Seriously, Google is retiring Google Reader? I feel like they’re trying to get into every corner of the internet and they’re giving this up? I thought they had the market on this, maybe I wrong and there is something better. But many many feed readers (clients) support this program and they’re giving it up…

Am I expressing my disbelief enough? I’m not even sure what I’d chose as an alternative. I think bloglines is still around (wasn’t it supposed to go away?) but do they support third party APIs? I need to do it on the desktop via the web (and/or a client) and I need to also be able to do it on my iPhone and iPad while keeping all the feeds synced so that I’m not rereading them.

I gotta tell you, personally, I think this is going to affect me more than if I heard that gmail would be shut down. I can get and set up and support other e-mail accounts, there are standards there, I don’t think there are standards for syncing feeds and unread feed data, is there? It’s not the only service Google is shutting down.

That said: I’m clearly looking for suggestions for a feed reader that I can use on the web and have client software (apps) on my iDevices that will keep them all in sync. To be clear, I need the feeds themselves to sync but then items I read need to be marked as read on all devices. And I’ve got to figure it out before July 1, 2013!

Did I ever tell you I used to be a big comic collector? I had at least 12,000+ items (maybe 15,000): comics, sci-fi stuff, movie posters, movie programs, paperback books and more. Those guys in Big Bang Theory hanging out in the comic shop, that’s pretty much how it used to be; on Wednesday’s the new comics were out and on the weekend we might pedal our bicycles to one of the comic shops nearby. But I haven’t really been active in collecting in over 20 years. For a while I still picked up a few titles and the last dozen years I haven’t really read much at all; some Neil Gaiman stuff, a few recommendations (Invincible, Alias), and whatever they had on free comic day.

But there was a lot of talk on-line as the Amazing Spider-Man was reaching issue 700, so I started reading it. Be warned, huge spoilers follow: The short version is that Doctor Octopus was dying and he managed to swap his mind for Peter Parker’s mind (you do know that PP is the secret identity of Spider-Man?) but here’s the problem: before Peter could figure out how to swap back minds, Doc Ock’s body dies and Otto Octavious’s mind is in Peter Parker’s body (in Spider-man’s body). He is the new Spider-man and no one knows it!

I thought this was the dumbest thing ever, it’s not going to be any good and you know in a year or two somehow Peter is going to come back (somehow). This transitioned into a new title, the egotistically titled “Superior Spider-Man“, where Doc Ock decides he’ll “do it”, he would become a superior Spider-Man. I have to tell you, my doubts were banished and I thought this was a excellent story. Actually, I thought it was excellent until they revealed at the very end that Peter’s mind was still in there and I thought “argh! this was great and they ruined it”, but I was wrong again. It’s been five issues now and it has been excellent. Think of all the things you see in a movie (or a comic book) and think “why are they doing that?” and “why don’t they…?”, well this new Spider-Man does many things differently than the old Spider-Man and it’s working.

You need to remember, Spider-Man / Peter Parker is the “With great power comes great responsibility” guy (actually his Uncle Ben taught him that, the hard way), he takes this seriously and has always been “amazing”. But here’s the thing, Doc Ock is not only a “Superior” Spider-Man, in many ways he’s a being a better Peter Parker too. He’s not perfect, but he’s working pretty good on making his Peter a better Peter. It’s interesting the way that he does things, he’s as smart as Peter (maybe more) but it’s really the way he thinks (and that he has to pretend to be Peter) that gives him different insight into the roll.

At some point, I believe, Peter Parker will be back and it will make for some interesting adjustments for him. I don’t think I’m going to say much more about the current story, maybe you’ll want to read it yourself. (If you can’t find the issues at your local shop or find some kid to lend them to you, you can pre-order it from Amazon in The Superior Spider-Man, (Vol. 1: My Own Worst Enemy) trade paperback.)

The comments of this post are allowed to have spoilers (even more than I’ve revealed above) so if you feel like commenting…

I thought this video about the whys of Daylight Savings Time was entertaining. For those of you from other places that do not practice this, it’s a time in the spring and the fall when we adjust our clocks back (or forward) an hour to pretend to get an extra hour of daylight (by taking away an hour of daylight) or vice-versa depending on your perspective (and the time of year).

I’m not for Daylight Savings TIme, I think it’s chaotic and not needed. Plus, if it really has some of the costs associated as illustrated in the video, it’s totally not worth it.

Flickr will extend your Flickr pro account for 3 months for free but I’m not sure how long the offer will last (it’s a “holiday” offer).

The way I read it, I think it will give you a pro account for free, but as my account was already pro, I can’t really try it out.

When I first saw the Doctor Who EncyclopediaI was super excited, it was by Gary Russell and published by Random House and the BBC but it was a little pricey at $6.99 and it only included the eleventh Doctor Who (Matt Smith). The ninth and tenth doctors were an additional $6.99 each(!) for a total of $20.97 for the whole thing. They experimented with pricing up and down with the modules at different prices, I think $8.97 is the cheapest I ever saw the whole thing for.

That’s all changed now! It’s back up to $6.99 but it has been updated to include the first half of season seven (through September 2012) and now includes the tenth and eleventh doctors (Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant) as part of the price.

Actually, if you purchased it before (at any of it’s price points) you now have the whole package with today’s update. So now it has all of the episodes from 2005 on, from The Doctor meeting Rose to the season halfway point with the departure of the Ponds / Williams.

So here’s the thing, it’s pretty neat, but it’s not awesome. I think it needs to be a little more intuitive, but it’s got a lot in it. When I say a lot, I pretty much mean everything! If you tried it a year ago, I think they’ve improved the interface a bit. It’s got a references to almost every character and object and place that has appeared. If you’re a fan and you’ve got an iPad it’s (probably) a must get.

If $6.99 seems a little high, then go over to appshopper.com and set up an alert to mail you if the price goes down. Now that they have all the new episodes integrated into it, I don’t really see that happening for a while, and probably only a dollar or two; remember right now is still $2 cheaper than the cheapest it every was before (and it was as high as $21).

They say they’ve updated for iOS 6 and the iPad mini too, so if you’ve had any problems this update might fix them.

Warning, this is from a EXTENDED teaser trailer. May be consider to have spoilers, but I’m not sure if spoilers involves previews (unless you don’t actually watch previews).

Lots of dark crazy destructive action until about one minute in.

“Is there anything you would not do… for your family??”

Look how the one hand looks behind plastic. Really really reminds me of the death of Spock in the (wait for it…) second Star Trek movie. Seems a little cheesy to steal this story-line, so we’ll see what they do with it. Who knows, I haven’t read much, maybe Benedict Cumbatch is playing Khan, except it’s a little to early in Kirk’s career (in this timeline) to have Khan as an enemy yet. From the slightly shorter version of the preview, Khan didn’t cross my mind, but for this extra few seconds, he did….

Link to Star Trek Into Darkness teaser incase the embedded version doesn’t show.

That part kind of flipped me out a bit and I don’t know why?

Maybe “Is there anything you would not do… for your family?” will replace “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” quote? Not. A. Chance.