With Google Reader closing up shop on July 1, devoted users are still scrounging around for an RSS feed replacement. Could Facebook create the next big place to stay updated on news across the Internet?

According to Tom Waddington, a web developer for the site Cut Out + Keep, a new code on Facebook hints that Facebook may launch RSS feeds for users in the future

A RSS feed would allow users to subscribe to and pull in online content from news organizations, blogs and videos to keep up with news

SEE ALSO: How to Export Your RSS Feeds From Google Reader

Waddington noted in a blog post that he spotted Facebook code for RSS feeds, with each showing multiple entries and a list of subscribers. Facebook typically lists the types of content and connections among that content in its code, such as user photos and tagged geolocations. Read more...

Facebook's worldwide mobile ad revenue will top $2 billion for the first time this year, an increase of more than 300% from the less than half a billion dollars earned in 2012, according to a new forecast from eMarketer

The forecast is all the more impressive when you consider that Facebook had no mobile revenue at all 2011; it didn't introduce mobile ads until 2012. The growing revenue from mobile ads should provide a nice boost to Facebook's bottom line: The company reported $5 billion in revenues last year, up from $3.7 billion the year before.

SEE ALSO: Why Are Mobile Ads So Cheap?

Even with that impressive growth, Facebook's mobile ad revenue still pales in comparison to that of Google, which is expected to rake in $8.85 billion this year — more than half the total worldwide mobile ad revenue. Facebook, by comparison, will account for 10% of global mobile ad dollars Read more...

"Crowdsourcing," "mouseover," "big data," "redirect" and "e-reader" are among the tech terms that made the cut in this year's version of The Oxford English Dictionary, while "follower" and "tweet" will be given expanded definitions to accommodate their associations with Twitter.

The tech terms are among 1,200 words out of a total of 823,000. In a blog post announcing the new entries, the OED acknowledges that it has been using crowdsourcing techniques since the 19th century, but has only now seen fit to include the word. According to the dictionary's editors, that term was coined by Jeff Howe in Wired in 2006 Read more...

Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world.

Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting stories. This is either the greatest or the worst news you’ve heard all day: Facebook finally incorporated hashtags. New reports indicate Apple is looking at bigger screens for iPhones, including 4.7-inch and 5.7-inch models, in addition to lower-priced versions available in a range of colors. And last but not least: Twitter shut down API v.1.

Check out the video above for more on these stories.

Image via iStockphoto, ardaguldogan Read more...

You're doing it again — spending too much valuable time on Twitter and Facebook

So we've narrowed down seven free and convenient browser plugins and extensions to help you stop procrastinating — now

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Safari Plugins and Extensions for Better Productivity

Image courtesy of White Noise

You may have impeccable taste in music, but all that bass dropping can be distracting. User-friendly White Noise lets you drown out background chatter. Play around with other noise "colors," like gray, pink and blue.

Image courtesy of Strict Workflow

Strict Workflow employs the Pomodoro technique: Focus for 25 minutes, then reward yourself with a sanity-saving five minute break. A simple click on the tiny tomato starts the timer, which sits unobtrusively in the corner of your screen. You can also blacklist and whitelist specific sites during sessions. Read more...

Here's an innovative use of Twitter. Fiat's Abarth 500 has zero followers — and intends to stay that way to prove a point. When you try to follow the account, you'll receive a direct message stating that you can't do so because the Abarth 500 is just too fast:

The stunt follows a Fiat 500 ad in February showing Charlie Sheen doing laps inside his house and proclaiming "I love being under house arrest."

Image courtesy of David Villarreal Fernández Read more...

LOS ANGELES — King.com launched its third game on mobile Thursday, Pet Rescue Saga. Following the success of games like Bubble Witch and Candy Crush Saga, the Facebook favorite is arriving on both iPhone and Android.

Currently one of the top 10 games on Facebook, Pet Rescue Saga prompts players to destroy colored boxes on screen by placing three or more of the same color into groups — in order to rescue pets trapped within the multicolored block structure.

SEE ALSO: 10 Best Cross-Platform Multiplayer Mobile Games

The mobile version of the game will launch with 72 levels, with more to follow in future updates. Read more...

Bill Gates made his LinkedIn debut Thursday morning as one of the network's super influencers, an illustrious network of business moguls who contribute blog posts on the social network

In his first post, Gates reveals three skills he has learned from Warren Buffet, from investing to time management. We also get to see another side of the relationship between Gates and Buffet — as it turns out, they're actually friends. Gates even admits to looking to Buffet for help with big decisions regarding both Microsoft and the Gates Foundation

"The dialogue has been invaluable to me, and not only at Microsoft. When Melinda and I started our foundation, I turned to him for advice. We talked a lot about the idea that philanthropy could be just as impactful in its own way as software had been." Read more...

LOS ANGELES — The zombies are coming!

On July 18th, PopCap, a division of Electronic Arts (EA) is releasing Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time! A play on words, the time reference in the name of the game is a gentle jab at how long it’s taken the studio to create the game, as well a reference to time travel, which plays a huge role in its storyline.

Redesigned from the ground up, Plants vs. Zombies 2 offers similar gameplay to its predecessor, while bringing a number of new places and new experiences into the mix.

I had the opportunity to spend a little time with Plants vs. Zombies 2 at E3 this week, and much like the original version found myself almost instantly addicted, spending 40 minutes playing the demo version of the game rather than the 15 I had originally intended. Read more...

This year's Google I/O conference unveiled a brand new Google Maps app for mobile. With this update, Google combined all of its mapping tools (Street View, satellite imagery, real-time traffic, etc.) into one sleek, user-friendly direction beast.

SEE ALSO: Hands-On With the New Google Maps

Your Google map is fully customizable, and will recommend locations and deals that may interest you, based on your search history. First, though, you need to figure out how to use it. To help, we've created this guide to the mobile Maps app.

Have any more questions? Post them in the comments below and we'll answer them for you. Read more...

The Internet is home to hundreds of different social networks. Aside from the big-wigs, plenty cater to a more niche variety of interests

We browsed the web and compiled some of the strangest, most hobby-specific ones we could find. Some are geared toward a specific audience, while others are just plain — well, weird. Take a look at our collection below.

SEE ALSO: WTF! 15 Videos That Will Make You Quit the Internet

Are there any bizarre ones we missed? Share your coolest finds with us in the comments.

Big date tonight? That's great. Until the two of you get back to your apartment ... and all your catsBe cool, you tell yourself, just pray he/she isn't allergic Read more...

Apple is looking into launching iPhones with a 4.7-inch and a 5.7-inch screen, Reuters reports, citing sources with knowledge of the matter

The company is also considering launching a cheaper variant of the iPhone, that would cost around $99 and come in 5-6 colors

The moves are described as being "under discussion," meaning they may never actually happen. If they do, however, it would mean Apple has more or less abandoned its position as the standard-setter in the smartphone market and become just another trend-follower

Long-known for its limited palette of products, Apple always focused on the premium segment of the market, claiming the form factors of its devices, as well as the prices, are just right. For example, Samsung currently offers smartphones and phablets with more than 10 different screen sizes, while Apple has only two: the 3.5-inch iPhone 4S and the 4-inch iPhone 5 Read more...

Google revealed on Wednesday that phishing activity in Iran has jumped, as its citizens prepare to hit the polls on Friday.

For nearly three weeks, the search giant has "detected and disrupted" tens of thousands of Iranian user accounts that were targeted by email-based phishing scams originating in Iran, according to a blog post blog post published Wednesday.

SEE ALSO: Iran's Next President Might Be a Redditor

"The timing and targeting of the campaigns suggest that the attacks are politically motivated in connection with the Iranian presidential election on Friday," wrote Eric Grosse, Google's vice-president of security engineering Read more...

A trailer for 300: Rise of an Empire, the follow-up to 2006 action film 300, surfaced online Wednesday. Similar to its predecessor, Rise of an Empire is filmed in a graphic-novel style, and depicts mortal-turned-god Xerxes in his bid to overtake more territory

A two-and-a-half minute trailer, above, reveals intense battle scenes between Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro reprising his role in 300) and woman-warrior Artemisia (Eva Green of Casino Royale fame) against Greek general Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton). The film is based on Frank Miller's latest graphic novel, Xerxes.

Directed by Noam Murro, 300: Rise of an Empire is slated to hit theaters on March 7, 2014. Do you plan to watch it? Tell us in the comments, below. Read more...

Something about that portrait you snapped just isn't cutting it.

Maybe it's that pesky blemish, stubble or unruly strand of hair that's trying to ruin your pic again. But fear not, the people from Lightricks Ltd. are making your photo-editing needs easier (and cheaper). Meet Facetune, which at time of writing was ranked number three on the App Store's top paid apps chart. The program allows you to touch up your portraits with intuitive tools "previously reserved for the pros."

SEE ALSO: 12 Most Cliché Photos on Instagram

The app allows you to smooth skin, remove stray hairs, implant or color hairs, clear away imperfections, and remove red-eye and white-eye effects, among other features, with an array of editing tools (screenshots above) — the goal here, essentially, is to make your face look better. Read more...

When news broke a few years ago that an experimental spray-on liquid fabric could become wearable clothing, people were wowed by what sounded more science-fiction than fact. Fast forward a few years and that same technology is on the cusp of being introduced into our daily lives in the form of a host of applications that could very well change the face of art, consumer products, and even conservation.

The company behind this technology is called Fabrican. Developed by clothing-designer-turned-chemist Dr. Manel Torres, who was originally looking for a faster way to produce clothes, the idea came to the self-proclaimed fashion doctor when he went to a friend's wedding and saw someone getting sprayed by silly string, the popular 90s-era toyThat's when Torres got his "aha" moment and decided to pursue an instant, nonstick fabric. The result was the creation of instant garments you can remove and even wash. Read more...

A new mode of personal transportation has beat hoverboards to the market: the flying bicycle.

Czech companies Duratec, Technodat and Evektor have created a prototype of a flying electric bicycle. Unlike E.T.'s run-of-the-mill two-wheeler, however, this one looks more like a snow bike

SEE ALSO: Technostalgia: 20 Misty Memories of Personal Computing

Including six battery-powered propellers, the bicycle weighs 209 pounds. It has four main motors and one main propeller. A Wednesday demonstration of the bike in Prague featured a remote-controlled, five-minute flight with a mannequin in the rider’s seat. Engineers working on the bike say it will need better batteries before actual people can take a spin in the sky Read more...

Listen up, active tweeter and Facebook-poster: you might be a narcissist.

At least, that's according to a new study from the University of Michigan. It found that frequent social media use could be fueling narcissistic tendencies in social media users of all ages

Michigan researchers Elliot Panek, Yioryos Nardis and Sara Konrath published their study results online in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. The study analyzed how much the subjects posted to Facebook and Twitter each day, as well as time spent on those sites reading posts and comments. It also surveyed the participants about their social media use and took personality traits into account. The study participants included 486 college undergraduates and 93 adults, whose average age was 35. Read more...

Apple's colorful new iOS 7 redesign has received its fair share of criticism — but none so creative as that from a Tumblr called "Jony Ive Redesigns Things."

The blog began after Sasha Agapov, a Los Angeles-based art director, posted his version of a Jonathan Ive redesign of Google's search engine on his Dribbble page. Agapov's inbox was soon flooded with submissions from the Dribbble community, so he created the Tumblr as "a place to store all the good stuff."

As for his take on the new iOS, Agapov told Mashable, "I've installed it, and only could handle it for a couple of hours — the new functionality, interaction and UX changes are great, but the colors and icons were really throwing me off a bit. We can't really judge the new look now, since it's gotten mixed reception, and perhaps Apple'll make some steps to improve the visual part of the new iOS and release a prettier version this fall." Read more...

Most brands have avoided commenting on the NSA's surveillance of phone calls and web activity, but Denny's has proven to be a surprising outlier

The restaurant chain offered the following tweet on Tuesday, making light of the issue:

Denny's knows what you're craving before they dotwitpic.com/cwjkg6

— Denny's (@DennysDiner) June 10, 2013

The brand, a prolific tweeter, didn't repeat the gag on its Facebook Page

Denny's social media is handled by Gotham, a New York-based ad agency that attempted to inject the brand into conversations around the Academy Awards, among other events.

What do you think of Denny's tweet? Tell us in the comments, below Read more...