Hello and welcome back to our little Lesson in Arrogance. When we last left our shows, WCW lead announcer Tony Schiavone, under the behest of show runner Eric Bischoff, just informed the viewing audience that fan favorite Mick Foley was finally going to win the WWF Title. Naturally, millions simultaneously switched over to Raw just to see it happen. And now that you’re up to date, we bring you the exciting conclusion.

As foolish as the move seemed on the surface, there was indeed a method to Bischoff’s madness. Yes, his ratings would temporarily take a nose dive while wrestling fans watched the WWF, but the ratings would immediately shoot back up again after the match ended. How did he know this? Simple — the Foley/Rock title match was taking place before the scheduled Kevin Nash/Hulk Hogan match up on Nitro. While the world was watching the competition, the WCW faithful were “treated” to under card acts like Konnan, Scott Steiner, Wrath, and Bam Bam Bigelow. When the millions returned to Nitro, they were greeted by former champion and fan favorite “Diamond” Dallas Page beating upon perennial jobbers — the wrestling equivalent to a “tomato can” from boxing and MMA — Brian Adams and Mike “Virgil” Jones. Still, everything was riding on the Kevin Nash/”Hollywood” Hulk Hogan main event. If everything happened exactly right, then no one would remember the little “faux pas” involving Mick Foley and “that other company.” The key word in that sentence, however, is “if.”

Before we discuss the actual main event, you have to realize how big this match truly was. By 1999, Hulk Hogan rarely appeared on free television. Bischoff simply mentioning that “Hollywood was in the building” made fans sit up and take notice. Sure, he was usually there to hype some made-for-TV movie or the next pay-per-view event, but that really didn’t matter. The simple fact that he was there at all was good enough. Even those who legitimately hated Hogan wanted to see him, if for no other reason than to boo him mercilessly. But to have him there and working the main event was completely unfathomable. All they would have to do is deliver a solid main event. If they do that, then everything is fine. There’s that “if” again…

So after all the hype, all of the swerves (again, plot twists), and all of the comments, it was finally time for the main event. Hogan came out first, acting like a kid who was just caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Nash, on the other hand, looked primed and ready. He had everything going for him — the fans, the title, even two-thirds of the announce team. Hogan nervously walked over to the champ, only to be pushed back into the corner of the ring. He started to throw a punch, but stopped. Instead, he decided it would be best to lightly poke his opponent in the shoulder. Nash, of course, did what any good champion would do in that situation: Fall flat on his back, acting as if he was just knocked out. Hogan casually got down to the mat and pinned Nash. The newly reunited duo of Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan spent the rest of allotted television time laughing at the fans.

Just in case you missed the “payoff” (climax), allow me to say it again: Hulk Hogan defeated Kevin Nash in five seconds by pushing him over with his finger. The two wrestlers then began to mock the very people who indirectly pay their salaries. It wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t even enjoyable. To most fans, the so-called “Finger Poke of Doom” was proof positive that WCW was going down the tubes. The next week, many of them switched over to Raw and never looked back. Within six months, Eric Bischoff would be “sent home,” a wrestling term that basically translates to “one step below being fired.” Within two and a half years, WCW would be sold to Vince McMahon for next to nothing. Ted Turner’s worst wrestling-related nightmare had finally come true.

…And there you have it. Come back tomorrow to see how this whole crazy thing ties together.

There are some stories, concepts, and rumors that seem to live on blogs like this one. Most of the time, these stories deserve the “star status” that they have been given. Every now and then, however, you run into a”Brett Farve” — a report that used to be interesting, but has been driven into the ground so much that it has become downright annoying. So on today’s episode of the Free Line, we are going to take a look at five of these stories, keeping a close eye on what exactly went wrong.

5. The “Twitpocylyse” – As you might have noticed, there has been one word on the lips of every mover, shaker, and outgoing athlete in the past year: Twitter. But for every one story about the insanely popular service, there seems to be two talking about its eventual end. According to some, the end is going to come when the number of users exceed 4,294,967,295. When this happens, the sites say, many Twitter-based programs will simply stop working. Interesting? Yes. Scary? Well yes, if you’re a Twitter addict. Still, there is one small problem with this theory — it was supposed to have happened once before. See, June 12th was supposed to bring about the end of all Tweets as we know it. The actual result? Two programs stopped working, but both were fixed within twenty-four hours. Maybe take two will bring about the end. We can only wait and see.

4. Google Makes the Greatest Things Ever – If there is one thing that everyone can agree upon, it’s Google’s track record. They make good products, plain and simple. Unfortunately, that sort of reliability has the tendency to be overblown by us in the press. Chrome isn’t a promising browser and/or operating system; it’s the one-two combination that will send Microsoft into bankruptcy. Android was being called a “sure fire iPhone killer” months before anyone even saw a screen shot. The latest program on the bandwagon is Google Voice, which is supposedly poised not only to take down Skype, but Apple and AT&T as well. Praise is great, but sometimes, it can go a bit too far.

3. The Demise of… – We are all familiar of the pop culture phenomenon known as “the backlash” — an odd social  movement in which a celebrated musician, trend, or celebrity goes from hero to “public enemy number one” seemingly overnight. This happens in the tech world as well, only in a slightly different fashion. Instead of mocking the offending tech product on talk shows and the like, we talk about how the company is on the point of death. Yahoo, MySpace, and eBay have all been subject to the “web services death watch.” While all of the companies mentioned have seen better days, the suspicious timing of these articles, and well as the dubious suggestions on how to right the proverbial ship (e.g. “Do what the competition is doing … it’s not ripping them off at all!”) , have us rubbing our collective temples in frustration.

2. Is Biz Stone Going to Sell Twitter? – For media outlets such as ESPN and Sports Illustrated, the aformentioned “Brett Farve watch” is a bonafide dream story. They can spend hour after hour and page after page sitting out on the man’s lawn, hoping that he will eventually come out and say “yes, I am coming out of retirement to join the Minnesota Vikings football team.” And if he doesn’t, who cares? The simple fact that he didn’t make an appearance is a fine little story within itself. The tech crowd has their own “Farve Watch,” but it has nothing to do with “sticking it” to the Green Bay Packers. No, ours involves the looming sale of Twitter by Biz Stone. Like Farve, Stone knows exactly how to play the media to his liking. All he has to do is drop a few key words into an interview — “monetize,” “Yahoo,” “Microsoft” — and the tech crowd is talking about it for a week. No matter when or if Stone decides to set his prized creation adrift, we can almost guarantee you that like Brett Farve’s third comeback attempt, the reality of the situation will not live up to the hype.

1. Fun With Microsoft and Yahoo – Everyone loves a good “will they, or won’t they?” story. In the 1970’s, we had Satuday Night Live’s lampooning of Fransisco Franco’s deathbed drama. (Spoiler: Franco is still dead.) In the 1990’s, we had the ongoing love affair between “Friends” Ross and Rachael. In the new millennium, we have the ongoing merger talks between Microsoft and Yahoo to keep us guessing. It seems like everything is going well, but oh no! Then-Yahoo president Jerry Yang has shot it down! Everything appeared to get back on track, but then Microsoft head Steve Ballmer announced that his company wants “absolutely nothing to do” with Yahoo. Things went on … and on … and on … like this until last week, when the two companies finally worked out a search deal. While it’s great that Yahoo has gotten their company in order, we sort of wish that they wouldn’t have “teased” us for so long.

…And there you have it. On behalf of everyone here at the Free Line, good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.

As you probably have heard by now, Yahoo Search is no more. In a move that totally surprised no one everyone, Yahoo has decided to jettison the “search” end of the business in favor of Microsoft’s shiny new Bing engine. The folks at Redmond, in return, will receive complete, unfettered access to the likes of Yahoo BOSS and Search Monkey. Despite the grumblings of a few “disgruntled” stock holders, the big brass at both companies actively welcome the change, calling it “a complete game changer” and “a great day for Yahoo.” If all goes well with the government, expect to see Bing in a Yahoo search bar near you within eight to nine months.

This isn’t the first time a major tech firm attempted to play nice with another massive corporation. Anyone who remembers running Microsoft and IBM’s OS/2 operating system on their brand new desktop featuring an Intel-branded AMD 286 processor knows exactly what I’m talking about. Still, our story isn’t about the manufacturing of microprocessors or the internal bickering between Bill Gates and Big Blue. No, today’s story involves a search engine, a cartoon mouse, and a web portal that time — and the majority of the Internet – has forgotten. And what is this portal that we speak of? Go.com.

Once upon a time, the site now known as Go.com was once a search engine called “Infoseek.” Started in 1994 by prolific inventor Steve Kirsch, Infoseek was one of the first engines to actively allow users to incorporate Boolean modifiers into their searches. Because of its sheer willingness to try something a bit off kilter, “Mr. Kirsch’s pet project” became the talk of the town, both online and off . It was so popular in fact, that the company felt the need to create “Ultraseek,” an engine designed specifically for enterprise users. This success lasted until 1998, when the folks at Disney — yes, that Disney — swallowed the company whole. On the surface, the deal appeared to be a match made in heaven for everyone involved. Disney now had a world class search engine at their beckoned call, while Infoseek had a proverbial “800 pound gorilla” backing them up. The merger of the engine with the newly acquired Starwave development house helped to excite users all the more. Within months, both companies were gone. In their places sat Go.com, a web portal designed to bring the so-called “House of Mouse” into the Internet Age. The days of Infoseek were officially no more.

Needless to say, the entire project was a failure of epic proportions. Within four years, the search section was gone for good. In its place sat a box for its new “search partner,” a little site called Yahoo. (Funny the way the world works, isn’t it?) While Go.com does still officially exist, it is now little more than a host site for the likes of ESPN and ABC. The Infoseek name is still used in both Japan and Australia, but these sites have little to do with the “engine that Steve Krsch built.” (The former is run by Japanese shopping kingpins Rakuten, while the latter is controlled by design firm Orange Digital Media.) The only technology to make it out of this entire debacle alive was Ultraseek, which is still trying to deliver enterprise search to the masses. As for Yahoo, well … you know.

…And there you have it. Be sure to tune tomorrow for part two of our “Summer Travel Showdown.” Until then, we bid thee a fond adieu.

Okay gang, it’s time for yet another highly popular round of “ask me a question.” So without further adieu, let us get to it.

Where is part three of “Web Programming for Smart Phones?” – Part three, tentatively entitled “The Waiting Is the Hardest Part,” will be hitting a web browser near your within the next few days. the series is very important to us, but honestly, we also wanted to establish our other concepts as well.

Oh? Such as? – Building our own mobile site, for one. High class, high quality mobile sites should not just be limited to the likes of million dollar computer firms or folks whose personal wealth rivals that of Scrooge McDuck. We intend to prove that it is possible to build, maintain, and most importantly advertise, a mobile site without spending a ton of cash. We are so confident that we can make this happen, that we set our design budget to an unthinkable, unheard of sum of zero dollars American. That’s right. We will have a top shelf mobile headquarters, and it will not cost us a dime. And the best part? A site like this can be yours as well. It’s all about smart design, forward thinking, and a great ad campaign.

Wait … I thought you said you were for tailoring your existing site to fit the needs of mobile users. What gives? – We still are. Still, it doesn’t mean that we cannot explore other options.

Will this be programming intensive? I hate programming. I have guys who do it for me. – Nope. This will be about theory, content, advertising, marketing, and overall presentation. Not one line of code will be printed in this blog. I assure you of that.

Works for me. How’s the text advertising project coming along? – As we said last Friday, it usually takes a little while for this kind of thing to register. Ask us again in a few days.

I hate the “geek” stuff. More advertising news, stat! – We hear you. We here at the Free Line promise that there will be more talk about marketing your site and/or product in the future.

Great. Do you have anything that I can check out right now? – I do, actually. For those interested in the emerging world of mobile advertising, I highly suggest reading “Mobile Marketing Without Being Annoying” by Chris Crum. Essentially an expanded interview with Yahoo’s Tom Foran, the article explains the ins and of out of advertising on the so-called “mobile web” without being too confusing or geeky. While some of his suggestions and tactics are not exactly “free,” the piece is still worth the old “once over.”

…And there you have it. Until tomorrow, we here at the Free Line bid you all good day.

As many of you already realize, there’s more to advertising your site, brand, or genuinely “hilarious” YouTube video than just posting a note on Digg. No, if you want your media project of the future to be a true success, you’ll have to do more than hang out at social hot spots. Mastering the basics (and possibly the intermediate level) of search engine optimization is always a good thing to do. Making sure that you understand the “ins and outs” of various browsers, hardware platforms, and programming languages doesn’t hurt, either. Still, there is even more that you could be doing to draw new faces to your site. And what is this magic fix that I speak of? Viral advertising.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Is he crazy? I can’t pull that off! It’s too expensive and time consuming!” Now before you call the nice young men in the clean, white coats to take me away, hear me out. Not everyone who sets up a viral campaign is trying to pull off a J.J. Abrams style Alternate Reality Game or is trying to sell a badly put together ring tone to teenagers. In reality, most viral marketing campaigns are rather small, low-key affairs that deliver their pitch to prospective users with a minimal amount of trouble or annoyance. Simply put, it’s targeted advertising done right.

To prove the ease that I speak of, we will engage in our own campaign. Yes, that’s right. The Free Line is going viral. At the present moment, our campaign will rely heavily on SMSDelivery, a handy little service that allows us to create text message campaigns for free. Everything we do — our successes, our failures, and so on — will be reported here. Before we call it a day, allow me to answer a few questions.

So … which plan are you going for: free or paid? – Free, of course. We wouldn’t be able to call ourselves the Free Line if we actually paid for things like this. It’s against the rules.

I want to get in on the action. What do I text where? – Our account is still firmly in the “setup” phase right now. According to the official website, it sometimes takes as long as two business days to get things working properly. As soon as we get a number, we will definitely pass it along to you.

…And there you have it. Be sure to come back Monday for part three of “Web Programing for Smart Phones.” Until then, we bid thee adieu.

…And we’re back! What better way to celebrate our grand return than with a little bit of what we like to call “news of the weird.” First up: we have the very meaning of the word “irony…”

- A few days ago, the big brass at Amazon accidentally discovered (read: informed by a lawyer in an official sounding letter) that their eBook store was selling unauthorized copies of a few “well known” novels. The lawyer simply asked for the books to be removed from the store. Amazon, fearing the legal threat, decided it would be best to not only delete the “bootleg” copies from their servers, but from their customers’ Kindle eBook readers as well. As you might have already guessed, this did not sit well with Kindle owners, who said that they should not be punished for the mistakes of another company. In a statement, Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener apologized for the move, assuring everyone that this kind of thing would not happen again. So what were the books in question, you ask? 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell.

- It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that advertising is seemingly everywhere these days. Video games have them. Sitcoms have them. Even other commercials have them. (Anyone who has been told by a pleasant sounding spokesman to “type ‘Pontiac‘ into Google” knows what we’re talking about here.) Still, there is one place that remains completely ad-free: the Moon. That is about to change. A company mysterious new entity called “Moon Publicity” has announced that they will be the first firm to bring advertising into the final frontier.  The company intends to pull this daring feat off using something called “shadow shaping” — a process by which a small little robot draws forty foot pictures into the lunar surface. The giant ads would then be visible to the citizens of Earth during “certain phases” of the Moon. Needless to say, not everyone is thrilled with the idea of turning a heavenly body into a gigantic billboard. Some have even gone as far as saying that the entire plan borders on comic book style super-villainy. The folks at Moon Publicity see things a bit differently, however. To them, it’s not about the ads. It’s about the very survival of the human race. “Any number of global catastrophes could and eventually will end live on Earth,” writes the company in a press release. “Space travel is more than just footprints and flags; it is vital to our survival. Just as we back up hard drives in case they crash, we need to back up mankind on other worlds. Creating images on the Moon provides a commercial incentive for turbo charging space travel technology.”  Those interested in this “unique” form of advertising have until October 20th to get in on the action. At the time of this writing, bids start at a “mere” $46,000 per shadow shaping robot.

Hello and welcome back to “Web Programming for Smart Phones,” our landmark five-part series dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of the mobile web. Today we continue our journey with looking at your friend and mine, in-site content.

Why should I worry about my content? – As we mentioned last week, most of the major smart phones feature a screen resolution of 320 by 480. Having a wall of text that rivals Stephen King’s “The Stand” or tons of high bit rate images are simply not good ideas. This isn’t ten years ago, when mobile devices were as powerful as a graphing calculator and featured a small, blurry, monochrome screen. The iPhone, for example, is more powerful than the standard desktop built in 1999. Simply put, mobile users matter. Lose them, and you can potentially lose a large chunk of your audience.

So people on smart phones have short attention spans. – No, not at all. Look at it this way: staring at a pocket-sized screen is naturally harder on the eyes than staring at that beautiful flat screen you have at home or at work. Having a site with tons of small text and/or several massive image files will not be doing your mobile user base any favors. The “trick,” for lack of a better work, is to have a nice, easy to use site that is accessible to mobile users, while not insulting the traditional desktop and laptop crowd.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just make a mobile site? - Not necessarily. For the average site proprietor, spending a load of time, effort, and most importantly, money on a separate site does not make sense in this current financial environment. At this point in time, it would be best to concentrate your efforts into perfecting your main site.

Content gone bad – The “bad content for a mobile computing device” award goes to tech industry news site WebProNews. Every last article we clicked upon appeared to be nothing more than line after line of blurry, incomprehensible text. While it was nice that the ads were visible to the naked eye (we here at the Free Line prefer to live in the real world), they had a tendency to both overpower and overwhelm. For all of the effort it took just to make everything readable, we could have found a similar article on another site.

Good examples of mobile content – Out of all of the major tech sites — present company excluded, of course — TechCrunch fits the criteria described above the best. Each article and advertisement is easy enough to read on a mobile device, yet still carries all of the appeal and charm of a “traditional” news site.

Our suggestion – Our advice boils down to one, easy to remember phrase: keep it all within proportion. The last thing that anyone would want is a site filled to the brim with overpowering pictures and unreadable text. Still, you have to keep in mind that a site filled with pages and pages of text will bore the living daylights out of your “on the go” constituents. If you keep everything on an even keel, your site should be ready for any situation that might present itself.

…And there you have it. Be sure to come back next Monday for our part three of our series: Load Times. Expect the classic Free Line for the rest of the week. Until then, we bid thee adieu.

As we have established before, we live in a society that is growing increasingly dependent on information. When things work the way that they are “supposed” to work, no one complains. When several major “news sources” come up dry and ultimately bring nothing new to the table, however … things seem to break down fairly quickly. It is at this point that we in the blogging community try to make something — anything — interesting and unique. A few days ago, the major tech sites were all abuzz about the Chrome operating system and the surprising success of Bing. Today, on the other hand, the sites were overflowing with stories about several “minor” Twitter updates and a merger of two companies that, quite frankly, no one has ever heard of. If you got lucky, you just might have “stumbled” upon a discussion about Steve Ballmer or the various health issues facing Steve Jobs. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes or Lenny Briscoe to notice that their just might be a problem here.

The obvious solution to this “problem,” of course, is simply to turn off our monitors, put down the keyboards, and wait for something to happen. Be it right or wrong, life does not exactly work in that way anymore. So we fill the void with various media sources, hoping that it will fill the “dead space” of a slow news day. Some watch Brock Lesnar beat poor Frank Mir until he cries on YouTube for the five hundredth time. Others go to TMZ in order see the “forgotten” footage of Michael Jackson’s hair catching fire. Still others figure out a way to watch the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court hopeful Sonja Sotomayor. While all of these activities do give us our “media fix,” they are about as productive as watching paint dry. One can only watch a former professional wrestler insult everyone within earshot, burning hair, or politicians yell at each other for so long before going completely insane. So we decide to go back to work on our pet projects, hoping that one day it — and by extension, we — will become successful enough to be covered the likes of Michael Arrington and Henry Blodgett on a slow news day.

And therein lies what makes this moment in time different than the media controlled dystopia of Max Headroom: power. We are ultimately in control of the content given to us, not some cryptic television network run by Charles Rocket and Jeffery Tambor. The New York Times doesn’t decide what news is “fit to print,” we do. While it’s great to scope out The Drudge Report or Mashable for new things to read and/or learn about, it is more important in our society to “create” that next big idea. So we work on our blogs and fiddle with our various web 2.0 applications, all with the hope that our contributions will turn the “information tide” our way. This is our time, and we will make damn sure that we get every last second out of it. Biz Stone did it. Tim Brenners Lee did it. Now it’s our turn.

…And there you have it. On the behalf of everyone at the Free Line, we sincerely hope that you have enjoyed our three-part series about the future, media, and everything in between. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for more of that web 2.0 news you can use. Until then, we bid thee adieu.

It seems that everyone has a thought or two on Google’s new Chrome operating system. In our continuing effort to cover the best of the tech world, allow us to present the top ten comments about the much talked about — and highly controversial — OS of the (near) future.

1. “Who knows what this thing is. To me, the Chrome OS thing is highly interesting (in) that it won’t happen for a year and a half and they already announced an operating system.” – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
2. “[Chrome] is an extraordinary market play. And an unsettling one. For it seeks to place Google, which already collects vast amounts of data about our Internet use, at the very center of our information experience.” – John Paczkowski, All Things Digital
3. “If the Chrome OS can help change consumer perceptions about the utility of online applications and cloud storage, it could be a big success for Google, even without wide adoption.” – John Timmer, ArsTechnica
4. “Google’s decision to create its own Linux distribution and splinter the Linux community decisively once again can only be seen as foolhardy and self-obsessive.” – Renai LeMay, Silicon.com
5. “Google wants to see multiple devices connected to the web in every household. A web device in your pocket, one on your wrist, in your car, on your boat and in every room of your house; not to mention computers in homes in the developing world. The Microsoft tax ($50 per unit for instance) has hindered the market adoption of these types of devices.” - Amanda McPherson, The Linux Foundation
6. “It’s disappointing that they’ve chosen to go it alone this far rather than working with the existing [Linux] communities.” – Joe Brockmeier, Community Manager for openSUSE
7. “As the long-foretold ‘Internet of Things‘ emerges — allowing everyday objects to be addressed via online queries — Chrome OS will be well positioned to help Google organize even more of the world’s information than the company already handles.” – Thomas Claburn, Information Week
8. “Nobody seems to appreciate how hard it is to make an operating system. You don’t just wake up one day and fall out of bed and make one. Not even the smarty pants kiddies at Google can do that. These things take years. Decades, even… Whatever Google might release in the second half of next year, it will just be a starting point.” – Dan Lyons, aka The Fake Steve Jobs
9. “If Google wants to succeed in its boldest product launch to date, the Chrome OS, the company needs to focus on its success with the same intensity it once dedicated to search. If it doesn’t, Chrome OS will end up just like Chrome: yet another irrelevant skunkworks [sic] project used by a handful of digerati and Microsoft-haters and ignored by everyone else.” – Henry Blodgett, Silicon Valley Insider.
10. “If anyone thinks that the recent attention being paid to Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, and the sudden announcement of a free OS from Google is a coincidence, then you haven’t been following the tech business closely. Everything is strategic.” – John C. Dvorak, MarketWatch.com

…As for us, it all comes down to a very concise list of pros and cons.

Pros:

• Google starting small. Honestly, no one would give them the time of day if they immediately targeted traditional desktop and laptop systems. It would just be another small fish living in a pond inhabited by the likes of Windows, OS X, Ubuntu, and Fedora. By going to the comparatively uncharted world of netbooks first, Google has the opportunity of making considerable headway in a relatively short amount of time.

Cons:

• Google seems to have a hard time picking good hardware providers. Their “temporary alliance” with mediocre phone manufacturer HTC is proof of that. Now the folks at the “big  G” could always surprise us by linking up such heavy hitters as Asus and Dell. They could even go with an “under the radar” firm with a stellar reputation, such as Cowon or Archos. Unfortunately, we do not see that happening any time soon.
• Despite what many might think, the original Windows lineup — 3.1, 95, 98, and ME, etc –  were not operating systems in the strictest sense of the word. They were actually specialized suites called “extender programs” designed to make the aging DOS system structure more user friendly. As it stands now, Chrome OS is that very thing, only for Linux instead of DOS. While being a fancy extender program isn’t a “bad” thing, it doesn’t necessarily make it a true operating system, either.
• The thoughts of having to rely exclusively on cloud-based applications such as Zoho Office makes us want to cry. Now don’t get us wrong here — we love online apps just as much as the next person. Still, man cannot live on Google Docs and Adobe Acrobat Online alone. Even if there is a way to load external, offline programs onto the operating system, the bulk of these apps will have been designed specifically for Linux. In the minds of many, Konqueror, KOffice, and GNUCash are not adequate replacements for the likes of Safari, Microsoft Office, and the Peachtree Accounting Suite.

Our Verdict: Too soon to tell. I guess we will have to wait until the Chrome source code is released in November before we immediately start jumping to conclusions. Until that time arrives, consider the Free Line’s involvement in the matter to be officially closed.

As we mentioned in Monday’s post, we are planning to dedicate an entire week of the Free Line in order to help you stake a claim in the mobile web. Although it might seem to be difficult at first, programming a site specifically for a phone can actually be quite easy once you get the hang of it. After much discussion, we decided that it all comes down to five key ideas — form factor, content, load times, competition, and innovation.

1. Form Factor – As many of you already know, the way you hold your phone dictates the way your site is loaded. Some sites look good viewed from the “vertical” position, but tend to fall apart when put into horizontal “widescreen” mode. This section will help you construct a site that everyone — vertical fans, landscape fans, and even traditional desktop fans — can truly get behind.
2. Content – Despite what you might have heard, putting a block of text that rivals “War and Peace” on a site designed for an iPhone or Palm Pre is not a good idea. It might work for a traditional site, but not one designed for a five-inch screen. Still, that doesn’t mean that your content should be “dumbed down” for mobile users. Other ideas covered in this section include image size, link usage, and the pros and cons of using Flash.
3. Load Times – Allow us, if you will, to hit you with a harsh truth: It takes a phone longer to load a site than it does a desktop or laptop. It all comes down to the hardware. It honestly doesn’t matter how good your personal WiFI setup is or how reliable your mobile carrier’s 3G network is. When put through a “real world” speed test, the traditional system will win every single time. This module will help you prepare for that little eventuality without sacrificing things such as style and content.
4. Competition – More than likely, there is someone out there attempting to do what you are trying to do. This particular lesson will show how to learn from your competitor’s mistakes, all while building a stellar, spot-on reputation of your own. Other major points include advertising, branding, and overall marketability.
5. Innovation – This segment will be about the sweet art of creativity. Make it unique. Make it different. Make it a “go-to site” for anyone who uses a smart phone on a regular basis.

…And there you have it. Expect to see the first topic on the list, “Form Factor,” on Monday. Until then, we here at the Free Line bid thee adieu.