There are thousands of people, myself included, saddened by the news that Google are shutting down Reader in a couple of months. Why did they do it? News is now coming out that the Mountain View-based company closed Reader due to the hidden costs of keeping users' data private.

This is coming from an unnamed source of AllThingD, who said that the closure of Reader is at least partly due to Google's reluctance to build out the staff and infrastructure needed to deal with the legal and privacy issues related to Reader. The source added that Google are trying to position themselves so that they stop getting into expensive lawsuits, by adding dedicated staff to deal with legal issues to each of their teams.

When Google announced the closure of Reader, they didn't even have a project manager of full-time engineer dedicated to it. Google reportedly didn't want to spend the money building the service into a full-blown app, and on the flip side, didn't want to sell it to a third-party because of its deep integration with other Google Apps.

Blizzard have yet another game that gamers will pour hours into, where during the Penny Arcade Expo, Blizzard announced a free-to-play, collectible card game based on the Warcraft franchise. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will see players select one of nine characters as they take turns summoning characters, casting spells and using weapons in a one-versus-one online game.

The company have said that they love collectible card games and have been playing them since their Silicon & Synapse days, adding that creating a digital card game like Hearthstone felt natural, so they constructed a small team of 15 developers to smash out the title. They were reportedly given more creative freedom to experiment, but it looks like it could pay off.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will be made available for PC and Mac users, with an iPad version arriving at a later date. You can try to apply for beta access through your Battle.net account.

Apple have reached 100% renewable energy usage at all of their data centers, with their corporate facilities not far behind with 75% renewable energy. Considering the company was at just 35% renewable energy for their corporate facilities two years ago, this is a swift, and great change:

Apple made a commitment in May of last year after criticism hit then from Greenpeace over their energy usage, and while Greenpeace's ratings are based on erroneous calculations and assumptions, Apple still took the initiative to push forward and make more public statements about their energy usage and plans.

With Tim Cook steering the Apple ship, we are seeing the company go in a new direction, something I'm guessing will help them gain more users, but not alienate others who like iOS. The latest news is that the Apple CEO has set Jony Ive with leadership of Apple's Human Interface teams, as well as his role as the head of Industrial Design.

This news has suggested that Apple's hardware and software user interfaces could be intertwined even more, with one executive in charge of everything you see and touch on an iOS device. The Wall Street Journal has chimed in, confirming that this is true, with mobile software teams being briefed about new hardware prototypes earlier in the design cycle. Ive is now sitting in on the human interface team's review sessions, where he can have more one-on-one time with the new designs.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have put up a $100,000 of initial funding for someone who designs the "next generation of condoms." The money won't stop there, as the funding will expand up to $1 million for whoever is capable of delivering the next-gen contraception.

Considering that the basic form of contraception hasn't received many changes over the years, it is used by an estimated 750 million people across the world for both reducing unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually-transmitted infections. The Foundation's description of the challenge explains it as: "The primary drawback from the male perspective is that condoms decrease pleasure as compared to no condom."

A next-gen condom might give men more sensation, pushing them to use them more often, for the good of global health. When it comes to female condoms, "suffer from some of the same liabilities as male condoms, require proper insertion training and are substantially more expensive than their male counterparts."

After a security hole was discovered in Apple's iForgot password recovery page that allowed passwords to be recovered with just an e-mail and date of birth, Apple has disabled the page for obvious reasons. Navigating to the page now returns a "Currently Unavailable" status message that suggests you "check back later."

Make sure to enable two-step authentication on your account to help protect from future vulnerabilities such as this.

At the time of writing, Apple's page continually timed out for both my coworkers and myself.

For the last 50 years or so, it has been widely accepted that an impact from an asteroid was the direct cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs, but it appears that that theory has now been turned upside down. A recent report that was given at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference suggests that it was not an asteroid that caused the demise of the dinosaurs, but was actually a comet.

This theory is based on the fact that 180km wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico is simply too large to have been caused by a meteor, which is supported by the lack of an abundance of iridium. An element which would have been kicked up in vast quantities if such a large asteroid were the source of the crater.

Dr. Jason Moore, of Dartmouth College said: "You'd need an asteroid of about 5km diameter to contribute that much iridium and osmium. But an asteroid that size would not make a 200km-diameter crater," He theorized that the crater was created by something moving much faster than an asteroid, something with less rock and more ice.

Fujifilm has just shown off two new cameras that will be added to its FinePix lineup in later this spring. One is aimed at the adventurer who finds themselves in or around water, while the other is more geared towards the higher end point and shoot market.

The funky looking FinePix XP200 is encased in a protective housing that makes it waterproof up to a depth of 50 feet, and has the added bonus of making it impact resistant. A 16MP CMOS sensor with a 28-140mm lens gives the camera an effective zoom length of 5X. The Wi-Fi equipped XP200 is capable of full HD video and 10 frames per second of continuous shooting.

A 16MP BSI CMOS sensor is at the core of the FinePix S8400W and offers a huge 24-1,056mm lens which equates to 44x zoom. An aperture of f/2.9 - 6.5 combined with an ISO range up to 12,800 ensures that you are always gathering as much light as possible for the best images possible. The S8400W is capable of HD video at 60FPS at 1080i and super slow motion capture at 480FPS.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has just placed an order with Apple for over 600,000 iDevices to help supplement its arsenal. This huge purchase comes at a time of major budgetary cuts, a sequester which equates to $85 billion in lost spending.

Electronista first broke the news earlier today which detailed over 650,000 Apple devices being ordered. Included in the order were 120k iPads, 100k iPad minis, 200k iPod touches and 2010k iPhones. By my reasoning, that could amount to more than a $250 million payday for Apple.

Before everyone grabs their pitchforks and torches, the US Government has been looking to move from its antiquated BlackBerry devices to something new for some time now. This is most likely the first wave of a transition to iOS based devices and likely not the last major order we will see.

While addressing the House of Representatives committee on IT pricing today, Adobe Australia and New Zealand managing director, Paul Robson, was questioned about the higher prices in Australia for their Creative Suite 6 software.

Considering Adobe charge Australians a not so down under 167% more, the question is a very big one to answer. Australians are paying $3175 compared to their US friends paying just $1899 for CS6. Robson said that consumers in Australia were paying the extra costs because they were automatically redirected to Adobe's Australian website, giving them the ability to access local discounts and community groups.

Robson didn't explain exactly why Australians pay more for Adobe software, saying that Adobe's use of Australian-only pricing or "geoblocking" was a "well established and legal process".

NVIDIA have announced the first ever GeForce eSports World of Tanks Open Tournament, with gamers competing to win NVIDIA GPUs and a shot at the $100,000 total prize pool. Pre-registration is now open, with team and player registration opening up its doors on March 28 for two weeks. Head of Community and Wargaming in North America, Kevin Van Ness, has said:

Five regions are open to enter the World of Tanks tournament, China, APAC, the Americas, Russia and Europe. The five regional finalists will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the Grand Finals, which will be announced at a later date. All tournament matches are seven-person teams playing the best of three game matches.

I wish this were me doing the video, but I'll continue to dream for now. The team at Oculus have received their first Rift off the production line, and have done a nice unboxing video for the world.

They've also taken the time to announce through the Oculus blog that developer kits will begin shipping to the earliest Kickstarter backers by March 29. Once the dev kit ships to the backer, they'll receive an e-mail confirmation so that they can track their Rift as it is shipping to their door. Oculus expect to deliver between 1000-1500 units per week until they've fulfilled all of their orders.

The Oculus Rift developer kit comes with a plethora of goodies, including:

Samsung may be getting ready to launch their Galaxy S4, but this doesn't stop them from working on a thousand and one other devices, especially in the very lucrative emerging markets.Samsung may be getting ready to launch their Galaxy S4, but this doesn't stop them from working on a thousand and one other devices, especially in the very lucrative emerging markets.

Samsung have plenty of devices in the low- to mid-range market, such as the Galaxy S3 Mini, but they're also wanting to hit the super low-end emerging markets, such as India and Indonesia. These markets are pretty much controlled by feature phones, with Samsung clawing considerable amounts of the market share with devices in the sub-$100 market.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the South Korean electronics giant has seen their market share in Indonesia rise from just 2% in 2010, to a market-dominating 50% in the last quarter.

J.D. Power and Associates' new study shows that Apple leads the pack when it comes to consumer satisfaction. This is the ninth time in a row that Apple has topped J.D. Power's survey, though not everything remains the same. Second place is in fierce contention by four different manufacturers.

Apple is the only company to be above the study average, coming in with a score of 855. Just one point behind the study average, Nokia comes in at a satisfaction rating of 795. Samsung pulls a close third with a score of 793. Just behind Samsung is Motorola with a score of 792. HTC brings up the rear with a score of 790.

Once you move down the list, the scores drop off. LG received a score of 744 and BlackBerry only scored 732. Interestingly enough, about 17 percent of those surveyed said that they encountered some sort of bug or glitch. Bugs and glitches really detract from the user experience and companies should probably focus heavily in these areas.

Everyone's favorite $99 console might be getting streaming video content, at least if the CEO's hint proves accurate. At a keynote at South By Southwest, CEO Julie Uhrman hinted that the Ouya console would be able to function as a set-top box, meaning that we should expect streaming video.

The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii have all successfully integrated online video streaming service apps and these have helped the consoles extend their lifespan. Uhrman noted that she "feels pretty confident" that Ouya will feature streaming content via native apps from some of the larger players.

This will probably be a fairly easy task as the console will be running Android. Hulu and Netflix already have streaming video apps available for Android. Uhrman added that if it isn't available directly at launch, it should be available shortly after. "We're talking to everyone."

Going green is the big push right now and has been for the past several years. Apple releases its "Apple and the Environment" report to show just how Apple's business affects the environment around us. The latest report shows that while Apple is moving towards green energy use, its overall production of CO2 is still increasing.

Apple has started to brag that its data centers are 100 percent powered by renewable energy sources. Even with this change, Apple's overall production has increased by 34 percent. Apple attributes this increase to its overall increase in products sold. It's true that Apple produces less CO2 per dollar revenue.

Since 2008, Apple has reduced its emissions per dollar revenue by 21.5 percent. Apple has also increased renewable energy at its corporate facilities by 114 percent. However, facilities only contribute 2 percent of Apple's emissions. 61 percent, or the large majority, come from the manufacturing of the devices.

HTC CEO Peter Chou is so committed to the success of the HTC One that he has reportedly said that he will quit his job and leave HTC if the upcoming One smartphone is a flop.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Chou said that in the event that the HTC One is a failure, he will resign his position at the company. At the moment, things are not looking good for Chou as HTC's flagship release has been delayed until the end of this month due to delays.

The delays were first thought to be caused by HTC's new "Ultra Pixel" camera technology, or its aluminum uni-frame body, but we recently discovered that is not the case. In fact, HTC is having issues getting many of its components due to being downgraded from a tier one manufacturer.

A new virus specific to Mac has been discovered by Russian security firm Doctor Web. Named Trojan.Yontoo.1, the virus injects ads into webpages on the infected machine.

The malware works by installing an adware plugin into any of the popular browsers then overlays an advertisement in key locations on webpages. Doctor Web says that this trojan is just another piece of a large adware puzzle that has been infecting OS X for some time now.

The virus can be caught in several different ways, with the most popular method being the use of movie trailer pages in which users must install a plugin to view the content. Other methods of injection have been media player enhancement programs and download accelerators. One indication of infection is that when launched, Trojan.Yontoo.1 will prompt users to install a program called "Free Twit Tube" or something similar.

What do you do when you have more cash reserves than any other company in the world? You develop a system that magically flips your company's flagship phone into the proper position during a fall to lessen damage. Yes, Apple has patented a method that turns your phone into a cat.

US Patent #20130073095 describes a "Protective Mechanism for an Electronic Device" that appears to use centrifugal force to reorient an iPhone in the event of a drop or fall. From the patent drawings, it looks like a small motor with a weight on one end would spin up and make the phone flip into an orientation that would lessen damage to sensitive parts like the screen.

The patent also mentions alternative methods that would deploy airfoils to levy aerodynamics to reorient the phone. There is also mention of cables that could be jettisoned to catch the phone mid fall, and other far out there concepts like gas canisters used in conjunction with thrust nozzles to reorient the phone. Below you can see more of the artwork courtesy of Apple Insider.

We're willing to bet that more than a few of our readers have participated in a video game beta test before despite the fact that they are sometimes hard to get into. Up until now, you usually had to rely on being selected to participate in those beta programs, but Valve is looking to change that.

Steam has just released a new service called Early Access that makes participating in beta test easier. Instead of filling out form after form, and email after email, Valve's solution is to let game developers simply charge users to be part of the beta. Developers can chose to offer the beta for free through the service or charge users full price for the game, which rolls over to your steam library when officially launched.

As of this posting, the Early Access program has 12 titles including some heavy hitters like: Arma 3 Aplha, Kerbal Space Program and Star Forge Alpha. It is still up in the air if gamers are willing to buy a game at full price months before release just to get access to the beta program, but something tells me that it will be a success.