Last week, we told you about Knol, Google’s attempt at producing a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia. There seems to be more going on in Google’s offices than the free exchange of ideas, however. According an article from insider blog WebProNews, Google is generally giving Knol articles higher page rankings than equivalent articles on other sites. Google has yet to respond to this allegation. When anything new comes around, we will certainly let you know.In other Google news, it seems as if the “Big G” is planning to kill off its Page Creator application. While current users are still able to use the service, new users are being directed to its sister site, Google Pages. Google is expected to move all Page Creator content to Google Pages later in the year. Expect to see more on this story, especially when the switch over finally happens.

In Hollywood, many film producers are experimenting with the “reboot” - restarting a popular series, such as James Bond and Star Trek, from the beginning. Well, a firm called BBN Technologies, Inc wants to do that very thing to the Internet. Called the GENI Network, the project would build a new, Internet-like system from the ground up. Thus far, BBN has received over $12 million in initial grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as a 30 Gigabyte per second of bandwidth to run tests on. If Congress approves the $350 million price tag, we might be seeing a functional GENI Network within five years.

If you share files using peer-to-peer networks and also subscribe to AT&T’s wireless broadband service, you might be running into some trouble. According to a document filed by AT&T to the FCC, users of P2P networking are violating their terms of service contract. They say that peer to peer programs use a steady bandwidth rather than small bursts of high bandwidth, making a worse internet experience for everyone involved. So far, AT&T has yet to shut off service to people using these programs to download and share files. Neither AT&T nor the FCC have commented publicly on the matter.

Joss Whedon, the creator of such television programs as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly is spending his summer experimenting with the Free Line. Whedon has been streaming his “musical tragicomedy” Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog free on iTunes since July. The series, which stars Neil Patrick Harris as an aspiring supervillain, will also be available on the Hulu network for a limited run.

It seems as if Joss Whedon fans aren’t the only ones going to the Internet to get their television fix. According to a new poll by Media Measurements Incorporated, about 20% all television veiwing in America happens online. Those who watch their favorite television shows online also seem to be more “in touch” with the content presented. And the kicker? Most of these programs are coming from free streams provided by television networks. Just further proof that the Free Line works… even when your watching television.

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.

Wikipedia，这个当红的在线百科全书一直受着资料可信度的困扰，而现在又来了新的对手。上周三，Google正式·发布了Knol，一个新的协作信息平台。不像维基百科，任何用户都可以随意编辑文章，Knol上的所有的文章必须被一部分人审阅·。在一个词条正式出现之前，它必须被这部分人通过才行。我们目前还不知道用户们如何才能体现所谓的“适当”参与。你可以访问我们的网站来了解更多Knol和wikipedia的消息，网址就在freelinereport.com

另一条Google新闻，他们刚刚宣布为YouTube视频加入了新的语音识别搜索功能。通过一个新的叫做Google选举视频搜索工具“的iGoogle小程序，用户们可以通过视频中说的话来搜索想要的视频了。而看名字也就知道，只有一些少数被选中的政治视频才有机会被搜索出来。所以针对全部视频的搜索还要等段时间。

其它地方，Digg的总裁Kevin Rose在上周四宣布了和Facebook新的合作，·叫做“对接Facebook”，新的服务允许用户们通过Facebook快速的成为Digg用户·。这样，用户们也就可以对Digg上他们喜欢的内容进行分享和评论了。同时Facebook用户们也可以把他们Digg上的内容贴到自己的主页上了。对接Facebook应该不久之后就会上线了。

接下来，让我们来说说Zimbra。`Zimbra是一个很多IT界的人们都在使用的简单易用的离线email程序·。除了可以登陆他们的email帐户，用户们还可以做很多事情比如编辑文档，从iCal导入日程表，或是在Yahoo地图上查看地址。Zimbra目前支持的系统有Windows，Linux和Mac。它也是我们大家在StompernNet所使用的email程序。

最后，现实中我们不可能像电影回到未来那样做时空旅行。不过你在twitter上的帖子，那可不一定了。·通过TweetLater，你就可以设定未来发送帖子的时间。这样你就可以开朋友的玩笑，给自己发送日程提醒，甚至可以在前一天晚上向大家问候早上好。可能性是几乎无限的，所回到未来并不是白日做梦。

让我们下期免费帮再见，我是Brad Fallon。明天的两分钟我们将给大家带来更多的Web2.0新闻。

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.

Topicle, 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 Topicle 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.

今天我们为你准备了特殊的内容，我今天将给大家介绍一些可能改变互联网的新型搜索引擎。这些引擎都梦想成为下一个Google，同时它们也是今天互联网新老技术的一个完美结合。

Clusty是今天我们主要要来关注的一个搜索引擎。它们发布已经有短时间了，并且已经有了自己的用户群。·Clusty的搜索结果是分成小堆的，一个小堆就类似一个有关联的组或文件夹。比如如果你搜索帽子，它就会出现不同小戳的帽子信息，这也是搜索关联信息变得更方便。·

下面要说的Topicle，是一个更专注的搜索引擎。 ·它只显示社区成员挑选出来的结果。所以社区成员的意见对搜索结果的质量有很大影响·。你只需要简单的注册之后就可以参与挑选搜索结果了。可以把它看作天涯版的搜索引擎。

接下来看一下Wikia Search，·它是Wikipedia创立者Jimmy Wales的另一作品。我们之前在免费帮介绍过WikiaSearch，结果它不断的跳票·。它是第一个开放的搜索引擎，同时它也依赖于用户、标签、编辑和相关网页。这是搜索的未来吗？还真不好说。但是Wikipedia就是这么成功的，所以我们拭目以待吧。

当然，不是所有人都希望得到一群不认识的人选出来的结果。所以维基风格确实有弊端。·Mahalo是一个由一群工程师日夜为你编辑的搜索引擎·。它的结果不取决于用户，而是由网站编辑们暗自商量的。

最后，Strands·打算通过建立一个免费开发的推荐系统来完全模仿亚马逊的推荐系统。如果你在网上卖东西，你可以推荐并存在Strands里。它可以快速的找到非常精准的推荐结果，跟亚马逊不相上下。如果它们一直做下去亚马逊恐怕就会面临一个不小的竞争对手了，或者干脆把它给买掉。

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&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.

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.

微软正在加足马力希望在网络广告领域里面抢占更多的份额。－他们刚刚成立了微软广告，准备成就一番作为。而Redmond新营销部的执行不同于Google AdWords－。其实它不是并单项服务，而是由很多个之前购买的服务组合在一起的整合部门，比如Atlas和Massive。尽管竞争很激烈，这个软件巨人依然保持着能够与搜索大王竞争的信息。我们Free Line在此向祝微软好运。打广告时有选择总是好事。

你是否曾经想过，如果能把社交网络巨人Facebook和下载之王BT下载结合起来会是一件很酷的事呢？－多亏了Morrent，这个想法已经实现。Morrent与uTorrent紧密合作，终于实现了在Facebook上检测BT下载情况的能功能－。你可以把它看作是一种当你离开电脑时实时跟踪BT下载情况的工具。不过别忘了：不该下的别下。

有时候，编辑Wikipedia会是很痛苦的。谁有时间去学习那些讨厌的wiki代码？如果你同意，并且你正巧拥有我们最喜欢的软件OpenOffice的话，那么你走运了。－SunWiki Publisher是一个OpenOffice的插件允许用户就像使用文字编辑器一样使用MediaWiki系统－你需要做的……只是打字而已。所以只要登陆和编辑，无论是Wikipedia或是我们自己的Free Line Wiki，也就是www.freelinereport.com/wiki。我觉得它比wikipedia强多了，虽然只有我这么觉得……

想象一下世界上最大的U盘的样子，它从来都不会被装满并且对所有人都有无数的空间，另外何时何地都可以使用。不用再yy了，这种东西是存在的，也就是我们的True Share。这个True Share网络文件系统是一个个人文件存储系统，它允许你随时随地都可以存储任何东西。很多用户都夸奖True Share的可用性，便利性，和其综合各种桌面工具的能力。虽然服务并不是完全免费的，如果你总是需要在各地读取各种文件且不想携带U盘的话它还是值得的。

最后如果你曾经想过去开发MySpace的商务功能，却不知所措的话，MySpace商务管理器也许能帮忙。MySpace商务管理器是建立在微软的Excel上的，它能把MySpace变成一个商务人士喜欢的场所。

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.

民主党最近通过使用攻击维基把总统竞选擂台搬到了网上，并发布了麦凯恩百科，这个网站是建立在著名的软件Wikimedia之上的，它也是Wikipedia所使用的软件，而整个网站的目的就是去反对麦凯恩。它反驳了麦凯恩主张的各种政策，从医疗保险到最高法院人员的指派问题。不像其它维基，不是所有人都可以加入并编辑它的页面的，这也遭到了很多人的排斥】。他们认为这是对维基精神的严重违反。

而维基百科的真正粉丝现在却很值得开心，因为你现在可以通过iRex Lliad 把这本免费的百科全书搬下线了。就像索尼的eReader和亚马逊的Kindle一样，这个书一般大小的阅读器可以给你清晰的阅读体验。现在你可以带着维基百科到处在了。

如果你觉得iRex Llid比较贵的话，那么OLPC【项目将给你最适合的电子书浏览器。他们刚刚宣布了其下一代的笔记本电脑，XO2，它首先是一个电子阅读器然后才是一台电脑，它搭载了两个LCD触摸屏并随机附赠无数免费软件。】

另一则关于电子书的新闻，微软刚刚关闭了它Live Search的图书搜索功能。【他们将不再扫描数字书籍，并会在本周内关闭Live Book Search的网页】。不过虽然微软离开了，值得庆幸的是Google和Scribd‘s今后还将继续这样的工作。

除了在电子图书政策方面有所变化，微软宣布将采用一种新的策略去吸引人们使用Live Search：金钱诱惑。【没错，微软要为那些在它的搜索引擎中点击付费广告的用户们支付现金。】他们在这种创新叫做回扣服务，它可以为用户们节省2%到30%的费用。