Yahoo has gone open source, in a way. The brain trust behind the second biggest search engine in the world announced the creation of BOSS, a service that will allow perspective search moguls to roll their own search engine. BOSS users will able to perform a wide range of functions, from re-ranking search results to removing all traces of the distinctive Yahoo logo. Yahoo will eventually allow BOSS users to advertise their specialized engines on the Yahoo site. At press time, Yahoo’s web, images, and news engines are available for tinkering, with video search coming soon.

Anyone who has used the Internet in the past ten years should be familiar with the concept of “mirrors” - one website located on several different and independent servers. Doing this with blogs, however, can be the very definition of “headache inducing.” Copying and re-copying the same data on several different platforms is not the easiest thing in the world to do. This is where switchAbit comes in. SwitchAbit takes away the frustration of blog mirroring by automating the entire process. Copying your WordPress blog into your Facebook account is as easy as logging into a website. While the service is still working through a few bugs, the switchAbit team promises that everything will operational in the first stable.

Hot water is for squares, man! Well, not really, but it isn’t a necessity when washing your clothing. According to the lovely people at Seventh Generation, ninety percent of all the energy used in one load of laundry goes to heating up the water. If facts such as that bother you but still aren’t keen on giving your boxer shorts an ice bath, have no fear. They are here to help. All you have to do is take their “cold water” pledge and you get a copy of their book Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe and Healthy, Non-Toxic Cleaning absolutely free. Free reading material telling you how to save both money and the environment… sounds great to me.

Believe it or not, your cell phone can do more that take calls, send text messages, check emails, download music, and surf the web. It can now also record and stream video online. Qik is a handy little service that turns your average looking Windows or Symbian-based cell phone in miniature HandyCam. Just connect using your cell number and within seconds, you will be recording and streaming video for the world to see. The video output will then be available from either the Qik website or from previous Free Line all-star PicLens. A bit of warning though: Qik can eat up its fair share of bandwidth. So unless you subscribe to unlimited data plan, I’d think twice before starting production on the cell phone remake of Gone With the Wind.

To finish up the week, we have Plurk. Now on the surface, Plurk seems to be just another Twitter clone. Look closely, however, and you will see that it is much, much more. Utilizing a horizontal layout and cute graphics, Plurk is perfect someone who enjoys microblogging, but wishes to have a little whimsical fun while doing it. And honestly, everyone needs a little fun in their lives, even those towing the Free Line.