Shyftr stands for Share Your Feeds Together. A feed, or RSS (really simple syndication), is a way for content providers to push news content, blogs, podcasts, photo streams, and other content directly to you as it becomes available. Think of RSS like web site updates that inform you once the content is published; when a content provider makes changes to a particular section or topic on their site, you will receive notification through Shyftr -- no matter what computer you're using. Thousands of your favorite sites, from blogs to news sources to gossip pages, already use RSS for updating overall site changes and topic-specific updates (like the "entertainment" page on your favorite news site).

Forbes.com has ranked America's metros and discovered exactly which ones are the union's brightest bulbs. Since our last ranking a year ago, there have been a few upsets in the top 10--although Nos. 1 and 2 have held their positions, some newbies have entered the race and knocked their predecessors out of the competition.

Bill Gates Speech Archive - 2008

The co-founding editor of Wired magazine and author of Out of Control is working on a new book on "what technology wants." His research led to the first-ever history of scientific methodology. Starting from this long-term view of science's past transformation, he speculates on how the practice of science will change in the future. Science, says Kevin Kelly, is the process of changing how we know things. It is the foundation of our culture and society. While civilizations come and go, science grows steadily onward. It does this by watching itself.

Pop!Tech is a one-of-a-kind conference, a community of remarkable people, and an ongoing conversation about science, technology and the future of ideas.

On Tuesday, Yahoo plans to introduce a service called Buzz that relies on users to help it compile the most popular articles from around the Web. Yahoo plans to include some of those on its front page, hoping to attract more users and turn it into a hub for driving traffic to other publishers.

It's time for TED 2008. Most of the TED team -- helped by a vast contingent of electricians, decorators, and other skilled craftspeople -- is in Monterey, California, preparing the conference, which will start on Wednesday. Our colleagues are in Aspen doing the same (see previous post): in a TED first, the two locations will be linked by satellite, and several speakers will be addressing the Monterey audience from Colorado.