The weekday report for the topics and people that are trending on
Yahoo! and across the Web for Wednesday April 25, 2012.

Research by Search editor Liz Streng

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor budget deficit shall slow the postal carrier, even on Saturdays—not if the Senate has anything to do with it. In another show of reassurance, a White House official promises to scout out the hornery in the Secret Service. And nothing stands in the way of beauty, not even a slightly messy procedure that borrows from an old-fashioned writing implement. What's buzzing, primped for your reading.

STANDOUT SPIKES

• Senate Bill S1789: Also known as the 21st Century Postal Service Act of 2012, the bill wants to save this hoary government institution and an estimated $19 billion by 2016. The Senate voted 62-37 to keep Saturday hours for two years, although postal officials proposed cost-saving measures such as closing all weekend long and shuttering 3,700 offices, most in rural areas.
• Janet Napolitano:

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It's hard to imagine what New York City looked like a century ago. Now you don't have to. Thanks to the work of NYC's Department of Records, relying on movies and history books to see what 'the city so nice they named it twice' was like in the early 1900s is a thing of the past. More than 800,000 images released by the Municipal Archives have been made available for the public to view on the Internet for the first time.

It took four years to digitize all 870,000 of the pictures, which were taken mostly by municipal workers. They depict many aspects of the city -- from cobblestone streets being constructed to baseball legend Babe Ruth in the Polo Grounds stands, notorious mobster Charles "Lucky" Luciano's booking photo, and even crime scenes.

On social media, people are calling the images gritty and real. One person tweeted his plans to view every single photo, joking, "bye bye

iPad

Just why are e-books so expensive, and should they be?

The knee-jerk answer to the second question is of course not. Does it make sense to pay a higher price for a digital title than for its print counterpart, especially after factoring in the cost of an e-book reader? (Tangential aside: Purchasing an e-book reader is believed to be a more environmentally sound choice than buying new books.)

So, while most government action these days draws criticisms of busybody interference, the Department of Justice's price-fixing charges filed April 11 against Apple and "five of the six largest publishers in the United States" brought a sense of satisfaction for anyone who has seethed while downloading a pricier title.

Three publishers—HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, and Simon & Schuster—settled to avoid the expense of a civil trial. But Apple and two others, Macmillan and Penguin USA, are fighting back. The two publishers believe that a monopoly would return to the marketplace. Apple