Once upon a time (before the rise of Twitter), blogs and RSS readers were thought to be the fastest tools for distributing news, opinion, and other content bits to a mass audience. Now, in an effort to reposition blogs and really simple syndication at the forefront of an increasingly real-time information ecosystem, WordPress just added a new feature that lets RSS readers grab blog updates instantaneously rather than having to regularly poll sites to check for changes. As ReadWriteWeb explains, RSSCloud, so-called, is now active on every blog hosted on Wordpress.com, which numbers around 7.5 …

It's not too late to jumpstart your music career now that app developer Smule has released an "I Am T-Pain" Auto-Tune iPhone app. The company says rapper/"singer" T-Pain himself -- who helped popularize the pitch-correction technology -- approached Smule about creating the app. For just $2.99, you can sing along with T-Pain songs -- the app shows you the lyrics -- or sing anything else, then share the recording with friends via email or social networking sites.

Bit.ly, which helps micro-bloggers shorten their URLs, just launched a service to create even shorter URLs. Powered by the bit.ly platform, j.mp has the same short URLs, metrics, history, user accounts, and customization of bit.ly, all on a short, memorable domain, according to the company. In fact, any bit.ly URL also works as a j.mp URL. Using the new service, the Business Insider estimates that one's tweets on Twitter can now "potentially" be 1.4% longer.

Under pressure from privacy advocates, Google has published a detailed privacy policy surrounding it Google Books settlement. The search giant promises not force a user to log into a Google account when reading pages of books online, browsing through a university's subscription, or viewing through a public library terminal. Buying a book, meanwhile, will require logging in, but users can delete histories of books they have purchased, and credit card companies won't get buying histories.

Conspiracy theorists, and those generally unsettled by the rising digitization of the written word, could have a field day with this one. After wirelessly deleting copies of two George Orwell titles from some customers' Kindle e-readers, Amazon is offering to return the titles, or to give owners a $30 Amazon gift certificate. The error, which occurred back in July, prompted a class action lawsuit, filed in part on behalf of a student who lost his notes in the process.

RSS -- heralded by many a tech evangelist as the future of online news consumption -- might no long be in vogue, but it's most certainly not dead. Indeed, according to new data from a McKinsey Global Survey, 42% of some 1,700 executives report seeing a measurable benefit from really simple syndication. That's 24% more than those who see any benefit from micro-blogging, i.e., Twitter. Apart from Twitter's rise, however, some speculate that the bad press -- or increasingly less press -- that RSS has received has more to do with the Google Reader than the technology itself.

To support its Android mobile operating system, Google plans to upgrade its Android Market application store with better organization, categories, screenshots, and the like. Who cares? It appears as though anyone with a stake in the future of the mobile Web. "The news ... isn't a big deal by itself," writes ZDNet. "But when you consider the armada of Android powered devices coming to market the Android Market improvements are critical ... you can't have a bevy of Android devices without a good app store to go with it." Sprint is preparing to offer the HTC Hero …

This past year, the meteoric rise of Facebook usage wasn't limited to consumers' homes and offices, as its mobile users tripled to 65 million worldwide. That means that about a quarter of its 250 million monthly users are now accessing the site through mobile devices, which -- considering the fact that mobile Web usage is still in its infancy, and Facebook just relaunched a far more user-friendly iPhone app -- has huge implications for the future of mobile social networking. Also, indicating a pretty active community, about half of Facebook's monthly users log-in everyday.

Amid reports of YouTube meeting with top studios about a movie "rental" business, comes word that the Google-owned site is talking with Hollywood honcho Jim Wiatt about a possible consulting gig. The former head of the William Morris talent agency is leaving his old job in the aftermath of the agency's rocky merger with the Endeavor agency (run by Ari Emanuel who inspired the character Ari Gold on the HBO series "Entourage".) Earlier this year, there were unconfirmed rumors that William Morris and Google had entered into some sort of agreement, which would encourage talent to spread their wings on …

What does it take to score a little venture capital these days? Like adding "dot com" to your name in the '90s, factoring Facebook into your company's equation seems to help. From a maker of software for managing your social networks through your in-box to a resident referral service, the Journal looks at about two dozen companies building applications on Facebook, and their prospects for future funding. At least one angel investor, however, expresses concern that companies built for particular services, like Facebook, might have a short shelf-life.