ReadWriteWeb

Lazyfeed, the site we previously described as a "super-simple feed reader" is coming out with a whole new design today that not only makes everything even lazier, but changes the core purpose of the site itself.

Instead of just watching "live updates on every topic you care about, simultaneously," the site is now the "super-lazy way to blog about everything you love".

We recently told you about 5 Great Blogs For Funding Advice, and now we wanted to remind you about a resource that can get you advice straight from the horse's mouth: Larry Cheng's extensive list of 131 top blogs from venture capitalists and firms - a priceless tool for any entrepreneur looking for free advice.

The blogs are ranked by their number of Google Reader subscriptions, though Cheng, himself ranked 33rd, says, "there are many great blogs with fewer subscribers as the number of subscribers doesn't necessarily correlate to the quality of content."

Nevertheless, resources like this are a great tool for keeping up with what the VC's are talking about, but how can one possibly manage a blogroll so large? Thankfully, there are plenty of solutions for managing RSS feeds so you can stay on top of it all.

In late November, ReadWriteWeb asked the question, Can Netvibes pull off integration of real-time feeds into its existing dashboard product?. At the time, early testers were just gaining access to Wasabi beta. As of today the service will go live to the public concurrent with CEO Freddy Mini's presentation at the Le Web conference.

If your job requires you to have your finger on the pulse of an industry, then you should take note. Curated feed community Collected offers users a great option for aggregating the latest info from their favorite sites. First developed by Stockholm-based new media agency Great Works, Collected aggregates feeds from blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Friendfeed and allows you to create fast web-based collections.

In late August Br.st was nothing more than a URL shortener service with link stats and malware filters. While the company allowed users to cross post to social networks like Twitter, Myspace and Digg, it was simply too late to the space to be considered a contender. As of today the caterpillar has transformed into a butterfly. Br.st is spreading it's new wings with a slew of features and instead of resembling Bitly, it's looking a lot closer to the current social media reader of choice Brizzly.

Bloggers, muckrakers and news fanatics, lend me your ears. It's entirely possible that we've discovered one of the best approaches to media monitoring since RSS itself. My mother always said, "You'll never get what you want unless you ask." But with adaptive feed application Parse.ly, that simply isn't true. Rather than forcing us to abandon our overflowing feed readers, Parse.ly records our preferences and learns to work with us.

Sony today announced that it will sell a wireless eReader device for $399 by Christmas. The Reader Daily Edition will be powered by AT&T's 3G network. That in itself is interesting news, especially given that Barnes & Noble announced a similar device in partnership with Irex yesterday. What's gotten somewhat lost in all the excitement about the hardware, however, is that Sony has also partnered with a number of independent booksellers in the US. These include over 200 members of the American Booksellers Association, as well as BooksOnBoard, Net Galley, and Portland, OR-based Powell's Books, the world's largest independent bookseller. In addition, Sony also plans to make it easier for users to check out eBooks from their local libraries.

In this fourth part of our investigation into the ongoing changes in the book publishing business, we look at the author's point of view. What are they getting today? What would they like to get? What can they reasonably expect to get as this drama unfolds? Authors are the creative juice of the whole eco-system. If they don't create material that people want to read, no one will make any money.

Their struggles in the old model have been well documented (of course, we should have expected them to write about their experiences): the starving writer up in the garret who uses rejection letters from publishers for wallpaper is an established literary hack. In the new world of print on demand, e-books and social media marketing, the author takes center stage. Those with an appetite for it can really take control of their work and commercial fortune.

Google Reader is about to get much faster for developers. You'll be pleased to note that Reader has just adopted the PubSubHubbub protocol for shared items. This means that instead of repeatedly requesting that Reader's shared items reload from the server, the feed automatically updates via a distributed hub model. Rather than waiting on the back and forth pings of update notifications and polled Atom URLs, feed subscribers can receive both the notification and the message from a hub.

Sony just dropped the price of all new releases and New York Times bestseller titles in its eBook store to $9.99. In addition, the company also announced two new hardware eReaders: the Sony Reader Pocket Edition with a five-inch screen for $199 and the Reader Touch Edition ($299) with a touch screen and Memory Stick and SD card expansion slots. The new devices will be available by the end of August.

While Sony has always offered very attractive eReaders, the prices in Sony's eBook store were a deal-breaker for many who had been considering buying a Sony eBook reader. Amazon generally charges $9.99 for an eBook, but until today, Sony often asked for $11.99 or more.