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The 404 876: Where 92 percent of our hosts are fake (podcast)

Which would you rather give up for a week, your toothbrush or your iPhone? We welcome CNETer Kenley Bradstreet back on the show today to help us answer this hypothetical question and more.

Of course, Joey Kaminski is here, too, and we have a minefield of a story rundown to test his self-control, such as a nail polish inspired by bruises and bodily fluids, a world-record-breaking attempt going down tomorrow on the corner of Seaman and Dyckman Streets, and a report that 92-percent of Newt Gengrich's 1.3 million Twitter followers are actually robots.

The 404 Digest for Episode 876

Nail polish names inspired by bruises and blood. Report: 92 percent of Newt Gingrich's Twitter Followers Aren't Real. iPhone users would trade shoes, sex for phone. N.Y. lingerie shop to break world record for simultaneous breastfeeding. No lasers were harmed in the scanning of these cats.

Episode 876 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Facebook News Feed to get face-lift?

Might we finally be getting the long-sought-after "dislike" button on Facebook?

The social-networking giant is working on an overhaul of its News Feed product, where users post status updates, photos, videos, and other items of interest, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Facebook is considering an unfiltered News Feed, which would dramatically increase the amount of content users see on their homepage, people familiar with the situation told the newspaper.

The site is also working on expanding the functionality of its "Like" button to include other hand gestures created by third-party developers, allowing users to … Read more

News Feaster

The Internet is the Best Thing Ever for news junkies, and RSS feeds help make it that way. Pmcc's News Messenger is a free news reader that reads not only Atom and RSS pages but also HTML, so it can read headlines from sites that don't support syndication. It requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 or higher.

We extracted and saved News Messenger's program file, which immediately scanned for updated headlines when we opened it. The program displays headlines and brief summaries as well as time stamps in a narrow vertical column that can be configured to … Read more

Pulse News, an elegant mobile reader

Pulse News gives you all the news from your favorite Web sites laid out in an intuitive interface. News sites are laid out vertically so you can swipe up and down to the latest news from all sites quickly, or you can swipe horizontally to read more stories from the same site. Each story heading has the headline and an included graphic, making for a more elegant approach than other news readers that show only text links. Touching a story heading gives you either a text-based summary, a mobile-optimized version for easy reading, or a way to view the story … Read more

A blast from the past

Winamp has been around for ages--it's one of the first media players we remember using--and it's still alive and kicking. Winamp Lite is a scaled-down version of the program, offering the basic character of Winamp with fewer features and in a smaller package. Although we personally find Winamp to be dated and awkward to use, hard-core fans will likely approve of this lightweight version of the software.

Opening Winamp Lite was a blast from the past, as its interface has remained largely unchanged over the years. It's still full of tiny text and buttons with hard-to-read labels. … Read more

How to clean up your Facebook feed

Get in real time. At the top of your News Feed, click "Most Recent." Now you're viewing a real-time view of your friends' activities--however, Facebook is still only showing posts from people who it thinks you interact with most. To change that, click Most Recent > Edit Options > Show posts from all of your friends and pages.

Now you're viewing activities as they happen, which can get a little hectic. Here's how to refine this view:

Hide friends from the feed. Instead of unfriending someone because of his bothersome updates (like, "This chicken … Read more

The 404 789: Where we're desperately clinging to our last peanut (podcast)

Natali Morris is letting go of her peanuts and leaving CNET, but she'll be here until April 29, which means there are only four more Natali Thursdays left! In this edition of The 404, Google is making news with its latest social networking effort, +1; the government is developing a panic button smartphone app; and Reddit users are defending the integrity of the board against link fraud!

The 404 Digest for Episode 789

Single tires are available for sale on Amazon.com. Today is World Data Backup Day--thanks, Reddit! 4chan sends us the Anonymous Bad Guy 404 Augmented Reality app. Uncle Henry shows us The 404 playing on a white iPad 2. Hard Wok Cafe logo mock-ups by Hai Ho and Robin--thanks!

Episode 789 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Take the pulse of the Internet

Pulse News for iPad gives you all the news from your favorite Web sites laid out in an intuitive interface. News sites are laid out vertically so you can swipe up and down to the latest news from all sites quickly, or you can swipe horizontally to read more stories from the same site. Each story heading has the headline and an included graphic, making for a more elegant approach than other news readers that show only text links. Touching a story heading gives you either a text-based summary, a mobile-optimized version for easy reading, or a way to view … Read more

Microsoft turns searches into Web albums

A new Web app from Microsoft can bring life to your Web searches by using them to build customizable news-oriented Web albums.

Demoed at Le Web conference last week, Microsoft's Montage can take virtually any topic or keyword that you enter and create a Web page filled with articles and photographs grabbed from news sites, Twitter, YouTube, and a variety of other sources. You can customize your page with different layouts and change each section of the page to point to specific sources of information. When you're done, you can save your page and publish it or share … Read more