services

As Microsoft marches toward its early April 2013 end-of-free-support deadline for Windows 7, the company is planning to update automatically some of those who still have yet to install the first (and seemingly only) Service Pack for the operating system.

As announced yesterday on the Microsoft "Blogging Windows" blog, Microsoft plans to begin rolling out Windows 7 SP1 automatically, via Windows Update to Windows 7 users who still are running the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version without SP1 installed. This process will begin on March 19. 

From the blog post:

Google announced today that it's taking the ax to a handful of services, including Google Reader, in its latest round of spring cleaning.

Google said it will retire the RSS reader on July 1, giving users and developers a little more than three months to export their data with Google Takeout to alternative RSS readers. The Web giant said in a company blog post today that its decision was based on declining usage of the RSS reader, which Google launched in 2005.

The company also revealed a half dozen other services or features to be eliminated this year, bringing … Read more

Identity thieves are more active than ever. In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 2 million consumer complaints overall, and for the 13th consecutive year, identity theft was the most-common complaint category: 369,132 ID-theft reports were added to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network in the year, an increase of more than 30 percent from 2011.

Last week the FTC released its 2012 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book (PDF). According to the report, the fastest-growing category of identity theft relates to government documents and benefits: complaints in this category increased 46 percent from calendar-year 2010. Credit-card fraud (… Read more

HANOVER, Germany--Intel today debuted a technology called display as a service (DAAS) that it hopes will transform how people use their gadgets.

The technology breaks the hard link between a video source and a screen the way virtualization software breaks the hard link between an operating system and a processor. With DAAS, people can view what's on their tablet on a big-screen TV, mirror the same imagery on multiple displays, or link up multiple displays to create a single, bigger display.

Another possibility, which Intel Labs' Divya Kolar described on blog post, is to combine multiple devices' video onto … Read more

If one of your resolutions for the new year was to get your hundreds (or thousands) of pictures gathered up in one place and organized for easier browsing, you'll want to check out Everpix.

The service, which started two years ago, can be connected to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and Gmail accounts and will pull in pictures from those sources and collect them together in one interface.

It can also be connected to Windows or Mac computers and iOS devices (Android support is in development). Once pictures are uploaded, Everpix analyzes your shots so you … Read more

Mail service as we know it just doesn't work anymore. Too much junk. Too much hassle sorting, scanning, and/or filing the stuff we need to keep. And, let's be honest, so much of what arrives in our mailboxes could -- some would say should -- arrive electronically.

Austin-based startup Outbox wants to make that happen by digitizing all of your physical mail and delivering it to you electronically on your iPhone or iPad, or your PC.

Interesting proposition, wouldn't you say? Think about it: no more daily trek to the mailbox followed by the daily armload … Read more

Google recently rolled out Google sign-ins affording Web and app developers the ability to have users sign in with Google credentials. Once an app is integrated with Google sign-in, data from the app can then be shared to Google+ much like sharing data with Facebook has occurred for a while now.

In order for the apps on your Android device to be compatible with the new system, an update to Google Play Services is required. There's nothing you need to do for the update to happen, it all takes place in the background and normally you wouldn't notice … Read more

Uber's UberX service, which uses hybrid cars and charges customers less for trips than in traditional cars, is getting a boost, the company has announced.

Uber will be partnering with more drivers in San Francisco through its UberX service, according to a company blog post yesterday. The hybrid cars meet California's requirements for driving, as well as Uber's screening tests to ensure they're fit to handle service, the company said.

UberX was unveiled in July as an invite-only service for San Francisco. At that time, the company said that it couldn't offer it to everyone … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in with questions on how to read older AppleWorks documents in newer versions of OS X, how to get files to all open in a specific application, recovering a Mac Mini's files from a system that will not boot, and whether or not cleaning utilities are useful. I welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Managing old AppleWorks documents MacFixIt reader Don asks:… Read more