The founder of Microsoft is stepping down today. That’s right- Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft. According to Gates, he going to use his newly accquired “free time” to peruse his philanthropic interests. Love him or hate him, he completely revolutionized computing with his products. From DOS to Windows and from QuickBasic to Visual Studio, he’ll leave a lasting footprint on almost any computer in the world.

To commemorate the event, we’ve got a few links celebrating the big man’s leave of absence. Here’s a video from Wired, mashing up his greatest hits. And to show he has a sense of humor, here’s a video spoof starring the man himself, making fun of his last day in Microsoft.

Now that Bill Gates has officially “left the building,” who will step in to take his place? And in what direction will he or she steer Microsoft? ZDNet does some quick speculation, and tells us that two people will replace Bill Gates- Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundy. As of yet it is uncertain as to the future of Microsoft, but lets hope things get better with time.

Of course, one of the biggest thorn’s in Microsoft’s side the last few years has been the free Operating System, Linux. Ubuntu has been making great strides, taking a once archiac and unfriendly architecture and making it sing. There is even a video comparing Vista and Linux, with the special effects of both taking center stage.

Just because Bill Gates is going away doesn’t mean that Microsoft will stop being a player in the tech sector. We’ve talked about Powerset off and on here at the Freeline. It’s the next big thing in search engines, allowing for an almost natural language search. Some people are even speculating that it might topple Google, once it works out all the kinks. It looks like Microsoft has been paying attention to all the buzz as well – Redmond has officially bought up Powerset. Many analysts predict that Microsoft will use the new technology to compete against Google. The deal should be completed by the end of the year.

Well, that’s it for today. So long Bill Gates, and good luck in the future!

Last week we told you about LibraryThing, the social web site that allows you to catalog your books online and discuss them, all for free. LibraryThing’s biggest competition, Shelfari, has just received a new make over that they hope will keep users coming back. Some of the latest features include a more powerful search engine and “My Shelfari,” a tool that keeps track of everything from your personal information to your friends. One of the biggest changes is the new Authors Unbound section, where fans can edit information on their favorite authors, wiki-style. If you’re a fan of literature, then Shelfari is definitely the place for you.

Sometimes in business, it’s imperative to know where your company’s website stands against the competition. Sure ,you might think you’re pretty popular the world over, but perception and reality are often two different things. Thankfully, Google has you covered with Google Trends new site comparison feature. When we compared LibraryThing and Shelfari, for example, we found that while LibraryThing is more popular in the US, Shelfari holds the edge in India. Both easy to follow and powerful to use, Google Trends will have you comparing your sites with each other in no time flat.

Nowadays, statistics are getting harder and harder to verify. Take Avril Lavigne’s video for her song “Girlfriend” on YouTube, for example. On the surface, it seems as if video has 90,388,110 views. Look a little closer, however, and things get a bit more “sinister.” The number isn’t real. A bunch of net savvy fans are using a web bot to go and view the page once every five minutes, racking up the hits without YouTube even noticing. Their ultimate goal was to make Avril the number one most viewed video on YouTube. The kicker? They succeeded. As of this writing, “Girlfriend” by Avril Lagvine is the most viewed video on YouTube.

The best places to get new and interesting sites that haven’t been gamed for popularity are new web engines that are still in beta. One of the best new start ups for link discovery that we’ve seen in awhile is called Socialbrowse. This site lets you share links in a Twitter fashion, and lets you follow what other people are linking. This is definitely one to watch out for.

On a sad note, we’d like to talk about the recent death of George Carlin. The man was a funny man and a brilliant thinker. In tribute to Mr. Carlin, we here at the Freeline would like to present the “Seven Words and/or Phrases You Can’t Say in a Marketing Email:”

1. Penis
2. “Free insurance”
3. “Click here!”
4. Enhancement
5. “Deposed dictator”
6. “Apply today!”
7. “Canadian pharmaceuticals”

For more on George Carlin, his life, and his work, check out YouTube.

Quick quiz: which insanely popular social networking browser is on top right now? Well, that is all depends on who you are asking. At the end of May, it’s Facebook. The scrappy little fighter in the blue and white trunks has officially surpassed MySpace in the number of unique visitors worldwide – 123.9 million to MySpace’s 114.6 million. Facebook detractors, however, are quick to point out that while they are in the lead worldwide, MySpace still has the edge in the United States. Roughly 73.7 million Americans visited MySpace last May, compared to the 35.6 million that stopped by Facebook. The US is still considered to be the number one advertising market. So who is on top right now? We’re not really sure, but it will definitely be interesting to find out.

So what could possibly be better than being number one in the world? Changing the Internet, of course. According to the people at Take Back the Web, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is one of the Top 15 people who changed the Internet. Zuckerberg placed number three, ahead of such luminaries as Shawn Fanning (Napster), Kevin Rose (Digg), and Bram Cohen (BitTorrent). Two notable absentees are Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, the creators of MySpace.

Controversial site stats and an oddball snubbing aside, there is plenty for the MySpace faithful to get excited about, like the movie. Yes, that’s right. Many MySpacers are in the midst of making their own movie. Called Faintheart, the movie is a comedy taking place in a battle reneactment club. The director, actors and much of the music were chosen via MySpace, all pulled directly from the producer’s Friend List.

Moving “off line” for a moment, we’ve got news that Google Docs has Gears support. This means you don’t have to be connected to the internet to get all the functionality of Google Docs. This puts it in direct competition with Adobe’s Buzz Word Processor, which has the same technology, as well as all the other offline Word Processors (Word, AbiWord) and Office suites (Office, OpenOffice) that clog our desktops.

And of course, if you want to take that web 2.0 feel offline, no one is currently doing it better than Adobe. The multimedia giant’s development platform Adobe Air is currently taking the Flash Development community by storm, and it’s time for the end user to reap the benefits. Productivity blog Lifehacker has a list of ten Air-based applications that are definitely worth looking at. Give it a shot. You’ll be glad that you did.

It won’t be long before the more popular web browsers out there start supporting web 2.0. Sure, there are few “minor” browsers out there to fill the “social networking void” (like Flock, for example), but nothing to really write home about yet. So until the day comes when all web browsers support things like microformats and social web browsing, we have a few killer plugins for Firefox that can turn your favorite web browser into a web 2.0 natural.

ScibeFire – This little beauty allows you to update your blog without ever leaving Firefox. The set up is simple and very easy to use, and you can even post to multiple blogs at the same time.

Shareaholic – A social bookmarking dream. It lets you send any website you are on to digg, del.icio.us, facebook, Friendfeed, Google Bookmarks, Magnolia Mixx, Reddit, Simpy, Stumbleupon, Truemors, Tumblr, Twitter and Bzzster, and it lets you chose each one or have them post it all at once.

TwitterBar – Share webpages on Twitter. It even goes so far as adding a little “Currently Browsing” text in front of the URL you send. That way, people can know not only what you are doing, but where you are looking as well.

OutFoxed – This smart little application takes everything you love about social networking and applies it to the web at large. Searches, for example, can be reordered, putting the sites most popular with your friends first in the listing. Individual sites can also be given a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” rating, warning friends of potential hazards. Keep your eyes peeled for Lejit, the OutFoxed follow-up that is still in closed beta testing.

Sometimes, it’s not easy being free. QTrax, the legal free download program for big label music, launched last week to a slew of problems. First and foremost, their music library is very small. Really, really small. Things are definitely getting better, but their library is nowhere near “iTunes” levels as of yet. Once – or rather, if – you find the song that you want, there’s a good possibility that you won’t be able to actually listen to it. Devices supporting the Windows PlaysForSure label do not support the QTrax files, despite the company claiming otherwise. A free, legal, and robust way to share and load files is coming sooner or later. As Axl Rose once said, “all we need is just a little patience.”

Going from one unpredictable rocker to another, Kid Rock is at it again. The music superstar is currently boycotting iTunes, claiming that most of the money made from album sales go to the record companies and Apple. The artist, in turn, ends up with little or nothing. “The Internet was an opportunity for everyone to be treated fairly,” Rock said in a recent interview with the BBC. “[The record companies] stuck to the ‘old system’.” So in true “rock and roll” fashion, the so-called “American Badass” is telling his fans to “steal” his albums… along with everything else of value. “I don’t mind people stealing my music [from the Internet], that’s fine. But I think they should steal everything. You know how much money the oil companies have? If you need some gas, just go fill your tank off [sic] and drive off, they’re not going to miss it.” The record industry, Apple, the oil companies, and everyone else who sells a product or service have declined to comment on the issue. If Kid Rock had watched the Free Line, he could have had the idea to release his albums for free, like Trent Reznor and Radiohead.

In other media news, the ten minute time limit placed upon all YouTube videos will become a thing of the past for some. Instead of dealing with the pesky time limit, special “partners” of Google – mainly independent filmmakers – will now have the opportunity to work with a “weight limit” of one gigabyte. By removing the time constraints, these filmmakers will now have the ability to present their work in one piece. Since these videos can support ads, both Google and their newfound partners can make some nice money from the venture. Will this support ever reach the normal YouTube users? Probably not, but it’s nice to see a company like Google lend a hand to the people who truly need it.

If YouTube and Twitter had a baby, what would it look like? We think that it would a lot like Seesmic. Seesmic is attempting to add something new in to the “microblogging” game: video. Twitter with real time video output… definitely an intriguing idea. The private beta is one of the hardest to get into right now, but if you can find an invite you’re in for a treat – or rather, “tweet.”

So maybe new fangled technology like Twitter and YouTube aren’t “your thing.” Maybe you prefer a more boring traditional medium to convey your ideas, like a slide show. It was good enough for former Vice President Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. The fine folks at Wired How-To have a great article up detailing how the controversial slide show was made, and eight steps you can take to make your own highly slept through talked about masterpiece. So go on… unleash your inner “Al Gore.” You won’t be sorry.

Twit(url)y is a new website that scans Twitter and looks for the links people are talking about the most. It then assembles them onto its home page – making this into a really great news source. It’s got the same community appeal as Digg, but without the need to actually go out and vote on something. Instead, just Twittering about a subject and including the URL is considered a vote, and the more links, the more it rises. Kind of like how Google uses PageRank in its algorithm.

If you want the same kind of thing, but only for tech news, you can head on over to Twitlinks and get an aggregated set of links built for the latest news in technology. The web design is sparse, but powerful, giving you up to date news, the minute it is twittered.

Then there’s SmashingFeeds, a site that mashes up content from Twitter and tons of other places that offer an RSS feed. It’s free, and it doesn’t even require a login to start using the features. You just point, click, and view, wandering around and soaking in all that web 2.0 news.

Next, if you are a book lover and want the same power of Digg or Delicious for your personal library, check out the social site called LibraryThing. It helps you catalogue almost all of your books for free, and you can carry on conversations with people who have the same books. If you have a lot of books, you can even buy a scanner and have your book automatically picked up via the ISBN number.

And finally, in other social bookmarking news, Reddit the popular bookmarking site, is opening up their source code, allowing anyone in the community to make changes and fix bugs. What does this mean for the normal Reddit user? More popularity and more tools and widgets for using Reddit online. When Netscape opened its code, it gave birth to the Mozilla foundation and then to FireFox. Let’s hope the same great advances happen here.

At the Free Line, we love product launches, because it’s a great way to get free stuff. Plus, if you’re an internet marketer, there’s nothing like selling a few million dollars in an hour to keep the lights on in your business. At StomperNet we’ve done that a few times now and it’s fun. Plus, it lets us pay for the best faculty of world class internet marketing experts ever assembled. And yesterday, StomperNet CEO, Andy Jenkins released a new free video — all about using video to sell more online. It’s 45 minutes long and you won’t want to miss it. It’s a behind the scenes Director’s commentary on one of the most successful videos StomperNet ever produced. And of course, it’s free.

Speaking of product launches and free stuff, the the smoke has now cleared and Mozilla’s Firefox 3 Download Day has been a roaring success. Within the first hour of the launch the numbers zoomed past 1 million downloads. Which is amazing, considering the fact that the servers kept going up and down, making it hard for most people to participate. If you were a part of download day – congratulations! You’ve been a part of history.

A majority of plugins don’t work with the new version of the browser, so before you get frustrated, check out this link that lists up to date plugin compatibility for FireFox 3. If your favorite plugin or theme isn’t listed, don’t worry. We’ve also got a tutorial that shows you how to get past that pesky problem with only a few clicks of the mouse and get any of your old plugins working fine.

Now that you’ve got your bright and shiny new version of FireFox, you might wander what new power is under the hood that you’re not taking advantage of yet. We’ve got a link that can show you some little known features that can really make things shine. My favorite? Being able to use Gmail as the default email program in FireFox without using a plugin. Sweet.

And to celebrate the occasion of FireFox Version 3, the folks at Microsoft sent them a cake. A big cake with a giant blue E, the trademark symbol of Internet Explorer. The IE team did the same thing for the release of FireFox 2, so it looks like this might become a tradition of sorts between the two rival companies. So far, we have no idea how good the cake tastes, or whether it was vanilla or chocolate. But it sure looked delicious.

Speaking of Internet Explorer, we’re starting to get some information about Internet Explorer 8, the new version that’s on the horizon. Due to complaints across the web, IE 8 will be 100% standards compliant, right out of the box. What does this mean? It means a lot of websites need to stop slacking and get things up and running using proper web code, or else it might not work in Internet Explorer. What’s so important about being Standards Complient? Until now, people had to write special code just to get a website to look the same in Internet Explorer as it did in FireFox and Opera. Once IE8 goes live, new websites will be easier to create an mantain.

QuillPill. It’s in beta right now, but any would be J.K. Rowlings should take note and get ready to write their next masterpiece on their iPhones.

TuneWiki is a hot application for iPhone fans who like to sing along to their favorite songs. It displays the lyrics across the front of your iPhone as it plays, letting you croon along like the next American Idol star that you know that you are. If you want an audience while you do it, the new version of TuneWiki now takes advantage of iPhone’s GPS system, telling you when other TuneWiki users are close by and ready for an impromptu concert.

And if you’ve got an iPhone, you’ll love our next news announcement. Looks like Google is working hard on speeding up their mobile search. They plan on using some caching technology to get this done, boosting speeds on almost every single mobile web browser available. Looks like Google is set to conquer the mobile search market too.

Next up is a Google Gears Powered MySpace Messaging engine that is super fast, and allows you to do many thing you can’t do with MySpace in your web browser. Until now, you couldn’t easily search or sort through your messages, making it hard to go back to old messages from a lost friend. But with the Gears Powered MySpace Messaging, you can now bring up messages by date and identity. And if you have a large friends list like me, you will notice a huge speed increase.

And if you’re a fan of MySpace, or any other social network for that matter, you might want to keep all of your messages in one spot, including your email. Well, you have your chance with Orgoo. You can combine your gmail, livemail or hotmail account with just about any social network, giving you one online identity.

Well, this Sunday is Father’s Day, so we’re going to show you how to honor it, Free Line Style.First, nothing brings a smile to a dad’s face like pictures of his kids. This father’s day, Shutterfly, a website dedicated to putting photos on just about anything, has a special offer for dads. Get 10 photo book pages for free – giving your dad a nice and glossy, high quality book of memories.

Or even better, why not take him on a trip instead? You can use TravelMuses’s new Inspiration Finder for ideas. Completely free, the Inspiration Finder can give you ideas for great trips that you never even heard of before. You can even plan you travel and book the whole trip without leaving the website. While the Inspiration Finder is completely free, the actual trip costs are up to you.

And what if your family is scattered across the country, like many are these days? You can always use PalTalk Express to talk to your dad and get your brothers and sisters together online. It’s got free video chat, right in your web browser. No downloading required to connect you and your family one more time. Or just give your dad a Mac and use iChat.

And off course, who doesn’t want their own webpage? You can build one for dear old dad completely for free using the Weebly website. You don’t even have to know how to make a web page to do it, since that’s where Weebly comes in. And it now supports Ad-sense in their custom websites, so you can get your dad some cash to boot.

And even though you can’t get him an iPhone 2.0 in time for Father’s day, make sure he grabs a copy of Apple’s new Mobile Me. It will help keep his Computer, laptop and iPhone all in sync. Calendars, address book, and email, all connected. It works natively with both Mac and PC’s, using the software that he’s already got installed plus there’s a 60 day free trial.

这个星期天就是父亲节了，所以今天我们来看看如何庆祝它，免费帮的方式。首先，没有任何东西比孩子的微笑更能带给父亲微笑了。·Shutterfly这个可以使你把照片放在任何东西上面的网站在这个父亲节有特殊的折扣，·10页免费的相册。它能给你父亲一个高质量、漂亮的回忆。

另外你不妨可以带他出去转转。·你可以用TravelMuses的找灵感功能计划一下，它完全免费，并且能为你安排一次你前所未闻的绝妙旅程。更好的是你甚至可以仅在这个网站上就把所有的票全部搞定。虽然这个网站是免费的，但是买票和定旅店的时候还是要些银子的。·

也许你的家庭是像现在很多人一样分布在全国各地的，你可以通过使用·PalTalk Express和父亲聊天或是把弟弟妹妹们聚集起来。它支持在浏览器里的免费视频聊天·。现在你再也不用担心老爸老妈不知道QQ是何物了，能用IE就能视频是我们一贯的宗旨。

另外，谁不想拥有自己的网站呢？· 你现在可以为我们电脑白痴的老爸们免费的建立一个网站了。如果你也是个电脑白痴那就更好了，Weebly就是为这些人设计的。另外它还支持Google的Ad－sense，·所以这样还可以给老爸赚些外快。

尽管你不能在父亲节及时的送给老爸一台iPhone 2.0，你还可以送它一套苹果最新的Mobile Me。·它会自动同步老爸的台式、笔记本和iPhone里的日程、电话本和email·。它同时完美支持Mac和PC，你可以试用60天而且不需要其它特殊的软件。

今天差不多了。如果你和我一样也是爸爸的话，祝你父亲节快乐。