This weekend was SoCon08 in Atlanta, the second annual Social Media Conference in the ATL. It was very cool, and hundreds of people showed up. One takeaway, Crowdvine is a free app that lets you host your own online community.

So we started one for the Free Line at freeline.crowdvine.com. Join up and see how it works. Plus, it’s a good thing to consider for any of your own internet marketing projects. It only takes a minute to create your own social networking site, and Crowdvine has some cool features — like a faceted tag cloud in the right-hand column that lets you get a feel for all the members at a glance, and the ability to display your own blog feed so other members can see what you’re writing about. Check it out, and be sure to add me as a friend – you can never have too many friends.

Well, Yahoo has officially rejected Microsoft’s bid and is looking for alternatives to keep itself independent, including some sort of partnership with Google. The board thinks Microsoft’s bid is too low. No word on what the shareholders think – those are the ones who were holding the stock at $20 when Microsoft offered $31 a share. Anyway, it shouldn’t matter too much what the board thinks – this IS a hostile takeover. Some sort of poison pill is still a possibility, but this deal is far from dead, and Microsoft is already talking to some of the big shareholders directly. Stay tuned . . . .

Google News now offers local news. Go to news.google.com and enter a zip code or the name of a city. Google then looks for any mention of news for that town. The end results give you multiple sources on every story, giving you a clearer view of the local news.

The web-based Iminta launches into public beta this week. It’s a self-funded project by ex-CNET Product Manager, Aaron Newton. The site allows you to track all of your social networks in one spot and get an RSS feed listing everything you and your friends are up to in one, easy-to read-place. And you can customize the data; for example, if you’ve got a couple friends who Twitter too much, you can sei it to ignore their twitter feeds. The beta launches tomorrow, so request an invitation today. There are other services like this, too, and TechCrunch lists them all.

When you want something more graphical and fun than a Facebook game can offer, here’s Neverball, a free 3D marble madness style game that might keep you playing for hours on end. So there’s your warning.

Now, if you want to be MORE productive and keep current on Web 2.0 in LESS time, join the Free Line community at freeline.crowdvine.com. And subscribe to our email list at freelinereport.com.