Yesterday Facebook brought out Smart Lists to combat Google+, and today the social network has a new feature to take on both Google+ and Twitter. Facebook has launched a new Subscriber feature so you can get updates from people who might not be your friends. Before the Subscribe button the only way to get status more »

When Google started its Google Book Search Service a few years ago, it annoyed a number of people. Those people included “the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers.” On Tuesday the groups involved reached an agreement, and have submitted it to the court.

The agreement would see Google paying $125 million, but allow them to add millions of books both in- and out-of-print. Of course, most people won’t be able to read entire copyrighted texts before actually buying them, but they will be able to see a few pages of the book. Plenty more information after the break.

If you’re reading this blog, then it’s likely you already are a regular rider of the RSS train. But RSS isn’t something everyone in the general public knows about, as only an estimated 5-percent of web users subscribe to websites using RSS. Hence the idea for RSS Awareness Day, which takes place on May 1, 2008 (which happens to be nine days before the first National Train Day, to continue with the train theme). In observance of this day, you can blog about RSS to help get the word out about this technology.

According to Wikipedia; RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and along with the orange RSS icon became widespread in 2005/2006. RSS is defined as “a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts.” Which when used with either programs such as NewsFire or NetNewsWire or web-based readers such as Google Reader or Bloglines subscribers can have all the content from their favorite blogs available in one location, making it easy to get all the news.

If you already read Gadgetell everyday, why not just subscribe to our RSS feed?

According to Wikipedia, “RSS is a simple XML-based system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites.” But really, that’s even making it sound a whole lot more techie than it actually is. RSS is a way to allow you to receive content (news, blogs, audio, video) without actually having to visit each site itself.