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Google experienced a bevy of screw-ups yesterday. Users were complaining all over Twitter that the search giant’s GMail service, as well as Google News and Reader, were experiencing outages during the morning. While problems have been resolved, the outages were prevalent enough to become the #2 trending topic on Twitter, under the topic “#googlefail.”
Facebook is set to begin testing a payments system next week. The plan is for Facebook to develop a system that allows users to easily pay for products and applications by third party developers, with the social network taking a small portion of each transaction. Facebook is hopeful that the micro-payments program could help generate revenue, and, eventually, become the easiest, most preferred way for users to purchase products online.
Amazon has added a self-publishing aspect to the Kindle. The program allows bloggers to sell posts via a micro-subscription payment, which sends the blogs feed to the gadget via RSS. Feeds for sites like HuffPo will go for $1.99 a month, while others, like paidContent, will go for $0.99 a month.
Conan O’Brien is set to be Jay Leno’s final guest as host of the Tonight Show. Conan, who has appeared on the Tonight Show 17 times, will chat with Jay during the finale on May 29th, after a week of major celebrity guests including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson and Billy Crystal. O’Brien will then begin hosting the Tonight Show on Monday June 1.
Amidst considerable buzz, the season finale of ABC’s Lost earned a 4.3/11 rating Wednesday night. While the much hyped show earned its best rating in months, it could not compete with American Idol, which helped Fox win the night with a 5.5/15 rating, and earning 16.2 million viewers.