The search through our “virtual basement” — also known as the wiki — is almost finished. Needless to say, it just gets stranger and stranger from here…

Service #1: Broong

Website: http://www.broong.com/
Wiki Link: http://www.freelinereport.com/wiki/Office_and_Productivity_Software
Service: Social note taking
First Impression: “I am not familiar with the thing that I’m seeing.”
Ease of Use: N/A — Just type in your email address and your set.
Positives: It’s a community bulletin board that just happens to be online. Broong also has one major advantage over said “message boards” of old: each user gets five gigs of storage space for free. It’s hard to go wrong there.
Negatives: It’s a community bulletin board that just happens to be online.
Overall: 7; “It really is a nice service. It just looks a little odd.”

Service #2: Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG)

Website: http://www.gnupg.org/
Wiki Link: http://www.freelinereport.com/wiki/Security%2C_Spyware%2C_and_Viruses
Service: Security
First Impression: “Where did it go? I honestly cannot find it on my system.”
Ease of Use: -4; “What’s going on? What is it doing? Why do I have to type a message?”
Positives: Well … it probably is a really, really powerful privacy protector. Too bad that we could not figure out how to use the darn thing. We may or may not have to compile it ourselves.
Negatives: This is honestly the most difficult, most cryptic program that we have attempted to run in Windows. Case in point: once we finally found the root GnuPG file, it told us to “type a message.” We still have no idea what that means.
Overall: N/A, as we didn’t have a chance to do anything of merit.

Service #3: Websnpr

Website: http://www.websnapr.com/
Wiki Link: http://www.freelinereport.com/wiki/Web_Apps
Service: Online screen capture
First Impression: “Aww … that’s cute. It’s tiny!”
Ease of Use: N/A; All you have to do is type in a web address. The actual service does the rest.
Positives: It’s different.
Negatives: We are still trying to figure out what purpose this application serves. Who out there would exactly want a small little “snapshot” of their favorite website, anyway? Wouldn’t it be more productive to actually, you know, go to the website in question?
Overall: 6; “It’s a well put together program. We just do not see the point.”

Service #4: MixedInk

Website: http://mixedink.com/
Wiki Link: http://www.freelinereport.com/wiki/Social_Media
Service: Collaborative news
First Impression: “What’s with the logo? It looks like the ‘I’ is giving the ‘M’ a back breaker.”
Ease of Use: 8; “Setting up your account is easy. Posting your opinions is even easier.”
Positives: It is incredibly simple to use. It makes the likes of Digg and Reddit look like the Gnu Privacy Guard by comparison.
Negatives: It seems as if most the topics are about politics. While that’s great for political junkies, it’s bound to annoy everyone else within earshot.
Overall: 6

Service #5: Domainr

Website: http://domai.nr/
Wiki Link: http://www.freelinereport.com/wiki/Website_Creation
Service: Domain naming service
First Impression: “There’s a domain search service out there that isn’t ‘WhoIs?’ Neat.”
Ease of Use: 9
Positives: The results given by the service can be very creative at times. A search for the “Free Line Report,” for example, netted us such gems as “freel.in/ereport,” “freeline.re/port,” and “fr.ee/linereport.”
Negatives: …On the other hand, some of the suggestions can be a bit “odd” for daily use.
Overall: 9; “It’s entertaining.”