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.

We all know that WordPress is a great tool for creating a website. It’s much more than a blog platform, it is an essential tool for anyone that wants a website that is easy to maintain and update. But as an essential marketing tool for social networks, a lot of added features for WordPress often get overlooked or ignored entirely. We’ve got some great plugins that can be leveraged easily in any social marketing campaign.

The key to get the word out about your website this day in age is posting about it on social networks. For every social network out there, someone has created a cross posting tool in WordPress. Our current favourites are the MySpace, Twitter and Facebook plugins, that take any post you put on your WordPress website and posts about it on the respective Social Network.

And of course, you want to make sure that your fans and readers have a chance to do the same thing. Check out the Sociable plugin- it makes it a snap to tell anyone and everyone about one of your web pages. It automatically supports Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Email, Facebook and lots of others. Its like the swiss army knife of social bookmarks.

Once you’ve got the word out, you’ll need to take advantage of the social aspects of social networks. If you just cross post your WordPress site without having an extensive list of friends you won’t be taking advantage of the social media platforms. Finding and adding friends can be time consuming. But it can go by a lot faster with the Yoono plugin for FireFox.

And of course, while we’re talking about social networking and WordPress, we might as well return to WordPress MU, also known as WordPress MultiUser, the version of WordPress that lets multiple blogs be hosted on the same website. Automatic, the creators of WordPress and WordPress MU just bought BuddyPress, a plugin that turns WordPress MU into a full fledged Social Network. This means that future versions of WordPress MU will contain all the stuff that BuddyPress added in, giving your WordPress install all the power of MySpace of Facebook.

Quick quiz: which insanely popular social networking browser is on top right now? Well, that is all depends on who you are asking. At the end of May, it’s Facebook. The scrappy little fighter in the blue and white trunks has officially surpassed MySpace in the number of unique visitors worldwide - 123.9 million to MySpace’s 114.6 million. Facebook detractors, however, are quick to point out that while they are in the lead worldwide, MySpace still has the edge in the United States. Roughly 73.7 million Americans visited MySpace last May, compared to the 35.6 million that stopped by Facebook. The US is still considered to be the number one advertising market. So who is on top right now? We’re not really sure, but it will definitely be interesting to find out.

So what could possibly be better than being number one in the world? Changing the Internet, of course. According to the people at Take Back the Web, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is one of the Top 15 people who changed the Internet. Zuckerberg placed number three, ahead of such luminaries as Shawn Fanning (Napster), Kevin Rose (Digg), and Bram Cohen (BitTorrent). Two notable absentees are Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, the creators of MySpace.

Controversial site stats and an oddball snubbing aside, there is plenty for the MySpace faithful to get excited about, like the movie. Yes, that’s right. Many MySpacers are in the midst of making their own movie. Called Faintheart, the movie is a comedy taking place in a battle reneactment club. The director, actors and much of the music were chosen via MySpace, all pulled directly from the producer’s Friend List.

Moving “off line” for a moment, we’ve got news that Google Docs has Gears support. This means you don’t have to be connected to the internet to get all the functionality of Google Docs. This puts it in direct competition with Adobe’s Buzz Word Processor, which has the same technology, as well as all the other offline Word Processors (Word, AbiWord) and Office suites (Office, OpenOffice) that clog our desktops.

And of course, if you want to take that web 2.0 feel offline, no one is currently doing it better than Adobe. The multimedia giant’s development platform Adobe Air is currently taking the Flash Development community by storm, and it’s time for the end user to reap the benefits. Productivity blog Lifehacker has a list of ten Air-based applications that are definitely worth looking at. Give it a shot. You’ll be glad that you did.

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.

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.

密苏里立法部门最近对这个问题有了新的说法。该州出台了一项新的法案，并在两院的投票中以高额票数通过，这也使该州在未来可以对用电子设备对它人进行骚扰的人提起诉讼。而此前，只有手写的文字和电话内容才会被算作骚扰性语言。这项新的法案跟Megan Meier的死亡有直接关系，这个13岁的女孩在MySpace上被别人进行骚扰后在家中自杀。该法案目前正在等待州长Mark Blunt的通过。

最近，捷克软件公司Grisoft刚刚发布了AVG 8.0的免费版，从而加入了在线杀毒软件的大军。与之前的一样，AVG 8.0免费版去掉了所有用户们通常忽略的高级程序和功能，转而把注意力集中在自己的核心上，也就是杀毒。虽然开发人员说程序将提供高级功能，但是用户需要对它们付费。我们建议大家使用免费的版本或者其它类似的程序比如Ad Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy，和Hijack this来弥补AVG的缺失。

如果你安全还不放心，这个链接还会告诉你如何对你的Gmail帐户进行加密。方法很简单，你只需要下载一个免费的GPG程序和一个Firefox的加密插件。之后，你就可以通过Gmail收发加密过的邮件了。还不光如此，在这篇文章的最后它还会教你如何对苹果的邮件进行加密。

接下来，YouTube最近在它的洞察程序中加入了浏览者统计信息。不久前发布的“洞察”可以可以使你追踪哪些人在什么时间浏览了你的视频。现在你可以轻松了解浏览者的年龄、性别、或者它们的综合，你还可以结合之前的地理信息工具一起使用。

最后，Adobe对Flash播放器进行了升级。第10版现在支持了Linux和一个改进的界面。大部分改进都是针对程序员的——也许对终端用户最直接的好处就是速度的提升，它可使任何Flash网站读取的速度有明显的加快。

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Loyal MySpace users can rest a bit easier tonight, knowing the two biggest threats to their accounts have been dealt with. Notorious MySpace spammers Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines were fined a record $234 million by the US District Court for the Central District of California Friday. Wallace and Rines reportedly sent over 700,000 pieces of spam to unsuspecting users, using both newly created and hijacked accounts. The judgment was passed under the guise of the “CAN-SPAM Act,” a roughly four year old law aimed at cracking down on various annoyances.

On the browser front, the Mozilla Foundation released the latest version of Firefox on Friday. “Firefox 3.0 r c 1” features everything beta testers have come to love in the new browser, while dropping a few of its “less-admired” bugs and conflicts. It is well worth the download, but be warned: some of your extensions might not function within the new browser.

New to cell phones last week is Opera Mini 4.1, the latest in the company’s “Opera for mobile devices” line. New features include file transfers, text search inside a page, and auto-completion of web addresses. While the browser doesn’t compare with those found on more “advanced” devices like the iPhone, it is definitely better than the “bare bones” setup most phones come equipped with. As always, Opera Mini is totally free.

If you own an iPhone, you have a new option when it comes to music downloads and file sharing. iSlsk is a new program that taps into the Soulseek network at pretty decent speeds. You’ll need your iPhone to be Jail Broken in order to use the new program. Jail Breaking an iPhone lets you install 3rd party applications onto an iPhone that have not been officially approved by Apple.

And if you don’t know how to do it, we’ve got a link to a quick and dirty tutorial showing you step by step instruction on how to get this done. This is not a simple procedure, so take caution before doing it and back up everything on your iPhone before starting. Oh, and it will probably void your warranty, so there’s that to consider, too.

And finally, we’ve got a great website for you to check out and bookmark. It’s called Archive.org, and it has a ton of free, public domain videos you can watch online. Since the videos are all public domain you can also download them, mash them together or use it as stock footage in your podcast. All for free.

忠实的MySpace用户今晚可以轻松一下了，因为对它们帐户的两大威胁终于被清除了。臭名昭著的MySpace垃圾散步者Sanfor Wallance和Walter Rines在上周五被加州联邦地方法院处以2340万美元的罚款。Wallance 和 Rines被指通过使用自己建立和盗取的帐户，向用户发布了70万条垃圾信息。这项裁决是基于“反垃圾邮件法”做出的，该法案在4年前推出，旨在消灭多种垃圾骚扰。

浏览器方面，Mozilla基金会在上周五发布了最新版的火狐。火狐3.0rc1保留了测试用户们喜欢的所有功能，并解决了一些不该有错误和冲突。它非常值得去下载，但是要注意：你的一些插件在新的浏览器中可能还是不能使用。

上周关于手机的新闻是Opera Mini 4.1，目前它是移动设备Opera产品线的最新版。新的功能包括文件传输，页内文本搜索，和网址的自动填充。尽管这个浏览器还不能和其它像iphone这样先进设备上的相比，但是它的功能已经完全超越了许多手机自带的浏览器。和以往一样这款软件是免费的。

如果你有一台iPhone，现在你有了一个新的方式去下载音乐和共享文件。iSls是一个可以快速连接到Soulseek网络的新程序，而为了使用它你需要把你的iPhone进行破解。破解iPhone将使你可以安装第三方软件但是目前还没有得到苹果的许可。

如果你还不知道如何破解的话，我们这里有一个快速上手的傻瓜教程帮助你一步步实现这个愿望。这个过程并不简单，所以千万留意并备份好你iPhone上的所有东西。噢，另外你的保修可能也会失效，所以这一点也值得考虑。

最后，我们这里有一个非常值得浏览和收藏的网站，叫做Archive.org。它上面有无数免费，公共领域的在线视频。因为这些视频属于公共领域所以你还可以下载它们，收集起来或作为将来可以使用的脚本素材。完全免费。

If you’re confused as to what Web 3.0 is, or rather, will be, we’ve got a link to a great article that explains what Web 3.0 is and how you’ll be able to reap the benefits of this future technology.

Following on the heels of MySpace’s announcement to allow websites to bring in profile data, comes Facebook with an almost identical feature. They’re calling it FaceBook Connect.  Although it won’t actually launch for a few weeks, it will be, essentially, an overhaul of their 3rd party API which will give outside applications access to the same data that Facebook applications have now.

Google has just released an new tool called Friend Connect, which will allow you to do exactly the same thing Facebook and MySpace are planning on doing with any Open Social network. It looks like we’re about to see the full realization of Web 2.0. Pretty soon, meeting up with your friend’s online will be even easier than meeting them offline — and soon, whatever third party site you’re on, all your friends can come with you — automatically.

Fans of Twitter with latest Mac OSX are in for a surprise–included with the development tools is a hidden treat! A screen saver that displays all of your Twitter friends, built right on top of the operating system. Running the screen saver is simple: just drag and drop and away you go. When it’s done loading, it shows a wheel with your Twitter friends and their tweets.

GeoGraffiti turns your cellphone into a web 2.0 tool, enabling you to leave voice message details for free about any place you want. Verbal tips, tools, reviews of a restaurant, description of scenery, or even directions to a specific place, and then save it all so that other people with GeoGraffiti accounts can find it for free.

In the next few weeks MySpace users should expect the ability to quickly and easily share videos, profile details and images to web sites operated by Yahoo, Ebay and others, including websites like Photobucket and Twitter.

OpenOffice 3.0 is now ready for public beta testing. We have some visual changes- new and better icons, a pretty start screen, as well as some pretty heavy changes under the hood. You can expect a better install process for Mac machines with complete look and feel that jives with other aqua apps.

Facebook finally reached an agreement with the attorney generals of 49 states and the District of Columbia concerning stricter safety standards. Facebook pledged to develop age verification technology in addition send warnings to anyone under 18 giving out their own personal information as well as restrict a vast majority of what they can do on the website.

Facebook plans on lifting that cumbersome 5,000 friends limit in the near future. Different reasons for the limit have been bandied about for keeping the upper limit on friends to five thousand, but the real reason is scalability issues.

FullFillment Central is giving away 100 free full color flyers. That’s right- free. All you need to do is pay a small shipping and handling fee to get them delivered to anywhere in the US. A great example of pushing the Free Line.