TECHBITS

TV over Internet service includes PCs

NEW YORK — Billionaire Barry Diller’s Aereo is broadening availability of its service even as broadcasters challenge the legality of the startup’s live television transmissions over the Internet.

Aereo is still limited to residents of New York City, but it’s now available on additional devices including Windows computers and on a wider selection of Web browsers including Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Before, access was restricted to selected Apple devices such as the iPad, as well as the Roku streaming set-top box.

The company says it doesn’t expect to announce additional cities for a few more months. It also says the service isn’t likely to be available on Android devices until late this year.

The Associated Press

AOL’s Alto service helps organize email

NEW YORK — The Internet icon that bought email to the masses with its classic “You’ve got mail” slogan now wants to help people organize the flood of messages in their Gmail, Yahoo mail and other accounts.

AOL Inc. launched Alto. It’s not a new email service. Rather, Alto works in concert with other email accounts to clean out and organize messages, social network notifications, daily deals, photos and email attachments. The service is available for free by invitation to users in a closed “beta” test.

Users can set up Alto so that mass-emails, such as those from retailers or daily deals sites, skip their inbox entirely and show up only in Alto. Instead of a text-based list that people are used to in email, Alto uses what it calls “stacks.” These take up most of the application’s main page.

You can use Alto’s existing stacks such as “daily deals,” “social notifications,” “retailers” or “photos.” Or, you can create your own stacks — for messages from family members, newsletters you subscribe to or event invitations, for example.

Alto also lets users “snooze” certain emails, which can be useful for bill pay notifications or invites. Alto is not compatible with Microsoft’s email services.

AOL said the goal of Alto is to make email less stressful, harkening back to the days when “You’ve got mail” made people excited. Excited is not the first emotion that comes to mind for most email users today when a message arrives in one of their inboxes.

Barbara Ortutay

AP technology writer