwalt says. 

The new update lets you both sign up and log in through social media accounts like Facebook. (Because Facebook and Twitter don't let Seesaw access the API that would let the app send invites, getting your friends to start using it is still handled via SMS.) Seesaw is working on letting you split votes by social network so that you could compare what your Facebook friends think you should do against advice from other circles.

Can An App Provide A Moral Compass?

For me, Seesaw becomes truly fascinating when moral issues come into play. Not only did Steve the potential groundhog exterminator get a lesson in animal ethics, he got valuable insight into what others might do in his shoes. 

My first Seesaw question addressed whether or not I should crowdsource my moral decision making. (How meta is that?) Not surprisingly, strangers on the app overwhelmingly think I should. But my query also exposes flaws in Seesaw's ability to serve as a true moral compass. 

For one, as everyone knows, it's far easier to tell someone else what to do than it is to make actually make a decision yourself. I have no reason to think people didn't answer my question seriously, but they could have just found it funny. As for Steve's groundhog problem, a yes-or-no question can't possibly get at all the nuances of the situation.

Then there's the follow up issue. Steve has no particular incentive to actually follow through on the crowd's suggestion. It'd be an interesting addition if Seesaw could let users notify the crowd what they actually decided to do. 

Obviously, Seesaw is more focused on its ability to gather friends around simple decisions centered on clothing, accessory purchases or food, and the app is a solid decision-making tool for these relatively trivial situations.

Crowdsourcing moral decisions, on the other hand, is uncharted territory. Seesaw is inadvertently emerging as a leader in this space. At the very least, when it comes to letting a crowd make decisions for you, Seesaw is a better choice than turning yourself into a publicly owned company.   

Its full title is Super Monster Bros By Adventure Time Pocket Free Games, and it just may be the worst iPhone app ever. Dug up by an excellent IGN series '"iPhone Garbage," the free app is a side-scrolling game that not only blatantly rips off Nintendo with slightly altered Pokémon character designs, but it also employs an aggressive in-app purchase system that spams users constantly with offers at prices up to $100! It's a iPhone rip-off tactic only marginally less offensiver than the ever-popular screenshot scam.

For instance, if you want to use a character other than the default, which is basically a duplicate of Charmander from the original Pokémon games, you need to cough up anywhere from $4.99 for the caveman to a whopping $99.99 for the Charizard look-alike. Then when you're actually playing the game, you're bombarded with offers for other purchases, like $1 to buy more firepower for your character or 20 extra lives for $10. Then there are the full-screen ads for other apps that randomly pop up on-screen in the middle of the game. 

Not surprisingly, the gameplay is beyond terrible. There doesn't seem to be any point outside of scamming people into paying for ridiculous add-ons. The biggest mystery is how this travesty got through Apple's App Store approval process despite apparently infringing on copyrighted Nintendo material and an all-around exploitive design. The games are also available on Google's less-restrictive Google Play market for Android. 

What To Watch Out For

Reviews are certainly a great way to keep others from downloading a terrible app; the first three reviews that show up are titled, respectively, "This should be criminal..," "This app is offensive," and "This should be illegal."  So you may wonder who gets fooled by this nonsense, but how about those unlucky parents with kids who know their Apple ID passwords. All it takes is clicking the Buy button and entering your password, and this game could end up costing some family hundreds of dollars.

In fact, the Top 10 in-app purchases list in the App Store indicates that the number-one item purchased by players is the "Role NO.1 and Unlock All" feature - for an absurd $99.99. 

So who is the mastermind behind this ingenious money-making machine? That would be a developer by the name of Mario Casas, designer of such other gems as Adventure Games Super Monster Bros Plus and Super Squirrel Bros by Mario Casas Games. They all share similar designs and the same in-app purchasing system.  

How To Report Bad Apps to Apple

The App Store has long wrestled with a proliferation of scam apps. IGN's iPhone Garbage series exposes a dark corner of the App Store where games like Krazy Kong (a Donkey Kong rip-off) and Legend of Zenda (a Zelda rip-off) somehow found a home. Apple seems to take an after-the-fact approach to rooting them out, as outlined here by iMore's Rene Ritchie:

Apple's approach seems to be that of YouTube - approve any app that meets technical criteria and then respond to publicity or legal takedown demands from copyright holders when and if they come in. It's one of the smartest, safest approaches, legally, for Apple. They certainly don't want to take on the responsibility of pre-emptively moderating intellectual property, and then have their necks on the lawsuit line when something slips through and the rights holders sue both the offending party and Apple.

So how do you report a bad app like Super Monster Bros By Adventure Time Pocket Free Games?  If you dropped a bundle on this game's purchases, Apple devotes a Web page to reporting issues with purchases. If you managed to hold on to your cash but still want to report the app, the best way is to go through iTunes Support. Be warned, though, Apple hasn't shown much inclination to substantially overhaul its review process to catch these specific types of tricks. So as long as these kinds of exploitive apps can make their creators easy money, they'll keep showing up.  

Update: The game, as well as all other titles from the same developer, are no longer available in the U.S. App Store. It's not clear whether or not they are still available in other countries, but we will update with that information as soon as we can. 

Apple's annual World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC), an event where the Cupertino company typically showcases both new products and software overhauls to OS X and iOS, has sold out in less than two minutes. That obliterates the 2012 record of two hours, which beat the 2011 sell-out time of 12 hours, which... you get the idea. (The big difference is that this year, Apple announced when tickets would go on sale in advance, so the entire Apple developer community was scrambling to grab tickets at 10am PDT Thursday morning.)

Wall Street may be souring on Apple, but developer interest in the company's next moves continues to hit new highs. The conference, to be held on June 10-14 in San Francisco, also happened to crush Google's I/O conference sell-out time of a plodding 49 minutes. Tickets to the conference were limited to one per person and five per organization, contributing to the rush. 

The growth of WWDC and the increasing frenzy around scoring the coveted tickets causes some vexing problems for Apple and its developers. 

On the one hand, Apple made some $8 million off the $1,599 tickets, pricey for many independent developers but clearly not a big money maker for the company. But the bigger problem is that hordes of interested developers simply can't get in to the event. (Unlike competing events, Apple doesn't invite the press, either.)

Calls have come to expand the event but that might dilute the value of meeting with key Apple experts for those who do manage to attend. Holding satellite events at other locations around the world might allow more developers to attend, but could prove a time-suck for top Apple personnel - or would have to make do with lesser experts - again diluting the value of the events.

The company is promising "exciting announcements on videos and more" for those who couldn't get a ticket, but it's hard to see how that will satisfy Apple developers looking to get one-on-one time with company experts.  

Yahoo's new iOS app launched this morning, bringing to the table the results of its $30 million acquisition of news summary app Summly last month. It's basically a full overhaul of Yahoo's flagship app focused on providing news via algorithmic summaries that originated with Summly founder and 17-year-old tech wunderkind Nick D'Aloisio.

Bottom line: The app has a solid design, a barebones interface, and works very much as designed. Its simplicity, however, may limit its attractiveness relative to more established news readers that skillfully weave in social media. 

Even worse, Yahoo News is still too full of celebrity and viral trash to become anyone's foremost news hub. (Excepting those who live for celebrity and viral trash, that is.)

Yahoo Finally Catches Up In The Design Race

The app, simply dubbed "Yahoo!," is basic in the extreme. But that simplicity is consistent with Yahoo's new mobile approach, which aims for stripped down functionality that offers users the essentials and nothing but the essentials.

Designed much like its companion apps — Finance, Mail, Messenger, Sportacular, and Weather — the app has just one main screen that constantly updates at the top with new stories. There's also a sidebar that offers you Web search via Yahoo's search engine, which still ranks as the third most trafficked behind Bing and Google, and the ability to set preferences. Which gets a little complicated because it forces you to sign into Yahoo; more on that in a moment.

The remaining two thirds of the sidebar is dedicated to plugging the rest of Yahoo's mobile suite, as well as sharing and rating tools.

From a design standpoint, the simplicity is great. The app couldn't be easier to use, and doesn't require you to log in to use its most important functions. In true Summly fashion, the news summaries are no longer than four sentences and typically feature a full image with the text overlaid. Clicking through takes you to a full-page version of the article.  

Some Difficult Tradeoffs

There are a few less-than-happy tradeoffs, though. Switching between story categories remains buried in the sidebar under the "All Stories" tab. That certainly limits the app's versatility for news junkies looking for a quick and easy way to navigate trending tropics. On top of that, Yahoo's comment section, which in the browser can feature thousands of comments on any given story, is inaccessible from the app at the moment. 

Similarly, to tell the app which news topics you're most interested in, you not only have to sign into your Yahoo account, then you have to create a Yahoo Profile as well. If you haven't done so before, which happened to be the case for me, the process is easy, but it's all handled in a weird Web client within the app that is terribly slow.

Then, once you're signed in, you have to maneuver to the settings section to access preferences, which are now mysteriously called content preferences and not topic preferences. To make matters worse, clicking that forces you to link your account with Facebook — and that didn’t even work for me until I opened that page in my laptop’s browser. Apparently, any kind of preference over what kind of stories you’re seeing is all routed through this terribly clunky social media integration that you can't even set up within the app itself.

Banking On News Summaries, For Good Or Ill

The core of the app's usefulness lies in how effective Summly's summation algorithm can help users quickly digest Yahoo News stories. It's the main reason Yahoo reported shelled out $30 million for a company that barely had a million users and no monetization model, besides the 18-month contract it nabbed with D'Aloisio. 

It's worth noting that by buying Summly, Yahoo was primarily acquiring IP, code and technology from SRI International, a nonprofit research institute that has helped develop technologies in fields as varied as education systems and national defense. SRI purchased equity in Summly after D'Aloisio created the summation algorithm and basically evolved it into a valuable product by providing him "artificial intelligence expertise in machine learning and natural language processing," as Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson reported.

SRI also held equity in Siri Inc. before Apple bought it in 2010. Within Yahoo, Summly is even reportedly known as "Yahoo's Siri."

Gossip And Viral Videos

So it's easy to see how Yahoo is banking on summation technology as the future of mobile news consumption. But even with the smartest, leanest "organic" algorithms in the consumer tech industry, the company still faces a big problem: The sour reputation of Yahoo News, which covers as much celebrity gossip and viral Internet videos as it does hard news of substance.

Granted, Yahoo News generates enormous traffic, and a story on a subject of national interest, like the Boston bomber being charged, can generate more than 4,700 comments in a matter of hours. But right next to that in Yahoo's homepage pinwheel — and by extension below or above it in its new mobile app — is a story on Jennifer Lawrence's haircut or a piece titled "Surprise under woman's car."

That's some truly broad coverage, which doesn't necessarily bode well for users who might otherwise be interested in making Yahoo their one stop shop for news. That's especially the case on mobile, where huge news reading players like Flipboard, Pulse, and Zite have built intensive environments with social media integration and large numbers of curated categories.  

If Yahoo can leverage the effectiveness of the Summly algorithm to build a base around quick-and-easy mobile reading and flesh the app out a bit more to let users avoid all the trash, this mobile overhaul could be a huge win. For now, while it looks and reads great, it doesn't come close to besting the competition even with its news summaries. 

Earth Day, which has been held annually in the U.S. on April 22 for the last 43 years, is a moment for education about and support for environmental protection. Founded in 1970 as a teach-in day by Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day marks a time to work together on renewable energy, recycling and preservation, as well as to celebrate the life that exists outside our phone and laptop screens.  

There is no better time to than Earth Day to reflect on how best to use and recycle technology while staying conscious of power use. These 5 tips won't save the planet, but they will make your own tech use a little greener: 

1.  Monitor Your Sleep Mode Preferences

IT solutions provider En Pointe Technologies points out that computer use during off hours is a huge energy waster that driving up facilities costs for businesses. One way to curb this problem is to stay on top of your power management and energy-saver preferences, ensuring that your devices go to sleep in a timely manner when not in use. 

2. Unplug To Avoid "Vampire Power"

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), devices that are in standby mode but still plugged in add up to an extra $10 billion in energy costs per year. The solution to the effects of vampire power is to always switch off power strips, or unplug at the end of the day or before the start of a long trip. This goes for not only PCs and laptops, but for smartphones and tablets as well.

3. Recycle Your Old Tech

Numerous retailers, from Apple Best Buy to Staples and Office Max, have technology-recycling programs that allow you to either drop off or send in your unused devices for environmentally safe recycling. Apple's Recycling Program is a great start for any and all iDevices, and the Environmental Protection Agency has a great searchable database for donation and recycling by device and company. And even enterprises can contribute by relying on recycled technology when appropriate.

(See also Refurbished IT: A Cost-Efficient, Green Approach To Big Data.)

Why is this so important? "Recycling one million laptops saves the energy equivalent to the electricity used by more than 3,500 U.S. homes in a year," says the EPA, and for every million cell phones recycled, 35 thousand pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium can be recovered.

4. Put Up Barriers To Office Printing

It might seem hard to believe what with all our electronic gadgets, but the average office worker still uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year. Mixed in with that huge stack of paper is a considerable chunk of un-retrieved print jobs, where someone prints something off and ends up never picking it up. By adding authentication, like the scanning of employee ID, to initiate printing, businesss can cut down on the amount of paper wasted in the office. 

5. Go Fluorescent

Fluorescent light bulbs may not be as sexy as power-saving algorithms on your smartphone, but they arguably make a much bigger difference to the planet. Fluorescent bulbs enable a number energy-saving factors that reduce power consumption. Compared with incandescent bulbs, a standard fluorescent bulbs lasts 10 to 20 times longer (35,000 hours vs. 2,000 hours) and use 75% less energy. They also produce 75% less heat, which helps cut airconditioning costs.

Replacing your home or business' incandescent light bulbs with eco-friendly fluorescent ones is a huge step towards an overall greener tech footprint - without even touching your computers and mobile devices. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

Bitcoin is known as an underground digital currency with neither government regulation nor a central bank. It relies on peer-to-peer transactions and complex cryptography to bypass traditional payment models.

(See also Bitcoins... What Are Those Again? [Video])

Once thought of as no more than a fringe Web fascination, the currency has rocketed into to the mainstream conciousness. A catastrophic valuation dropoff last week made headlines around the world, often highlighting topics like the Winkelvoss twin's huge bitcoin stash and the Reddit user who invested his entire life savings in Bitcoins - and cashed out at an enormous profit. 

Despite the turmoil, or perhaps because of it, some real businesses have begun accepting Bitcoins. Last Tuesday, for example, online-dating site OkCupid announced it would take Bitcoins as payment for its "A-list subscription features." Some of these businesses could be positioning themselves for a day when the currency actually catches on, but most seem to be looking for some of Bitcoins' cool factor to rub off on them. (Businesses can limit their Bitcoin risk by clearing out their transactions daily using services like Coinbase.) 

The Benefits Of Bitcoins

In simple terms, Bitcoins are a way to turn recognized currency like U.S. dollars into a digital equivalent that can be used to buy products. Bitcoins can also be stored digital wallets for later use. The exchange rate fluctuates constantly, set by a collective belief in what people will pay for them. The value of a Bitcoin sat at $119 as of Friday afternoon (down from an all-time high of $266). 

The benefits of using Bitcoins come in two basic flavors: anonymity and the ability to operate outside the traditional monetary system. No surprise, Bitcoins are a primary method of online payment for illegal drugs and weapons on online black markets. But Bitcoins are also a way to avoid dealing with PayPal, Amazon and other online payment methods that many Web users dislike. The fees are reportedly lower, and the transactions are instantaneous because they don't have to move through a bank.

Buying Stuff With Bitcoins

So what can you actually buy with Bitcoins? It turns out that enough different companies accept Bitcoins that you could use them to buy almost everything you might need. Want to buy clothing, homemade cosmetics or train tickets? Bitcoins can do all that, and more. 

But Bitcoins remain very much a niche payment method. In accepting the currency, OKCupid joined the ranks of a very small circle of large Internet companies particpating in the system. Others include WordPress, which will sell you everything from Web hosting to CSS packages in exchange for Bitcoins. WikiLeaks and 4chan, meanwhile, are part of a growing list of online organizations that accept Bitcoin donations. 

OkCupid could pave the way for more large-scale Web companies to explore alternative payment schemes. "One of the reasons why we want to be early in the mix is so we can learn," said OkCupid co-founder Sam Yagen in an interview with Ars Technica. 

Will Trade Bitcoins For Food

Living off Bitcoin transactions alone might still be difficult, but at least you won't starve. Last week Foodler became the first food-ordering and delivery service to accept Bitcoins. (Other sites like PizzaForCoins.com let you pay the site in Bitcoins and then place your order for you in U.S. dollars, charging a 0.02BTC fee.) 

"We're helping the community and want to support that community and it seems like a natural progression," said Christian Dumontet, a co-founder of Foodler. In as little as six minutes after initating the transaction through Foodler's website - which uses a Bitcoin deposit address and QR code to handle the exchange - hungry users get an email confirming the rate in U.S. dollars at which they were charged. Bitcoins can be fractioned down, so you don't have to order $119 worth of dinner at a time. 

Dumontet acknowledged that using Bitcoins for food delivery is of interest largely to core enthusiasts of the currency; "It's a small fraction of our online orders," he said, about 20 orders a day. "But that's how it starts," he added. "Every day since we've launched it, we've seeing an increase in usage." 

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

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.

As ReadWrite founder Richard MacManus noted in observing the site's 10th anniversary, our original goal was "to convert the Web into a two-way system."

Back in 2003, only those with the technical skills to build websites could publish their thoughts. Those walls have broken down. For good or ill, the Web is now clearly a two-way system, and ReadWrite continues to explore what it means to live in a world where every object is something we can all read and write.

But it's been a long journey to get there. For our 10th anniversary, we've highlighted the 10 most important stories in the publication's history. Not just posts that generated lots of traffic or whipped up controversy, but the stories that set an agenda and mapped out what was coming next.

These were the stories that helped readers understand the monumental shifts in how we work, how we play, and how we communicate. From the evolution of Twitter as a platform for serious discourse to the steady rise of the Android operating system to rival Apple's iPhone and iPad, these stories highlight ReadWrite's history of invaluable analysis amid uncertain time.  

1. 10 Future Web Trends

By Richard MacManus / September 2007

From Web services to personalization to the rise of Internet TV, our founder called some big shifts early on.

2. The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse

By Josh Catone / January 2008

Twitter was not barely a year and a half old when writer Josh Catone commented on its potential to go beyond 140 characters. 

3. ReadWriteWeb Interview With Tim Berners-Lee, Part 1: Linked Data

By Richard MacManus / July 2009

Called a "career highlight" by the man who started ReadWrite 10 years ago, Richard MacManus's interview with Internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee explored the deeper meaning of the Web.

4. 13 Tools For Building Your Own iPhone App

By Sarah Perez / November 2009

Just as we covered the democratization of Web publishing, we were early in showing how the app economy was an opportunity for anyone.

5. Facebook Wants To Be Your One True Login

By Mike Melanson / February 2010

This story drew a lot of attention because confused search visitors thought this page would help them log in to the social network. What they found instead was a smart and prophetic take on how Facebook would become a universal login service for all kinds of websites and apps.

6. How Old Spice Won The Internet

By Marshall Kirkpatrick / July 2010

Marketing, too, became two-way, as a major consumer product adopted the Internet's real-time ethic. 

7. iPhone to Android: One Month with the Nexus S

By Sarah Perez / January 2011

For ReadWrite, testing gadgets isn't about checking speeds and feeds. It's about living with them.

8. Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today

By Marshall Kirkpatrick / March 2011

In a major scoop, ReadWrite learned about a key feature of Google's Facebook killer months before its launch.

9. Top 10 YouTube Videos Of All Time

By Richard MacManus / September 2012

To write about a user-generated site, you have to understand the content its community embraces. 

10. Why Are Dead People Liking Stuff On Facebook?

By Bernard Meisler / December 2012

This investigation into possibly bogus "likes" on Facebook raised big questions about the social network's value to marketers.

Image courtesy of Richard MacManus. From the ReadWrite Summit in May of 2010 (from left to right), Frederic Lardinois, Chris Cameron, Richard ManManus, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Sean Ammirati.