The MacBook Air was the only new Apple hardware to be announced and launched at WWDC this year (besides the new AirPort Extreme), and while it isn't a big change from the previous version, it packs some crucial improvements that really cater to the Air's existing strengths. The 2013 Air is really Apple pushing the envelope with its ultraportable, and that has helped make one of the best computers in the world even better.

If any story screams out for a multimedia e-book treatment, it's the tale of The Rock Bottom Remainders, a small band of best-selling authors — including Amy Tan, Dave Barry and Stephen King — who yowled out rock standards. Hard Listening is a digital scrapbook about their years as musicians.

You know who you are. You check into CrunchBase every day, maybe a few times, just to make sure your competition has not closed that new round. If you are that guy, CrunchBase is about to make your life a little easier. Today we are launching the CrunchBase Daily, an email roundup of the latest funding data from CrunchBase. You can sign up for the CrunchBase Daily by joining our mailing list or following us on Twitter where we’ll tweet each day’s recap.

There is no shortage of apps on the market to help users find new, interesting videos to watch and enjoy. But video discovery startup Squrl still thinks there's work to be done. The company just released a new version of its iPhone and iPad app that provides new ways to share with friends and find content that is more personally relevant to them.

GitHub is rolling out a major redesign over the next few days with the intent of putting more emphasis on content, speed and interactivity. A year in the making, the new redesign is meant to be optimized for how people interact with GitHub on a daily basis.

This started out as a list titled Fashion Apps Actual Fashionistas Would Use, but in sifting through numerous style-centric apps, I realized that girls like Alexa Chung aren’t going to be using any of them. Outfit selfie services like Pose and Cloth are awesome if you’re an everyday clotheshorse looking to share your new haul — and, seriously, I’m all about the democratization of fashion — but not so much if your alternative is getting snapped by Tommy Ton. Trendabl and Snapette can be good marketing tools for brands, but if Derek Blasberg’s last post was 39 weeks ago, it’s not hitting the mark.

The most famous man on the lam, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, has answered reader questions in a live Q&A on the Guardian’s blog. Snowden skyrocketed to international fame/infamy after leaking a top-secret court order about the National Security Agency’s collection of all U.S. Verizon phone records. After disappearing from his Hong Kong hideaway, Snowden resurfaced for the online Q&A. You can read the full transcript on The Guardian; we’ve summarized the best of it below (edited for brevity and clarity). Passion, Righteous Passion “All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.” On Tech Company Denials “Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included

In the "ask me anything" format made famous by Reddit, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden returned to the Guardian's website this morning to answer questions from the general public as part of a live event known as "AskSnowden." It was a fascinating exchange, and you can see the whole thing here -- and we'll have a rundown of the full event here soon. But there was one standout bit of good news from Snowden along with the disturbing details of the government's surveillance of our web activity: Encryption works as a method to keep your personal data private.

Jottacloud, a cloud storage service based in Norway, is promoting itself as a safe and secure haven, free of the NSA's long reach that it has with services such as SkyDrive, Dropbox and iCloud.

Digg today announced that the first public beta of its Google Reader replacement Digg Reader will launch next week and will be available to everybody by June 26th. Judging from the early screenshots the team just posted, we're looking at a straight-up feed reader with a clean design and - at least for the time being - without any of the social media integrations the company hinted at earlier this year.