Fun with iTunes: TechCrunch, Remote, Pandora, Mobile News Network, SpeechCloud, Wordpress

The new iTunes store was launched last Thursday, and with it came all of the new portable applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Out of the roughly 550 applications hat have been released, 125 of those applications are completely free.

And of course, the best way to choose what to install on your new iPhone is by seeing it in action. Tech blog TechCrunch has a fantastic feature showing off eight of the new apps.

Our friends at Lifehacker a nice little piece detailing the best free applications the iPhone has to offer.

And it just wouldn’t be the Free Line if we didn’t put our two cents into it as well. So without further adieu, we give you the Free Line’s top five free applications for the iPhone.

Remote: Control both iTunes and Apple TV using your iPhone. Simple idea, but it’s executed well.

Pandora: Internet radio has invaded the iPhone. Not only does Pandora stream your favorite music, it actually customizes its play list based on your preferences. Perfect for those who want to listen to something different, yet don’t want to shell out the $12.95 a month for satellite radio.

Mobile News Network: Powered by the Associated Press, the Mobile News Network allows you to keep up with the latest goings on in the world around us. Easy to use and a wealth of proven, credible sources, all for free. Can’t beat that.

SpeechCloud: A helpful little tool that adds voice dialing. Simple? Of course. Not everything great has to be complicated.

Wordpress: The sheer power of blogging has hit the iPhone. Keep in touch even when you’re away from your computer. Fun and useful… seems to be Wordpress’ M.O., doesn’t it?


(中文版) iPhone专辑: TechCrunch, Remote, Pandora, Mobile News Network, SpeechCloud, Wordpress

欢迎来到免费帮的iPhone专辑。首先,新的iTunes商店上周四上线了,随之而来的是为iPhone和iPod touch设计的全新手机程序。到目前为止有超过550个程序发布,`这个数字也超越了以往任何一个新上线的系统。乔布斯也称这是他职业生涯最重要的产品发布。我们也非常欣慰的告诉大家乔布斯深喑免费之道,因为当中的125个程序,相当于全部的25%,是完全免费的。当然,在那么多免费的程序中挑出来一些值得安装的也不是件容易的事。所以我们为大家献上最热门的iPhone程序列表。我们的最爱?是那个可以把你的iPhone变成iTunes和Apple TV遥控器的程序。加油啊乔布斯,我们期待着更多的免费程序。另一个超牛又免费的程序就是新的iPhone版的潘多拉。·潘多拉是一个免费的在线音乐试听网站,并有独特的根据用户喜好提供的推荐系统。iPhone版的潘多拉完全免费,而且它几乎也是你能在网上找到的最好的音乐试听网站了。它的基面完美的整合了iPhone的特点,几乎与原生的iTunes界面无异。不过当然了,判断一个新的程序最好的办法就是亲自去体验它。· TechCrunch上周五发布了一份特别的报道给程序开发者提供了一个展示的舞台·。网站的链接就在FreeLineReport.com。最后,那些特别想随时随地记录生活的Wordpress玩家注意了,·看一下最新的iPhone版的Wordpress。没错,现在不论在什么地方你都可以登陆wordpress并发布博客了!


WordPress Cross Poster for Facebook, MySpace and Twitter - Sociable Plugin - Yoonoo Plugin for FireFox - BuddyPress

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 MySpaceTwitter 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.


AdWords Tool Updates, Woopra, Social Media Marketing, Twitter for Lawyers, WordPress MU

Just when we think we know all the answers concerning Internet marketing, Google changes the questions. Internet marketing expert and StomperNet faculty member Ed Dale is reporting that Google has altered the way that the AdWords Keyword Tool reports keyword search volume. Each report now accurately states how many times keywords or strings of keywords were searched, all using real numbers. Thanks to the new update, the end user will be able to know whether or not a keyword or a string of keywords are worth pursuing. We are currently testing the system for accuracy ourselves. We will keep you posted on the results.

For those of you who still want a bit more out of your data than what Google is giving, we suggest giving Woopra a try. From all reports, the featuring list on thing is nothing short of “massive.” According to developer iFusion Labs, Woopra is designed to do everything a developer would want, from tracking hits to sending real time notifications. Although still in beta, Woopra already has those “in the know” talking. Woopra, like most of tools featured on the Free Line, is completely free.

With the popularity of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, the term “social media marketer” has become the Internet’s new buzzword. But as those of us in the business know, a real social media marketer is more than just a person with a smattering of SEO knowledge and a passion for friend’s lists. On Techipedia, journalist Tamar Wienberg talks about what it takes to be the very best with the people who know it best: actual social media marketers. “A social media marketer’s job never ends,” says media strategist Reem Abeidoh. “They usually work 70 hour weeks and need to be extremely flexible. There are days when marketers may have to serve as internal evangelist by introducing key stakeholders to social media. There are other times when marketers may have to launch a multi-platform outreach campaign. It just depends on the needs of the client.”

The practice of using social networks as a business tool are not limited to the “social media” kingpins mentioned above. Lawyers are now using Twitter as a way to find prospective clients. The key, according to Law Firm Web Strategy blogger Steve Matthews, is to remember that Twitter is based upon “pure, personal reactions.” By staying personal, the marketer or lawyer will have an easier time “exposing one’s practice and expertise online.” Great words to live by, no matter if your product is legal services or or web developing.

As many of you already know, hosting and maintaining a blog can increase visibility of your website. Hosting several blogs on varied, yet still relevant topics could be huge for your business, but could also cause massive headaches for either you or your IT team. Our solution is simple: WordPress MultiUser, or “MU” for short. WordPress MU makes it easy for users to host, track, and update several different blogs hosted on the same website. It also makes it a breeze to start new blogs when needed. So start blogging. The world is waiting to hear what you have to say.


Wordpress Update - Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead - Wi-Max - High Tech April Fools Pranks- Free Line Report 3.31.01

April Fool’s Day is tomorrow, and to help you celebrate, we’ve got a list of the top 10 tech pranks you can pull on your friends and family. These high tech high jinx will keep your family bewildered as you laugh when their desktop goes haywire or their speech recognition software only responds to Klingon.

Next, some of the biggest names in cable television, wireless phones and the internet are talking about joining forces to fund Wi-Max, a wireless high speed internet network to link phones and computers – as fast as DSL. The big talkers include Google, Comcast and Sprint and the group plans to invest $3-4 billion in the joint venture, according to the AP who’s bringing Washington-style leaks to Silicon Valley. All this according to an anonymous source who asked not to be named because he or she was not authorized to discuss the talks. Well heck, don’t let that stop you. Where would 24 hour news and information overload be without leakers?

And the music industry was turned on its head when two major music groups decided to move the free line themselves – this was the year that both Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead offered all or portions of their newest albums for free. We have a link to a great overview of how both of these groups have offered free music online throughout the years, and what led to their ground breaking offers. This is an excellent Real World case study of how moving the free line pays off.

And WordPress has released a brand new update, making the editing and administration of a WordPress blog easier than ever before. The Wordpress dashboard now has widget features kind of like MovableType. Other additions include multiple file uploads, one click plug-in upgrades, built in galleries and better search. They also claim more code friendsly WYSIWYG editing – that would be great. In fact, I’ll let you know in a couple days. In the meantime, we have a link to a free video with a demo of the new WordPress features.

And finally, the One Laptop Per Child Project, which sells very inexpensive laptops to the developing world, has accumulated over 8.5 gigs of free music that anyone can download, use or remix. The music is licensed under Creative Commons and comes from the likes of the Berkley College of Music and electronic superstar BT. The music can be used in any project, even ones that have nothing to do with OLPC laptops.


(Chinese Version 中文版) Wordpress Update - Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead - Wi-Max - High Tech April Fools Pranks- Free Line Report 3.31.01

**中文版视频:

明天就是愚人节了,为了庆祝,我们为大家准备了10大可以对家人朋友开玩笑的科技谣言。这些超级捣蛋的程序会使你的朋友们迷惑不堪,直到你笑话他们那些被搞乱的桌面和只能识别克林贡的语音识别软件。

接下来,一些有线电视、无线电话和互联网领域里的巨头们正在开始考虑联合起来资助Wi-Max,后者是一个可以令电脑和电话工作在一起的高速网络,与DSL一样快。其中主要成员包括Google,Comcast和Sprint计划共同投入30到40亿美元的风险投资,而这次的消息是由美联社悄悄泄露给硅谷的。全部消息来自于一位不愿透露姓名的人士,因为他本来没有被授权说出这些秘密。我说,不要让那些规矩约束你,哪天的新闻不是充斥着各种小道消息呢?

当两大主流音乐团体决定让他们的作品免费的时候整个音乐界迎来了轩然大波——今年九寸钉和电台司令乐队开始向大众免费开放他们的全部或部分最新专辑。我们找到了一个不错的链接解释这些团体这些年是如何在网上免费发布音乐,以及他们是怎么做到的。这是一个现实世界中一个学习免费是如何赚钱的好案例。

WordPress刚刚发布了最新的升级,这极大简化了WordPress用户对博客的编辑和管理。而WordPress的面板也被增添了新的特性,类似活版印刷术。其它的改动包括多文件上传,插件的一键升级,内置图库和更好的搜索。另外它们还改进了的所见即所得编辑,这太好了。事实上你很快就能亲身体会到了。与此同时,我们这里还有一个免费的WordPress新功能展示视频。

最后,那个”每个孩子一台电脑”项目,也就是向发展中国家出售低价电脑的项目,已经拿到了8.5G的免费音乐,任何人都可以下载,使用或混音。这些音乐来自诸如伯克利音乐学院和电音BT的地方,并通过知识共享的方式授权。它们可以被用在任何地方,甚至不用跟OLPC电脑有任何的关系。


Hulu Goes Live - Voozoo Does Movie Clips for Facebook - Six Apart and Wordpress At War - Free Line Report 3.12.08

Paramount and FanRocket are combining forces to create VooZoo, a web application that lets you grab movie clips and send them to your friends on Facebook. These will be short clips, usually lasting from several seconds to a full minute, And below each clip a small button appears that allows the viewer to purchase a DVD of the movie.

The star of last year’s South by Southwest Conference on technology was Twitter, the microblogging service. This year, a website called Sched.org stole the show. It’s a calendaring application and it showed its real power by creating a schedule for the conference for attendees to synch up and use. Let’s hope other conferences get the idea and create similar calendars — it makes the experience of going to conferences — and figuring out where to be and when — a lot easier — especially the after parties :-)

MyVox is about to make a big splash when it opens its phone-to-web API to the public this week. This system lets you create a voice message using your cellphone, and then put it on Google Maps, Facebook or any web page you wish. It’s free to use — the only cost of the service is listening to a small advertisement while you’re on hold.

Six Apart and Wordpress are at it again — feuding across blogs and twitter, trying to get users to switch from one platform to another. What started it this time? Looks like the creator of Six Apart casually remarked in a blog that maybe users should try switching to his platform rather than upgrading to the new version Wordpress. This sparked angry remarks from both camps. Man, people sure take their blogging platform allegiances seriously.

And today is the day that Hulu, the video web site founded by Fox and NBC Universal, finally goes live. That’s right — no more private beta. And the news gets even better — not only can you watch your favorite NBC and Fox shows for free, anytime, but they have added support from Warner Brothers, Lionsgate, the NBA, NHL and twenty other content providers.


(Chinese 中文版)Hulu Goes Live - Voozoo Does Movie Clips for Facebook - Six Apart and Wordpress At War - Free Line Report 3.12.08

**中文版视频

最近Paramount 和 FanRocket联合组建了VooZoo, 它是一个让你可以与朋友们在facebook上分享电影片段的程序。 这些片段通常很短,差不多从几秒到1分钟,而且用户可以通过点击每一个片段的下面的按钮去购买该影片的DVD。

在去年的西南技术大会上Twitter这个微博客服务商的表现最为抢眼。而今年,一个叫做Sched.org的网站成为了新的亮点。这个日程表程序通过在大会期间为会员们提供日程表的同步服务展现了自己的光芒。我们希望其他会议也采取相同的办法,它确实使我们方便的了解何时何地去参与会议变得容易许多,特别是会后的party :-)

MyVox在本周对外发布电话到网页API之后一定会引起很大的反响。人们可以通过这项服务,用电话生成一则语音留言,然后把它放在Google Maps,Facebook或任何你喜欢的网页上。你可以免费使用,唯一的花销是你在使用的时候需要听一则小广告。

Six Apart跟Wordpress之间又生是非,为博客跟twitter争论不休,都劝说另一方的用户转到自己这边来。这回怎么引起的?看起来是Six Apart的创立人在自己的博客里说也许用户们可以试试他的平台而不是升级新版本的Wordpress。这个导火线马上引起双方不满。我说,人们当然会为自己喜欢的平台说好话。

期待已久的视频网站Hulu,今天在Fox跟NBC环球的共同努力下,终于上线了。没错,不再是内部测试。还有更好的消息,你不仅可以观看你最喜欢的NBC和Fox的节目,免费的,你现在还可以观看华纳兄弟,狮子门,还有NBA,NHL等提供的节目。是不是觉得不错?


WordPress Social Networking with Buddy Press - Twitter Gadgets - Microsoft Office Live - Top 100 Webmaster Tools - Free Line Report 3.10.08

WordPress is entering the Social Networking world with official support of BuddyPress, a WordPress application that transforms it into a web 2.0 platform. With this plugin, it will be easy for anyone to create their own social network. Just install WordPress and then installing the BuddyPress plugin.

If you like Twitter, then you’ll love this list of the top 7 gadgets to enhance it. From graphic statistics displayed in 3D, to FireFox plugins, to desktop applications for both Mac and Windows, this list has all the tools to fire up your Twittering.

If you’re a web designer, you know it’s hard to keep up with the changes of technology. Today, we have a link that will keep you up to date and on the bleeding edge. It contains the top 100 resources for web developers. It includes free tools on redirection, design layouts, and bits of javascript code that anyone can use — no programming knowledge required.

Velocity has poured $6M into Generate, a video start up with a focus on professional video content for the web. If successful, videos created and promoted through Generate could make it to more traditional venues, such as television broadcasting networks.

Microsoft released Office Live to the public this week, allowing you to go online and share documents with friends and sync up edits easily between several different computers. While it’s not a version of Office on the web, like Google Docs or Adobe’s Buzzword, it does make sharing and writing Word Documents between a group of writers much easier. That is, unless you have a Mac. Mac support is still buggy and slow.


(中文版)WordPress Social Networking with Buddy Press - Twitter Gadgets - Microsoft Office Live - Top 100 Webmaster Tools - Free Line Report 3.10.08

**中文版视频:

WordPress对BuddyPress的支持表明了它将正式进军社交网络领域,后者是WordPress的一个插件,它能够把这个免费的博客平台变成一个Web2.0的社交网络平台。

如果你喜欢Twitter,嘿谁不喜欢呢,那么你一定会对这7款热门小工具感兴趣。从三维数据生成器、火狐插件到苹果跟windows的桌面程序,这份榜单一定会提升你twitter的体验。

如果你是一个网站设计师,你一定知道跟随技术革新有多么的难。今天,我们给出的这个网站可以轻松帮助任何人获得最新最流行的东西。它汇总了100个顶级建站资源,包括免费的转向工具,设计排版,和一些任何人都可以用的java程序,不需要任何的编程基础。

Generate,这个专注于为互联网提供专业娱乐内容的创业公司刚刚完成了600万美元的融资,velocity investments充当了领衔投资方。如果成功的话,在Generate上创作视频的方式就会变得更像传统媒体,比如电视网络。这也许是将来的发展方向,值得关注一下。

最后,微软本周对外发布了Office Live,人们将可以在网上与别人分享文件并在几台电脑中进行简单的编辑跟同步。虽然它不是一个完整版本的在线office,像Google文件或 Adobe Buzzword,它确实可以使协作编写文件更加容易。除非,你是一个苹果用户。因为它对苹果的支持依然很烂。

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