“Networking” via your mobile phone might be more of a passive activity than once thought. According to a new poll conducted by ABI Research, roughly 30% say that they use their handsets to perform “major” social networking tasks such as uploading music or images. Furthermore, only 17% say that they use their phones to network on a daily basis. Despite this, many within the industry believe that the findings point more to a “phase” than anything else. “The fact is that more consumers are really starting to adopt social networking on their phones,” said ABI research director Michael Wolf to WebProNews. “”The combination of more capable phones with flat-rate mobile broadband and pre-installed social network applications will help cement social networks as hubs for entertainment and communication, regardless of the screen consumers use to access them.”

Elsewhere, the folks at Google have created a specialized YouTube channel designed to help users master Analytics. While the notion of a “video help desk” seems to lend itself to mostly beginners, Google is assuring that users of all skill sets will get something out of the new service. “[The new channel is] a one-stop source for the latest Google Analytics-related videos,” writes Melissa Hsieh on the Google Analytics Blog. ” If you’re looking for a beginner’s guide to interpreting and acting on your data, an introduction to motion charts, or you want to learn how to perform placement targeting in 60 seconds, you can now find it [here].” The Analytics YouTube channel is available now to all users.

In other Google-centric news, the Google Docs PDF Viewer is now officially available for Gmail. Previously, users who wanted to access a PDF file directly from their account had to use a shoddy “PDF to HTML” converter. The result was a faux-PDF full of the document’s content, but lacking most of its style. Those who wanted the “full expereince” had to turn to third-party external programs such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. Although it is still technically a third-party app, Google Docs PDF Viewer brings a level of ease and functionality to a platform desperate for it. In short, your emailed PDF files have never looked so good.

Next, we have Twitblogs. As the name clearly implies, Twitblogs attempts to combine the visual panache of Twitter with all of the standard features of a normal blogging setup. It also automatically throws your post onto the base Twitter service, making sure that everyone sees what you have to say. While the expanded message size is a nice little touch, the cartoony nature of the service makes serious blogging almost impossible. That said, Twitblogs is perfect for someone who wants to add a happy, optimistic vibe to their words. Twitblogs is available now.

Finally: Every now and then on the Free Line, we like to cover things that are, for lack of a better phrase, a bit on the strange side. This story definitely fits the bill. Oleg Teterin, a businessman and entrepreneur from Russia, has announced that he has officially trademarked the wink — or — emoticon. Teterin, who also claims to own the copyright to the popular symbol, says the trademark is to put a stop to others “making a profit” off of something he rightfully owns. The average user, he says, will not be affected and will not have to pay up. At press time, the trademark is valid for Russia only.

A possible deal between Microsoft and Yahoo might still be in the works, according to the London Times. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft would take control of Yahoo’s search service for a period of ten years. While Yahoo Search would be under Microsoft control, it would remain a distinct, separate entity from Live Search. The deal would also give Microsoft three seats on Yahoo’s board of directors, as well as a “two year window” to purchase the search engine outright for $20 billion. It must be distinctly understood, however, that the deal only involves the actual Yahoo search engine. All of the other services currently offered by the company, such as Yahoo Mail and Yahoo News, will remain under Yahoo control. Neither Microsoft nor Yahoo have chosen to comment at this time.

As enticing as the story is on the surface, many within the industry are having a hard time believing that it’s true. Kara Swisher of All Things Digital says that a source close to both companies claims the rumors are “total fiction.” Writes Swisher: “I have spoken to top sources at Yahoo and Microsoft too and all scoff at such a deal now taking place or that either side has been in any such discussions of late.” While she doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility of this deal happening some time in the future, the “present” looks very much in doubt.

In other, non-Yahoo news,  Amazon has gone forward with plans to shut down Alexa. For those unaware, Alexa was a tool designed to track the web usage of users, similar to Google Analytics. The software was more famous — or infamous, if you prefer — for the spyware warning that followed its toolbar throughout its life. According to the folks at Amazon, Alexa was shut down due to a combination of low usage and stiff competition from the likes of Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Although Alexa stopped accepting new customers November 26th, Amazon plans to keep the service running until January 26th.

Elsewhere, it seems as if the advertising found on social networking sites might not be as popular (or profitable) as once thought. According to a new poll conducted by researcher IDC, only 57% of those surveyed said they have clicked on at least one social network-based ad in the past year, with only 11% actually buying anything. By comparison, the click rate/purchase dynamic on traditional websites stand at 79% and 27%, respectively. “The thinking has been that the popularity of social networking services will attract a big audience and generate a lot of traffic, which in turn will produce enormous amounts of user-generated content and therefore advertising inventory,” IDC’s Karsten Weide told WebProNews. “All of the above has proven true — except that almost invariably, [social services] have had a hard time selling this inventory.”

Finally, we have Ziipa. Ziipa is an interesting social media site that allows users to find, post, and talk about all of the best web 2.0 tools and apps the Internet has to offer. Despite being rather new — the root company was only created last May — the service is already getting favorable reviews from a few well-known sites. “Ziipa will interest virtually anyone who’s tired of the same old, same old,” writes Mashable’s Paul Glazowski. Equal parts Google, StumbleUpon, and the “award winning pies” table at the county fair, Ziipa is perfect for anyone who is in the mood for something a bit “different,” yet still mind numbingly advanced.

Microsoft’s Live.com web portal has gotten a distinct social makeover. The new site now contains many “standards” of the social networking trade — custom profiles, messaging ability, blogging, and more. The folks at Redmond say that the service will eventually be connected with fifty content partners. While the move seems a bit odd coming from a more “traditional” company like Microsoft, it’s not all that uncommon for search sites to embrace social media. As some of you may remember, Yahoo attempted to do something similar a few months ago with their Profiles. The new, web 2.0-flavored Live.com is online now.

Twitter has officially hit the monumental “one billion message” milestone. The billionth Tweet is thought to have occurred sometime Wednesday. According to data supplied by social archival site Popacular, it took roughly two years and three months for the microblogging service to reach that level. By comparison, instant messaging services from Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft hit the billion message mark on a near daily basis. The people behind Twitter have no comment at this time.

Despite reports to the contrary, the use of social networking in business is still considered to be fairly controversial by many CEOs. According to a poll conducted by Burson-Marsteller and industry periodical PR Week, 29% said that using social media is an effective way to communicate with employees, consumers, and shareholders. An equal amount also claimed that using social services didn’t help their businesses at all. Moreover, only 18% of those surveyed have actually used social media services to inform their shareholders. While the jury may still be out concerning the use of web 2.0 technologies, most agree that the use of “web 1.0″ has indeed helped their business. Nearly 71% say their website is the best way to interact with others.

In other social networking news, MySpace has officially released the MySpace Primetime Application (or MPA for short), a new app designed to take their video offering to the next level. The MPA allows users to quickly find videos from not only MySpace TV, but Hulu as well. Once the desired video is located, users can then post it onto their pages, just like always. “Video on MySpace flows throughout the network as there are multiple entry points where videos can be discovered,” MySpace Vice President Jason Kirk told WebProNews. “We believe the 76 million US users spending four hours on the site every month, and the advertisers that rely on our ad-solutions, will be happy with the flexibility of this application.” MySpace Primetime Application is available now.

And finally, there’s Happenr. Happenr is a so-called “events search engine” designed to tell you what’s happening on the continent of Europe. The engine scours several diverse databases and the cultural calendars of over one-hundred cities, all in an effort to keep your hypothetical itinerary as “up to date” as humanly possible. Results can be displayed in English, German, and Dutch. To top it all off, the Happenr API is available for free on the site, meaning that other sites can tap into its interesting European goodness. Happenr is up and running on a PC near you. An iPhone application is also in the works.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Microsoft has absolutely no interest in purchasing Yahoo. “We made an offer, we made another offer … We moved on,” said Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer at a business event in Sydney. “We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly.” The rumors of a combined Microsoft-Yahoo entity began swirling around again after Google pulled out of a proposed advertising deal last week. These comments contradict those of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who said that Microsoft was “still their best option.” Microsoft originally offered shareholders $47.5 billion dollars for the beleaguered search service last May.

In other Microsoft news, there’s BizSpark. BizSpark is an amalgamation of web services designed to get your website up and running. While it isn’t exactly “open source” like MySQL, Microsoft is doing something fairly out-of-character to entice startups into using their service — giving three-year subscriptions away for free. Aside from the subscriptions, users also have access to Redmond’s small army of tech support. Designed with the “promising young startup” market in mind, BizSpark is perfect for anyone who wishes to get their online business a major league boost.

According to pollster site SquareTrade, the iPhone is the most reliable of the three major smart phones available today. Out of 15,000 mobile devices tested, the iPhone has a 5.6% failure rate. By comparison, 11.6% of all Blackberry and 16.6% of all Treo devices have failure issues. By far, most “first year” problems are linked to input problems, usually a touchscreen or a keyboard. SquareTrade expects the iPhone failure rate to jump to around 9% within two years.

In other news of the “cell phone” variety, Nokia is joining the microblogging game. The”Beta Labs” wing of the cell phone giant has released Friend View, a new service that will allow you to leave short, Twitter-style messages from both your phone and your personal computer. Unlike Twitter, Friend View has an surprising GPS element built directly into it. When a user posts a message, the location of the poster will appear on a map. Despite the innovation, early reviews of the service have been mixed. Friend View is available now from Nokia Beta Labs.

And finally, Brian Wallace of Mashable.com has an excellent article up explaining how to get the most out of business social networking site LinkedIn. “Using LinkedIn, I’ve trained small businesses to spread their wings and get connected with companies that they might otherwise have thought were beyond reach,” he writes. Throughout the relatively short piece, Wallace explains the basics of LinkedIn, including sending messages and performing background checks, simply and easily. While it barely scratches the surface on what LinkedIn can do, the article is great for all of those who wants to start “networking” the web 2.0 way.

Searching the web from your cell phone seems to be on the rise. According to the Kelsey Group, 33.6% of those surveyed said that they use their phones to get movie listings and research products, a 9.2% increase from the previous year. While only 18.9% say that they currently own cell phones, 49.2% say that they are planning to buy one within two years. “We are seeing a qualitative difference in consumer usage of mobile phones,” said Kelsey Research Director Steve Marshall to tech blog WebProNews. “The aggressive projections about mobile are approaching reality, as smartphones are now becoming mainstream platforms for commercial usage.”

Delver, the search engine known for making web searching a social experience, has announced a content partnership with Yahoo. Under the terms of the deal, search results derived from Yahoo BOSS will be integrated into Delver’s existing results. “Leveraging Yahoo Search BOSS allows us to keep focusing on social-graph ranking and indexing,” said Delver Chief Executive Liad Agmon in a prepared statement. “[The deal provides] our users with a solution that intelligently mixes social results with traditional Web results.”

Elsewhere, Google has launched a series of short videos and blog posts designed to help people get the most out of AdSense. In the debut episode, the AdSense team discusses advertising size. According to them, there is one thing that you must do when creating an advertisement — make it big. “Publishers often ask us what the best ad sizes are to include in their site’s design,” writes team member Mel Ann Chan. “If you position your ad units well, users will be more likely to see these ad formats and find an ad that they’re interested in.” Expect more helpful hints such as this in the near future.

In other news, groups are coming to Twitter … in a way. Twitter Japan, along with their partner Digital Garage, has officially launched Twicco, a new site dedicated to groups and the people who frequent them. Aside from the affiliation, the basic group structure is similar to what you will find elsewhere on the web. Twicco groups are available now in Japan. Both Twitter Japan and Digital Garage are promising a “wider roll out” of the service in the near future.

Finally: Internet surveyors Netcraft have finished counting the numbers of active sites on the web. According to the firm, there are 182,226,259 sites, up nearly 948,000 from July. Netcraft is also reporting that Apache is the server software of choice for the majority of active sites, with Microsoft’s IIS server technology coming in a distant second. Apache has been on top of the web server food chain since July 1996.

YouTube is the number one video site in the land yet again. According to a poll conducted by Nielsen Media and Beet.tv, the Google subsidiary had roughly 5.4 billion total views and 82 million unique users in the month of September. The big news, however, has nothing to do with who is number one. In a surprising turn of events, Yahoo Video was able to grab the number two spot, with 264.2 million views and 30 million unique users — an astonishing 59.1% increase from the previous month. Many insiders believe that the popularity boost is due to Yahoo’s unique “quality over quantity” approach to online video. Other video sites listed include Fox Media/MySpace (242.4 million views and 19.2 million users), MSN/Windows Live (164.7 million views and 11 million users), and Nickelodeon (163 million views and 6.15 million users).

To many users, the illegal downloading and sharing of media files are the “dark side” of the Free Line. If you feel this way, then you have a new ally in the fight — the French government. In an overwhelming 297 to 15 vote, the French Senate passed a so-called “P2P three strikes” anti-piracy bill. According to the bill, a new government agency known as the High Authority for Copyright Protection and Dissemination of Works on the Internet (or HADOPI) will be created to monitor all of the country’s Internet connections. If a user is convicted of online copyright infringement three times, HADOPI will have his or her Internet privileges revoked. Critics argue that the punishment does not fit the crime. The French National Assembly has yet to vote on the bill.

In other news, text messaging is coming to Gmail. The folks over at Gmail Labs are hard at work on a plugin that will allow users to send text messages from their mail accounts. The service initally launched last week, but was quickly taken offline after a few major bugs were found. “When you’d try to turn it on, it wouldn’t fully enable,” writes product manager Leo Dirac in the Official Gmail Blog. “We thought about keeping it out there — bugs and all — but the experience wasn’t that great. So, in the spirit of Labs, we’ve pulled SMS chat back to fix it.” Dirac expects the new service to up and running again “in about two weeks.”

In other news, it seems as if the usually mundane task of web searching is about to get a bit more social. Scour (formally known as Aftervote) is a new search engine that allows users to view results from Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search, then rank them in order of relevance. Aside from the distinct social aspect, users also have the opportunity to get paid for their work. Each search query, vote, comment, and recommendation is worth a point. For each set of 6500 points, the user gets a $25 gift card. Despite the similarities in the name, Scour has little to no connection to the domain’s previous tenant, music downloading pioneer Scour Media. Scour is up and running now.

Elsewhere, blogger Jack Humphrey has written an interesting piece about attracting more people to your blog. According to Humphrey, the key is to let your personality shine through. “The majority of successful blogs share one thing in common: people follow the blogger, not the blog,” he writes. “If personality weren’t important to building more than just a casual following for your blog, why would so many people who have reached the big time in blogging feel the need to pass on what they feel is a pretty important factor in their success?” Interesting and thought provoking, Jack Humphrey’s article is perfect for anyone who wants to shake things up a bit.

Google is getting into the publishing business. The search engine giant has worked out a deal with several major authors to bring their work online. Moreover, the new Google publishing house will not be available to e-Readers such as the Amazon Kindle. By eliminating e-Readers from the equation, users will not feel the need to buy yet another piece of equipment. “You don’t have to look at [a computer screen] at a funny angle, and today’s monitors have better resolution than ever,” says Google co-founder Sergey Brin in an interview with USA Today. At press time, a launch date for the new service has yet to be announced.

In other news, Facebook has taken a commanding lead over MySpace when it comes to worldwide popularity. Facebook received 161.4 million unique hits in September, a 4.7% increase from the previous month. MySpace, on the other hand, is down 1.6% to 117.9 million unique views. MySpace remains popular in the United States, where it holds a 59% share of the market. Rupert Murdoch’s favorite social network is said to enjoy similar popularity in Germany and Japan as well.

Elsewhere in the world of web 2.0, there’s Trutap. Trutap is a new service that promises to bring the wonders of the Internet to the average, everyday cell phone. Aside from the promised (and, let’s face it, totally expected) Facebook compatibility, users can check their favorite instant messaging service and browse Flickr and Photobucket with ease. The service is also compatible with such blogging platforms as Typepad and Blogger. While it isn’t exactly an original idea — most cell providers offer these services for an additional charge — the completeness of the package, as well as the unbeatable price (free), makes this suite well worth the download. Trutap is available now.

It seems as if AOL has contracted “upgrade fever.” Aside from the standard array of bug fixes, the new site lets users work with their MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and Twitter account without ever leaving the front page. Users can also overhaul the page to their liking, adding new widgets, RSS feeds, and more with only a few clicks. “Consumers want choice and relevance in their Web experiences,” says AOL Vice President Bill Wilson in an interview with WebProNews. “We will continue to enhance the appeal… by adding more relevant programming, customization opportunities, greater integration of third party content, improved design and access to social networks directly from AOL.com.”

And to finish off the week: As long term fans of the Free Line know, we’ve covered more than a few Firefox extensions in our day. We even went over a hodgepodge of Opera widgets last August. Users of Internet Explorer and Safari, on the other hand, always seem to be left out in the cold. If this is you, well then today is your lucky day. We have ten extensions and plugins designed to make your personal web browsing experience a pleasurable one.

Internet Explorer:

• FoxyTunes - Control the media player of your choice, find lyrics and more, all without minimizing Internet Explorer.
•  ieSpell - Adds a surprisingly accurate spell check to all IE text boxes. ieSpell supports American, Canadian, and the Queen’s English right out of the box.
• IEPro7 - Add a variety of interesting and useful tools (crash recovery, improved page searching, mouse gestures, etc.) to IE.
• Zemata -Add pictures, links, and added information to any blog post.
• Delicious - IE users get to join the link sharing party that is Delicious.

Safari

• Keywurl - Search the web from your address bar, just like in Firefox.
• Safari Prairiefire - Give your bookmark folder a good cleaning.
• Cooliris Previews - Check out the contents of a link without actually clicking on it.
• Inquisitor - Add a powerful “predicting” search bar to Safari. Inquisitor is based upon Yahoo BOSS technology.
• ForgetMeNot - Easily organize and save your tab layout.

Are you disappointed that your favorite extension, widget, and/or AppleScript wasn’t covered? Are you a loyal Chrome, Konqueror, Epiphany, SeaMonkey, or Camino user that wants to spread the word about the best add-ons for your chosen browser? Bring it up! The Free Line is all about free exchange of ideas and products.

Google is the undisputed king of search engines in the month of September. According to a poll conducted by Neilsen Online, around 8.1 million searches were performed, giving it a 59.7% share of the market. While impressive, the Google market share actually went down by .3% from the previous month. The biggest gainer this time around is Windows Live Search, which grew 1.1%. Microsoft’s favorite search engine came in at a solid third, with 953,000 searches and a 11.8% market share. Other notables include Yahoo (second place with 1.46 million searches and a 18.1% share), AOL (fourth place with 335,000 searches and a 4.1 share), and Comcast (seventh place with 52,000 search and a .6% share).

In other seach-based news, Yahoo’s so-called “Open Strategy” has gone live. The service, also known as Y!OS, lets users share applications and data in ways that most Yahoo users never considered. The new system will also add a level of “social interaction” that will permeate throughout the search engine and its related services. “As of today, developers can start using our newly available data on their own web sites and even start deploying new applications into Yahoo,” says Open Strategy chief Jay Rossiter. “We’re anxious to see what developers out there have up their sleeves and what [the end user will] do with it.”

In social networking news, the folks behind Facebook are planning to give their beloved service a major overhaul … with a twist. Instead of working during office hours, the techs are going to do it the old fashioned way — with an all-nighter. “Every few months, our engineers unleash their talents in one epic, all-night coding session,” writes Pedram Keyani in the official Facebook blog. “Dozens of Facebook engineers create working prototypes of projects that they always wanted to build but couldn’t ever pursue during their regular hours.” In addition to their ideas, the engineers will be working on some of your ideas as well. Deadlines for the suggestions are noon (Pacific Time) on Monday, November 3rd. Facebook’s Hackathon XI will go down Wednesday, November 5th.

Elsewhere, a specialized version of Microsoft Office is coming to the web. The so-called “Online Office” will allow users to read, create and edit a variety of files without leaving the safety of your browser. Surprisingly, the new web suite is not built upon Microsoft’s Flash competitor, Silverlight. Instead, the programs operate upon a solid bed of HTML and Javascrpt, similar to Google Apps. “What’s great is that this provides a consistent Office experience when and where our customers want it, regardless of whether they are accessing their Office documents through the PC, phone, or browser,” said Senior Vice President Chris Capossela in a press release. At press time, the web-centric version of Office is scheduled to work in Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.

Finally: LinkedIn, the social network designed for the business-minded, is getting into the “proprietary apps” game. Unlike the widgets available MySpace and Facebook, each LinkedIn InApp is comprehensively reviewed and tested before it is deemed worthy for release. In theory, the approval process will limit (or even eliminate) the proliferation of so-called “junk apps.” Users are also limited to having “only” fifteen apps on their main profile page to help reduce clutter. The first batch of InApps widgets are available now for all LinkedIn users.

The folks at Microsoft are the latest in a long line of tech firms putting their chips on the OpenID project. For those unaware, “OpenID” is based around the theory that having one login ID for several sites is intrinsically better than having proprietary IDs for each site. Many analysts see addition of Windows Live users — all 400 million of them — as a major victory for the emerging web standard. While Microsoft might be the biggest company to embrace OpenID, it isn’t the first. Other notable firms that have pledged their support for the service include Yahoo, Technorati, and WordPress.

Pollster and security company FaceTime Communications has a few interesting things to say about social networking use in business. According to the report, roughly 79% use social networking and video sites at work for specific, “business-centric” reasons. In addition, 51% of those surveyed said that they visit social sites at least once a day. LinkedIn is by far the most popular social networking site among business people, with 62% saying that it is their favorite service. YouTube comes in second, with a 55% user rate.

In related news, video services such as YouTube have a new group to thank for their unparalleled growth — women. Roughly 54% of women over twelve said that they have watched at least one online video in the past month, a 9% increase from 2007. Men still lead the pack at 58%, but the gap is shrinking. “It appears the prevalence of streaming video online among younger males may be approaching a ceiling today,” Ipsos Media director Adam Wright recently told WebProNews. “The other demographic groups are driving the audience growth here.”

In other news, Kwanzoo is promising that even the smallest of quizzes can boost overall advertising revenues. The little startup claims that they can produce results ten times greater than traditional banner ads, and is using the success of partners Meebo and Glam Media to prove it. Kwanzoo is based around the idea that people are more likely to click on something that is interactive and fun than “boring” and traditional. Site owners can choose from over 50,000 questions for their own personalized “quiz widget,” or they can write their own. Kwanzoo is up and running now.

Finally, a few new Gadgets are coming to a Gmail account near you. New additions include a simple Calendar viewer (complete with so-called “meeting alerts) and a full-featured search engine geared towards Google Docs. “Gmail Labs has been a really fun way to easily try out new ideas and get some of our pet feature requests implemented quickly,” writes Gmail engineer Dan Pupius. “We wanted to take this to the next level.” The new Google Gadgets are available now, with many more to come in the near future.

The use of online video sites such as YouTube are on the rise. In a recent poll conducted by D S Simon Productions, 65% of all online media sites use so-called “outside video sources” to supplement their content. Furthermore, 67% of magazines, newspapers, and radio stations and 45% of television stations say that their respective websites have used at least some outside video with the past year. Out of those polled, 79% state that they plan on using outside video sometime in the immediate future. “Web Influencers [sic] are now the mainstream media,” said D S Simon president Douglas Simon in a statement to Online Media Daily. “We need to understand the content needs of these Web Influencers if we hope to communicate successfully in the online world.”

Elsewhere in the polls, not everyone is down on the economy. According to a DLA Piper survey, 66% of business executives polled believe that the “Tech Bubble” troubles of 2000 was worse overall than the current crisis. Only 25% said that they are planning to cut back due to financial concerns. While the mood isn’t exactly upbeat — 75% said that their businesses have been negatively affected by the market’s volatility — the survey suggests that things aren’t as bad as it could be.”Those responses reflect an opinion that the impact of the current crisis on the technology industry is more residual than the 2000 crash,” says DLA Piper co-head Peter Astiz.

Moving to the web, data tracker Hitwise has published an interesting list detailing the twenty most popular websites in the month of September. Coming in first is Google, with an industry leading 6% market share. Despite its impeccable reputation amongst the web elite, Google’s Gmail mail service came in eleventh with a 0.79% share. The undisputed king of the web-based email services is Yahoo Mail, which came in second overall with a surprising 4.7% share. Other notable rankings include MySpace (third, 4.01% share), Facebook (eighth, 1.2% share), and YouTube (tenth, 0.93% share).

Our last stop on the survey train takes us to England. According to the London Telegraph, 92% 0f those polled said that they were at their creative worst at 4:33 in the afternoon. In contrast, 25% said that they were at their best past midnight. Nearly 44% mentioned that a quick shower usually gives their minds a proverbial “second wind.” The survey also suggests that people tend to be more inspired in the lavatory than anywhere else. It just goes to show that creativity can truly strike at any time … unless the time in question is 4:33, that is.

And finally, it seems as if Microsoft’s search interests are about to get the “social” treatment. A derivative of Live Search, U Rank allows users to not only customize their searches, but also share them with others. Although still in development and fairly bug-filled, many critics consider U Rank to be an interesting departure for Microsoft. “This… takes search into a different direction by putting a lot of emphasis on social interaction,” writes RedWriteWeb contributor Frederick Lardinois. “We can see how this new interface could be very useful if you are working in a team that is focused on a very specific topic.” U Rank is up and running now.