Mat Honan has a fun profile of Betaworks and their Digg team’s race to ship a Google Reader replacement:

McLaughlin saw a blog post in the Fall of 2012 speculating that Google Reader, choked of resources, was shutting down. He sent a teasing note to a friend at Google offering to “take it off their hands.” To his surprise, he got a serious reply. Google, his friend replied, had concluded that it couldn’t sell the name, user data, or code base (which would only run on their servers) and so there was nothing to actually buy.

The following February, McLaughlin, now full-time at Digg, bumped into this same pal at a TED conference. The friend warned him to act fast if he really did want to develop a Reader. “He said ‘I’m not telling you anything, but we’re not going to keep this thing around forever and maybe you want to have something ready by the end of the year.”

But instead of year’s end Google announced plans to shutter Google Reader on July 1. That same night, Digg put up a blog post announcing that it was going to build a replacement. The Internet went crazy.

Stephen Hackett:

iOS 7 is defined by thin text and lots of white space, and the OS X Mavericks artwork closely matches that aesthetic.

However, Mavericks doesn’t bring a sweeping UI overhaul to OS X. While iBooks, Maps and a handful of other new features are being added with this release, the big changes coming to OS X this fall are under the hood.

To get an idea of what OS X (10.10? 11?) might look like with an iOS 7-inspired redesign, look no further than Rdio’s Mac app. The Rdio app on iOS is one of the most iOS 7-like app out there right now.

Great dissertation by Alex Kessinger on the current state of feed readers and the feed reader market, as well as an excellent look at RSS in general and why it’s just so darn awesome to be your own news desk editor. (Via Brent Simmons.)

Great overview of some easy ways to encrypt your computer’s hard drive and your public internet usage (such as when you’re at a coffee shop).

Also, Ben’s hypothetical worst-case scenario for a total 1Password breach is smart. In fact, I do exactly what he recommends: my primary and secondary email passwords, as well as my Dropbox password are each unique and strong passwords which are easy enough for me to commit to memory. All others are who knows what.

Not your average Instagram video. This one’s a stop-motion movie that uses over 1,600 Instagram pictures.

Andrew Kim:

Last week, I went to a Microsoft Store and bought a Nokia Lumia 920. I frequently say that Nokia has some of the best looking phones in the market today and have also publicly shown my admiration for Windows Phone. However, these things have never convinced me to switch perviously. So the question is, why now?

Well, it’s iOS 7.

Andrew has now had his Windows phone for about a week, and he shares some of the differences (good and bad) between the hardware and the software.

It’s an interesting move. iOS 7 is certainly polarizing. I wonder how many others, will, like Andrew Kim, switch to a different phone and OS, or else just hold out and refuse to update their current device to iOS 7.

Last year there was a holdout of people who didn’t update from iOS 5 to 6 because of the issues with Apple’s Maps app. But in that scenario the remnants at least had a light at the end of the tunnel: the hope and expectation that Google would release their own maps app. And Google did.

With iOS 7, however, there is no “light at the end of the tunnel” for those who don’t like the new look.

Casey Liss considers that maybe the new-to-iOS 7 swipe-left-to-right-to-go back gesture is a hint at a forthcoming bigger iPhone.

Maybe.

But a bigger iPhone certainly isn’t needed to appreciate the new gesture. If you’ve used an app like Riposte that already implements that gesture, you know it’s more than just an easier way to go back without having to strrreeeetch your thumb up to the Back Button.

Swiping to go back feels natural. After using Riposte for a while, the gesture had become one of those I found myself using in many other apps — similar to how I was always trying pull to refresh in apps that didn’t even support it, I’ve begun swiping right to go back in apps that don’t support it.

And now, on my iOS 7 test device, I’m using the gesture all over the place. Aside from Control Center, it may be my favorite new feature in iOS 7.

Guess when that quote was written.

I bet you didn’t guess it was written in 1891. Me neither. This xkcd comic gives a little bit of perspective regarding the “fast pace” of our modern life. (Via Kottke.)

I love the style of videos that Trey Hill has been posting on Instagram. Rather than making mini-movies or panning shots, his videos are more like living pictures. (Hat tip to Matt Alexander.)

Tokens is a Mac app for managing App Store promo codes.

Tokens gets promo codes from iTunes Connect, creates shareable URLs for each code and notifies you once they’re redeemed.

The first step to getting your app noticed is inviting bloggers to try it. Promo codes let you give away free copies of your app, but unfortunately they’re laborious to create, awkward to redeem and impossible to track.

With Tokens you create a code with one click and bloggers can redeem it just as easily. By naming the token you can tell who has tried your app and follow up with them. You can also reuse any unredeemed codes before they expire.

Tokens is available now at usetokens.com/syndicate. Shawnblanc.net readers get a special 20% discount until July using this link.

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My thanks to Tokens for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Thomas Brand is running in the St. Jude Memphis Marathon to raise money for St. Jude on behalf of Josiah Hackett, the son of my good friend Stephen Hackett. St. Jude is an incredibly generous hospital that has paid for over $2,000,000 worth of brain cancer treatment, allowing Stephen and his family to get vital medical coverage debt free.

Like last year, Anna and I are once again donating towards Brand’s marathon goal. All donations go directly to St. Jude so they can keep on helping children. I hope you’ll consider donating as well.

Just announced this morning. You get 15 total seconds of recording time, there’s several video-specific filters, and you can hand-pick the cover frame. I’m actually looking forward to this.

Some great thoughts on iOS 7’s new look and apps, and he nails it at the end regarding Apple’s seemingly non-existent aversion to leaving things behind.

Also, I like Chuck’s comment on the new Siri:

The biggest win here are tie-ins to device capabilities like “turn on bluetooth” or “increase brightness” that we saw during the keynote. It makes Siri feel more like the voice behind your phone, not just another feature.

Agreed, and I love that this is the direction they’re going. One of my favorite tidbits seen in the new Notification Center is the natural language overview of your day regarding weather and events, as well as tomorrow’s events. Presumably that information is being parsed and the sentences are being written with the same technology behind Siri’s conversational tone.

When I ran the in-house design team for the International House of Prayer we worked in an open office. Seventeen people and their desks with no cubicles or walls. We loved it because it was open and refreshing and you felt connected to the team. And it worked because we honored a rule of no talking, and no interrupting other people at their desk.

Everyone had iChat (back then it wasn’t yet called Messages) open and if you needed to talk to someone, even if they were in the desk next to you, you’d send them an instant message. And if their iChat status was set to “away” then it meant they were busy and in the zone and you would just have to hold your horses for a bit.

In short, if you spend any amount of time using the Mac’s Messages app (R.I.P. iChat) for conversing with peers and/or co-workers, then Chatology is for you. Because a lot of useful, helpful, and random information gets shared and this app makes it a breeze to find those past chats and/or whatever links or files where passed. You can even filter your searches to only show chats with images or links.

Like Ben wrote in his review, Chatology isn’t for everybody, but those who could use it are going to love it.