Google Drive is offline for many users.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Google Drive was having some hiccups earlier today but apparently has since recovered.

The online file storage site had been inaccessible for a large number of users today. On its status page, Google initially said that it's "investigating reports of an issue with Google Drive" as of 7:17 a.m. PT and that it will "provide more information shortly."

A second update on the status page offered a bit more information:

We're aware of a problem with Google Drive affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Drive. We will provide an update by 3/18/13 12:10 PM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.

The latest update at 9:35 a.m. PT indicates that the problem has, or at least "should be," fixed:

The problem with Google Drive should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better. If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us via the ... [Read more]

The shift by Adobe Systems toward its Creative Cloud subscription plan looks to be popular with customers, a Jefferies survey of some of them shows.

Adobe is making its entire Creative Suite of software available for an introductory price of $30 per month for annual commitments, with a regular $50 monthly price to kick in later. The subscription also includes services, software that's not part of the CS products, and early updates that traditional perpetual-license customers won't get until CS7.

Jefferies asked customers about their sentiments in a follow-up to a 2012 survey with CNET.

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Google's decision to kill its Google Reader service has caused some collateral damage: the end of a related Chrome extension that let the browser handle RSS feeds.

RSS and the similar Atom technology make it easier for people to subscribe to regular updates published on Web sites, and Google Reader was a popular way for people to read that content. Google announced that it's scrapping Google Reader on July 1, but it's already gone ahead and withdrawn the feed-finding Chrome extension.

The extension would detect Web sites' feeds then let people use a variety of RSS reader services to subscribe to those feeds.

For those who want to replace Chrome's reader extension, one option that seems to be actively maintained is the RSS Subscription Extension. According to the unofficial Google Operating System blog, it's based on Google's own RSS extension for Chrome, and based on my tests works identically so far.

I'm one of the people who bemoans the loss of Google Reader, since I use it daily to scan countless news sites and blogs for the latest updates and think it reduces the friction of information flow around th... [Read more]