http://feeds.feedburner.com/freelinereport/Pod http://www.freelinereport.com Brad Fallon's Web 2.0 and Internet Marketing 2-minute daily video podcast. Feeder 1.4.10(348) http://reinventedsoftware.com/feeder/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss en Brad Fallon 2008 brad@freeiq.com brad@freeiq.com Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:03:07 -0500 Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:03:07 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freelinecover1144.jpg http://www.freelinereport.com 144 144 Free Line Report - Brad Fallon Brad Fallon Brad Fallon's Internet Marketing and Web 2.0 Video News in 2.0 Minutes - The Free Line Report Daily 2-minute video podcast by Brad Fallon, CEO of Free IQ, a free video site for valuable videos and more. The Free Line Report highlights the latest free resources and information about Web 2.0, Internet Marketing and eBusiness. Internet Marketing, seo, sem, Web 2.0, video podcast, video blog, blogging, social media, youtube, Free IQ, online marketing no Brad Fallon brad@freeiq.com no http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-9-9-08/ Overlay.tv is a new start-up that lets you grab any web video and start adding content on top of it. You can make any videos interactive, display ads, and include hyperlinks to other websites. Overlay.tv is easy to set up and free to use. And while you’re at it, check out their retro YouTube infomercial. It’s both funny and informative.If you’re one of the many people who feel that YouTube’s web design is pretty lacking in many areas, you might like the new web site, BufferMe. Using YouTube’s API, BufferMe brings a faster, more intuitive user experience to YouTube. BufferMe is currently in closed beta, but that is expected to change very soon. And not a day goes by anymore without more news about Google Chrome. According to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Chrome will indeed be available on Android, Google’s forthcoming mobile phone platform. Despite popular opinion to the contray, Chrome and Android were developed by separate teams. If you were impressed with the new online slideshow program 280 Slides and wondered how they built it, you’re in luck. They’ve released their own programming language environment called Cappuccino. Based on Apple’s Objective-C, Cappucino is a powerful, yet still completely free, programming environment. Many of you know about Yahoo BOSS, the programming toolkit that allows you to create new search engines using Yahoo. Actually doing this, however, requires knowledge of several different programming language and tools. That’s all about to change, thanks to the Yahoo-sponsored BuildASearch.com. BuildASearch is designed to help those new to programming overcome the steep learning curve associated with Yahoo BOSS. Now all it takes is a little patience and just a few clicks of the mouse. With BuildASearch, you will be searching the Internet your way in no time flat. Tue, 9 Sep 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-9-9-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-9-9-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Overlay.tv is a new start-up that lets you grab any web video and start adding content on top of it. You can make any videos interactive, display ads, and include hyperlinks to other websites. Overlay.tv is easy to set up and free to use. And while you’re at it, check out their retro YouTube infomercial. It’s both funny and informative.If you’re one of the many people who feel that YouTube’s web design is pretty lacking in many areas, you might like the new web site, BufferMe. Using YouTube’s API, BufferMe brings a faster, more intuitive user experience to YouTube. BufferMe is currently in closed beta, but that is expected to change very soon. And not a day goes by anymore without more news about Google Chrome. According to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Chrome will indeed be available on Android, Google’s forthcoming mobile phone platform. Despite popular opinion to the contray, Chrome and Android were developed by separate teams. If you were impressed with the new online slideshow program 280 Slides and wondered how they built it, you’re in luck. They’ve released their own programming language environment called Cappuccino. Based on Apple’s Objective-C, Cappucino is a powerful, yet still completely free, programming environment. Many of you know about Yahoo BOSS, the programming toolkit that allows you to create new search engines using Yahoo. Actually doing this, however, requires knowledge of several different programming language and tools. That’s all about to change, thanks to the Yahoo-sponsored BuildASearch.com. BuildASearch is designed to help those new to programming overcome the steep learning curve associated with Yahoo BOSS. Now all it takes is a little patience and just a few clicks of the mouse. With BuildASearch, you will be searching the Internet your way in no time flat. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-9-8-08/ The browser wars are heating up again, and things are starting to get really interesting. Everyone who has tried Google Chrome mentions right away how fast the new web browser is. Firefox didn’t take these statements lying down, however. The perennial number two browser in the world have released an official report that claims the private beta version of Firefox 3.1 is faster than Chrome. Google has no comment on the matter at this time. One of the web sites getting a boost from faster browsers is Picasa. The new release contains several new tweaks and upgrades, but the most arguably most interesting of the lot is its experimentation face recognition technology. While the technology needs some work (lighting issues, profile shots, and other ambient conditions), the overall concept is commendable and intriguing. In Linux news, we here at the Free Line would like to wish a very happy birthday to GNU. First started by programmer Richard Stallman in 1983 as derivative of the UNIX operating system, GNU has went on to become the symbol of free software worldwide. GNU is perhaps best known for the GNU Public License, a legal document that describes in detail what free software is and how that software can be used. Several Free Line all-stars are covered under the GPL, including OpenOffice.org, VideoLAN player, and Scribus. In celebration of this landmark occasion, Steven Fry talks for a bit on YouTube about GNU, free software, and the open source market it created. For those unaware, Stephen Fry is a British actor/comedian best remembered for his comedy duo with House star Hugh Laurie. Fry is also an admitted technophile, claiming to own several smartphones and the second Mac ever sold in the UK. If you’re a fan of Google Talk, then you need to check out these five bots that can make your life easier. You can get IMFeeds, FriendFeeds and even translations sent directly to your instant messaging software, all completely free. Mon, 8 Sep 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-9-8-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-9-8-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes The browser wars are heating up again, and things are starting to get really interesting. Everyone who has tried Google Chrome mentions right away how fast the new web browser is. Firefox didn’t take these statements lying down, however. The perennial number two browser in the world have released an official report that claims the private beta version of Firefox 3.1 is faster than Chrome. Google has no comment on the matter at this time. One of the web sites getting a boost from faster browsers is Picasa. The new release contains several new tweaks and upgrades, but the most arguably most interesting of the lot is its experimentation face recognition technology. While the technology needs some work (lighting issues, profile shots, and other ambient conditions), the overall concept is commendable and intriguing. In Linux news, we here at the Free Line would like to wish a very happy birthday to GNU. First started by programmer Richard Stallman in 1983 as derivative of the UNIX operating system, GNU has went on to become the symbol of free software worldwide. GNU is perhaps best known for the GNU Public License, a legal document that describes in detail what free software is and how that software can be used. Several Free Line all-stars are covered under the GPL, including OpenOffice.org, VideoLAN player, and Scribus. In celebration of this landmark occasion, Steven Fry talks for a bit on YouTube about GNU, free software, and the open source market it created. For those unaware, Stephen Fry is a British actor/comedian best remembered for his comedy duo with House star Hugh Laurie. Fry is also an admitted technophile, claiming to own several smartphones and the second Mac ever sold in the UK. If you’re a fan of Google Talk, then you need to check out these five bots that can make your life easier. You can get IMFeeds, FriendFeeds and even translations sent directly to your instant messaging software, all completely free. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-29-08/ Sorkin, the writer behind the film A Few Good Men and the television series The West Wing, has been tapped to pen a feature on Facebook. To help him in his research, Sorkin, an admitted social networking first-timer, has set up a Facebook Group dedicated to the potential film. Facebook, which at the present time is not involved with the production of the film, has yet to comment. On Wednesday’s edition of the Free Line we told you about Google Suggest, the new service that suggests keywords to users. Blogger Linda Buquet has written a fascinating article discussing the effects the new service might have with SEO concept known as the long tail of search. For those unaware, the long tail of search is based upon the idea that a search field gets smaller and more specialized when more words are added to the search. According to Buquet, Google Suggest is, at least for the time being, a great way to scout out the popularity of a search phrase. Phrases that have less overall results but at the same time is higher on the Suggest list might be more beneficial to your business than a phrase with more results, but lower on the list. In other news, there’s QuarkBase. Simply put, QuarkBase tells you everything about your website, from the site’s search ranking to what kind of blogging software is used. QuarkBase also breaks down the social items related to your site, including pages posted to Digg, Delicious bookmarks, and comments from StumbleUpon. Your site’s traffic is also broken down, by both page views and by country. Wetpaint is a tool designed to aide you in the creation of your own social network. The idea behind Wetpaint is to make building a networking site as easy as putting together a traditional website. Members have access to a wide array of tools, from blogging software to forums. Simple to use and ridiculously simple to maintain, Wetpaint is a free and easy way to get your site onto the networking bandwagon. JamLegend is the latest in a long line of games to take on powerhouse guitar simulation games Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Unlike those games, however, JamLegend requires no special peripherals or video game systems. All you need is a keyboard — computer, not musical — and an Internet connection. The actual game is completely free. At press time, JamLegend only features three bands and twenty songs, but that number should be increasing shortly. Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-29-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-29-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Sorkin, the writer behind the film A Few Good Men and the television series The West Wing, has been tapped to pen a feature on Facebook. To help him in his research, Sorkin, an admitted social networking first-timer, has set up a Facebook Group dedicated to the potential film. Facebook, which at the present time is not involved with the production of the film, has yet to comment. On Wednesday’s edition of the Free Line we told you about Google Suggest, the new service that suggests keywords to users. Blogger Linda Buquet has written a fascinating article discussing the effects the new service might have with SEO concept known as the long tail of search. For those unaware, the long tail of search is based upon the idea that a search field gets smaller and more specialized when more words are added to the search. According to Buquet, Google Suggest is, at least for the time being, a great way to scout out the popularity of a search phrase. Phrases that have less overall results but at the same time is higher on the Suggest list might be more beneficial to your business than a phrase with more results, but lower on the list. In other news, there’s QuarkBase. Simply put, QuarkBase tells you everything about your website, from the site’s search ranking to what kind of blogging software is used. QuarkBase also breaks down the social items related to your site, including pages posted to Digg, Delicious bookmarks, and comments from StumbleUpon. Your site’s traffic is also broken down, by both page views and by country. Wetpaint is a tool designed to aide you in the creation of your own social network. The idea behind Wetpaint is to make building a networking site as easy as putting together a traditional website. Members have access to a wide array of tools, from blogging software to forums. Simple to use and ridiculously simple to maintain, Wetpaint is a free and easy way to get your site onto the networking bandwagon. JamLegend is the latest in a long line of games to take on powerhouse guitar simulation games Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Unlike those games, however, JamLegend requires no special peripherals or video game systems. All you need is a keyboard — computer, not musical — and an Internet connection. The actual game is completely free. At press time, JamLegend only features three bands and twenty songs, but that number should be increasing shortly. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-28-08/ Microsoft has been named the top display advertiser on the web in the month of June. Redmond produced roughly 5.5 billion display ads, which were seen by 126.3 million people, beating out such notables as Netflix and the University of Phoenix. Many analysts are under the impression that Microsoft’s 1.7% market share — up .7% from May — is due to their aggressive advertising of Windows Live Search and the introduction of its Windows Live Search Cashback program.Microsoft might be on top when it comes to purchasing ads, but it finishes in fourth when it comes to actually displaying them. That award goes to Fox Media, the parent company of MySpace. Fox Media ran 52.3 billion ads in June, giving them a surprising 15.9% share of the market. Yahoo comes in second with 34.6 billion ads and a 10.5% share. Other companies listed include AOL, Google, and Facebook. While Yahoo is far behind Fox Media in terms of the amount of ads, it outdoes Fox Media in the overall amount of viewers. Yahoo ads were seen by 150 million unique users in June, while Fox’s ads were only seen by 83.7 million unique viewers.Google is finally bringing its Google Ad Manager tool to the masses. Ad Manager, which disseminates, tracks, and manages both first and third party advertising, has been in closed beta status since March. Google is seen by some as the chief competitor to OpenX, an open source software system that performs largely the same tasks. It is also believed that Google has the early advantage over OpenX, largely due to Ad Manager’s ease of set up and ties to the already powerful AdWords. Chris Brogan has written an interesting piece on using Twitter to help expand your business leads. In “How to Listen for Opportunities on Twitter,” Brogan states that the most powerful tool you have is the Twitter search engine. By using that engine, along with the option to make specific users RSS feeds, you can easily track those who might be interested in your product or service. Extremely easy to execute, this article is a great source for anyone who wishes to get a bit more out of Twitter. If you’re a business owner, and you’re looking into advertising on mobile phones, take a look at JumpTap. JumpTap is a search engine directly designed for use on mobile phones. To top it all off, JumpTap claims to have an advertising front end that could potentially give Google AdWords a run for its money. Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-28-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-28-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Microsoft has been named the top display advertiser on the web in the month of June. Redmond produced roughly 5.5 billion display ads, which were seen by 126.3 million people, beating out such notables as Netflix and the University of Phoenix. Many analysts are under the impression that Microsoft’s 1.7% market share — up .7% from May — is due to their aggressive advertising of Windows Live Search and the introduction of its Windows Live Search Cashback program.Microsoft might be on top when it comes to purchasing ads, but it finishes in fourth when it comes to actually displaying them. That award goes to Fox Media, the parent company of MySpace. Fox Media ran 52.3 billion ads in June, giving them a surprising 15.9% share of the market. Yahoo comes in second with 34.6 billion ads and a 10.5% share. Other companies listed include AOL, Google, and Facebook. While Yahoo is far behind Fox Media in terms of the amount of ads, it outdoes Fox Media in the overall amount of viewers. Yahoo ads were seen by 150 million unique users in June, while Fox’s ads were only seen by 83.7 million unique viewers.Google is finally bringing its Google Ad Manager tool to the masses. Ad Manager, which disseminates, tracks, and manages both first and third party advertising, has been in closed beta status since March. Google is seen by some as the chief competitor to OpenX, an open source software system that performs largely the same tasks. It is also believed that Google has the early advantage over OpenX, largely due to Ad Manager’s ease of set up and ties to the already powerful AdWords. Chris Brogan has written an interesting piece on using Twitter to help expand your business leads. In “How to Listen for Opportunities on Twitter,” Brogan states that the most powerful tool you have is the Twitter search engine. By using that engine, along with the option to make specific users RSS feeds, you can easily track those who might be interested in your product or service. Extremely easy to execute, this article is a great source for anyone who wishes to get a bit more out of Twitter. If you’re a business owner, and you’re looking into advertising on mobile phones, take a look at JumpTap. JumpTap is a search engine directly designed for use on mobile phones. To top it all off, JumpTap claims to have an advertising front end that could potentially give Google AdWords a run for its money. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-25-08/ C-SPAN, the cable television station dedicated to the goings on in government, is looking to liven up their rather stodgy image. The network is now using a variety of modern tools and services to cover both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, including YouTube, Twitter, and former Free Line favorite Qik. Third party blog posts from the likes of Arianna Huffington and RedState.com will also be available on the C-SPAN site. The new C-SPAN Convention Hub site is up and running now. The rivalry between MySpace and Facebook continues. While Facebook is the biggest social networking site in the world, MySpace has more users in America. Many within the industry believe that MySpace’s dominance in the American market is largely due to its ability to disseminate music. MySpace uses a homegrown method in order to bring music to the masses, while Facebook relies on iLike. ILike, in turn, relies on Rhapsody for its streaming content. By choosing to work in house instead of with another company, MySpace is able to give both musicians and fans alike more control over their music. Until this situation changes, some analysts say, MySpace will continue to be the number on social network in the United States. Thanks to Iterasi, bookmarks everywhere are about to get a serious upgrade. Members of the Iterasi service are not only able to bookmark the physical location of a webpage, but the contents as well. You can then share your webpage snapshots with anyone you please. In the world of writing, a good proofreader is a must. The same goes for web design. If your website launches with faulty or badly written code, it could spell short-term doom for your business. For those of who you don’t have an HTML proofreader on hand, there’s OnlineWebCheck. OnlineWebCheck scans your code for flaws, errors, and other problems. Our friends at WebProNews have a great article up discussing the importance of having a good corporate narrative. For those unaware, a corporate narrative is the underlying back story and message that your company is based upon. Writer Jason Lee Miller suggests that your narrative should shy away from the “agenda” of your company and instead focus on the honest, true-to-life principles it was founded upon. Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-25-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-25-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes C-SPAN, the cable television station dedicated to the goings on in government, is looking to liven up their rather stodgy image. The network is now using a variety of modern tools and services to cover both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, including YouTube, Twitter, and former Free Line favorite Qik. Third party blog posts from the likes of Arianna Huffington and RedState.com will also be available on the C-SPAN site. The new C-SPAN Convention Hub site is up and running now. The rivalry between MySpace and Facebook continues. While Facebook is the biggest social networking site in the world, MySpace has more users in America. Many within the industry believe that MySpace’s dominance in the American market is largely due to its ability to disseminate music. MySpace uses a homegrown method in order to bring music to the masses, while Facebook relies on iLike. ILike, in turn, relies on Rhapsody for its streaming content. By choosing to work in house instead of with another company, MySpace is able to give both musicians and fans alike more control over their music. Until this situation changes, some analysts say, MySpace will continue to be the number on social network in the United States. Thanks to Iterasi, bookmarks everywhere are about to get a serious upgrade. Members of the Iterasi service are not only able to bookmark the physical location of a webpage, but the contents as well. You can then share your webpage snapshots with anyone you please. In the world of writing, a good proofreader is a must. The same goes for web design. If your website launches with faulty or badly written code, it could spell short-term doom for your business. For those of who you don’t have an HTML proofreader on hand, there’s OnlineWebCheck. OnlineWebCheck scans your code for flaws, errors, and other problems. Our friends at WebProNews have a great article up discussing the importance of having a good corporate narrative. For those unaware, a corporate narrative is the underlying back story and message that your company is based upon. Writer Jason Lee Miller suggests that your narrative should shy away from the “agenda” of your company and instead focus on the honest, true-to-life principles it was founded upon. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-19-08/ Sometimes it seems like SEO tools are a dime a dozen these days. It’s hard to know which ones are worthwhile until you’ve tried them all. Traffic Travis is one of the better tools we’ve seen. It features everything from a keyword finder to a page analyzer, and it has an easy-to-use interface to boot. And unlike a lot of SEO software that’s of this caliber, Traffic Travis is free.Next, tag clouds are great for a lot of reasons, and there’s a lot of ways you can use one. Wordle is a free online tool that lets you create a tag or word cloud out of any text you throw at it. The cloud then displays all the words from the text based on how frequently that word appears. Plus, you can easily display the words in different fonts and formats. StomperNet faculty member David Bullock is always thinking about sophisticated ways you can get more out of your ongoing keyword research. In “A New Definition for Keywords,” he suggests that you should be looking at the “conversations” of search phrases rather than just current search volume. According to Dave, a conversation is the history that a keyword has with a particular subject. For more on this intriguing idea, check his website at davidbullock.com. Finally, as faithful viewers of the Free Line know, a good showing on search engines such as Google and Yahoo can do wonders for your business. As important as search engines are, however, it is only a small portion of any good web marketing campaign. Here are three great tools to help you build presence in places other than Google: Archaeologist – Archaeologist is a new web application that lets you analyze and study keywords and phrases found in Digg. Each keyword is presented in a convenient time line layout, allowing you track the popularity of said word or phrase over time. Twello – Simply put, Twello is the “Yellow Pages” for Twitter. Each user and post are searchable by both name and subject. Facebook Lexicon – A Facebook widget that monitors the most popular words within the service. Each result can be viewed individually or paired with a similar keyword. It seems like there are five or six more Web 2.0 companies, tools and websites every single day. To give you an idea of the scope of social media proliferation, SimpleSpark created a video that flashes all the Web 2.0 company logos they could find into one short video. And that would be 5,000. They go fast, but it’s pretty cool if you have 333 seconds to kill. Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-19-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-19-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Sometimes it seems like SEO tools are a dime a dozen these days. It’s hard to know which ones are worthwhile until you’ve tried them all. Traffic Travis is one of the better tools we’ve seen. It features everything from a keyword finder to a page analyzer, and it has an easy-to-use interface to boot. And unlike a lot of SEO software that’s of this caliber, Traffic Travis is free.Next, tag clouds are great for a lot of reasons, and there’s a lot of ways you can use one. Wordle is a free online tool that lets you create a tag or word cloud out of any text you throw at it. The cloud then displays all the words from the text based on how frequently that word appears. Plus, you can easily display the words in different fonts and formats. StomperNet faculty member David Bullock is always thinking about sophisticated ways you can get more out of your ongoing keyword research. In “A New Definition for Keywords,” he suggests that you should be looking at the “conversations” of search phrases rather than just current search volume. According to Dave, a conversation is the history that a keyword has with a particular subject. For more on this intriguing idea, check his website at davidbullock.com. Finally, as faithful viewers of the Free Line know, a good showing on search engines such as Google and Yahoo can do wonders for your business. As important as search engines are, however, it is only a small portion of any good web marketing campaign. Here are three great tools to help you build presence in places other than Google: Archaeologist – Archaeologist is a new web application that lets you analyze and study keywords and phrases found in Digg. Each keyword is presented in a convenient time line layout, allowing you track the popularity of said word or phrase over time. Twello – Simply put, Twello is the “Yellow Pages” for Twitter. Each user and post are searchable by both name and subject. Facebook Lexicon – A Facebook widget that monitors the most popular words within the service. Each result can be viewed individually or paired with a similar keyword. It seems like there are five or six more Web 2.0 companies, tools and websites every single day. To give you an idea of the scope of social media proliferation, SimpleSpark created a video that flashes all the Web 2.0 company logos they could find into one short video. And that would be 5,000. They go fast, but it’s pretty cool if you have 333 seconds to kill. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-15-08/ Blogging platform WordPress is the latest to jump onto the social networking bandwagon. Called “BuddyPress,” the developers aim to make the “social experience” even easier. Although BuddyPress is based upon Wordpress‘ own collaborative blogging software, Wordpress MU, many analysts predict that it will take on a much more traditional, MySpace-like, appearance. BuddyPress is scheduled for a fourth-quarter launch.WordPress isn’t the only blogging platform experimenting with social networking. According to developer Six Apart, Movable Type Pro will contain a new feature called “social publishing.” Social Publishing will allow users not only to post comments, but rate them as well. Bloggers now also have access to the “Action Stream,” which lets them easily change and switch content with other sites.While some are anxiously awaiting the arrival of BuddyPress, many others are still signing up for established sites like Facebook, especially in markets outside North America. Facebook membership grew only 9% in North America, compared to 25% elsewhere according to comScore. Europe is especially on a roll, with 35 million users, a 303% increase from the year before. Many analysts agree that the North American market is in more of a “cooling off” period. North America remains Facebook’s strongest region, with roughly 49 million people subscribing to the service.In other social networking news, CW Teo has written a great piece about how you can use sites such as StumbleUpon to enhance your business. In “Targeted List Building With Social Bookmarking and Networking,” Teo not only talks about the underlying principles of these sites, but how you can use them to create social buzz about your product or service. This article is a must for anyone who wishes to not only stay up-to-date with the current social trends, but expand their business as well.Voice Over IP (VoIP) is coming to the iPhone. Global IP Solutions, a company known for their knowlege in the IP field, officially announced the launch of their development platform. Prospective iPhone developers will now be able to implement the Global IP engine called “VoiceEngine Mobile” into their application. As of now, VoIP will only be available through the phone’s Wi-Fi connection. Disqus, the service designed to take the pain out of commenting in blogs, has gotten an upgrade. The new “Disqus 2.0” features several new tools, including a new user interface and general programming improvements. Perhaps the most intriguing addition, is the new WordPress plugin. With this plugin, commenters on your blog are now able to store Disqus comments directly onto your blog instead of Disqus‘ server, giving you more control. Disqus 2.0, and the WordPress plugin are available now — and they’re free. Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-15-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-15-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Blogging platform WordPress is the latest to jump onto the social networking bandwagon. Called “BuddyPress,” the developers aim to make the “social experience” even easier. Although BuddyPress is based upon Wordpress‘ own collaborative blogging software, Wordpress MU, many analysts predict that it will take on a much more traditional, MySpace-like, appearance. BuddyPress is scheduled for a fourth-quarter launch.WordPress isn’t the only blogging platform experimenting with social networking. According to developer Six Apart, Movable Type Pro will contain a new feature called “social publishing.” Social Publishing will allow users not only to post comments, but rate them as well. Bloggers now also have access to the “Action Stream,” which lets them easily change and switch content with other sites.While some are anxiously awaiting the arrival of BuddyPress, many others are still signing up for established sites like Facebook, especially in markets outside North America. Facebook membership grew only 9% in North America, compared to 25% elsewhere according to comScore. Europe is especially on a roll, with 35 million users, a 303% increase from the year before. Many analysts agree that the North American market is in more of a “cooling off” period. North America remains Facebook’s strongest region, with roughly 49 million people subscribing to the service.In other social networking news, CW Teo has written a great piece about how you can use sites such as StumbleUpon to enhance your business. In “Targeted List Building With Social Bookmarking and Networking,” Teo not only talks about the underlying principles of these sites, but how you can use them to create social buzz about your product or service. This article is a must for anyone who wishes to not only stay up-to-date with the current social trends, but expand their business as well.Voice Over IP (VoIP) is coming to the iPhone. Global IP Solutions, a company known for their knowlege in the IP field, officially announced the launch of their development platform. Prospective iPhone developers will now be able to implement the Global IP engine called “VoiceEngine Mobile” into their application. As of now, VoIP will only be available through the phone’s Wi-Fi connection. Disqus, the service designed to take the pain out of commenting in blogs, has gotten an upgrade. The new “Disqus 2.0” features several new tools, including a new user interface and general programming improvements. Perhaps the most intriguing addition, is the new WordPress plugin. With this plugin, commenters on your blog are now able to store Disqus comments directly onto your blog instead of Disqus‘ server, giving you more control. Disqus 2.0, and the WordPress plugin are available now — and they’re free. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-13-08/ The hucksters are hitting the iPhone app market. As you might have heard, a few unsuspecting shoppers “accidentally” purchased an iPhone app costing $1,000. Sadly, all the application does is display a red jewel on your iPhone. It really doesn’t do anything else… other than show off your ability to buy a $1,000 iPhone app, that is. Apple has since taken the application off of its store, but there is no word yet as to whether or not the , umm, “customers” who bought the application will get their money back.RSS feeds are one of the cornerstones of Web 2.0. For many, finding a good feed reader is a must in today’s networked society. Our new favorite is a free offering called Regator. Regator makes it easy to find out what the hottest blogs are talking about, and then some. And it’s got built in Podcast functionality. You can subscribe directly to, say… I don’t know… the Free Line Report official podcast without installing any additional software. Great stuff. You know, if you don’t speak several different languages, you might just be missing out on some really good blogs. Now, a free service called Mloovi can help. It translates any RSS for free via Google Translate. Give it a try. We bet that you’ll be seeing, or rather, reading, things in a way that you never have before. TwitterFone - It’s Twitter! It’s an answering machine! It’s both! TwitterFone is a free service that lets you call a local phone number and just leave a voice mail. Within moments, your voice mail message will appear as text in Twitter. It’s similar to former Free Line all-star Jott, but much easier to set up. It can be hard to keep track of complex projects, with people scattered over the globe. Ididwork makes it easy. Ididwork is a free utility that helps you keep track of jobs you’ve done during the day. It also allows you to share your work reports with other members of a team, so everyone gets to see how much work is done on a project at any time. Ididwork is perfect for people working in teams online. It’s also the magic word: free. Can’t beat that. Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-13-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-13-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes The hucksters are hitting the iPhone app market. As you might have heard, a few unsuspecting shoppers “accidentally” purchased an iPhone app costing $1,000. Sadly, all the application does is display a red jewel on your iPhone. It really doesn’t do anything else… other than show off your ability to buy a $1,000 iPhone app, that is. Apple has since taken the application off of its store, but there is no word yet as to whether or not the , umm, “customers” who bought the application will get their money back.RSS feeds are one of the cornerstones of Web 2.0. For many, finding a good feed reader is a must in today’s networked society. Our new favorite is a free offering called Regator. Regator makes it easy to find out what the hottest blogs are talking about, and then some. And it’s got built in Podcast functionality. You can subscribe directly to, say… I don’t know… the Free Line Report official podcast without installing any additional software. Great stuff. You know, if you don’t speak several different languages, you might just be missing out on some really good blogs. Now, a free service called Mloovi can help. It translates any RSS for free via Google Translate. Give it a try. We bet that you’ll be seeing, or rather, reading, things in a way that you never have before. TwitterFone - It’s Twitter! It’s an answering machine! It’s both! TwitterFone is a free service that lets you call a local phone number and just leave a voice mail. Within moments, your voice mail message will appear as text in Twitter. It’s similar to former Free Line all-star Jott, but much easier to set up. It can be hard to keep track of complex projects, with people scattered over the globe. Ididwork makes it easy. Ididwork is a free utility that helps you keep track of jobs you’ve done during the day. It also allows you to share your work reports with other members of a team, so everyone gets to see how much work is done on a project at any time. Ididwork is perfect for people working in teams online. It’s also the magic word: free. Can’t beat that. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-12-08/ According to Mozilla, only you can prevent boring and ugly web browsers. Yes, that’s right. If you ever wanted to have something to say about what the future of the Internet looks like, then now is your chance. It’s called Mozilla Labs. The web browsing company wants you to come in and suggest how a post-Firefox web browser should work. Anyone can participate. Just send a suggestion or idea, and Mozilla will look into it. But Mozilla Labs is more than just suggestions and conversation. The Labs also feature mock-ups of a few of their “more promising” ideas. These short videos walk through some really cool new ideas that would completely change how everything works. Each of these demos are highly visual, and they’re difficult to describe. Thankfully, with the power of the web, I don’t have to. Isn’t the Internet wonderful? So what is my personal favorite? Hmm… that’s a tough one. Honestly, I would probably go with Aurora, from the Adaptive Path design firm. Aurora is based upon the idea that the “web” can go beyond the average “browser window.” Want to drag sport scores to your desktop? With Aurora, you can do that. Want to follow your stocks? You can do that as well. Aurora also allows the user to see their bookmarks in a highly innovative, 3D view. Unfortunately, Aurora isn’t available for download… yet. Of course, we can’t just sit around and just wait for the cool stuff to come out. Some of us, like yours truly, want to play with the new, interesting web functionality right now. As an example of the bleeding edge of browser technology, check out the new Snowl plugin for Firefox. Snowl lets you bring all your messaging platforms into one location — Instant Messaging, email, RSS/Atom Feeds, Twitter, FriendFeeds, and so on. At first glance, aggregating all your feeds is nothing new, but being able to handle all your messaging from within one web browser, as well as search and cross reference each one, could prove to be a very powerful. Snowl is available now. It appears as if the folks at Digg have joined in the Mozilla rush as well. Google’s favorite social news service is finally compatible with Firefox 3.0. With that comes a host of cool new features, including notification messages that pop up in the right hand corner of your browser. The rest is all pretty much standard fare for social network plugins - a tool bar, a “Digg this” button, and instant notification if you have any new messages. If you are stillusing Firefox 2.0, have no fear. The old pugin is still available. Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-12-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-12-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes According to Mozilla, only you can prevent boring and ugly web browsers. Yes, that’s right. If you ever wanted to have something to say about what the future of the Internet looks like, then now is your chance. It’s called Mozilla Labs. The web browsing company wants you to come in and suggest how a post-Firefox web browser should work. Anyone can participate. Just send a suggestion or idea, and Mozilla will look into it. But Mozilla Labs is more than just suggestions and conversation. The Labs also feature mock-ups of a few of their “more promising” ideas. These short videos walk through some really cool new ideas that would completely change how everything works. Each of these demos are highly visual, and they’re difficult to describe. Thankfully, with the power of the web, I don’t have to. Isn’t the Internet wonderful? So what is my personal favorite? Hmm… that’s a tough one. Honestly, I would probably go with Aurora, from the Adaptive Path design firm. Aurora is based upon the idea that the “web” can go beyond the average “browser window.” Want to drag sport scores to your desktop? With Aurora, you can do that. Want to follow your stocks? You can do that as well. Aurora also allows the user to see their bookmarks in a highly innovative, 3D view. Unfortunately, Aurora isn’t available for download… yet. Of course, we can’t just sit around and just wait for the cool stuff to come out. Some of us, like yours truly, want to play with the new, interesting web functionality right now. As an example of the bleeding edge of browser technology, check out the new Snowl plugin for Firefox. Snowl lets you bring all your messaging platforms into one location — Instant Messaging, email, RSS/Atom Feeds, Twitter, FriendFeeds, and so on. At first glance, aggregating all your feeds is nothing new, but being able to handle all your messaging from within one web browser, as well as search and cross reference each one, could prove to be a very powerful. Snowl is available now. It appears as if the folks at Digg have joined in the Mozilla rush as well. Google’s favorite social news service is finally compatible with Firefox 3.0. With that comes a host of cool new features, including notification messages that pop up in the right hand corner of your browser. The rest is all pretty much standard fare for social network plugins - a tool bar, a “Digg this” button, and instant notification if you have any new messages. If you are stillusing Firefox 2.0, have no fear. The old pugin is still available. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-5-08/ The AOL that you know might become a thing of the past. Media giant Time Warner is looking to sell off the technology concern in “about three to four pieces.” Both Yahoo and Microsoft are have shown interest in the content and advertising portions of the company, which has a combined $10 billion price tag attached. AOL’s “Platform-A” advertising averages roughly 170.3 million users a month, ranking them higher than both Yahoo and Google in terms of total views. In other news, Delicious has officially relaunched. Not only is the social bookmarking site sporting a new, streamlined look, it has a new address as well. Users who go to the traditional “del.icio.us” URL will now be redirected to delicious.com. Aside from the cosmetic changes, the new and improved Delicious features faster searches and higher quality search results. The upgraded Delicious.com is up and running now. If you frequent sites that use the Sitemeter web analysis software and also use Internet Explorer, then you might have been experiencing some trouble as of late. Thanks to a previously unknown bug in the software, IE users were greeted with a blank page, followed by an error message. After the message is taken care of, the site disappears. Sites and blogs affected include tech blog Gizmodo and lifestyle blog Lifehacker. Throughout the ages, people have used everything from quills to laptops in order to create literary masterpieces. And now, it’s time for your cell phone to join the party. Textnovel lets users write stories on their cell phones and then share them with whomever they please. Already a massive fad in Japan, Textnovel has all the tools to take off in North American. So go on and write. Who knows? That girl at the grocery store with the Sidekick might just be the next Hemingway. A well maintained site featuring Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, can be powerful tool in today’s web-driven world. A site full of overdone or improperly written code, on the other hand, could spell doom for your both your site and your prospects. That is why tools such as the CSS Optimizer are so useful. The no-frill page does what it sets out to do - cleans your code until nothing but a turbo-charged module waiting to be implemented. The CSS Optimizer is a completely free service. Tue, 5 Aug 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-5-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-05-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes The AOL that you know might become a thing of the past. Media giant Time Warner is looking to sell off the technology concern in “about three to four pieces.” Both Yahoo and Microsoft are have shown interest in the content and advertising portions of the company, which has a combined $10 billion price tag attached. AOL’s “Platform-A” advertising averages roughly 170.3 million users a month, ranking them higher than both Yahoo and Google in terms of total views. In other news, Delicious has officially relaunched. Not only is the social bookmarking site sporting a new, streamlined look, it has a new address as well. Users who go to the traditional “del.icio.us” URL will now be redirected to delicious.com. Aside from the cosmetic changes, the new and improved Delicious features faster searches and higher quality search results. The upgraded Delicious.com is up and running now. If you frequent sites that use the Sitemeter web analysis software and also use Internet Explorer, then you might have been experiencing some trouble as of late. Thanks to a previously unknown bug in the software, IE users were greeted with a blank page, followed by an error message. After the message is taken care of, the site disappears. Sites and blogs affected include tech blog Gizmodo and lifestyle blog Lifehacker. Throughout the ages, people have used everything from quills to laptops in order to create literary masterpieces. And now, it’s time for your cell phone to join the party. Textnovel lets users write stories on their cell phones and then share them with whomever they please. Already a massive fad in Japan, Textnovel has all the tools to take off in North American. So go on and write. Who knows? That girl at the grocery store with the Sidekick might just be the next Hemingway. A well maintained site featuring Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, can be powerful tool in today’s web-driven world. A site full of overdone or improperly written code, on the other hand, could spell doom for your both your site and your prospects. That is why tools such as the CSS Optimizer are so useful. The no-frill page does what it sets out to do - cleans your code until nothing but a turbo-charged module waiting to be implemented. The CSS Optimizer is a completely free service. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-1-08/ As the creators of the wildly successful Homestar Runner can tell you, online cartoons can be serious business. That their best, webtoons are catchy, viral, and can easily boost website traffic. The only things required are a working knowledge of Flash and some artistic skill. If you’re not an artist, or if the mere sight of Actionscript makes you break down into tears, don’t fret. Believe it or not, making your own animated masterwork is easier than you think. GoAnimate is a website that allows you to create your own short animations with no artistic ability or programming skill required. GoAnimate is surprisingly easy to use and is completely free (surprise surprise). If webcomics are more you thing, then BitStrips just might be for you. The site works sthe same as GoAnimate, only the end product is a comic strip instead of a cartoon. With BitStrip, making a funny, weekly online comic strip doesn’t require any artistic ability, and it could bring in more readers to your site. Of course, there are other ways to make a successful webcomic that doesn’t involve drawing, programming, or using a helper website. Dinosaur Comics a prime example of what is known as a fixed-art comic - the art stays the same while the actual dialog changes. Sprite comics such as 8-Bit Theater use sprites taken from older video games or computer programs. Sites such as I Can Has Cheezburger and Pundit Kitchen have proven that actual “art” is optional. All you need for a good comic is a photograph and a clever punchline. And there is common is the common thread - writing. Every good webtoon, webcomic, or comedic caption needs an intelligent, easy to read script. Sure, you can use something like Notepad to write your future Web Cartoonists’ Choice Award winning punchline, but that would be painful. If you’re looking for something a bit more robust, we suggest looking into Open Office.org 3, beta 2. OOO 3 is packed to the gills with interesting gadgets and features. Our favorite? Well, it all depends on who you ask. Some of us love the new integration with OS X. Others prefer the built-in support for Microsoft’s new .docx file type. Either way, you’ll be glad to know that the Open Office.org is, was, and always shall be free. When you finish creating your new webcomic or online animation, you might want to make some money through advertisements. WidgetBucks is an interesting advertising engine that lets you create a small, easy to install widget on your website that can help you start making money right away. Hmm… getting money right away… sounds like something that you might want to check out. And finally: So you say that you like to frequent your local public library. That’s great! Do you also like to check out social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace while at said library? You do? That’s… um… not so great, according to United States government. Congress is attempting to ban social networking sites from public libraries, in order to keep kids safe from sexual predators. The bill is being fought by the American Library Association. When something happens, we will certainly let you know. Fri, 1 Aug 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-1-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-8-1-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes As the creators of the wildly successful Homestar Runner can tell you, online cartoons can be serious business. That their best, webtoons are catchy, viral, and can easily boost website traffic. The only things required are a working knowledge of Flash and some artistic skill. If you’re not an artist, or if the mere sight of Actionscript makes you break down into tears, don’t fret. Believe it or not, making your own animated masterwork is easier than you think. GoAnimate is a website that allows you to create your own short animations with no artistic ability or programming skill required. GoAnimate is surprisingly easy to use and is completely free (surprise surprise). If webcomics are more you thing, then BitStrips just might be for you. The site works sthe same as GoAnimate, only the end product is a comic strip instead of a cartoon. With BitStrip, making a funny, weekly online comic strip doesn’t require any artistic ability, and it could bring in more readers to your site. Of course, there are other ways to make a successful webcomic that doesn’t involve drawing, programming, or using a helper website. Dinosaur Comics a prime example of what is known as a fixed-art comic - the art stays the same while the actual dialog changes. Sprite comics such as 8-Bit Theater use sprites taken from older video games or computer programs. Sites such as I Can Has Cheezburger and Pundit Kitchen have proven that actual “art” is optional. All you need for a good comic is a photograph and a clever punchline. And there is common is the common thread - writing. Every good webtoon, webcomic, or comedic caption needs an intelligent, easy to read script. Sure, you can use something like Notepad to write your future Web Cartoonists’ Choice Award winning punchline, but that would be painful. If you’re looking for something a bit more robust, we suggest looking into Open Office.org 3, beta 2. OOO 3 is packed to the gills with interesting gadgets and features. Our favorite? Well, it all depends on who you ask. Some of us love the new integration with OS X. Others prefer the built-in support for Microsoft’s new .docx file type. Either way, you’ll be glad to know that the Open Office.org is, was, and always shall be free. When you finish creating your new webcomic or online animation, you might want to make some money through advertisements. WidgetBucks is an interesting advertising engine that lets you create a small, easy to install widget on your website that can help you start making money right away. Hmm… getting money right away… sounds like something that you might want to check out. And finally: So you say that you like to frequent your local public library. That’s great! Do you also like to check out social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace while at said library? You do? That’s… um… not so great, according to United States government. Congress is attempting to ban social networking sites from public libraries, in order to keep kids safe from sexual predators. The bill is being fought by the American Library Association. When something happens, we will certainly let you know. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-30-08/ As faithful followers of the Free Line already know, Google is easily at the top of the “search engine pile.” The folks at Cuil is aiming to change all of that. Headed by former Google employee Anna Patterson, Cuil is a new search engine that will supposedly “change the way that searching works.” Their secret? Well for starters, Cuil supposedly has 120 billion pages in its index. Google “only” has about eight billion. Patterson is also experimenting with a three-column search result page, which gives the page more of a “magazine-like” feel.The first search engine using Yahoo BOSS, the new search initiative that allows users to create their own search engine, has been released. Called SearchCloud, the engine allows users to dictate the importance of a keyword or phrase. The idea behind it is that by qualifying the importance of the keywords used within a search, users will receive results more suited to their needs. It remains to be seen how well the SearchCloud concept works in practice. Expect to hear more about this promising new engine in the coming months. In other search engine news, Microsoft announced last week that Live Search will be heading to Facebook. The agreement is considered to be an expansion of a previous deal that saw Microsoft purchase a $240 million stake in the company. As we reported Monday, the deal with Microsoft is just one of two major partnerships deals Facebook had made in the past few months. Facebook plans to have Live Search online by the end of the year. Switching to the world of online music, it appears as if the Yahoo Music Store will be shutting off their servers September 30th. Due to the store’s use of the controversial Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection, users will be unable to copy their music to a new computer or device after the September deadline. In an e-mail to its customers, Yahoo is recommending that users burn their tracks to a CD and re-rip them into the file type of their choosing. It seems as if Amazon is looking into becoming the backbone of the new “MySpace Music” project. Launching in September, MySpace Music will offer users a variety of music-related content, including DRM-free MP3 files from three out of the four major record labels, ring tones and concert tickets. If the deal goes through, Amazon will be in charge of all of the transactions that happen on the site. Although Apple and Rhapsody are still in the running for the lucrative contract, many analysts consider them to be long shots at best. Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-30-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-30-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes As faithful followers of the Free Line already know, Google is easily at the top of the “search engine pile.” The folks at Cuil is aiming to change all of that. Headed by former Google employee Anna Patterson, Cuil is a new search engine that will supposedly “change the way that searching works.” Their secret? Well for starters, Cuil supposedly has 120 billion pages in its index. Google “only” has about eight billion. Patterson is also experimenting with a three-column search result page, which gives the page more of a “magazine-like” feel.The first search engine using Yahoo BOSS, the new search initiative that allows users to create their own search engine, has been released. Called SearchCloud, the engine allows users to dictate the importance of a keyword or phrase. The idea behind it is that by qualifying the importance of the keywords used within a search, users will receive results more suited to their needs. It remains to be seen how well the SearchCloud concept works in practice. Expect to hear more about this promising new engine in the coming months. In other search engine news, Microsoft announced last week that Live Search will be heading to Facebook. The agreement is considered to be an expansion of a previous deal that saw Microsoft purchase a $240 million stake in the company. As we reported Monday, the deal with Microsoft is just one of two major partnerships deals Facebook had made in the past few months. Facebook plans to have Live Search online by the end of the year. Switching to the world of online music, it appears as if the Yahoo Music Store will be shutting off their servers September 30th. Due to the store’s use of the controversial Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection, users will be unable to copy their music to a new computer or device after the September deadline. In an e-mail to its customers, Yahoo is recommending that users burn their tracks to a CD and re-rip them into the file type of their choosing. It seems as if Amazon is looking into becoming the backbone of the new “MySpace Music” project. Launching in September, MySpace Music will offer users a variety of music-related content, including DRM-free MP3 files from three out of the four major record labels, ring tones and concert tickets. If the deal goes through, Amazon will be in charge of all of the transactions that happen on the site. Although Apple and Rhapsody are still in the running for the lucrative contract, many analysts consider them to be long shots at best. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-29-08/ Online video advertising isn’t as annoying as you might think. According to a recent poll done by Ipsos North America, 82% of those surveyed are fine with “a few” ads being inserted into a feature-length television program. That number drops to 48%, however, when YouTube-style “homemade” videos are added to the mix. Taking snapshots of the Internet is an interesting concept. And that’s exactly what Websnapr does. The basic concept is simple: type in a web address and get a real time screen cap of that site. What sets the service apart from its competition, however, is its compatibility. Websnapr can be integrated into such platforms as Wordpress, Nuke, and Drupal, allowing users to view new pages, pictures, and blog posts before actually clicking on the links. You know, in today’s world, organization is key. And the folks at Jott realize this, and they’re here to help. Are you using Jott yet? It’s been around awhile, and for some it’s something they use all day, every day. There are a million uses for it, but the idea is you can jot yourself a note by just calling a number on your speed dial. Jott records your voice and sends back what you said to you in a text message or an email. Or you can even send your notes to someone else. And of course, it’s free. Let’s say that you’re at a conference or any meeting. You see a chart or a graph — or notes on a whiteboard — that you want to take a picture of, but normal image files just won’t cut it. What you really need is a pdf that you or anyone you send it to can email, save, print or fax. The solution? Qipit. It’s is a free service that will turn a photo from your digital camera or camera phone into a shiny new PDF file. From there, the world is your oyster. You can do almost anything you’d like with your new PDFs, like save them to a flash drive or fax them. Cool. Sometimes, you need to send a file to someone else via email. And not just any file, but a really big one. Your normal email provider can’t send a file like that — but mailbigfile.com can. Mailbigfile allows you to send files up to 100mb to anyone … for free. If that isn’t enough, a pay service is available which supports files up to one gig. Sending big files without using external media or the post office. Sounds like a good deal to me. Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-29-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-29-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Online video advertising isn’t as annoying as you might think. According to a recent poll done by Ipsos North America, 82% of those surveyed are fine with “a few” ads being inserted into a feature-length television program. That number drops to 48%, however, when YouTube-style “homemade” videos are added to the mix. Taking snapshots of the Internet is an interesting concept. And that’s exactly what Websnapr does. The basic concept is simple: type in a web address and get a real time screen cap of that site. What sets the service apart from its competition, however, is its compatibility. Websnapr can be integrated into such platforms as Wordpress, Nuke, and Drupal, allowing users to view new pages, pictures, and blog posts before actually clicking on the links. You know, in today’s world, organization is key. And the folks at Jott realize this, and they’re here to help. Are you using Jott yet? It’s been around awhile, and for some it’s something they use all day, every day. There are a million uses for it, but the idea is you can jot yourself a note by just calling a number on your speed dial. Jott records your voice and sends back what you said to you in a text message or an email. Or you can even send your notes to someone else. And of course, it’s free. Let’s say that you’re at a conference or any meeting. You see a chart or a graph — or notes on a whiteboard — that you want to take a picture of, but normal image files just won’t cut it. What you really need is a pdf that you or anyone you send it to can email, save, print or fax. The solution? Qipit. It’s is a free service that will turn a photo from your digital camera or camera phone into a shiny new PDF file. From there, the world is your oyster. You can do almost anything you’d like with your new PDFs, like save them to a flash drive or fax them. Cool. Sometimes, you need to send a file to someone else via email. And not just any file, but a really big one. Your normal email provider can’t send a file like that — but mailbigfile.com can. Mailbigfile allows you to send files up to 100mb to anyone … for free. If that isn’t enough, a pay service is available which supports files up to one gig. Sending big files without using external media or the post office. Sounds like a good deal to me. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-28-08/ Wikipedia, the user-edited encyclopedia that popularized the phrase “citation needed,” is getting a little competition. Last Wednesday, Google officially launched Knol, its new collaborative information resource. Unlike Wikipedia, which allows any user to edit the articles at will, all of the articles in Knol will be overseen by a group of authors. Before an edit actually appears in the article, it must first be approved by the authors. We don’t yet know how users will take to the so-called “moderated” editing. At this point (and admittedly, it is rather early), it isn’t looking good. Knol doesn’t really have much in terms of articles. A search for SEO, for example yielded one article - a list of SEO extensions for Firefox. Helpful for people who know what search engine optimization is, but will leave “SEO newbies” in the dark. We are currently running an in-house experiment involving both Wikipedia and Knol. When we know something, so will you. In other Google news, the company has recently announced the addition of voice recognition for YouTube video searches. Using a new iGoogle applet called the “Google Election Video Search Gadget,” users will now be able to search for a video based upon a word or phrase spoken in the video. As the name implies, only a few “specially chosen” political videos are equipped to handle this special feature. While it is interesting, I honestly don’t think that this feature will see a full-scale rollout. Political videos are one thing, but “normal” videos are quite another. Can you really see someone combing through, say, a professional wrestling match to document the number of times the announcer says “Bryan Danielson” or “submission hold?” I don’t think so. Elsewhere, Digg founder Kevin Rose announced a new partnership with Facebook Thursday. Called “Facebook Connect,” the new service will allow Facebook users to become registered Digg users quickly and easily. From there, users will be able to share and comment on Digg to their heart’s content. Facebook users will also have the ability to post their Digg content into their own Mini-Feeds. Facebook Connect should be up and running soon. Switching gears completely for a second, Zimbra is an easy to use offline email application that has many people in the tech world taking note. In addition to accessing their email accounts, users can do everything from editing documents to importing calendar entries from iCal to viewing addresses with Yahoo Maps. Zimbra is currently available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. And it’s also the email client of choice for all of us at StomperNet. Despite what Doc Brown told us in “Back to the Future,” there is still no way to travel to the future. Your Tweets, however…well, that’s a different story. With TweetLater, you can schedule to send your Tweets at a later time. You can fool your friends, send “helpful reminder” messages to yourself, or even automate “good morning” messages for your followers. The possibilities are nearly endless, and you don’t need 1.21 gigawatts to do it. Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-28-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-28-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Wikipedia, the user-edited encyclopedia that popularized the phrase “citation needed,” is getting a little competition. Last Wednesday, Google officially launched Knol, its new collaborative information resource. Unlike Wikipedia, which allows any user to edit the articles at will, all of the articles in Knol will be overseen by a group of authors. Before an edit actually appears in the article, it must first be approved by the authors. We don’t yet know how users will take to the so-called “moderated” editing. At this point (and admittedly, it is rather early), it isn’t looking good. Knol doesn’t really have much in terms of articles. A search for SEO, for example yielded one article - a list of SEO extensions for Firefox. Helpful for people who know what search engine optimization is, but will leave “SEO newbies” in the dark. We are currently running an in-house experiment involving both Wikipedia and Knol. When we know something, so will you. In other Google news, the company has recently announced the addition of voice recognition for YouTube video searches. Using a new iGoogle applet called the “Google Election Video Search Gadget,” users will now be able to search for a video based upon a word or phrase spoken in the video. As the name implies, only a few “specially chosen” political videos are equipped to handle this special feature. While it is interesting, I honestly don’t think that this feature will see a full-scale rollout. Political videos are one thing, but “normal” videos are quite another. Can you really see someone combing through, say, a professional wrestling match to document the number of times the announcer says “Bryan Danielson” or “submission hold?” I don’t think so. Elsewhere, Digg founder Kevin Rose announced a new partnership with Facebook Thursday. Called “Facebook Connect,” the new service will allow Facebook users to become registered Digg users quickly and easily. From there, users will be able to share and comment on Digg to their heart’s content. Facebook users will also have the ability to post their Digg content into their own Mini-Feeds. Facebook Connect should be up and running soon. Switching gears completely for a second, Zimbra is an easy to use offline email application that has many people in the tech world taking note. In addition to accessing their email accounts, users can do everything from editing documents to importing calendar entries from iCal to viewing addresses with Yahoo Maps. Zimbra is currently available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. And it’s also the email client of choice for all of us at StomperNet. Despite what Doc Brown told us in “Back to the Future,” there is still no way to travel to the future. Your Tweets, however…well, that’s a different story. With TweetLater, you can schedule to send your Tweets at a later time. You can fool your friends, send “helpful reminder” messages to yourself, or even automate “good morning” messages for your followers. The possibilities are nearly endless, and you don’t need 1.21 gigawatts to do it. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-25-08/ Social networking fans should head right over to the Flock website and download the new Flock 2 Beta 2. Built on a solid foundation of Firefox 3, the new update has all of the security and speed improvements that one is looking for in a modern browser. Flock users are still unable to log in to multiple networking accounts at once, but this is just a minor issue. The Flock beta is available now. If you would like the advantage of having a social web browser but only use MySpace, then BuddyWave is for you. You can edit your profile, post messages and more, all directly from the web browser. Easy to learn and fun to use, Bubby might just make visiting MySpace a thing of the past. BuddyWave is currently only available for Windows. Despite what you might have heard, social networking isn’t just for browser-based applications and sites. eMusic, the online music company that pioneered the “MP3 album” concept, is taking steps to insert itself into the social networking structure. Subscribers now have the ability to embed sound clips and album art into no less than thirteen networking sites, including Digg and Facebook. Subscribers will find that many of the album pages are now linked to appropriate YouTube sites. Innovation is really nothing new to eMusic. On July 19th, indie rock pioneers They Might Be Giants released the first full-length MP3 album, “Long Tall Weekend,” through the service. eMusic also garnered praise for its use of DRM-free MP3 files and its extensive collection of vintage jazz recordings. Of course, not everything on the Internet is associated with social browsing. Take Sleipner, for instance. This star of the Japanese computing scene a lot of the same functionality as Netscape Navigator 6, including the ability to allow users to choose how to “properly” view a website. Sleipner also has option of running in both Gecko (Firefox) and Trident (Internet Explorer) modes, similar to the “IE Tab” Firefox plugin. Sleipner’s developers, the Osaka-based Fenrir Inc, has promised that English, French, and Spanish versions will be released shortly. And finally, if you love Firefox, but hate downloading all those plugins just to get it working exactly they way you want it, try downloading the Orca browser. The appeal of browsers like Orca and its Internet Explorer counterpart Avant are that many of most downloaded extensions, including ad blockers and tab editors, are built into the browser. It’s blazingly fast and ultra customizable , allowing you to change the color scheme and toolbars on the fly. Like the previously mentioned BuddyWave, Orca is a Windows-only application. Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-25-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-25-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Social networking fans should head right over to the Flock website and download the new Flock 2 Beta 2. Built on a solid foundation of Firefox 3, the new update has all of the security and speed improvements that one is looking for in a modern browser. Flock users are still unable to log in to multiple networking accounts at once, but this is just a minor issue. The Flock beta is available now. If you would like the advantage of having a social web browser but only use MySpace, then BuddyWave is for you. You can edit your profile, post messages and more, all directly from the web browser. Easy to learn and fun to use, Bubby might just make visiting MySpace a thing of the past. BuddyWave is currently only available for Windows. Despite what you might have heard, social networking isn’t just for browser-based applications and sites. eMusic, the online music company that pioneered the “MP3 album” concept, is taking steps to insert itself into the social networking structure. Subscribers now have the ability to embed sound clips and album art into no less than thirteen networking sites, including Digg and Facebook. Subscribers will find that many of the album pages are now linked to appropriate YouTube sites. Innovation is really nothing new to eMusic. On July 19th, indie rock pioneers They Might Be Giants released the first full-length MP3 album, “Long Tall Weekend,” through the service. eMusic also garnered praise for its use of DRM-free MP3 files and its extensive collection of vintage jazz recordings. Of course, not everything on the Internet is associated with social browsing. Take Sleipner, for instance. This star of the Japanese computing scene a lot of the same functionality as Netscape Navigator 6, including the ability to allow users to choose how to “properly” view a website. Sleipner also has option of running in both Gecko (Firefox) and Trident (Internet Explorer) modes, similar to the “IE Tab” Firefox plugin. Sleipner’s developers, the Osaka-based Fenrir Inc, has promised that English, French, and Spanish versions will be released shortly. And finally, if you love Firefox, but hate downloading all those plugins just to get it working exactly they way you want it, try downloading the Orca browser. The appeal of browsers like Orca and its Internet Explorer counterpart Avant are that many of most downloaded extensions, including ad blockers and tab editors, are built into the browser. It’s blazingly fast and ultra customizable , allowing you to change the color scheme and toolbars on the fly. Like the previously mentioned BuddyWave, Orca is a Windows-only application. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-24-08/ Google is about to get even bigger. According industry blog Tech Crunch, Google is finalizing a deal to buy social media powerhouse Digg. If the deal does indeed go through, Google plans to fold the site into its “Google News” subsite. Microsoft, which is currently in the midst a three year advertising deal with Digg, attempted to purchase the site last year. A Microsoft takeover is still possible if the Google deal falls through, says the article. While Microsoft continues to strike out in the mergers and acquisitions department, microblogging kingpin Twitter seems to have there game under control, announcing the purchase of the search engine Summize. The newly named “Twitter Search” does everything that Summize used to do, only under a different name. You might remember Summize from our report on May 5th. Jing, a handy little program that gives users the ability to photograph and record their desktops, has recently turned one. And what better way to celebrate your birthday than to announce an affiliation. That’s right. The Jing project is now a part of SnagIt developer TechSmith. The Jing team is also upgrading its free storage space on screencast.com from 200 megabytes to two gigs. What’s interesting about the acquisition is that Jing, SnagIt and Camtasia Studio all perform similar functions. Judging by the documentation available on the Jing website, TechSmith will be marketing the three platforms in “tiers” - a “good, better, best” approach. I am currently downloading Jing as I type this. I will give you all a full report on my experiences with the product in a future post. Adobe has announced that Twhirl, their one-size-fits-all microblogging client, will now be supporting users of former Free Line all-star Identi.ca. Other services supported by Twhirl include Twitter, Seesmic, and Friendfeed. While Identi.ca might not be a household name, many users are confident that its inclusion will help garner the service some much deserved mainstream recognition. And finally… Unless you’re a graphic designer or a college student trying to push that page and a half essay on Moby Dick to two pages, you probably haven’t given fonts a second thought. Great typography can easily bring life and vibrance to a web space, while boring or overused fonts can make the same space seem boring. In the never ending quest to get a leg up on the competition, I suggest giving Fontspace a try. Fontspace delivers a repository of attractive fonts for an attractive price - free. So go experiment. You have nothing to lose… except for your utter reliance on Times New Roman, that is. Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-24-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-24-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Google is about to get even bigger. According industry blog Tech Crunch, Google is finalizing a deal to buy social media powerhouse Digg. If the deal does indeed go through, Google plans to fold the site into its “Google News” subsite. Microsoft, which is currently in the midst a three year advertising deal with Digg, attempted to purchase the site last year. A Microsoft takeover is still possible if the Google deal falls through, says the article. While Microsoft continues to strike out in the mergers and acquisitions department, microblogging kingpin Twitter seems to have there game under control, announcing the purchase of the search engine Summize. The newly named “Twitter Search” does everything that Summize used to do, only under a different name. You might remember Summize from our report on May 5th. Jing, a handy little program that gives users the ability to photograph and record their desktops, has recently turned one. And what better way to celebrate your birthday than to announce an affiliation. That’s right. The Jing project is now a part of SnagIt developer TechSmith. The Jing team is also upgrading its free storage space on screencast.com from 200 megabytes to two gigs. What’s interesting about the acquisition is that Jing, SnagIt and Camtasia Studio all perform similar functions. Judging by the documentation available on the Jing website, TechSmith will be marketing the three platforms in “tiers” - a “good, better, best” approach. I am currently downloading Jing as I type this. I will give you all a full report on my experiences with the product in a future post. Adobe has announced that Twhirl, their one-size-fits-all microblogging client, will now be supporting users of former Free Line all-star Identi.ca. Other services supported by Twhirl include Twitter, Seesmic, and Friendfeed. While Identi.ca might not be a household name, many users are confident that its inclusion will help garner the service some much deserved mainstream recognition. And finally… Unless you’re a graphic designer or a college student trying to push that page and a half essay on Moby Dick to two pages, you probably haven’t given fonts a second thought. Great typography can easily bring life and vibrance to a web space, while boring or overused fonts can make the same space seem boring. In the never ending quest to get a leg up on the competition, I suggest giving Fontspace a try. Fontspace delivers a repository of attractive fonts for an attractive price - free. So go experiment. You have nothing to lose… except for your utter reliance on Times New Roman, that is. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-23-08/ Is participating in social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook just a “phase” that people seem to go through? A new video by user “Super Josh” on Current.com claims just that. In his satirical animated short “Networking Wars,” cartoon representatives of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and Second Life vie for the attention of an average user. Very funny, and perhaps, very true. Sometimes, running a brand new, top-of-the-line operating system isn’t possible. Systems made to run Windows 2000, for example, will not be able to properly support Firefox 3.0, as one of our commenters has already figured out. But fear not. Don’t let those old legacy systems die in the basement. Get WattOS instead. Based on Ubuntu Linux, WattOS is designed to get the best out of older, more “time tested” machines. It can do almost anything that its bigger brother can do, just in a smaller package. WattOS is completely free to use and is covered under the GNU public license. Moving to the world of telecommunication devices for a moment, there’s TokBox. Powered by Adobe’s innovative “Air” development platform, TokBox is a Skype-esque way to keep in touch with family and friends. TokBox can be used from a variety of diverse places, from their website to Facebook. While the little upstart might not have the features of Skype at the moment, it is definitely one program to keep your eye on. Those who own an iPhone are no doubt familiar with Apple’s MobileMe, a handy little service that syncs up all of your media devices. If you like the idea of everything working together, but don’t think that perfect harmony is worth $100, give Mail2Web LIVE a try. Mail2Web does everything that MobileMe does, from playing nice with your Blackberry to updating Outlook on your PC, only it’s free. And the kicker? The service is built upon Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange Platform. So give Mail2Web LIVE a try. We promise not to tell Steve Jobs. These days, staying mobile doesn’t mean that you have to leave your social networking habits at home. For example, check out Moblog. It works kind of like Twitter, except it allows you to post pictures and video you’ve taken with your phone as well as text. And the best part? The Moblog team builds your private space for you. All you need to do is send a text message. Moblog makes networking on the road simple and easy. Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-23-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-23-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Is participating in social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook just a “phase” that people seem to go through? A new video by user “Super Josh” on Current.com claims just that. In his satirical animated short “Networking Wars,” cartoon representatives of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and Second Life vie for the attention of an average user. Very funny, and perhaps, very true. Sometimes, running a brand new, top-of-the-line operating system isn’t possible. Systems made to run Windows 2000, for example, will not be able to properly support Firefox 3.0, as one of our commenters has already figured out. But fear not. Don’t let those old legacy systems die in the basement. Get WattOS instead. Based on Ubuntu Linux, WattOS is designed to get the best out of older, more “time tested” machines. It can do almost anything that its bigger brother can do, just in a smaller package. WattOS is completely free to use and is covered under the GNU public license. Moving to the world of telecommunication devices for a moment, there’s TokBox. Powered by Adobe’s innovative “Air” development platform, TokBox is a Skype-esque way to keep in touch with family and friends. TokBox can be used from a variety of diverse places, from their website to Facebook. While the little upstart might not have the features of Skype at the moment, it is definitely one program to keep your eye on. Those who own an iPhone are no doubt familiar with Apple’s MobileMe, a handy little service that syncs up all of your media devices. If you like the idea of everything working together, but don’t think that perfect harmony is worth $100, give Mail2Web LIVE a try. Mail2Web does everything that MobileMe does, from playing nice with your Blackberry to updating Outlook on your PC, only it’s free. And the kicker? The service is built upon Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange Platform. So give Mail2Web LIVE a try. We promise not to tell Steve Jobs. These days, staying mobile doesn’t mean that you have to leave your social networking habits at home. For example, check out Moblog. It works kind of like Twitter, except it allows you to post pictures and video you’ve taken with your phone as well as text. And the best part? The Moblog team builds your private space for you. All you need to do is send a text message. Moblog makes networking on the road simple and easy. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-22-08/ If you’re a Firefox user, then you no doubt know that Mozilla has released a small update to its popular web browser. Firefox 3.0.1 delivers everything that 3.0 delivered, only slightly more bug-free. It’s not a major change - you probably won’t see a difference in performance - but anything that improves stability is welcomed by us. Firefox 3.1, on the other hand… now that’s an entirely different story. Mozilla’s next major update will reportedly contain several new features that were left out of the 3.0 release, including better tab switching. As you can guess, Firefox 3.1 is nowhere near ready to be used by the general public. Still, if you’re the adventurous type like I am, Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 pre-release is available on the Mozilla FTP. For those who would like to try the new tab switching scheme but are wary about loading anything with the word “alpha” in the title, then the Ctrl-Tab add-on is for you. Ctrl-Tab allows users to see snapshots of their open tabs, similar to Alt-Tab in Windows. I’ve been using Ctrl-Tab for awhile now. It’s an extremely handy way to keep track of your tabs. As with all Firefox plug ins and add-ons, Ctrl-Tab is completely free. If creating new “skins” and themes for Firefox is more your thing, then Personas is definitely for you. It lets anyone theme, skin and modify Firefox on the fly. No actual coding knowledge is needed. All of the changes you make are applied instantly and are easily undone. While Personas helps with the creation of new themes, it doesn’t actually give the user more artistic skill. Darn… still out of luck. Ah… the clipboard. Best friend to the trio known as “cut, copy, and paste.” If you want to expand your clipboard’s horizons past your desktop, we suggest giving the Clipmarks extension a go. Clipmarks takes the text that you have designated for your clipboard and posts it directly to their site. The new clips are then available to a variety of social networking and blogging applications, such as Facebook and Wordpress. Handy and fun, Clipmarks just might be the clipboard upgrade that you didn’t know you needed. And finally: If there’s one thing that we know around here, it’s search engine optimization, or SEO. The Firefox add-on Niche Watch Tool knows a few things about SEO as well. It allows you to track everything SEO, from backlinks to keyword appearances to page ranking. It also has the added bonus of comparing these results to the results of your competition. Despite the unassuming and, frankly, boring name, Niche Watch Tool is perfect for those who want to bring a little “SEO” into their lives. Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-22-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-22-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes If you’re a Firefox user, then you no doubt know that Mozilla has released a small update to its popular web browser. Firefox 3.0.1 delivers everything that 3.0 delivered, only slightly more bug-free. It’s not a major change - you probably won’t see a difference in performance - but anything that improves stability is welcomed by us. Firefox 3.1, on the other hand… now that’s an entirely different story. Mozilla’s next major update will reportedly contain several new features that were left out of the 3.0 release, including better tab switching. As you can guess, Firefox 3.1 is nowhere near ready to be used by the general public. Still, if you’re the adventurous type like I am, Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 pre-release is available on the Mozilla FTP. For those who would like to try the new tab switching scheme but are wary about loading anything with the word “alpha” in the title, then the Ctrl-Tab add-on is for you. Ctrl-Tab allows users to see snapshots of their open tabs, similar to Alt-Tab in Windows. I’ve been using Ctrl-Tab for awhile now. It’s an extremely handy way to keep track of your tabs. As with all Firefox plug ins and add-ons, Ctrl-Tab is completely free. If creating new “skins” and themes for Firefox is more your thing, then Personas is definitely for you. It lets anyone theme, skin and modify Firefox on the fly. No actual coding knowledge is needed. All of the changes you make are applied instantly and are easily undone. While Personas helps with the creation of new themes, it doesn’t actually give the user more artistic skill. Darn… still out of luck. Ah… the clipboard. Best friend to the trio known as “cut, copy, and paste.” If you want to expand your clipboard’s horizons past your desktop, we suggest giving the Clipmarks extension a go. Clipmarks takes the text that you have designated for your clipboard and posts it directly to their site. The new clips are then available to a variety of social networking and blogging applications, such as Facebook and Wordpress. Handy and fun, Clipmarks just might be the clipboard upgrade that you didn’t know you needed. And finally: If there’s one thing that we know around here, it’s search engine optimization, or SEO. The Firefox add-on Niche Watch Tool knows a few things about SEO as well. It allows you to track everything SEO, from backlinks to keyword appearances to page ranking. It also has the added bonus of comparing these results to the results of your competition. Despite the unassuming and, frankly, boring name, Niche Watch Tool is perfect for those who want to bring a little “SEO” into their lives. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-21-08/ Ah… the homemade “tribute” music video. What better way to show your love for a celebrity, professional wrestler, or animated series from Japan than to commit low-level copyright infringement in their name? If this is a racket that you want to get in on but believe that your video editing skill are lacking, check out Animoto. Simply upload some images, upload a song of your choice, and Animoto does the rest. The results are surprisingly good. Say that you’ve graduated past the random “still” image. Maybe you want to incorporate actual video into your tribute or business video. Don’t worry, because MuveeMix has it all covered. MuveeMix takes in your music, throws in some video of your choice, and then edits it on the fly. The result? A professional quality music video. As always, MuveeMix is completely free of charge. Some of us, however, might not be as content letting a website do the work for them. For all you control freaks hands-on types, there’s JumpCut, from Yahoo. JumpCut is like a web-based iMovie, allowing you to edit, splice, overlay, and more, all from your browser. One of the coolest features is that you can import media directly from your Facebook page or your Flikr account. You also get a special email address, that your friends can use to send you clips from their mobile phones. All you need is a Yahoo ID (those are free as well) and a video camera. If you want more out of a video editor than what JumpCut can provide, but at the same time not willing to take out the small bank loan it takes to afford Apple’s Final Cut Pro, then EyeSpot might be for you. It’s not as powerful as Final Cut Pro, but it has more bells and whistles than JumpCut. And for an added feature, it even allows you to embed the video editor into your website, allowing other people to come in and mix up and edit videos that you put on your website. A 100 MB upload limit doesn’t get you very far with video content, though. Hopefully, they’ll up this limit soon. If not, someone will. There’s no stopping the Free Line. And now for the big one. Are you ready for this? Your not…there’s no way. What we’re about to show you is going to change the very meaning of online video. Kaltura is a…wait for it… a free and open source VIDEO PLATFORM! Well, what does that mean, you ask? I thought you might. It means that now anybody can add a full featured video solution to their website for free! Functionality includes uploading, transcoding, remixing, annotating, sharing, search, and just about anything else you can think of. A plugin has just been released that let’s you add Kaltura video to a wiki and a WordPress plugin is coming soon. Keep your eye on our own Free Line wiki. We’ll be implementing this very soon. Its just too cool. Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-21-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-21-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Ah… the homemade “tribute” music video. What better way to show your love for a celebrity, professional wrestler, or animated series from Japan than to commit low-level copyright infringement in their name? If this is a racket that you want to get in on but believe that your video editing skill are lacking, check out Animoto. Simply upload some images, upload a song of your choice, and Animoto does the rest. The results are surprisingly good. Say that you’ve graduated past the random “still” image. Maybe you want to incorporate actual video into your tribute or business video. Don’t worry, because MuveeMix has it all covered. MuveeMix takes in your music, throws in some video of your choice, and then edits it on the fly. The result? A professional quality music video. As always, MuveeMix is completely free of charge. Some of us, however, might not be as content letting a website do the work for them. For all you control freaks hands-on types, there’s JumpCut, from Yahoo. JumpCut is like a web-based iMovie, allowing you to edit, splice, overlay, and more, all from your browser. One of the coolest features is that you can import media directly from your Facebook page or your Flikr account. You also get a special email address, that your friends can use to send you clips from their mobile phones. All you need is a Yahoo ID (those are free as well) and a video camera. If you want more out of a video editor than what JumpCut can provide, but at the same time not willing to take out the small bank loan it takes to afford Apple’s Final Cut Pro, then EyeSpot might be for you. It’s not as powerful as Final Cut Pro, but it has more bells and whistles than JumpCut. And for an added feature, it even allows you to embed the video editor into your website, allowing other people to come in and mix up and edit videos that you put on your website. A 100 MB upload limit doesn’t get you very far with video content, though. Hopefully, they’ll up this limit soon. If not, someone will. There’s no stopping the Free Line. And now for the big one. Are you ready for this? Your not…there’s no way. What we’re about to show you is going to change the very meaning of online video. Kaltura is a…wait for it… a free and open source VIDEO PLATFORM! Well, what does that mean, you ask? I thought you might. It means that now anybody can add a full featured video solution to their website for free! Functionality includes uploading, transcoding, remixing, annotating, sharing, search, and just about anything else you can think of. A plugin has just been released that let’s you add Kaltura video to a wiki and a WordPress plugin is coming soon. Keep your eye on our own Free Line wiki. We’ll be implementing this very soon. Its just too cool. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-18-08/ Last May, we reported on the French government’s complaints about privacy issues with Google’s StreetView system. Apparently, they weren’t the only ones concerned. Google has now removed a grand total of 51 specific locations from their Google Maps Street View. Many of the deleted images are considered to be of a “sensitive nature,” such as research labs and nuclear reactors. Non-military sites being blocked or blurred include the Playland Amusement Park in Rye, New York, the homes of Vice President Dick Cheney and actor William Hurt… and the entire continent of Europe. Google has yet to comment publicly on this matter. Bookmarks. RSS feeds. Downloaded files. General social media. Despite what you be thinking right now, throwing everything onto the digital equivalent of your bedroom floor is not being organized. Don’t worry, because Secondbrain is here to help. Secondbrain is like a giant file cabinet, keeping all of your links and files safe and accessible in one central location. It also makes it easy to share your private collection of web bits with the world. After a few minutes, you’ll see what how great true online organization is. It’s better than the bedroom floor approach. One of the harder things to do in life is deal with a cat. One second, it’s rubbing up against you affectionately. The next, it’s taking its claws for a spin on your new sofa. In many ways, writing HTML and CSS code is the same exact thing. To calm the raging feline that lives within your web server, we here at the Free Line suggest trying HTML Playground. HTML Playground allows you to see the changes you make to your code in real time, allowing you to view and anticipate any problems as they occur. If something doesn’t quite work, just undo it. No harm done. While it’s not necessarily suited for everyday use, HTML Playground is perfect as the “catnip” needed to keep your site in line. Sometimes, all it takes is one picture to turn your website from beautiful to an eyesore. Site colors that clash with the colors of a picture can not only ruin your site’s ascetics, it could scare potential clients away. One way to prevent this from happening is by using a “color match” service like the Color Palette Generator. The Generator analyzes your picture files, and offers up a few appropriate colors that will match nicely. Simple and easy to use, the Color Palette Generator is one way to make sure that the your site is not an eyesore. In the world of digital photography, keeping everything deep and meaningful isn’t always appropriate. There are moments where you just need to lighten up and explore your inner “Andy Warhol.” Cameroid takes webcam-based digital pictures and turns them into an over-the-top experience heavy on visual delight, but light on thinking. All of the classic filters and options are present, from pop art to the head of Frankenstein. While it won’t guarantee you your “fifteen minutes,” the free Cameroid service does provide some mindless fun. And sometimes, a little mindless fun is exactly what the doctor ordered. Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-18-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-18-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Last May, we reported on the French government’s complaints about privacy issues with Google’s StreetView system. Apparently, they weren’t the only ones concerned. Google has now removed a grand total of 51 specific locations from their Google Maps Street View. Many of the deleted images are considered to be of a “sensitive nature,” such as research labs and nuclear reactors. Non-military sites being blocked or blurred include the Playland Amusement Park in Rye, New York, the homes of Vice President Dick Cheney and actor William Hurt… and the entire continent of Europe. Google has yet to comment publicly on this matter. Bookmarks. RSS feeds. Downloaded files. General social media. Despite what you be thinking right now, throwing everything onto the digital equivalent of your bedroom floor is not being organized. Don’t worry, because Secondbrain is here to help. Secondbrain is like a giant file cabinet, keeping all of your links and files safe and accessible in one central location. It also makes it easy to share your private collection of web bits with the world. After a few minutes, you’ll see what how great true online organization is. It’s better than the bedroom floor approach. One of the harder things to do in life is deal with a cat. One second, it’s rubbing up against you affectionately. The next, it’s taking its claws for a spin on your new sofa. In many ways, writing HTML and CSS code is the same exact thing. To calm the raging feline that lives within your web server, we here at the Free Line suggest trying HTML Playground. HTML Playground allows you to see the changes you make to your code in real time, allowing you to view and anticipate any problems as they occur. If something doesn’t quite work, just undo it. No harm done. While it’s not necessarily suited for everyday use, HTML Playground is perfect as the “catnip” needed to keep your site in line. Sometimes, all it takes is one picture to turn your website from beautiful to an eyesore. Site colors that clash with the colors of a picture can not only ruin your site’s ascetics, it could scare potential clients away. One way to prevent this from happening is by using a “color match” service like the Color Palette Generator. The Generator analyzes your picture files, and offers up a few appropriate colors that will match nicely. Simple and easy to use, the Color Palette Generator is one way to make sure that the your site is not an eyesore. In the world of digital photography, keeping everything deep and meaningful isn’t always appropriate. There are moments where you just need to lighten up and explore your inner “Andy Warhol.” Cameroid takes webcam-based digital pictures and turns them into an over-the-top experience heavy on visual delight, but light on thinking. All of the classic filters and options are present, from pop art to the head of Frankenstein. While it won’t guarantee you your “fifteen minutes,” the free Cameroid service does provide some mindless fun. And sometimes, a little mindless fun is exactly what the doctor ordered. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-17-08/ 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. Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-17-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-17-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes On the July 8th edition of the Free Line, we reported that media giant Viacom was forcing Google to hand over the personal records associated with YouTube users. Tech blog Gizmodo is now reporting that this might not be the case after all. While Viacom is still set to receive the information from Google, all personal information will be replaced with a so called “arbitrary identifier.” This latest change came about after privacy groups protested the move. Neither Google nor Viacom have any comment concerning this latest development. Around the world, widespread disease is still a serious problem. Keeping track of the diseases used to be a painstaking and not too reliable proposition. Thankfully, that is about to change. Healthmap is a project in which top researchers use Google Maps to keep tabs on the various viral nasties that populate the planet. According to their website, their ultimate goal is to provide a “unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health.” On behalf of the Free Line, I wish you nothing but good luck on behalf of your cause. To some of us, text messaging is a necessary evil. For those of you who feel that texting is a gigantic waste of time but still have a need to use the service, there’s GizmoSMS. Unlike most texting services, Gizmo is based from a website. Not only can you avoid the normal texting fees that come with sending a message, you can use your keyboard to write full sentences. Ah… the simple joys of the properly punctuated sentence. As always, Gizmo SMS is a free service. There are many of us who believe that a cell phone is not a proper replacement for a regular digital camera. Sadly this is not true, as most phone are obscenely underpowered when compared to nicer cameras on the market. Still, that doesn’t mean that your pictures automatically have to look bad. Download the Mobile Photo Enhancer and clean those pictures up. The Mobile Photo Enhancer removes noise, JPEG compression artifacts, and more from cell phone imagery. What you’re left with is nicest looking picture possible. Even cell phones can capture the beauty of the world around us. They just need a little help in the clutch. Despite what Huey Lewis might have told you, it’s not hip to be square, especially when it comes to CSS bounding boxes. RoundedCornr delivers what it promises - nice rounded edges for all. Just choose your colors and your height and off you go. It’s not flashy, but it’s functional. And sometimes, functional is all you need. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-16-08/ On the July 8th edition of the Free Line, we reported that media giant Viacom was forcing Google to hand over the personal records associated with YouTube users. Tech blog Gizmodo is now reporting that this might not be the case after all. While Viacom is still set to receive the information from Google, all personal information will be replaced with a so called “arbitrary identifier.” This latest change came about after privacy groups protested the move. Neither Google nor Viacom have any comment concerning this latest development. Around the world, widespread disease is still a serious problem. Keeping track of the diseases used to be a painstaking and not too reliable proposition. Thankfully, that is about to change. Healthmap is a project in which top researchers use Google Maps to keep tabs on the various viral nasties that populate the planet. According to their website, their ultimate goal is to provide a “unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health.” On behalf of the Free Line, I wish you nothing but good luck on behalf of your cause. To some of us, text messaging is a necessary evil. For those of you who feel that texting is a gigantic waste of time but still have a need to use the service, there’s GizmoSMS. Unlike most texting services, Gizmo is based from a website. Not only can you avoid the normal texting fees that come with sending a message, you can use your keyboard to write full sentences. Ah… the simple joys of the properly punctuated sentence. As always, Gizmo SMS is a free service. There are many of us who believe that a cell phone is not a proper replacement for a regular digital camera. Sadly this is not true, as most phone are obscenely underpowered when compared to nicer cameras on the market. Still, that doesn’t mean that your pictures automatically have to look bad. Download the Mobile Photo Enhancer and clean those pictures up. The Mobile Photo Enhancer removes noise, JPEG compression artifacts, and more from cell phone imagery. What you’re left with is nicest looking picture possible. Even cell phones can capture the beauty of the world around us. They just need a little help in the clutch. Despite what Huey Lewis might have told you, it’s not hip to be square, especially when it comes to CSS bounding boxes. RoundedCornr delivers what it promises - nice rounded edges for all. Just choose your colors and your height and off you go. It’s not flashy, but it’s functional. And sometimes, functional is all you need. Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-16-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-16-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes On the July 8th edition of the Free Line, we reported that media giant Viacom was forcing Google to hand over the personal records associated with YouTube users. Tech blog Gizmodo is now reporting that this might not be the case after all. While Viacom is still set to receive the information from Google, all personal information will be replaced with a so called “arbitrary identifier.” This latest change came about after privacy groups protested the move. Neither Google nor Viacom have any comment concerning this latest development. Around the world, widespread disease is still a serious problem. Keeping track of the diseases used to be a painstaking and not too reliable proposition. Thankfully, that is about to change. Healthmap is a project in which top researchers use Google Maps to keep tabs on the various viral nasties that populate the planet. According to their website, their ultimate goal is to provide a “unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health.” On behalf of the Free Line, I wish you nothing but good luck on behalf of your cause. To some of us, text messaging is a necessary evil. For those of you who feel that texting is a gigantic waste of time but still have a need to use the service, there’s GizmoSMS. Unlike most texting services, Gizmo is based from a website. Not only can you avoid the normal texting fees that come with sending a message, you can use your keyboard to write full sentences. Ah… the simple joys of the properly punctuated sentence. As always, Gizmo SMS is a free service. There are many of us who believe that a cell phone is not a proper replacement for a regular digital camera. Sadly this is not true, as most phone are obscenely underpowered when compared to nicer cameras on the market. Still, that doesn’t mean that your pictures automatically have to look bad. Download the Mobile Photo Enhancer and clean those pictures up. The Mobile Photo Enhancer removes noise, JPEG compression artifacts, and more from cell phone imagery. What you’re left with is nicest looking picture possible. Even cell phones can capture the beauty of the world around us. They just need a little help in the clutch. Despite what Huey Lewis might have told you, it’s not hip to be square, especially when it comes to CSS bounding boxes. RoundedCornr delivers what it promises - nice rounded edges for all. Just choose your colors and your height and off you go. It’s not flashy, but it’s functional. And sometimes, functional is all you need. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-15-08/ The Republican Party is now on Facebook. No, this is not a joke. The Republican Platform Committee recently has launched a Facebook application in order to find out what “average people” care about. Topics listed include national security concerns, gas prices, judicial nominations, and tech policies. If you wish to give them a “piece of your mind to feast upon” yet don’t have a Facebook account, have no fear. The GOP has also set up a traditional website as well. While Democratic nominee Barack Obama is embarking on a similar campaign, the party on a whole has yet to implement such a measure. So go on and vent. It’s the American way. Mozilla, the development house responsible for Firefox and Thunderbird, is in the Guinness Book of World Records. Firefox 3.0 was downloaded a staggering 8,002,530 times on the day of its launch, easily setting the new world record for most downloads in a 24 hour period. Mozilla now finds themselves rubbing elbows with such luminaries as Stephen Carter (world’s fastest pumpkin carver), Claudio Castagnoli (longest held non-submission wrestling maneuver), and the Tivoli Lovelies (world oldest chorus line). Needless to say, this stunt still has people talking. ZDNet recently talked with Paul Kim, the Vice President of Marketing with Mozilla. According to Mr. Kim, his company has social networking to thank for setting the record. “Since Firefox is all about the online experience, it’s a natural fit for folks who are open to social networking. We announced Download Day with a very concerted plan to leverage multiple social networks and to seed content on those networks that would drive traffic to the download site.” For the complete interview, feel free to visit ZDNet. Sticking with Firefox for a moment, our colleague Jason Bartholme has a list of the top eleven power plugins for Firefox. Our current favorite is CodeTech, it allows you to edit web pages while viewing them. Think Dream Weaver or Front Page, but without the external program. Very handy in the moments when a page needs to be debugged now. Everyone needs a little help finding something new from time to time. Enter Similicious. Similicious is sort of the “helper monkey” of social websites. Instead of a plain old web search, Similicious uses Del.icio.us bookmarks as a way of finding websites related to the ones you like. Oh… and it’s free as well. Can’t beat that. To finish things up, I have a simple question for you: have you ever lost Post-It Notes. I’m not talking about the pad. I am talking about the actual, filled out notes. If this is you (it’s definitely me), then we here at the Free Line suggest giving UberNote a try. UberNote is a completely free alternative to Microsoft’s OneNote application, allowing you to take notes, bookmarks make lists and clip portions of the web all from your browser. It’s easy to use, completely free, and best all, can’t be lost. Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-15-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-15-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes The Republican Party is now on Facebook. No, this is not a joke. The Republican Platform Committee recently has launched a Facebook application in order to find out what “average people” care about. Topics listed include national security concerns, gas prices, judicial nominations, and tech policies. If you wish to give them a “piece of your mind to feast upon” yet don’t have a Facebook account, have no fear. The GOP has also set up a traditional website as well. While Democratic nominee Barack Obama is embarking on a similar campaign, the party on a whole has yet to implement such a measure. So go on and vent. It’s the American way. Mozilla, the development house responsible for Firefox and Thunderbird, is in the Guinness Book of World Records. Firefox 3.0 was downloaded a staggering 8,002,530 times on the day of its launch, easily setting the new world record for most downloads in a 24 hour period. Mozilla now finds themselves rubbing elbows with such luminaries as Stephen Carter (world’s fastest pumpkin carver), Claudio Castagnoli (longest held non-submission wrestling maneuver), and the Tivoli Lovelies (world oldest chorus line). Needless to say, this stunt still has people talking. ZDNet recently talked with Paul Kim, the Vice President of Marketing with Mozilla. According to Mr. Kim, his company has social networking to thank for setting the record. “Since Firefox is all about the online experience, it’s a natural fit for folks who are open to social networking. We announced Download Day with a very concerted plan to leverage multiple social networks and to seed content on those networks that would drive traffic to the download site.” For the complete interview, feel free to visit ZDNet. Sticking with Firefox for a moment, our colleague Jason Bartholme has a list of the top eleven power plugins for Firefox. Our current favorite is CodeTech, it allows you to edit web pages while viewing them. Think Dream Weaver or Front Page, but without the external program. Very handy in the moments when a page needs to be debugged now. Everyone needs a little help finding something new from time to time. Enter Similicious. Similicious is sort of the “helper monkey” of social websites. Instead of a plain old web search, Similicious uses Del.icio.us bookmarks as a way of finding websites related to the ones you like. Oh… and it’s free as well. Can’t beat that. To finish things up, I have a simple question for you: have you ever lost Post-It Notes. I’m not talking about the pad. I am talking about the actual, filled out notes. If this is you (it’s definitely me), then we here at the Free Line suggest giving UberNote a try. UberNote is a completely free alternative to Microsoft’s OneNote application, allowing you to take notes, bookmarks make lists and clip portions of the web all from your browser. It’s easy to use, completely free, and best all, can’t be lost. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-14-08/ The new iTunes store was launched last Thursday, and with it came all of the new portable applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Out of the roughly 550 applications hat have been released, 125 of those applications are completely free. And of course, the best way to choose what to install on your new iPhone is by seeing it in action. Tech blog TechCrunch has a fantastic feature showing off eight of the new apps. Our friends at Lifehacker a nice little piece detailing the best free applications the iPhone has to offer. And it just wouldn’t be the Free Line if we didn’t put our two cents into it as well. So without further adieu, we give you the Free Line’s top five free applications for the iPhone. Remote: Control both iTunes and Apple TV using your iPhone. Simple idea, but it’s executed well. Pandora: Internet radio has invaded the iPhone. Not only does Pandora stream your favorite music, it actually customizes its play list based on your preferences. Perfect for those who want to listen to something different, yet don’t want to shell out the $12.95 a month for satellite radio. Mobile News Network: Powered by the Associated Press, the Mobile News Network allows you to keep up with the latest goings on in the world around us. Easy to use and a wealth of proven, credible sources, all for free. Can’t beat that. SpeechCloud: A helpful little tool that adds voice dialing. Simple? Of course. Not everything great has to be complicated. Wordpress: The sheer power of blogging has hit the iPhone. Keep in touch even when you’re away from your computer. Fun and useful… seems to be Wordpress’ M.O., doesn’t it? Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-14-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-14-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes The new iTunes store was launched last Thursday, and with it came all of the new portable applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Out of the roughly 550 applications hat have been released, 125 of those applications are completely free. And of course, the best way to choose what to install on your new iPhone is by seeing it in action. Tech blog TechCrunch has a fantastic feature showing off eight of the new apps. Our friends at Lifehacker a nice little piece detailing the best free applications the iPhone has to offer. And it just wouldn’t be the Free Line if we didn’t put our two cents into it as well. So without further adieu, we give you the Free Line’s top five free applications for the iPhone. Remote: Control both iTunes and Apple TV using your iPhone. Simple idea, but it’s executed well. Pandora: Internet radio has invaded the iPhone. Not only does Pandora stream your favorite music, it actually customizes its play list based on your preferences. Perfect for those who want to listen to something different, yet don’t want to shell out the $12.95 a month for satellite radio. Mobile News Network: Powered by the Associated Press, the Mobile News Network allows you to keep up with the latest goings on in the world around us. Easy to use and a wealth of proven, credible sources, all for free. Can’t beat that. SpeechCloud: A helpful little tool that adds voice dialing. Simple? Of course. Not everything great has to be complicated. Wordpress: The sheer power of blogging has hit the iPhone. Keep in touch even when you’re away from your computer. Fun and useful… seems to be Wordpress’ M.O., doesn’t it? http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-8-08/ The way that advertising appears on social networks is about to change… if Google has anything to say about it, that is. The current reigning “king of all that is searchable” is trying to patent a new algorithm they call “FriendRank.” FriendRank is similar to its older brother, PageRank, only it uses social networking and friends lists to create popularity data. The idea is to find the most influential friend in a group of friends on a social network, and then display ads on their profile. The end result? Targeted advertising for less dollars and a possibly a few new friends to boot. Not a bad deal at all. In other Google news, it looks like the US Justice Department is investigating the advertising deal between Yahoo and Google. There are worries that it could be breaking antitrust laws, and that the two together would create a monopoly of Internet based advertising. They are requesting documentation not only from the two web giants, but also from all web advertising companies. Google’s general council Keith Walker still considers the deal to be “pro-competitive.” We will keep you abreast of this developing situation. In other legal news, a judge has officially ordered YouTube owner Google to give all of its user information to Viacom. Viacom is aiming to prove that illegal, pirated videos are more popular online than the “traditional” videos made by users. A victory would be huge for Viacom, as it would leave Google open to a contributory infringement charge. Although Google has since complied with the ruling, the company has yet to comment publicly on the matter. While the big brass at Google might be staying silent, those actively working on the search engine are letting their voices be heard. A Google search of the term “Viacom” has two news articles concerning the ruling ranking above the media giant’s corporate website, both with a distinct “anti-Viacom” slant. The article from CNET labels Viacom as “corporate bullies,” while the eCanadaNow piece quietly bemoans the breach of privacy. Both the articles and the search results prove that the pen - and, in this case, the search engine - is mightier than the legal summons. We’re now saying that Google skews the search results for their own political ends, but it sure is a big coincidence. Don’t you think? Ever wish you that you could smash ten pages of Amazon.com customer reviews into ten lines? You can now, thanks to Pluribo. This handy little Firefox extension strolls through a product, checks out the reviews, and converts them into a compact, easy to read summary. Pluribo is a great way to get the gist of what everyone is saying without actually sifting through those tedious reviews yourself. Oh… and it’s completely free. Can’t beat that. We’ve talked about Blender before. For those new to the Free Line, Blender is a free, open-source 3D graphics tool comparable to expensive programs such as 3DS Max and LightWave 3D. The Blender Institute, the group behind the feature-length film “Big Bucks Bunny,” is currently hard at work on their first video game. Tentatively titled “Apricot,” the game centers around a chipmunk looking for his nuts. The game, which is still in early stages of development, currently has no release date. Tue, 8 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-8-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-8-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes The way that advertising appears on social networks is about to change… if Google has anything to say about it, that is. The current reigning “king of all that is searchable” is trying to patent a new algorithm they call “FriendRank.” FriendRank is similar to its older brother, PageRank, only it uses social networking and friends lists to create popularity data. The idea is to find the most influential friend in a group of friends on a social network, and then display ads on their profile. The end result? Targeted advertising for less dollars and a possibly a few new friends to boot. Not a bad deal at all. In other Google news, it looks like the US Justice Department is investigating the advertising deal between Yahoo and Google. There are worries that it could be breaking antitrust laws, and that the two together would create a monopoly of Internet based advertising. They are requesting documentation not only from the two web giants, but also from all web advertising companies. Google’s general council Keith Walker still considers the deal to be “pro-competitive.” We will keep you abreast of this developing situation. In other legal news, a judge has officially ordered YouTube owner Google to give all of its user information to Viacom. Viacom is aiming to prove that illegal, pirated videos are more popular online than the “traditional” videos made by users. A victory would be huge for Viacom, as it would leave Google open to a contributory infringement charge. Although Google has since complied with the ruling, the company has yet to comment publicly on the matter. While the big brass at Google might be staying silent, those actively working on the search engine are letting their voices be heard. A Google search of the term “Viacom” has two news articles concerning the ruling ranking above the media giant’s corporate website, both with a distinct “anti-Viacom” slant. The article from CNET labels Viacom as “corporate bullies,” while the eCanadaNow piece quietly bemoans the breach of privacy. Both the articles and the search results prove that the pen - and, in this case, the search engine - is mightier than the legal summons. We’re now saying that Google skews the search results for their own political ends, but it sure is a big coincidence. Don’t you think? Ever wish you that you could smash ten pages of Amazon.com customer reviews into ten lines? You can now, thanks to Pluribo. This handy little Firefox extension strolls through a product, checks out the reviews, and converts them into a compact, easy to read summary. Pluribo is a great way to get the gist of what everyone is saying without actually sifting through those tedious reviews yourself. Oh… and it’s completely free. Can’t beat that. We’ve talked about Blender before. For those new to the Free Line, Blender is a free, open-source 3D graphics tool comparable to expensive programs such as 3DS Max and LightWave 3D. The Blender Institute, the group behind the feature-length film “Big Bucks Bunny,” is currently hard at work on their first video game. Tentatively titled “Apricot,” the game centers around a chipmunk looking for his nuts. The game, which is still in early stages of development, currently has no release date. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-7-08/ Have you ever wanted the Linux operating system to control your home? If this is you, then your prayers have been answered. Linux MCE is the new, free operating system that lets you to stream media files, pause live TV ala TIVO, and even control your lighting and heating system from your mobile phone, all from one place. All you need is a computer to run it on and hardware that supports it. Suddenly, the future that was predicted in The Jetsons doesn’t look all that far-fetched. Those of you out in the blogosphere who love to listen to free streaming music online, listen up. Streamzy lets your search for your favorite songs and then save them into a streaming playlist, all completely for free. Streamzy is the perfect tool for someone who likes to have their music digitally, but would rather not mess with any messy files. As always, Streamzy is a completely free service. If you like to play music as much as you like listening to it, then the following announcement will be music to your ears. The International Music Score Library, the web’s number one repository for public domain sheet music, has reopened. The IMSL founder Edward W. Guo is also promising some big changes in the future, including a backup system and a few “collaborations” with a few “major organizations.” No matter what comes about in the future, there is one thing that we all can agree on: it’s nice to have the “joyful noise” back online. Sometimes, it’s just not easy being number one. Just ask Twitter, who is still having scalability problems right now. User have seen the website more down than up lately, and some people have even started selling T-shirts with the infamous whale image you get when the site is down. The people at Twitter say that they are working on it, and we should see less and less down time as the changes near completion. For those who have grown tired of Twitter’s “whale” of a problem, why not give another service a try? Identi.ca, for example, is focused towards creating a fully scalable microblogging network, which promises to be more stable and secure than Twitter without removing features. It also plans on supporting both OpenID and the microblogging-targeted OpenSocial network. While its status as a “Twitter killer” is unknown, Identi.ca proves once again that necessity, like Frank Zappa, truly is the mother of invention. Mon, 7 Jul 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-7-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-7-7-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Have you ever wanted the Linux operating system to control your home? If this is you, then your prayers have been answered. Linux MCE is the new, free operating system that lets you to stream media files, pause live TV ala TIVO, and even control your lighting and heating system from your mobile phone, all from one place. All you need is a computer to run it on and hardware that supports it. Suddenly, the future that was predicted in The Jetsons doesn’t look all that far-fetched. Those of you out in the blogosphere who love to listen to free streaming music online, listen up. Streamzy lets your search for your favorite songs and then save them into a streaming playlist, all completely for free. Streamzy is the perfect tool for someone who likes to have their music digitally, but would rather not mess with any messy files. As always, Streamzy is a completely free service. If you like to play music as much as you like listening to it, then the following announcement will be music to your ears. The International Music Score Library, the web’s number one repository for public domain sheet music, has reopened. The IMSL founder Edward W. Guo is also promising some big changes in the future, including a backup system and a few “collaborations” with a few “major organizations.” No matter what comes about in the future, there is one thing that we all can agree on: it’s nice to have the “joyful noise” back online. Sometimes, it’s just not easy being number one. Just ask Twitter, who is still having scalability problems right now. User have seen the website more down than up lately, and some people have even started selling T-shirts with the infamous whale image you get when the site is down. The people at Twitter say that they are working on it, and we should see less and less down time as the changes near completion. For those who have grown tired of Twitter’s “whale” of a problem, why not give another service a try? Identi.ca, for example, is focused towards creating a fully scalable microblogging network, which promises to be more stable and secure than Twitter without removing features. It also plans on supporting both OpenID and the microblogging-targeted OpenSocial network. While its status as a “Twitter killer” is unknown, Identi.ca proves once again that necessity, like Frank Zappa, truly is the mother of invention. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-20-08/ Twitterurly 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 Twittlinks 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. Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-20-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-20-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Twitterurly 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 Twittlinks 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. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-19-08/ 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. Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-19-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-19-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes 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. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-18-08/ 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. Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-18-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-18-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes 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. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-13-08/ 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. Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-13-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-13-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes 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. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-12-08/ Today we’ve got a special treat for you- we’re going to cover some of the coolest new search engines to grace the internet. These engines are gunning to be the next Google, and they are using interesting combinations of old technology and new to embrace what the web has to offer. Clusty is one of the most prominent of the engines we’re looking at today. They’ve been around for a short while, and are starting to pick up a fan base. Clusty searches and returns results in clusters. A cluster is like a group or folder of related information. So, if you search for hats, you will get several different kind of hat clusters as a result, such as “cowboy hats” and “ball caps.” So, it narrows down your search for you and makes searching for related data a snap. Topical, on the other hand, is a much more limited search. It only retrieves a set of websites hand picked by the community. The community aspect to Topical plays a big part in the quality of your search results. This pretty much wipes SEO out of the equation. If you want to be found on Topical, you have to impress real people with you content, not just spiders. It is easy to sign up and starting adding your own choice picks to the engine, so go ahead and give it a try. Think of it as a MySpace for web searching. Next up we’ve got Wikia Search, the brain child of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. We’ve reported on WikiaSearch in the past for the Free Line, and it has come a long way since then. The first open crowd-sourced search engine, this also relies on the community to tag, edit, and rate webpages. Is this the future of search? I’m not quite so sure. But the same thing worked well with Wikipedia, so we’ll see. Of course, not everyone wants a large community of strangers choosing their search results. Wiki’s do have their downside, and if someone isn’t constantly editing, someone can easily sneak in and spam the search results. Mahalo is a search engine that has a set of engineers who work day and night creating great searches for you. It’s not based on a community, but rather an editorial process with several editors. And finally, Strands plans on taking Amazon’s Select head to head, by creating an open and free suggestion engine for businesses. If you sell something online, you can have it referenced and stored in Strands. It quickly serves up recommendations that are fairly accurate, almost as good as Amazon’s. If they keep this up Amazon will have some real competition on their hands, and they’ll probably just buy them. Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-12-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-12-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Today we’ve got a special treat for you- we’re going to cover some of the coolest new search engines to grace the internet. These engines are gunning to be the next Google, and they are using interesting combinations of old technology and new to embrace what the web has to offer. Clusty is one of the most prominent of the engines we’re looking at today. They’ve been around for a short while, and are starting to pick up a fan base. Clusty searches and returns results in clusters. A cluster is like a group or folder of related information. So, if you search for hats, you will get several different kind of hat clusters as a result, such as “cowboy hats” and “ball caps.” So, it narrows down your search for you and makes searching for related data a snap. Topical, on the other hand, is a much more limited search. It only retrieves a set of websites hand picked by the community. The community aspect to Topical plays a big part in the quality of your search results. This pretty much wipes SEO out of the equation. If you want to be found on Topical, you have to impress real people with you content, not just spiders. It is easy to sign up and starting adding your own choice picks to the engine, so go ahead and give it a try. Think of it as a MySpace for web searching. Next up we’ve got Wikia Search, the brain child of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. We’ve reported on WikiaSearch in the past for the Free Line, and it has come a long way since then. The first open crowd-sourced search engine, this also relies on the community to tag, edit, and rate webpages. Is this the future of search? I’m not quite so sure. But the same thing worked well with Wikipedia, so we’ll see. Of course, not everyone wants a large community of strangers choosing their search results. Wiki’s do have their downside, and if someone isn’t constantly editing, someone can easily sneak in and spam the search results. Mahalo is a search engine that has a set of engineers who work day and night creating great searches for you. It’s not based on a community, but rather an editorial process with several editors. And finally, Strands plans on taking Amazon’s Select head to head, by creating an open and free suggestion engine for businesses. If you sell something online, you can have it referenced and stored in Strands. It quickly serves up recommendations that are fairly accurate, almost as good as Amazon’s. If they keep this up Amazon will have some real competition on their hands, and they’ll probably just buy them. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-10-08/ For those of you looking for a free alternative to PowerPoint or Keynote, look no further than 280 Slides. Started by two former Apple employees and backed by Y Combinator, it does an excellent job of mimicking those desktop applications, online. They use Javascript instead of Flash, which makes the whole experience even more impressive. While it won’t solve the problem of having to sit through excruciating Power Point presentations, at least it’s free.We’ve reported on Last.FM quite a bit here on the Free Line- after all, it lets you stream any music you want to hear for as much you would like. But that is all about to change. Warner Music has pulled the plug on letting Last.FM stream their artist’s music, which will cut down on a large amount of free songs that you can tap your toes to. No more free Neil Young or Death Cab for Cutie. Bad form Warner. That’s not the way to move the freeline. Of course, some people get their music in less than legal ways, using programs like BitTorrent or BitComet. AT and T has officially come out and said that have never and will never cut down on bandwidth for people using BitTorrent technology. They say that it’s just not a part of their philosophy. They have, however, thought about doing something similar to what Time Warner Cable is doing for it’s internet offering- and that’s charging people per gigabyte of bandwidth. Of course, if they do charge for bandwidth, this could be a big problem for people using sites like Box.net to store their files. Box.net is an online file storage site that lets you upload any file you want, and also edit documents and photos online. A cool tool, and I hate to see people use it less just because they will get charged more by their internet company for using it. Especially since Box.net is completely free. And if you’re a Wikipedia addict (and who isn’t?), you should get a kick out of Six Degrees of Wikipedia. It’s a game where you put in two subjects, and see how many clicks it would take to get from one to the other. How far is it to get from Gatorade to Genghis Kahn? Just three. A fun and free way to waste some extra time. Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-11-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-11-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes For those of you looking for a free alternative to PowerPoint or Keynote, look no further than 280 Slides. Started by two former Apple employees and backed by Y Combinator, it does an excellent job of mimicking those desktop applications, online. They use Javascript instead of Flash, which makes the whole experience even more impressive. While it won’t solve the problem of having to sit through excruciating Power Point presentations, at least it’s free.We’ve reported on Last.FM quite a bit here on the Free Line- after all, it lets you stream any music you want to hear for as much you would like. But that is all about to change. Warner Music has pulled the plug on letting Last.FM stream their artist’s music, which will cut down on a large amount of free songs that you can tap your toes to. No more free Neil Young or Death Cab for Cutie. Bad form Warner. That’s not the way to move the freeline. Of course, some people get their music in less than legal ways, using programs like BitTorrent or BitComet. AT and T has officially come out and said that have never and will never cut down on bandwidth for people using BitTorrent technology. They say that it’s just not a part of their philosophy. They have, however, thought about doing something similar to what Time Warner Cable is doing for it’s internet offering- and that’s charging people per gigabyte of bandwidth. Of course, if they do charge for bandwidth, this could be a big problem for people using sites like Box.net to store their files. Box.net is an online file storage site that lets you upload any file you want, and also edit documents and photos online. A cool tool, and I hate to see people use it less just because they will get charged more by their internet company for using it. Especially since Box.net is completely free. And if you’re a Wikipedia addict (and who isn’t?), you should get a kick out of Six Degrees of Wikipedia. It’s a game where you put in two subjects, and see how many clicks it would take to get from one to the other. How far is it to get from Gatorade to Genghis Kahn? Just three. A fun and free way to waste some extra time. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-10-08/ Well, unless you were hiding under a cyber rock yesterday, you’ve by now heard the news. You know what we’re talking about - the iPhone 2.0 is here. Well..not exactly. It’s not quite ready yet, but the announcement is still very exciting. New offerings include a built-in GPS device and access to the 3G network, which will allow you to web surf at almost broadband speeds. Prices start at $199 for the eight gig version, and $299 for the larger, sixteen gig variety. Throw in some an extended warranty, and you might have yourself a deal, Mr. Jobs. Now that you have a brand new iPhone coming your way, you’re no doubt thinking about places to bury your old one. Well don’t do that, because Staples is willing to take it off of your hands. Called Eco Easy, Staples has made it easy to recycle your old tech, both Apple-related and otherwise. Just go to their website and fill out the form. They’ll even take care of the shipping costs. What do you get in return? A coupon for their store and that warm fuzzy feeling you get from knowing that your old iPhone isn’t sitting some landfill. And if you’ve got an old iPod that’s just been sitting in a sock drawer since you got your first iPhone, and you’d like to get some more use out of it, instead of sending it to Staples, give RockBox a try. Rockbox breaths new life into iPods, enabling them to play audio formats and connect to systems that were once considered to be impossible. Best of all, the Rockbox firmware sits beside the original firmware, allowing you to jump back and forth at will. Rockbox does not currently support video files, although support is under development. Now we know not everyone is so ga ga about the new iPhone. Maybe you just bought a Windows Mobile device and you’re perfectly happy with it, but still go green with envy when at the iPhone’s cool interface. iContact is a free program that will give your address book an Apple makeover. Just move your finger down the device, and watch the contents of your address book fly by. Thanks to iContact, you’ll never look at your contacts the same way again… literally. See, Windows guys? We’ve got love for you too. Like your new address book? Great. Now let’s take care of the nasties lurking elsewhere. You’re probably familiar with Spybot Search and Destroy, the Windows program that likes to hurt spyware and sends it crying home to mama. Spybot S and D for Windows Mobile is able to do everything that its big brother can do, only it comes in a smaller package. While a spyware detector for your mobile device might seem to be bit overkill for some, we here at the Free Line feel that a little free protection doesn’t hurt. Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-10-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-10-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Well, unless you were hiding under a cyber rock yesterday, you’ve by now heard the news. You know what we’re talking about - the iPhone 2.0 is here. Well..not exactly. It’s not quite ready yet, but the announcement is still very exciting. New offerings include a built-in GPS device and access to the 3G network, which will allow you to web surf at almost broadband speeds. Prices start at $199 for the eight gig version, and $299 for the larger, sixteen gig variety. Throw in some an extended warranty, and you might have yourself a deal, Mr. Jobs. Now that you have a brand new iPhone coming your way, you’re no doubt thinking about places to bury your old one. Well don’t do that, because Staples is willing to take it off of your hands. Called Eco Easy, Staples has made it easy to recycle your old tech, both Apple-related and otherwise. Just go to their website and fill out the form. They’ll even take care of the shipping costs. What do you get in return? A coupon for their store and that warm fuzzy feeling you get from knowing that your old iPhone isn’t sitting some landfill. And if you’ve got an old iPod that’s just been sitting in a sock drawer since you got your first iPhone, and you’d like to get some more use out of it, instead of sending it to Staples, give RockBox a try. Rockbox breaths new life into iPods, enabling them to play audio formats and connect to systems that were once considered to be impossible. Best of all, the Rockbox firmware sits beside the original firmware, allowing you to jump back and forth at will. Rockbox does not currently support video files, although support is under development. Now we know not everyone is so ga ga about the new iPhone. Maybe you just bought a Windows Mobile device and you’re perfectly happy with it, but still go green with envy when at the iPhone’s cool interface. iContact is a free program that will give your address book an Apple makeover. Just move your finger down the device, and watch the contents of your address book fly by. Thanks to iContact, you’ll never look at your contacts the same way again… literally. See, Windows guys? We’ve got love for you too. Like your new address book? Great. Now let’s take care of the nasties lurking elsewhere. You’re probably familiar with Spybot Search and Destroy, the Windows program that likes to hurt spyware and sends it crying home to mama. Spybot S and D for Windows Mobile is able to do everything that its big brother can do, only it comes in a smaller package. While a spyware detector for your mobile device might seem to be bit overkill for some, we here at the Free Line feel that a little free protection doesn’t hurt. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-9-08/ The Steve Jobs keynote at the World Wide Developers Conference ‘08 is happening right now. As I record this, bloggers are sharing live play-by-plays at the conference, plus some pretty good color commentary. So far, it looks like the iPhone 2.0 is going to move the line quite a bit, including big applause for the way Apple came up with to push stuff to your phone instantly, when you need it, rather than running apps in the background all the time which drain your batteries and make everything run slower. You can follow this link to see what the live bloggers are saying from the audience, complete with visual aids. Despite the many advances in web technology Opera has brought to the browser community in years past, such as tabs, the browser has consistently lagged behind FireFox in terms of popularity. Recently they struck a deal with Haute Secure to deal with malware right in the web browser itself. So far, Opera is the only browser that has anti-malware support built-in. It is unlikely that anyone will really care given all the hype surrounding the release of FireFox 3. Even before Mozilla announced Download Day for Fire Fox 3, the internet has been abuzz about the new features it’s going to support. If you’re not into beta testing for whatever reason, we’ve got a video link that shows you exactly how cool the new web browser will be. New features include an improved address bar and smarter bookmarking. Now if only it native support for web clippings, we’d be golden. Fortunately, you can do just that with the free Scrapbook Plugin. Just highlight what you want to save, tag it, and store it your bookmarks for later. It also saves a snapshot of the current page, so even if the site changes, your web clipping will look the same. And if you’re not a fan of FireFox, and would still enjoy this same type of feature in, say Safari or Internet Explorer, GoogleNotebook can pull this trick off with no sweat. In fact, this feature has just recently been added to Google Reader, so you can even clip and save portions of your favorite blogs right from your favorite feed reader. Finally, if you’re a Mac user, Google has a present for you. We’ve got a link to some cool tools that Google employees have been developing in their free time, all of them targeted towards OSX. They have everything from an Image Search application for the desktop, to a program that automatically lets you record directly from your iSight Camera to YouTube. Mon, 9 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-9-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-9-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes The Steve Jobs keynote at the World Wide Developers Conference ‘08 is happening right now. As I record this, bloggers are sharing live play-by-plays at the conference, plus some pretty good color commentary. So far, it looks like the iPhone 2.0 is going to move the line quite a bit, including big applause for the way Apple came up with to push stuff to your phone instantly, when you need it, rather than running apps in the background all the time which drain your batteries and make everything run slower. You can follow this link to see what the live bloggers are saying from the audience, complete with visual aids. Despite the many advances in web technology Opera has brought to the browser community in years past, such as tabs, the browser has consistently lagged behind FireFox in terms of popularity. Recently they struck a deal with Haute Secure to deal with malware right in the web browser itself. So far, Opera is the only browser that has anti-malware support built-in. It is unlikely that anyone will really care given all the hype surrounding the release of FireFox 3. Even before Mozilla announced Download Day for Fire Fox 3, the internet has been abuzz about the new features it’s going to support. If you’re not into beta testing for whatever reason, we’ve got a video link that shows you exactly how cool the new web browser will be. New features include an improved address bar and smarter bookmarking. Now if only it native support for web clippings, we’d be golden. Fortunately, you can do just that with the free Scrapbook Plugin. Just highlight what you want to save, tag it, and store it your bookmarks for later. It also saves a snapshot of the current page, so even if the site changes, your web clipping will look the same. And if you’re not a fan of FireFox, and would still enjoy this same type of feature in, say Safari or Internet Explorer, GoogleNotebook can pull this trick off with no sweat. In fact, this feature has just recently been added to Google Reader, so you can even clip and save portions of your favorite blogs right from your favorite feed reader. Finally, if you’re a Mac user, Google has a present for you. We’ve got a link to some cool tools that Google employees have been developing in their free time, all of them targeted towards OSX. They have everything from an Image Search application for the desktop, to a program that automatically lets you record directly from your iSight Camera to YouTube. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-6-08/ Remember the days when NetZero really cost nothing and all you had to do was watch ads to get free internet access? Those days might come back on steroids. Currently the FCC is toying with the idea of auctioning a portion of the 25 megahertz spectrum with a free provision. This means that whoever buys this spectrum is forced to provide high speed internet access free of charge. We won’t know for certain until June 12th, when the FCC meets and votes on this idea. And this idea could be right in time, since Time Warner Cable has decided to start metering their bandwidth, charging people a dollar for every gigabyte they go over their lotted amount. This doesn’t sound like much, but if you watch a lot of video on the internet it could add up very fast. Right now this is in a trial period in Texas, but is expected to branch out to the rest of their subscriber base within the next few years. A program that could definitely get you in trouble with Time Warner Cable is the new Microsoft Silverlight. This alternative to Flash lets you stream movies and play video games that can gobble up bandwidth faster than you can say Bit Torrent. And they have just recently announced support for Ruby on Rails - a programming language that makes developing web applications easier — but not necessarily better — just ask Twitter. Next, in the Internet Marketing world we’ve been seeing a lot of product launches lately. This week, my buddy Mike Filsaime, (who by the way, is a really great internet marketer that you should pay attention to) is giving away a really cool huge report and mind map series from his $5,000 workshop. And now even FireFox is getting in on the Product Launch Formula. In fact, FireFox is gunning for the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Software Downloaded in 24 hours. They’ve announced Download Day for the release of FireFox 3, and are trying to get as many people as possible to download a copy of FireFox during that 24 hour period. I just hope it doesn’t break GTD Inbox that we told you about. And finally, one of the coolest applications to run on a web browser, whether it is FireFox, Internet Explorer or Safari, is the new Unofficial Google Shell. Deemed Goosh, this Unix style command line interface is the brainchild of Stefan Grothkopp. You type in search terms and Goosh brings you information from Google in real time. That’s what I call using the internet in a new and interesting way — and I can’t wait to see what the technical types start doing with this. Fri, 6 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-6-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-6-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Remember the days when NetZero really cost nothing and all you had to do was watch ads to get free internet access? Those days might come back on steroids. Currently the FCC is toying with the idea of auctioning a portion of the 25 megahertz spectrum with a free provision. This means that whoever buys this spectrum is forced to provide high speed internet access free of charge. We won’t know for certain until June 12th, when the FCC meets and votes on this idea. And this idea could be right in time, since Time Warner Cable has decided to start metering their bandwidth, charging people a dollar for every gigabyte they go over their lotted amount. This doesn’t sound like much, but if you watch a lot of video on the internet it could add up very fast. Right now this is in a trial period in Texas, but is expected to branch out to the rest of their subscriber base within the next few years. A program that could definitely get you in trouble with Time Warner Cable is the new Microsoft Silverlight. This alternative to Flash lets you stream movies and play video games that can gobble up bandwidth faster than you can say Bit Torrent. And they have just recently announced support for Ruby on Rails - a programming language that makes developing web applications easier — but not necessarily better — just ask Twitter. Next, in the Internet Marketing world we’ve been seeing a lot of product launches lately. This week, my buddy Mike Filsaime, (who by the way, is a really great internet marketer that you should pay attention to) is giving away a really cool huge report and mind map series from his $5,000 workshop. And now even FireFox is getting in on the Product Launch Formula. In fact, FireFox is gunning for the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Software Downloaded in 24 hours. They’ve announced Download Day for the release of FireFox 3, and are trying to get as many people as possible to download a copy of FireFox during that 24 hour period. I just hope it doesn’t break GTD Inbox that we told you about. And finally, one of the coolest applications to run on a web browser, whether it is FireFox, Internet Explorer or Safari, is the new Unofficial Google Shell. Deemed Goosh, this Unix style command line interface is the brainchild of Stefan Grothkopp. You type in search terms and Goosh brings you information from Google in real time. That’s what I call using the internet in a new and interesting way — and I can’t wait to see what the technical types start doing with this. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-5-08/ First up –YouTube added a killer feature on Wednesday called YouTube Annotations. You can add text bubbles and links inside of your video, allowing you to cross reference other videos and create added bits to extend your video with notes, descriptions and commentary. These can be turned on or off by users that find them annoying. To get an idea on how cool this is, check out the examples YouTube has online—including an impressive interactive magic trick. One of the best things about YouTube is that you can easily embed your video into any website. But some websites with interactive content aren’t quite as easy to use, and it can be a painful experience trying to embed and share their applications. Enter OEmbed, a new proposed standard designed by Pownce developers Leah Culver and Mike Malone. The purpose of OEmbed is to simplify the process of embedding any content in a webpage. You put in an OEmbed tag and it gets all the required information from the host. So far, not all websites support OEmbed technology. But since Flickr and Viddler are supporting it, you can expect to see other big names following closely behind. Of course, embedding content is just a small portion of what web 2.0 is all about. The newest thing is taking web applications out of the browser and onto the desktop. The latest to take advantage of this new technology is Pandora, the online music engine that streams a radio station of free music according to what you like. Now that Pandora has been emancipated, you can listen to music all day long without worrying about accidentally closing your web browser. iTunes doesn’t have this problem, since it works outside of your browser anyway. And if you use iTunes a lot, you’ll find iConcertCal to be a great plugin. This searches through your and generates a calendar, showing you when your favorite bands are coming to your city. It runs on both Mac and Windows, and has world wide searching capabilities. The mac version can even sync with iCal. On the other hand, if you’ve got a band you’re trying to promote, then you should check out ArtistData. It’s a website that takes in whatever news, data or concert info you’ve got and it pushes it out to multiple websites all out once, promoting it on YouTube, Last.FM, MySpace and a whole lot of others. It can import and export information like tour dates, status updates and videos. Thu, 5 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-5-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-5-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes First up –YouTube added a killer feature on Wednesday called YouTube Annotations. You can add text bubbles and links inside of your video, allowing you to cross reference other videos and create added bits to extend your video with notes, descriptions and commentary. These can be turned on or off by users that find them annoying. To get an idea on how cool this is, check out the examples YouTube has online—including an impressive interactive magic trick. One of the best things about YouTube is that you can easily embed your video into any website. But some websites with interactive content aren’t quite as easy to use, and it can be a painful experience trying to embed and share their applications. Enter OEmbed, a new proposed standard designed by Pownce developers Leah Culver and Mike Malone. The purpose of OEmbed is to simplify the process of embedding any content in a webpage. You put in an OEmbed tag and it gets all the required information from the host. So far, not all websites support OEmbed technology. But since Flickr and Viddler are supporting it, you can expect to see other big names following closely behind. Of course, embedding content is just a small portion of what web 2.0 is all about. The newest thing is taking web applications out of the browser and onto the desktop. The latest to take advantage of this new technology is Pandora, the online music engine that streams a radio station of free music according to what you like. Now that Pandora has been emancipated, you can listen to music all day long without worrying about accidentally closing your web browser. iTunes doesn’t have this problem, since it works outside of your browser anyway. And if you use iTunes a lot, you’ll find iConcertCal to be a great plugin. This searches through your and generates a calendar, showing you when your favorite bands are coming to your city. It runs on both Mac and Windows, and has world wide searching capabilities. The mac version can even sync with iCal. On the other hand, if you’ve got a band you’re trying to promote, then you should check out ArtistData. It’s a website that takes in whatever news, data or concert info you’ve got and it pushes it out to multiple websites all out once, promoting it on YouTube, Last.FM, MySpace and a whole lot of others. It can import and export information like tour dates, status updates and videos. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-4-08/ Wrapping up our series on productivty, today we’re going to focus on free applications online that can help get your business organized. First up is OpenWorkBench. This Windows only tool makes managing projects a snap and lets you keep a close eye on which employee is doing what, all for free. It’s an open alternative to Microsoft Project, and easily competes with the big name software. The business world is becoming more and more virtual, with most businesses these days having remote contractors doing a majority of their work. oDesk is a web based software that helps you manage these contractors, keeping a close eye on them as they work. It covers scheduling and hiring, as well as paying your freelancers. Once you’ve got your employees using their time properly, you can move to the next step: Wikis. A lot of big businesses like Ziff Davis and Yahoo use this to get maximum leverage between employees, letting them develop ideas together faster and more effectively than the traditional route of interoffice memos. A popular choice for a lot of businesses is TWiki. Made specifically with the business environment in mind, it’s very easy to setup and get working right away. The final tool in the next generation of businesses is a social network built specifically for your employees. I suggest using the free social network builder, crowdvine. We’re currently using it for our Free Line social network, and so far it’s been one of the best tools we’ve got in the Free Line repertoire Let’s face it, your employees are going to kill a little downtime on the internet, using social networks. Might as well build one for them that relates to your business and helps foster relationships and community WITHIN your company. Leverage that downtime to your advantage- it will pay off faster than you realize. Wed, 4 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-4-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-4-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Wrapping up our series on productivty, today we’re going to focus on free applications online that can help get your business organized. First up is OpenWorkBench. This Windows only tool makes managing projects a snap and lets you keep a close eye on which employee is doing what, all for free. It’s an open alternative to Microsoft Project, and easily competes with the big name software. The business world is becoming more and more virtual, with most businesses these days having remote contractors doing a majority of their work. oDesk is a web based software that helps you manage these contractors, keeping a close eye on them as they work. It covers scheduling and hiring, as well as paying your freelancers. Once you’ve got your employees using their time properly, you can move to the next step: Wikis. A lot of big businesses like Ziff Davis and Yahoo use this to get maximum leverage between employees, letting them develop ideas together faster and more effectively than the traditional route of interoffice memos. A popular choice for a lot of businesses is TWiki. Made specifically with the business environment in mind, it’s very easy to setup and get working right away. The final tool in the next generation of businesses is a social network built specifically for your employees. I suggest using the free social network builder, crowdvine. We’re currently using it for our Free Line social network, and so far it’s been one of the best tools we’ve got in the Free Line repertoire Let’s face it, your employees are going to kill a little downtime on the internet, using social networks. Might as well build one for them that relates to your business and helps foster relationships and community WITHIN your company. Leverage that downtime to your advantage- it will pay off faster than you realize. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-3-08/ Fans of productivity guru, David Allen, rejoice! Today, in Part two of our series on productivity we’re going to focus on free applications that can help you get things done. Anyone familiar with David’s system will appreciate the GTD Inbox plugin for Firefox. This plugin adds additional functionality to Google Mail, most importantly, how it deals with labels. As emails come in, you decide whether they are actions, next actions, someday/maybes, or reference material. GTD Inbox encourages you to then archive the categorized email, and provides handy search tools for reviewing your task lists. Installing this plugin should be on everyone’s To Do List. So follow our link and get that done today. Mindomo is a web based application that lets you create and share sophisticated mind maps. A Mind Mapping tool is one that helps you organize your thoughts visually, literally connecting the dots in a graphically representation of your idea. This tool stands out from the rest with it’s simple to use interface and easy to embed software. Want to put a mindmap in your MySpace, Facebook or LiveJournal account? It’s as simple as YouTube. Scrybe is a great tool that can turn your chaotic life into one that’s more coherent and productive. The tools in this online application are intuitive, and contextual. Its calendaring application lets you move easily between time zones and gives you a great visual way of seeing your day to day schedules and appointments. You can bring in lists from Excel and use them as to-do lists, take notes on web pages and save portions of the page for later. And, it has a true offline mode that synchs easily with it’s web counterpart- without installing any extra software - Just using your browser’s offline mode. It’s in private beta right now, but once it goes live this will be –THE- tool for getting anything done online and offline. Make sure you visit the Free Line Dot Com and see our link to the promotional video. This is something you have to see in order to believe. Next up we’ve got PageOnce. This is a great new web application that aims to be your internet personal assistant. And it does this with style. You can track just about anything online, from your email to your bank account to the blogs that you read. All in one place and organized. And if you’re worried about security, this system is rock solid. It’s got military grade security in place, so you never have to worry about some hacker breaking in and stealing your banking information. And now that we have your digital life streamlined, let me show you something that’s going to change the way you get work done. Adobe’s releasing its next version of Acrobat along with a new website, Acrobat.com, that’s aimed at facilitating online collaboration. Similar to Google docs, Acrobat let’s you share documents online, but Adobe let’s you do it in REAL TIME. That’s because its built with Flash technology such as their freshly acquired, Buzzword wordprocessor. But it only gets better. You can also video chat in real time while sharing your desktop and collaborating on a document. And of course, like all the other tools we covered today, Acrobat.com is free. Tue, 3 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-3-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-3-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Fans of productivity guru, David Allen, rejoice! Today, in Part two of our series on productivity we’re going to focus on free applications that can help you get things done. Anyone familiar with David’s system will appreciate the GTD Inbox plugin for Firefox. This plugin adds additional functionality to Google Mail, most importantly, how it deals with labels. As emails come in, you decide whether they are actions, next actions, someday/maybes, or reference material. GTD Inbox encourages you to then archive the categorized email, and provides handy search tools for reviewing your task lists. Installing this plugin should be on everyone’s To Do List. So follow our link and get that done today. Mindomo is a web based application that lets you create and share sophisticated mind maps. A Mind Mapping tool is one that helps you organize your thoughts visually, literally connecting the dots in a graphically representation of your idea. This tool stands out from the rest with it’s simple to use interface and easy to embed software. Want to put a mindmap in your MySpace, Facebook or LiveJournal account? It’s as simple as YouTube. Scrybe is a great tool that can turn your chaotic life into one that’s more coherent and productive. The tools in this online application are intuitive, and contextual. Its calendaring application lets you move easily between time zones and gives you a great visual way of seeing your day to day schedules and appointments. You can bring in lists from Excel and use them as to-do lists, take notes on web pages and save portions of the page for later. And, it has a true offline mode that synchs easily with it’s web counterpart- without installing any extra software - Just using your browser’s offline mode. It’s in private beta right now, but once it goes live this will be –THE- tool for getting anything done online and offline. Make sure you visit the Free Line Dot Com and see our link to the promotional video. This is something you have to see in order to believe. Next up we’ve got PageOnce. This is a great new web application that aims to be your internet personal assistant. And it does this with style. You can track just about anything online, from your email to your bank account to the blogs that you read. All in one place and organized. And if you’re worried about security, this system is rock solid. It’s got military grade security in place, so you never have to worry about some hacker breaking in and stealing your banking information. And now that we have your digital life streamlined, let me show you something that’s going to change the way you get work done. Adobe’s releasing its next version of Acrobat along with a new website, Acrobat.com, that’s aimed at facilitating online collaboration. Similar to Google docs, Acrobat let’s you share documents online, but Adobe let’s you do it in REAL TIME. That’s because its built with Flash technology such as their freshly acquired, Buzzword wordprocessor. But it only gets better. You can also video chat in real time while sharing your desktop and collaborating on a document. And of course, like all the other tools we covered today, Acrobat.com is free. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-2-08/ We’ve got something special for you this week! The first ever Free Line Three Part Report. During the next three days we’re going to cover productivity tools you can use online. All of them for free, and all web 2.0 powered. For the first part we’re going to explore Online Desktops, or “web tops” These are desktops similar to Windows, Linux and OSX that you run right in your web browser, but without downloading software or partitioning your hard drive. First up is EyeOS. EyeOS is completely free in every sense of the word. You’ll never pay to use this system, and it’s built completely on Open Source code. You can even download the source code to EyeOS and put it on your company’s own server, providing your LAN with a shared desktop experience. Of course, Eye OS is clunkier than the other web operating systems, and sports some useless applications, including a web browser to be viewed inside your web browser. Just thinking about that makes my head hurt. Then we’ve got YouOS. This web-top has all the features of EyeOS plus some extra tools like an application editor, that lets you write programs especially for the YouOS environment. So far over 700 applications have been written with its API. The downside is the graphics- YouOS has one of the worst looking interfaces I’ve ever see. It even makes Windows 95 look pretty. Next up is the iCube Online Operating System. It’s the easiest Web OS to use and its look and functionality will be very familiar to Windows users. One unfortunate similarity to Windows however, is all the unknown errors that popped up when we tested it in Firefox. Maybe Microsoft isn’t the best role model for creating a stable operating system. Glide OS on the other hand, probably considers itself more of a Mac than a PC. The look and feel is very similar to OSX, but it’s built to be technology independent, with different GUIs for different platforms. For instance, when you log in from your computer, the interface is a beautiful Flash environment. But when you log in through your iPhone or other mobile device, the interface is built in HTML, so it looks a little different, but all of the functionality is still there. With Glide OS you can do everything from creating Word documents, to editing photos, to blogging and web design, as well as hold meetings from the online desktop. And to top it all off, you can now run it offline, directly from your real Mac, Windows, Linux or Solaris desktop, multiple desktops in fact, and all of your data stays synchronized. Glide offers a free account which gives you up to 5 gb of space for storing files, and paid accounts if you need more room. So far Glide OS is the winner in the next generation of Desktop Software. And finally, bringing the evolution of operating systems full circle, check out this online emulation of DOS. That’s right MS DOS. Kids, go ask you grandpa. This is what home computing looked like before there even was a desktop concept, or windows for that matter. It’s built with AJAX, and along with many of the old MS DOS commands, it includes some new tricks, like using Google’s API to perform a search. I command prompt you to check it out. Tune in Tomorrow to check out our Part 2 in this three part series! Mon, 2 Jun 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-2-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-6-2-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes We’ve got something special for you this week! The first ever Free Line Three Part Report. During the next three days we’re going to cover productivity tools you can use online. All of them for free, and all web 2.0 powered. For the first part we’re going to explore Online Desktops, or “web tops” These are desktops similar to Windows, Linux and OSX that you run right in your web browser, but without downloading software or partitioning your hard drive. First up is EyeOS. EyeOS is completely free in every sense of the word. You’ll never pay to use this system, and it’s built completely on Open Source code. You can even download the source code to EyeOS and put it on your company’s own server, providing your LAN with a shared desktop experience. Of course, Eye OS is clunkier than the other web operating systems, and sports some useless applications, including a web browser to be viewed inside your web browser. Just thinking about that makes my head hurt. Then we’ve got YouOS. This web-top has all the features of EyeOS plus some extra tools like an application editor, that lets you write programs especially for the YouOS environment. So far over 700 applications have been written with its API. The downside is the graphics- YouOS has one of the worst looking interfaces I’ve ever see. It even makes Windows 95 look pretty. Next up is the iCube Online Operating System. It’s the easiest Web OS to use and its look and functionality will be very familiar to Windows users. One unfortunate similarity to Windows however, is all the unknown errors that popped up when we tested it in Firefox. Maybe Microsoft isn’t the best role model for creating a stable operating system. Glide OS on the other hand, probably considers itself more of a Mac than a PC. The look and feel is very similar to OSX, but it’s built to be technology independent, with different GUIs for different platforms. For instance, when you log in from your computer, the interface is a beautiful Flash environment. But when you log in through your iPhone or other mobile device, the interface is built in HTML, so it looks a little different, but all of the functionality is still there. With Glide OS you can do everything from creating Word documents, to editing photos, to blogging and web design, as well as hold meetings from the online desktop. And to top it all off, you can now run it offline, directly from your real Mac, Windows, Linux or Solaris desktop, multiple desktops in fact, and all of your data stays synchronized. Glide offers a free account which gives you up to 5 gb of space for storing files, and paid accounts if you need more room. So far Glide OS is the winner in the next generation of Desktop Software. And finally, bringing the evolution of operating systems full circle, check out this online emulation of DOS. That’s right MS DOS. Kids, go ask you grandpa. This is what home computing looked like before there even was a desktop concept, or windows for that matter. It’s built with AJAX, and along with many of the old MS DOS commands, it includes some new tricks, like using Google’s API to perform a search. I command prompt you to check it out. Tune in Tomorrow to check out our Part 2 in this three part series! http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-30-08/ Microsoft is getting serious about taking more of the online ad revenue market. Called Microsoft Advertising, the software giant is out to advertise to the masses. Redmond’s new marketing division differs from Google AdWords in execution. Instead of being one solid service, Microsoft Advertising is actually an amalgamation of several services purchased over the years, such as Atlas and Massive. Despite the intense competition, the computing giant remains confident that they will be able to compete with the search engine king. We here at the Free Line wish Microsoft the best of luck. Having another place to advertise is never bad thing. Have you ever thought it would be cool if you could combine the social networking powerhouse Facebook and download king BitTorrent? Now you can, thanks to Morrent. Morrent works hand in hand with popular client uTorrent, allowing users to monitor and control their downloads from their Facebook profiles. Think of it as a high-tech way to stalk your torrents when you’re away from your system. Just remember: the law is still the law. Sometimes, editing Wikipedia can be a real pain. Who has all of that time to deal with that wiki code? If this is you, and you also happen to have the Free Line favorite OpenOffice, then you’re in luck. SunWiki Publisher is an OpenOffice add-on that allows users to work with the MediaWiki system the same way they tackle their word processing files. Simply put, Sun Wiki Publisher… is wikid cool. So go out there and edit, whether it’s Wikipedia or our own Free Line wiki… which, by the way, is superior to Wikipedia in every way. (Citation needed.) The True Share Internet File System is your personal digital self storage box, allowing you to store almost anything and access it anytime. Many users praise True Share for its general usability, its simplicity, and its ability to blend in with any desktop color scheme. While the service isn’t exactly free, it’s worth it for those who need access to their data at all times or want to avoid physical drives. If you’ve ever wanted to tap into the marketing potential of MySpace, but you never quite figured it out, MySpace Marketing Manager is here to help. Based upon Microsoft Excel, MySpace Marketing Manager provides prospective business people all of the tools they need to make the social network powerhouse work for them. Fri, 30 May 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-30-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-30-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Microsoft is getting serious about taking more of the online ad revenue market. Called Microsoft Advertising, the software giant is out to advertise to the masses. Redmond’s new marketing division differs from Google AdWords in execution. Instead of being one solid service, Microsoft Advertising is actually an amalgamation of several services purchased over the years, such as Atlas and Massive. Despite the intense competition, the computing giant remains confident that they will be able to compete with the search engine king. We here at the Free Line wish Microsoft the best of luck. Having another place to advertise is never bad thing. Have you ever thought it would be cool if you could combine the social networking powerhouse Facebook and download king BitTorrent? Now you can, thanks to Morrent. Morrent works hand in hand with popular client uTorrent, allowing users to monitor and control their downloads from their Facebook profiles. Think of it as a high-tech way to stalk your torrents when you’re away from your system. Just remember: the law is still the law. Sometimes, editing Wikipedia can be a real pain. Who has all of that time to deal with that wiki code? If this is you, and you also happen to have the Free Line favorite OpenOffice, then you’re in luck. SunWiki Publisher is an OpenOffice add-on that allows users to work with the MediaWiki system the same way they tackle their word processing files. Simply put, Sun Wiki Publisher… is wikid cool. So go out there and edit, whether it’s Wikipedia or our own Free Line wiki… which, by the way, is superior to Wikipedia in every way. (Citation needed.) The True Share Internet File System is your personal digital self storage box, allowing you to store almost anything and access it anytime. Many users praise True Share for its general usability, its simplicity, and its ability to blend in with any desktop color scheme. While the service isn’t exactly free, it’s worth it for those who need access to their data at all times or want to avoid physical drives. If you’ve ever wanted to tap into the marketing potential of MySpace, but you never quite figured it out, MySpace Marketing Manager is here to help. Based upon Microsoft Excel, MySpace Marketing Manager provides prospective business people all of the tools they need to make the social network powerhouse work for them. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-29-08/ As you know, Viral Videos are one of the most powerful marketing tools ever created. Just ask the rock band Weezer, who tapped the YouTube talent pool to make their latest video a smash hit. They pulled in all of YouTube’s most popular stars to make a cameo. Including that weeping kid who loved Britney Spears a little too much. They then uploaded it to YouTube and watched it’s popularity soar. All forms of social media can be used to generate big exposure, not just videos. A fake news story on a boy who goes on a spending spree and plays his Xbox with hookers made it to the top page of Digg. It was later reported on Fox News as being a real honest to goodness true news story. It wasn’t but it generated roughly 6,000 inbound links. That’s some killer exposure… Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand the power of online video, but the ones down at NASA, who now are sending us live photos of the Martian landing mission seem to have a fir grasp. We reported on this earlier in the week, and we now have something to look at it. The Phoenix Mars Mission site is alive and kicking, and has tons of great photographs of the landing and the surface of mars. Even the indie movie industry is getting in on the whole viral video thing. IndieFlix created a marketplace for independent films called MyFestival. It will stream video, and will let users select movies for film festivals. The most popular and most viral movies rise to the top. They will be performing a trail of the software for the Seattle International Film Festival. Of course, not everyone sees online videos as the way of the future. Viacom is currently suing YouTube for copyright infringement, asking for over 1 million dollars in damages. We feel Viacom’s lawsuit is kind of a direct attack on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law that was passed to help keep freedom of speech free on the internet. Google has gone on record saying that, “Viacom threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression.” Thu, 29 May 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-29-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-29-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes As you know, Viral Videos are one of the most powerful marketing tools ever created. Just ask the rock band Weezer, who tapped the YouTube talent pool to make their latest video a smash hit. They pulled in all of YouTube’s most popular stars to make a cameo. Including that weeping kid who loved Britney Spears a little too much. They then uploaded it to YouTube and watched it’s popularity soar. All forms of social media can be used to generate big exposure, not just videos. A fake news story on a boy who goes on a spending spree and plays his Xbox with hookers made it to the top page of Digg. It was later reported on Fox News as being a real honest to goodness true news story. It wasn’t but it generated roughly 6,000 inbound links. That’s some killer exposure… Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand the power of online video, but the ones down at NASA, who now are sending us live photos of the Martian landing mission seem to have a fir grasp. We reported on this earlier in the week, and we now have something to look at it. The Phoenix Mars Mission site is alive and kicking, and has tons of great photographs of the landing and the surface of mars. Even the indie movie industry is getting in on the whole viral video thing. IndieFlix created a marketplace for independent films called MyFestival. It will stream video, and will let users select movies for film festivals. The most popular and most viral movies rise to the top. They will be performing a trail of the software for the Seattle International Film Festival. Of course, not everyone sees online videos as the way of the future. Viacom is currently suing YouTube for copyright infringement, asking for over 1 million dollars in damages. We feel Viacom’s lawsuit is kind of a direct attack on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law that was passed to help keep freedom of speech free on the internet. Google has gone on record saying that, “Viacom threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression.” http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-27-08/ Democrats took the battle for presidency online by creating an attack Wiki. Dubbed McCain-Opedia, the website is based on the famous Wikimedia software, the same software that runs Wikipedia. The whole purpose of this website is to act as a tool for opposing the candidate. It gives arguments against McCain on everything from his stance on healthcare to his Supreme Court Justice picks. Unlike most other Wiki’s, anyone can’t just walk in and edit a page, spurring some technologists to criticize it. They say that it is against the spirit and ethos that drive wiki’s. Fans of the real Wikipedia can finally have their cake and eat it, too. You can now take the free encyclopedia offline using the eReader known as the iRex Iliad. Much like the Sony eReader and the Amazon Kindle, this bite sized book machine uses E-Ink technology, to give you a clear and crisp book like experience. Now Wikipedia can go anywhere you want it to go. And if you find the iRex Iliad out of your price range, the One Laptop Per Child project just might have the ebook reader for you. They announced their next generation One Laptop Per Child computer, the XO2. Designed to be an ebook reader first and a computer second, it contains two LCD touch screen displays and is loaded with tons of free software. In other electronic book news, Microsoft has just closed the virtual doors on its Live Search for Books. They will no longer be scanning in books digitally, and will be turning off the Live Book Search web pages within the week. Although we are sad to see it go, it should be noted that similar initiatives are still continuing with Google and Scribd’s free book scan project. And just in time to cover this small blow to online text, we have Microsoft announced a new incentive to get people to use Live Search: paying them. That’s right, Microsoft is dishing out the cash to get users to click on paid advertisements in their search engine. They call this initiative the cashback service, and can save users between 2 and 30% off select retailers. Wed, 28 May 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-28-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-28-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Democrats took the battle for presidency online by creating an attack Wiki. Dubbed McCain-Opedia, the website is based on the famous Wikimedia software, the same software that runs Wikipedia. The whole purpose of this website is to act as a tool for opposing the candidate. It gives arguments against McCain on everything from his stance on healthcare to his Supreme Court Justice picks. Unlike most other Wiki’s, anyone can’t just walk in and edit a page, spurring some technologists to criticize it. They say that it is against the spirit and ethos that drive wiki’s. Fans of the real Wikipedia can finally have their cake and eat it, too. You can now take the free encyclopedia offline using the eReader known as the iRex Iliad. Much like the Sony eReader and the Amazon Kindle, this bite sized book machine uses E-Ink technology, to give you a clear and crisp book like experience. Now Wikipedia can go anywhere you want it to go. And if you find the iRex Iliad out of your price range, the One Laptop Per Child project just might have the ebook reader for you. They announced their next generation One Laptop Per Child computer, the XO2. Designed to be an ebook reader first and a computer second, it contains two LCD touch screen displays and is loaded with tons of free software. In other electronic book news, Microsoft has just closed the virtual doors on its Live Search for Books. They will no longer be scanning in books digitally, and will be turning off the Live Book Search web pages within the week. Although we are sad to see it go, it should be noted that similar initiatives are still continuing with Google and Scribd’s free book scan project. And just in time to cover this small blow to online text, we have Microsoft announced a new incentive to get people to use Live Search: paying them. That’s right, Microsoft is dishing out the cash to get users to click on paid advertisements in their search engine. They call this initiative the cashback service, and can save users between 2 and 30% off select retailers. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-27-08/ Ever wanted to talk to Martians on MySpace? That future could be a distinct possibility soon, if NASA has its way. They’re bringing all the details and goals of the new mars mission online. They plan on providing real time images of the space craft landing. This will allow millions of people across the world to experience the Martian landscape first hand. And if we see any little green men, we’ll make sure to let them friend us on MySpace and Facebook. If you believe you are one of those people who have already met a little man from outer space, then Spielberg’s new venture should be right up your alley. It’s a website called The Rising, and it’s out to create a Facebook style social platform for UFO abductees. ET no longer needs to phone home- he just has to post a bulletin on his profile. For those of us still trapped here on earth, we’ve got a link to Wired’s new How-To section, about using the internet to live green. It’s set up in a wiki format, so if you know anything about living with a low carbon footprint, you can go and share your knowledge with the world. Earlier on the Free Line we showed you several free online applications that let you add Geo Tags to pictures, including one that used your cellphone. Looks like someone at Apple watches these videos and knows what the public wants. The next version of iPhone, 2.0, will have geo tagging for photos built in directly. Take a picture with your iPhone, and the geo tags automatically pop up. While we’re on the subject of tags, we’ve got some startling news about the next version of FireFox. It will not have microformat support after all. Microformats are a form of semantic web browsing, a technology now used in Yahoo and Google searches and one that will be used in Digg in the near future. This new technology is hailed as the future of the web, and it seems sad that Firefox won’t have them built in. Fear not, though, for you can always download the Operator plugin and experience web 3.0 first hand. Tue, 27 May 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-27-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-27-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Ever wanted to talk to Martians on MySpace? That future could be a distinct possibility soon, if NASA has its way. They’re bringing all the details and goals of the new mars mission online. They plan on providing real time images of the space craft landing. This will allow millions of people across the world to experience the Martian landscape first hand. And if we see any little green men, we’ll make sure to let them friend us on MySpace and Facebook. If you believe you are one of those people who have already met a little man from outer space, then Spielberg’s new venture should be right up your alley. It’s a website called The Rising, and it’s out to create a Facebook style social platform for UFO abductees. ET no longer needs to phone home- he just has to post a bulletin on his profile. For those of us still trapped here on earth, we’ve got a link to Wired’s new How-To section, about using the internet to live green. It’s set up in a wiki format, so if you know anything about living with a low carbon footprint, you can go and share your knowledge with the world. Earlier on the Free Line we showed you several free online applications that let you add Geo Tags to pictures, including one that used your cellphone. Looks like someone at Apple watches these videos and knows what the public wants. The next version of iPhone, 2.0, will have geo tagging for photos built in directly. Take a picture with your iPhone, and the geo tags automatically pop up. While we’re on the subject of tags, we’ve got some startling news about the next version of FireFox. It will not have microformat support after all. Microformats are a form of semantic web browsing, a technology now used in Yahoo and Google searches and one that will be used in Digg in the near future. This new technology is hailed as the future of the web, and it seems sad that Firefox won’t have them built in. Fear not, though, for you can always download the Operator plugin and experience web 3.0 first hand. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-23-08/ For you video buffs out there who want to spruce up your podcasts with some 3D special effects, you should check out Blender. This free and open 3D software suite just released version 2.46 and it available for download. It’s got some great new features that make it almost as cutting edge as any of the big name 3d modelers. Go and check it out from our link at free line report dot com. Blackberry users now have another option in staving off the ravages of boredom. XM, the satellite radio network that features such personalities and Opie and Anthony and Bob Dylan, is now available on most Blackberry devices. Subscribers will have access to twenty of the XM stations, ranging from rock to comedy. XM on Blackberry proves that even reading your email can be fun… if you have the right music to back it up, that is. Open source programmer Miguel de Icaza has announced the release of Moonlight, the open source answer to Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. For those unaware, Silverlight is Microsoft’s new software initiative created to compete with Adobe Flash. This is not the first time open source programmers have taken a patently Microsoft idea and given it that distinct GNU flavor. Mono, the development kit that Moonlight is based upon, is actually the open equivalent to the software giant’s .NET Framework. At press time, Moonlight is only available for Linux-based Firefox browsers. Before giant media centers like iTunes became the norm, stand alone players like WinAmp were the king of all digital media. If you would like to go back to those days while staying still staying true to FOSS, then may we suggest the VLC. Small and lightweight, the VLC can handle almost any kind of non-DRM’ed format thrown at it, from mp3s to Divx files to even DVDs. The VLC is available for most of the major operating systems and is, as always, completely free. Finally, we leave you with a look at OpenOffice.org gone blue - IBM blue, to be specific. IBM’s Lotus Symphony is a combination of OpenOffice’s core systems and Big Blue’s Rich Client Platform, giving the user new functionality and eye candy while keeping Open Office’s dependability in tact. Lotus Symphony is currently available for both Windows and Linux-based systems, with a Mac version coming in the near future. Fri, 23 May 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-23-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-23-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes For you video buffs out there who want to spruce up your podcasts with some 3D special effects, you should check out Blender. This free and open 3D software suite just released version 2.46 and it available for download. It’s got some great new features that make it almost as cutting edge as any of the big name 3d modelers. Go and check it out from our link at free line report dot com. Blackberry users now have another option in staving off the ravages of boredom. XM, the satellite radio network that features such personalities and Opie and Anthony and Bob Dylan, is now available on most Blackberry devices. Subscribers will have access to twenty of the XM stations, ranging from rock to comedy. XM on Blackberry proves that even reading your email can be fun… if you have the right music to back it up, that is. Open source programmer Miguel de Icaza has announced the release of Moonlight, the open source answer to Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. For those unaware, Silverlight is Microsoft’s new software initiative created to compete with Adobe Flash. This is not the first time open source programmers have taken a patently Microsoft idea and given it that distinct GNU flavor. Mono, the development kit that Moonlight is based upon, is actually the open equivalent to the software giant’s .NET Framework. At press time, Moonlight is only available for Linux-based Firefox browsers. Before giant media centers like iTunes became the norm, stand alone players like WinAmp were the king of all digital media. If you would like to go back to those days while staying still staying true to FOSS, then may we suggest the VLC. Small and lightweight, the VLC can handle almost any kind of non-DRM’ed format thrown at it, from mp3s to Divx files to even DVDs. The VLC is available for most of the major operating systems and is, as always, completely free. Finally, we leave you with a look at OpenOffice.org gone blue - IBM blue, to be specific. IBM’s Lotus Symphony is a combination of OpenOffice’s core systems and Big Blue’s Rich Client Platform, giving the user new functionality and eye candy while keeping Open Office’s dependability in tact. Lotus Symphony is currently available for both Windows and Linux-based systems, with a Mac version coming in the near future. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-22-08/ Noted file sharing critic, Comcast announced Monday that they have entered into an agreement with peer-to-peer start-up, GridNetwork. Analysts predict that the alliance will likely result in a perfectly legal, Comcast-controlled P2P network. The telecom giant also has deals in place with both BitTorrent and Pando Networks. These moves show that Comcast might finally be ready to embrace P2P. Kyte takes the social video free-for-all concept used by YouTube and Daily Motion and streamlines it slightly. Kyte users are referred to as channel owners, with all of their content acting as different shows. Kyte also allows users to interact with each other in real time, using a built-in chat client. Kyte currently hosts shows by such notables as musician Scott Ian, David Hasselhoff, and Spin magazine, as well content from average people like you and me. 2Collab allows users to bookmark the world. 2Collab bookmarks focus on scientific research, not the ten hottest Italian footballers. 2Collab allows scholars to connect with one another again, just like the old days, giving them their slice of the Web 2.0 pie with a scoop of dignity on the side. Pigdin takes your precious IM buddies from such services as MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and AOL and puts them all into one easy to use program. And the last stop on the Free Line is ZabaSearch, a search engine that is trying to become the Google of public information. Simply pick your state, type in the name you wish to search for, and hit find. It’s as simple as that. Once you find what you are looking for, you can easily post a message or send an email. ZabaSearch is a great tool for those who are just plain curious as to what that Internet has to say about them. One final note, guys. Just in case you haven’t heard, Stompernet re-opens to new members today for the first time in over a year. Thu, 22 May 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-22-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-22-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Noted file sharing critic, Comcast announced Monday that they have entered into an agreement with peer-to-peer start-up, GridNetwork. Analysts predict that the alliance will likely result in a perfectly legal, Comcast-controlled P2P network. The telecom giant also has deals in place with both BitTorrent and Pando Networks. These moves show that Comcast might finally be ready to embrace P2P. Kyte takes the social video free-for-all concept used by YouTube and Daily Motion and streamlines it slightly. Kyte users are referred to as channel owners, with all of their content acting as different shows. Kyte also allows users to interact with each other in real time, using a built-in chat client. Kyte currently hosts shows by such notables as musician Scott Ian, David Hasselhoff, and Spin magazine, as well content from average people like you and me. 2Collab allows users to bookmark the world. 2Collab bookmarks focus on scientific research, not the ten hottest Italian footballers. 2Collab allows scholars to connect with one another again, just like the old days, giving them their slice of the Web 2.0 pie with a scoop of dignity on the side. Pigdin takes your precious IM buddies from such services as MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and AOL and puts them all into one easy to use program. And the last stop on the Free Line is ZabaSearch, a search engine that is trying to become the Google of public information. Simply pick your state, type in the name you wish to search for, and hit find. It’s as simple as that. Once you find what you are looking for, you can easily post a message or send an email. ZabaSearch is a great tool for those who are just plain curious as to what that Internet has to say about them. One final note, guys. Just in case you haven’t heard, Stompernet re-opens to new members today for the first time in over a year. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-21-08/ To software geeks, the arrival of summer can only mean one thing: Google’s Summer of Code returns. Now in its fourth year, Google is expecting more than 1,100 students and 175 open source projects to take part in the festivities. In today’s edition of the Free Line, we cover four projects that are choosing to spend their summer with Google. Anyone who has taken a high school journalism class is familiar with the desktop publishing app QuarkXpress. It’s versatile, it’s powerful… and it’s as easy to use as…a Boeing 737. For an easier alternative, try Scribus. While it contains most of the tools that QuarkXpress does, Scribus is one thing the name brand competition is not: user friendly. Scribus is available for most major operating systems — and it’s free. As many loyal viewers of the Free Line know, OpenOffice is a great alternative to the big name word processing suites produced by Microsoft and Apple. But what if you want an alternative to the alternative? If this is the case, then AbiWord is for you. AbiWord does one thing - word processing - but it does it well. Small, lightweight and very easy to use, AbiWord is a good choice for those who dislike OpenOffice, but loathe the competition even more. And by the way, AbiWord was used in the creation of today’s Free Line Report. Being creative is great and all, but what if you just want to leave the house? Don’t worry. Open source programmers have that covered as well. OpenStreetMap is is kind of like Google Maps, and operates under a Creative Commons license. This guide is actually created by its users. Armed with everything from GPS devices to pen and paper, participants in the project track, photograph, and write about everything they come across. These journeys, in turn, are added to the OpenStreetMap database. And finally, if you like the idea of unwinding and have a few of those old LucasArts point-and-click adventure games lying around, then ScummVM is certainly for you. Created by uTorrent creator Ludvig Strigeus, ScummVM is intended to breathe new life into the forgotten classics like Day of the Tentacle and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Perhaps the best part is that it will run on most anything, from Windows XP to the iPhone. But before you run off to play Monkey Island 3, a word of warning: while the emulator might be free, most of the games are not. Go to ScummVM for a world class emulator, but go to thrift stores or eBay for the games themselves. Wed, 21 May 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-21-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-21-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes To software geeks, the arrival of summer can only mean one thing: Google’s Summer of Code returns. Now in its fourth year, Google is expecting more than 1,100 students and 175 open source projects to take part in the festivities. In today’s edition of the Free Line, we cover four projects that are choosing to spend their summer with Google. Anyone who has taken a high school journalism class is familiar with the desktop publishing app QuarkXpress. It’s versatile, it’s powerful… and it’s as easy to use as…a Boeing 737. For an easier alternative, try Scribus. While it contains most of the tools that QuarkXpress does, Scribus is one thing the name brand competition is not: user friendly. Scribus is available for most major operating systems — and it’s free. As many loyal viewers of the Free Line know, OpenOffice is a great alternative to the big name word processing suites produced by Microsoft and Apple. But what if you want an alternative to the alternative? If this is the case, then AbiWord is for you. AbiWord does one thing - word processing - but it does it well. Small, lightweight and very easy to use, AbiWord is a good choice for those who dislike OpenOffice, but loathe the competition even more. And by the way, AbiWord was used in the creation of today’s Free Line Report. Being creative is great and all, but what if you just want to leave the house? Don’t worry. Open source programmers have that covered as well. OpenStreetMap is is kind of like Google Maps, and operates under a Creative Commons license. This guide is actually created by its users. Armed with everything from GPS devices to pen and paper, participants in the project track, photograph, and write about everything they come across. These journeys, in turn, are added to the OpenStreetMap database. And finally, if you like the idea of unwinding and have a few of those old LucasArts point-and-click adventure games lying around, then ScummVM is certainly for you. Created by uTorrent creator Ludvig Strigeus, ScummVM is intended to breathe new life into the forgotten classics like Day of the Tentacle and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Perhaps the best part is that it will run on most anything, from Windows XP to the iPhone. But before you run off to play Monkey Island 3, a word of warning: while the emulator might be free, most of the games are not. Go to ScummVM for a world class emulator, but go to thrift stores or eBay for the games themselves. http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-20-08/ Internet bullying might be decreased… if the Missouri Legislature has anything to say about it, that is. A new bill, which was passed by an overwhelming margin in both houses, makes it possible for the state to prosecute those who use electronic devices to harass others. Previously, the harassing statement had to have been hand written or made in a phone conversation. This expansion of the law, is the direct result of the death of Megan Meier, a thirteen year old girl who committed suicide after being harassed on MySpace. The bill is currently awaiting the approval of Governor Mark Blunt. Elsewhere, Czech developer Grisoft has released AVG 8.0 Free Edition, the latest in the popular line of anti-virus protection. Like its previous incarnations, AVG 8.0 Free removes all of the extraneous programs and tools that most users ignore, choosing instead to focus on what it does best: virus protection. While the aforementioned “bells and whistles” are available, the user will have to pay for them. We suggest sticking with the Free edition and using other freely available programs such as Ad Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Hijack This to remove the nasties AVG overlooks. If you still crave more free security, we’ve got a link that will show you how to encrypt your Gmail account. It’s pretty straight forward- you just need to download the free GPG application and the encryption plugin for Firefox. After that, you can send and receive encrypted messages with Gmail. And there’s a bonus — at the end of the article there is a link that shows you how to encrypt Mac’s Mail program as well. Next, YouTube has expanded its Insight application with demographic reports. Insight is the recently released addition to the YouTube control panel that allows you to track who sees your videos and when. Now you can easily track who’s viewing your videos based on age, gender, or a combination of the two, in addition to the previously implemented geographic metrics. And finally, Abobe has released an update to its Flash Player. Version 10 now supports Linux and sports an improved interface . Most of the improvements are made for developers — perhaps most noticeable for the end user is the speed increase, giving any website that uses Flash a noticeably faster load time. Tue, 20 May 2008 22:42:19 -0500 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-20-08 http://www.freelinereport.com/freeline-5-20-08/ Brad Fallon Web 2.0 News You Can Use - in 2.0 Minutes Internet bullying might be decreased… if the Missouri Legislature has anything to say about it, that is. A new bill, which was passed by an overwhelming margin in both houses, makes it possible for the state to prosecute those who use electronic devices to harass others. Previously, the harassing statement had to have been hand written or made in a phone conversation. This expansion of the law, is the direct result of the death of Megan Meier, a thirteen year old girl who committed suicide after being harassed on MySpace. The bill is currently awaiting the approval of Governor Mark Blunt. Elsewhere, Czech developer Grisoft has released AVG 8.0 Free Edition, the latest in the popular line of anti-virus protection. Like its previous incarnations, AVG 8.0 Free removes all of the extraneous programs and tools that most users ignore, choosing instead to focus on what it does best: virus protection. While the aforementioned “bells and whistles” are available, the user will have to pay for them. We suggest sticking with the Free edition and using other freely available programs such as Ad Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Hijack This to remove the nasties AVG overlooks. If you still crave more free security, we’ve got a link that will show you how to encrypt your Gmail account. It’s pretty straight forward- you just need to download the free GPG application and the encryption plugin for Firefox. After that, you can send and receive encrypted messages with Gmail. And there’s a bonus — at the end of the article there is a link that shows you how to encrypt Mac’s Mail program as well. Next, YouTube has expanded its Insight application with demographic reports. Insight is the recently released addition to the YouTube control panel that allows you to track who sees your videos and when. Now you can easily track who’s viewing your videos based on age, gender, or a combination of the two, in addition to the previously implemented geographic metrics. And finally, Abobe has released an update to its Flash Player. Version 10 now supports Linux and sports an improved interface . Most of the improvements are made for developers — perhaps most noticeable for the end user is the speed increase, giving any website that uses Flash a noticeably faster load time.