Remember the email clients from Monday? Let’s see how they are holding up four days later.

Client #1: Evolution

Positives: The account setup wizard is surprisingly intuitive. All you have to do is enter your POP3 and SMTP settings and the program does the rest. Specialized ports? Evolution detects them. Security settings? It picks them up as well. It also runs pretty quick for a program that isn’t a fan of Windows 7.
Negatives: First and foremost, the “included” spam filter simply does not work. If you want spam to “disappear,” you have to program it in yourself. Another thing: the automated “email check” is apparently broken as well. While it might not seem like a big deal, it can be bothersome to a person who routinely forgets to press that dreaded “send and receive mail” button. (If you haven’t guessed already, I am definitely one of those people.)
Overall: 3; “It’s alright, I guess. Could be better though.”
Worth a Download?: Sadly, no.

Client #2: Thunderbird

Positives: The ability to load add-ons is a big plus. Nothing says “try me out” quite like the prospect of total customization. The aforementioned setup is also a nice touch. While it isn’t the easier setup we have run into thus far — that award goes to, of all programs, Evolution — it does make life a bit easier.  And since it’s made by a subsidiary of Mozilla, complete and total compatibility with Firefox is a given.
Negatives: Aside from the much lauded add-ons, Thunderbird comes off as rather “basic.” Yes, it checks, writes, and sends email, but that’s all it does … without modification, of course.
Overall: 7; “It’s nice and stable.”
Worth a Download?: Yes.

Client #3: Zimbra

Positives: Unlike the rest of the clients on this list, Zimbra is more than just a simple “email client.” It’s actually a highly diverse desktop system, designed to eliminate the need for Google Apps a variety of third-party freeware (and in some cases, shareware) applications. Zimbra also gets a few extra points for presentation. As cliche as it might sound, the simple fact that it “looks” nicer than the other clients does wonders for this little underdog.
Negatives: It’s a bit on the slow side starting up. Although the plethora of extra features are nice, they have a tendancy to “get in the way” from time to time.
Overall: 8
Worth a Download?: Yes

Client #4: Sylpheed

Positives: Wait … give us a moment. There has to be something in this program that can be construed as a positive … [Pause] There it is! Sylpheed is the only program that, to our knoledge, allows you look at the source code of your messages. We’re not exactly sure as to why you would want to do that, but it’s always nice to have the option.
Negatives: The words “extremely basic” were bandied about more than once. Furthermore, the following “standard” features are not available in Sylpheed: A spam filter, automatic mail check, the ability to view messages in an HTML format, the ability to send emails at all … I think you get the idea here.
Overall: 3; “Outlook Express 4 that was bundled with Windows 98 First Edition can do more things than Sylpheed.”
Worth a Download?: No

Anyone who has been reading the Free Line in the past few days knows of my love/hate relationship with Evolution. But how exactly does it stand up to other “free” mail clients? We are about to find that out. And before anyone asks, no. We have not forgotten about our “web app” tests. These things take time, after all. Expect to see the results some time within the next two weeks.

Client #1: Evolution

Website: http://www.dipconsultants.com/evolution/
Developer: The Gnome Project (Original program) and Tor Lillqvist (Windows port)
License: GPL
First Impression: “Where did it go? It likes to randomly disappear from time to time.”
Setup: Easier than most, thanks to the built in setup wizard.
Note: We here at the Free Line believe that the following is required reading:

“…Putting the little “browser snafu” behind me, I found myself heading to Wikipedia to research GPL email clients. Thankfully, the choice here was simple: Evolution. For those unaware, Evolution is the email companion to the Linux-based web browser (and Free Line favorite) Epiphany. About a year ago, the folks in charge of the client, along with higher ups at Novell, decided that it was a good idea to port the system over to Windows. While their intentions were  good, the result was anything but. Users who wanted to try Linux’s “best kept secret” had to compile everything themselves from scratch. Extensive knowledge of the DOS prompt was also required, as the newly installed program required it to be running at all times. Not happy with this turn of events, Novell programmer Nat Freidman hired famed Linux-to-Windows programmer Tor Lillqvist to create an easy to use installation file  for people who dislike compiling their own programs. People just like me.

Installing the program was easy: just click a few buttons and I was on my way. Setting up my various email accounts was easy as well. In many ways, Evolution was actually easier to work with than that brand new copy of Windows Live Mail Desktop that I had been previously using. Everything was going fine, until I accidentally closed the program. This is where my troubles truly began.

Before I go into detail, I think it’s only fair to detail the operating system I use. Like our fantastic product tester/guinea pig Angela Smedley, I work with a system that is dependent upon Windows 7 RC 1. Instead of having your open programs displayed in a long, somewhat annoying row like in previous editions of Windows, Windows 7 puts them all in “button” form next to the start menu. If you wish to have access to these programs after you have closed them, all you have to do is right click on the icon and select “pin to the taskbar.” Simple, elegant, and much easier to deal with than the traditional “long bar/quick launch button” combination. Most programs respond well to the new system. Evolution did not. Here comes “Excedrin headache #10” again…

As I stared at the strange, DOS-based error message, I thought about the steps that brought me to this point. Closing the message, I instantly decided to start the program from the shortcut on my desktop instead of from my taskbar. Although the ominous message was gone, I still didn’t have access to my email accounts. Undaunted, I right clicked on the shortcut and chose the “run as administrator” option. Success! After a few more minutes of “administrator-level” tweaking, I finally have things working properly. The shortcut that is currently pinned to my taskbar still isn’t completely functional, but it doesn’t matter. At least I still have access to my email.”

Client #2: Thunderbird

Website: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/thunderbird/
Developer: Mozilla
License: Mozilla Public License (MPL), Lesser GPL (LGPL), and GPL
First Impression: “Hey look! Add-ons!”
Ease of Setup: Three words: Intuitive setup wizard.
Layout: It wants to be Outlook Express in the worst way possible — icons appear up top, file folders on the left, letters on the top right hand side, and the actual letters show up at the bottom. It isn’t “bad,” but it can get to be a tad boring.

Client #3: Zimbra

Website: http://www.zimbra.com/
Developer: Zimbra Inc. and Yahoo
License: Yahoo Public License (YPL)
First Impression: “This one has some neat stuff in it. I sense that they really want to be Google here.”
Setup: Instead of implementing a tabbed system like Outlook Express or a wizard ala Thunderbird, Zimbra prefers the “one lengthy page” approach found in many web email services.
Layout: It’s as if Outlook Express and Google Apps had a baby. The physical mail client appears to be an almost carbon copy of Outlook, with the “standards” appearing in all the right places. Click on the tabs, however, and the user is taken to a Google Docs style text editor, a link to Flickr, and a feed reader respectively. While it doesn’t necessarily add to the “email experience,” the added features are nice to have on hand.

Client #4: Sylpheed

Website: http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/
Developer: Hiroyuki Yamomoto
License: GPL and LGPL
First Impression: “I don’t see anything that really ’sticks out’ about it.”
Ease of Setup: Simple. Just plug in all of your inforation and the program does the rest.
Layout: A tad dated compared to the likes of Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail, but nothing really to write home about.

What do cherries, Microsoft, and the Irving Berlin classic “White Christmas” all have in common? Despite what you might be thinking right now, the answer is not ice cream sundaes, anti-trust suits, or Danny Kaye. It’s Bing. For those unaware, Bing is Microsoft’s new “do it all” search portal that will supposedly change the way we look at search portals. Does it live up to the hype? We are about to find that out.

First Impression: “Why does the welcome picture have little ‘hot spots’ in it?”

Search (Term: “Open Source Browsers”)

Number of Hits
Bing: 57.2 million hits
Google: 62.6 million hits
Yahoo: 35.8 million hits

Search Quality
Bing: Although devoid of both repeating links and blatant advertising, Bing seems to be focused on one thing and one thing only: Chrome. Out of the ten links on the first page, four deal with Google’s controversial browser. Mozilla and Firefox, meanwhile, are left out in the proverbial cold.
Google: Google results seem to be a bit more diverse than that of Bing. Chrome, for example, only appears once, while Mozilla makes its presence felt twice.
Yahoo: Yahoo’s results are a tad more redundant than both Bing and Google, but it’s not anything to really write home about. Mozilla appears only once, while Chrome isn’t mentioned at all.

Video Search (Term: “Photoshop Tutorials”)

Number of Hits
Bing: 34,700
Google (YouTube): 73,600
Yahoo: 6,215

Search Quality
Bing: Every video on the first page actually corresponded with the keywords in question. While the difficulty and intended audience might differ from one clip to another, the overall theme remains steady.
Google (YouTube): Same as Bing, only with less links.
Yahoo: A few of the links seem to go a bit off-topic, but most stay on-point.

Bing On…
News: When you first arrive, you will notice a few videos sitting at the bottom of the screen. Those videos can be turned on by either clicking the link (as per tradition) or running your mouse over the “play” button. While it isn’t suited for watching whole stories, the Bing News mouse over feature makes grabbing a “sneak preview” as painless as possible.
Maps: For the life of us, we just could not get the map feature running properly. Instead of getting a map full of roads, rivers, and landmarks, we received a desolate beige blob full of orange arrows. After a little while, we were able to turn the beige blob in a grid similar to the one found in the science fiction film Tron. The actual turn-by-turn directions, however, are a completely different story. Every set we tried were incredibly detailed and extremely easy to read. We especially appreciate the “if you see ___, then you’ve gone too far” note that appeared at the end of every page. It makes exploring new places a bit less taxing.

Final Thought: While it isn’t exactly perfect, it’s much better than we expected. Microsoft supposedly put a ton of time and effort into this project, and it shows. Yes, it’s still “rough around the edges,” but it isn’t just a rebranded “Live Search” either. In short, Bing just might be the “web portal powerhouse” Redmond has always wanted. Whether it actually lives up to hype, however, remains to be seen.

Anyone who has been on the Internet for more than three minutes are familiar with the information-filled media smorgasbord known as the “portal site.” It seems as if every major Internet firm has one, from Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL to Comcast, Disney, and NBC Universal. But what about companies that live outside of the United States? They must obviously have something to talk about, right? That’s exactly what we are going to find out. On today’s trek, we make our way up north to Canada, take a pit-stop in Quebec, and spend a few minutes within the heart of Japan. With that said, here we go…

Site #1: Canada Online Explorer (aka CANOE)

Website: http://en.canoe.ca/home.html (English) http://fr.canoe.ca/ (French)
Parent Company: Quebecor Media
Launch Year: 1996
Language: English and French
Subject Matter: CANOE is teeming with news and sport topics that modern Canadians clamor for, from the National Hockey League and the Canadian Football League to the Parliament and the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Special Features: It’s odd in this day and age for a major league web portal such as CANOE to have an entire section dedicated to professional wrestling. Aside from the usual array of show recaps and rumors, the Slam! subsite also features columns by a slew of well-known Canadian wrestling personalities, including Don Callis and former world champion/national hero Bret “The Hitman” Hart. Other “distinctly Canadian” touches include a subsite dedicated to curling, articles about in-country vacationing, and an ever-present currency converter.
Drawbacks: The  overall design of the English-language site looks rather dated compared to its Acadian counterpart.

Site #2: livedoor

Website: http://www.livedoor.com
Parent Company: livedoor
Launch Year: 2004
Language: Japanese
Subject Matter: Livedoor is designed to be the “final word” in Japanese media and culture. Want to blog? They have their own blogging platform. Want to work on a wiki? They have one of those as well. Need to get to Gmail or YouTube? Thanks to a deal with Google, both services have links displayed prominently on the main site.
Special Features: Japanese businesses, especially large ones such as livedoor and Yahoo, try their best to do a bit of everything. Because of this, livedoor has features and services that normal portal sites usually lack. Think about it: how many other sites own a ticket service, a baseball team (called, appropriately enough, livedoor baseball), ISP, and have been involved with two independent puroresu wrestling promotions?
Other Notes: Livedoor found itself in the middle of an Enron-level accounting scandal in 2006. In the past three years, several major board members have either been sued, are awaiting jail time, or have committed suicide. Despite enduring popularity of livedoor, the company is still in second place behind the online behemoth known as Yahoo Japan.

- The world of Top-Level Domains has yet another superstar name on its hands — .ME Originally designed for the Eastern European country of Montenegro to signify its independence from Serbia, the fledgling TLD has become a hit with users who wish to give their sites a “personal touch.” According to industry site WebProNews, the relatively new .ME domain has been registered roughly 250,000 times since the initial “sunrise period” last year, and is only continuing to grow in popularity. The .ME TLD is available now through several registrars, including GoDaddy, Afilias, and the Montenegro-based Me.net.

- Despite rumors to the contrary, advertising will not be coming to a Twitter account near you anytime soon. In a post on the official Twitter blog, co-founder Biz Stone says that running banner ads “have always been low on our list of interesting ways to generate revenue.” Still, he’s not quite ready to close the door on ads just yet. Writes Stone: “We say traditional web banner advertising isn’t interesting to us which is true. However, to say we are philosophically opposed to any and all advertising is incorrect… [F]acilitating connections between businesses and individuals in meaningful and relevant ways is compelling. We’re going to leave the door open for exploration in this area.”

- The search engine known as Kumo might be making a public appearence sooner than anyone has ever expected. According to those close to the situation, Microsoft is planning to unveil the much anticipated replacement for Live Search as early as next week. In addition to the new name, Kumo is expected to bring a few much needed “enhancements and innovations” to the table, including the ability to group search results by category. The folks at Redmond reportedly have high hopes for the new engine, which could conceivably put them in the same elite category as Google and Yahoo. Microsoft is currently third in the “search engine arms race” with a disappointing 8.2% adoption rate.

- Cable network ESPN has struck a content deal with YouTube. According to the terms of the agreement, the sports giant will provide the online video megastar/Google subsidiary with original, ad-sponsored material designed to “compliment” the network’s programming. All of the videos in question will be available on the base YouTube site, but will feature a video player designed especially for ESPN. No live games or programming events are currently planned, but many believe that content from the broadband network ESPN 360 will be added in due time. A solid launch date is as of yet unknown.

- Popular music service Pandora has received a major upgrade. Called Pandora One, the new strategy is designed to “reward” paying customers while not “punishing” those who prefer the free-to-use player. Aside from the total annihilation of both banner and audio advertising from the site, the “pay service” has one major thing going for it — a desktop application powered by the Adobe AIR runtime environment. Thanks to the app, users can now stream their music at a higher bitrate (192 kbps), fill that space left by the advertising with fully customizable backgrounds, and more. Critics  point out that while the program does improve the overall desktop experience, Pandora’s penchant for repitition makes long-term use difficult. Others say that the app’s price ($36) might be a bit too steep for many users. Still, there is one thing that almost everyone can agree on: despite its faults, Pandora One is a nice little antidote to the predicable, sanitized nature of most FM broadcasts. Pandora One is available now for all paying customers.

As you might have heard, there are big changes afoot at MySpace. The first big change occurred Wednesday night, when CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe was let go by the bigwigs at MySpace’s parent company, News Corporation. According to the official press release, DeWolfe’s departure was a “mutual decision” and he is leaving of the very best of terms. It is rumored that he will act as a “strategic adviser” for the company and will also serve as a board member for MySpace China. Co-founder Tom Anderson is also vacating his current position, but like DeWolfe, is not leaving the company altogether. While the reasoning behind the move is unknown at this time, many within the industry believe that it is due to the threat known to the world as “Facebook.” It is believed by many that new blood is needed in order to “finish off” the plucky upstart once and for all. As always, we will have more on this story as soon as it becomes available.

MySpace isn’t the only major online organization that is making a few “hard decisions.” After nearly fifteen years in business, Yahoo has announced the closure of web hosting service GeoCities. Although it might not seem like much now, GeoCities was once considered one of the hottest and hippest places to be on the web. So hot, in fact, that Yahoo purchased the service, largely considered the “social network” of its day, for an unheard of (at the time) $2.87 billion. Current users are being asked to transfer their sites to the superior, yet decidedly not free, Yahoo Web Hosting. The actual shutdown date is unknown at this time.

And to finish out the week, it seems as if Plurk, everyone’s favorite extra-optimistic microblogging service, has been banned by the Chinese government. The thing is, no one is exactly sure what the company did to incur the wrath of the “Great Firewall of China.” “We feel terribly bad for the thousands of Chinese plurkers that have been affected by this,” writes Plurk developer Amir Salihefendic on his personal blog. “[We are] in shock that their government can do such a censorship.” The programmer also took some time out his busy schedule to talk about what he calls the “suppression of the freedom of speech.” Writes Salihefendic: “[W]e see freedom of speech as a basic human right. It’s known thought [sic] that other big corporations such as Google, Skype, AOL etc. are censoring for the Chinese government and probably indirectly putting people in jail.” As with the MySpace announcement, we will have more on this story as soon as it becomes available.

Throughout the year-plus run of the Free Line, wonderful viewers and readers such as yourself have left little notes of wisdom at the bottom of our posts. While all of these comments have been read and discussed, none of them have really received a proper response. This ends now. On today’s award winning episode, we take a dip into our “comments” section to see what you, the reader, has to say.

Web2.0Confused writes:

“There has been increasing interest in http://a.nnotate.com/ http://www.showdocument.com and http://www.bubbl.us, could you recommend a similar, more ‘classier’ version of this programme? I feel they looks rather childish etc for global businesses.”

That we can. For traditional meetings, we suggest looking into Scriblink. Like GoToMeeting and Zapproved, it makes meeting online a completely painless proposition. Unlike those, however, it’s free. 2Collab is also a nice little “sharing” service, but it’s more geared to academic research than inter-office communication. If you’re looking for something a bit more “inventive” however, it would be in your best interest to check out Adobe Buzzword. For those unaware, Buzzword is an online word processor that allows other users to critique, edit, and touch up your work. It’s not exactly pretty to look at, but then again, it doesn’t have to be. Simply put, Buzzword gets the proverbial job done, and that’s all that matters.

In response to our piece about the popularity of Twitter and Digg, George Zlatin writes:

“Interesting that Twitter is becoming more popular than Digg. It seems like all the social media sites are fads. They all die down after a while. Interestingly enough, Google is still around…and more popular then ever.”

Apples and oranges. Google, like all traditional search engines, is extremely passive. To the average user, it appears to be nothing more than a dozen links on a page. That sort of thing has been around for over fifteen years now, and is not showing any signs of slowing down. Twitter, and to a lesser extent, Digg, are most definitely “active” services. They thrive on human interaction. As with all things of that nature, people are bound to get bored and stop paying attention. The key is to evolve with the times. As you probably realize, this is easier said than done. Just ask the folks at Yahoo. (The once popular Yahoo Chat service has definitely seen better days, for example.) Whether Biz Stone at Twitter and Kevin Rose at Digg can avoid those pitfalls and maintain an interesting, long lasting service remains to be seen.

In response to our Firefox Fest ‘08 article, Anonymous writes:

“I tried to get Niche Watch Tool as well as Personas, but both said they were for older versions, not 3.0.1.”

No problem. Just do the following:

1. type “about:config” into the address bar. Ignore the warning message, as you won’t be doing much editing.
2. Right click. When the menu appears, select “New,” then click on “Boolean.”
3. Type (or paste) “extensions.checkCompatibility” into the text box and press okay.
4. If the default value of your new addition is “true,” double click on it. It must be set as “false.”
5. Repeat steps two through four, replacing “extensions.checkCompatibility” with “extensions.checkUpdateSecurity.”
6. Restart Firefox.

That’s all there is to it. It’s completely safe, and works almost every time.

And we’re back! For most of us, social media services such as Digg, Twitter, and Facebook are reliable, dependable, and perfect for day-to-day use. Still, there are moments that we yearn for something a bit different. That’s where we come in. On today’s episode of Showdown, we take a look at five social media services that take “odd” to totally new and unexpected heights.

Service #1: Adocu

Website: http://adocu.com/
Service Type: Microblogging
Mainstream Equivalent: Twitter
First Impression: “After the microblogging experiment, I found that it’s actually fun. This, however … this is weird.”
Weirdness Factor (Out of 5): 3; It’s odd, but strangely intriguing.
Why It’s Weird: Adocu is the first in what is bound to be a long line of “nanoblogging” services. Naturally, a word such as that could mean different things to different people. In the case of Adocu, “nanoblogging” means one word and one word only. Obviously, you can type more than one word, but said words will not have any spaces between them.
Positives: Despite it all, it is an interesting idea.
Negatives: We cannot stress this enough: it is only one word. What can you really say with just one word?
Overall (Out of 10): 6

Service #2: Stumpedia

Website: http://www.stumpedia.com/
Service Type: Search engine/Wiki
Mainstream Equivalent: Google, Yahoo, Live Search
First Impression: “I can’t find anything!”
Weirdness Factor: 4
Why It’s Weird: Stumpedia tries to set itself apart by relying exclusively on user additions. If a user didn’t add it personally, it isn’t there.
Positives: They get points for trying something new. While it isn’t much now, it’ll be something special in a few years time.
Negatives: Quite simply, there’s absolutely nothing on it. A search for the Symbian mobile phone OS, for example, only gave us one result — a MySpace page featuring a user named Symbian. The same search in Google netted us 290,000 results. Yahoo delivered 7.52 million results. A search for “Nokia” got us a few more (read: nine) hits in Stumpedia, while the same search in Google and Yahoo produced 360,000,000 and 692,000,000 entries, respectively. To say that there is a disparagy between the engines is an understatement.
Overall: 2; “There really isn’t anything that you can do with it.”

Service #3: GreatSchools

Website: http://www.greatschools.net/
Service Type: School choice
Mainstream Equivalent: Word of mouth
First Impression: “The more I look at it, the more it makes sense. People want something like this.”
Weirdness Factor: 3
Why It’s Weird: GreatSchools takes a tried-and-true American concept — comparing your child’s education to those in other school districts — and makes it a web 2.0 application.
Positives: Barring full-on school choice, this site is the closest parents will get to being able to choose a public school for their children.
Negatives: Non-parents, or parents whose children are already grown, will not get any use out of this service. While looking up your old high school is a fun way to waste five minutes, it’s not something that you would do all of the time.
Overall: 8

Service #4: Kiva

Website: http://www.kiva.org/

Service Type: Money exchange
Mainstream Equivalent: PayPal, Green Dot, established financial institutions, friends and family, etc.
First Impression: “What’s this one again? That money laundering one?”
Weirdness Factor: 5
Why It’s Weird: “Social money lending” isn’t something that you see on a regular basis.
Positives: It’s an interesting concept.
Negatives: Neither of us necessarily felt comfortable offering up funds to strangers. The first page of listings, for example, read more like the master list of email scams than a sincere plea for funds. We’re not saying that giving money to the less fortunate is a bad thing. We just believe that there are just safer ways of going about it.
Overall: N/A, as we’re not exactly sure how to go about rating something like this.

Service #5: NowPublic.com

Website: http://www.nowpublic.com/
Service Type: Social news
Mainstream Equivalent: Digg, Yahoo Buzz, Reddit
First Impression: “So many stories…”
Weirdness Factor: 4
Why It’s Weird: Unlike the other social news sites, NowPublic doesn’t expect you to link to and vote on articles from other sites. They expect you to write your own. External photographs and video clip are accepable, but the words that accompany them must be your own.
Positives: Despite our reservations, we must concede that this is a truly unique idea.
Negatives: In many ways, NowPublic is like Wikipedia — interesting, but too inherently biased to be considered an trustworthy news source. While it’s nice to have a variety of opinions available, it can be rather annoying when all you want is the news of the day. Other stories, although thoroughly researched, are the literary equivalent to the “fuzzy animal” human interest stories that are commonly found on the six o’clock news. No matter how well-written a piece about Area 51 or the Easter traditions of the White House might be, it doesn’t deserve to be next to a story about the economy.
Overall: 7; provided that you look at the site as a live experiment dealing with the emerging concept of “citizen journalism.” As an actual hard news source however, we give it a 3.

…Before we draw the curtain on today’s post, we have a question: What does Vince McMahon, the radio program All Things Considered, Dr. Spock, to-do lists, and those personality quizzes found in psychology textbooks and Cosmopolitan all have in common? Find out tomorrow as we continue our trek through the land of the odd.

In the past year, we here at the Free Line have seen Twitter used in a variety of unique and creative ways. With all due respect to the likes of Chris Bosh and Mark Cuban, no one has utilized the “in the moment” power of Twitter quite like the college students of Moldova. Bosh solicits travel directions and restaurant suggestions from his fans. Cuban angers the NBA on a fairly regular basis with his highly opinionated ramblings. The Moldovians, on the other hand … they use the service to help spark a revolution. Displeased with the underhanded and borderline illegal tactics employed by the country’s communist government, the students started a pro-freedom rally on the steps of the parliament building in Chisinau. The protesters have been using the microblogging service to not only give up-to-the-minute reports on the situation, but encourage others to join their cause. Thanks to the Tweets (and an odd YouTube video here and there), the students’ nonviolent protest has quickly turned into a full-on revolution. Like in many communist countries, access to ideas that fall outside of the “party line” is almost nonexistent for most Moldovians. By using services like Twitter to spread their message, dissenters can make sure their voices are truly heard.

In other news, next major evolution in websites could potentially cause some major headaches for professionals worldwide. As many of you now know, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — ICANN for short — has relaxed the rules concerning top-level domain names. Instead of being limited to the traditional .com, .net, and .org, consumers can now pick the domain name that fits him or her best. A wrestling promoter, for example, could use .suplex for their site instead of settling for comparatively boring suffixes like “.tv” or “.info.” This is where the problem comes in. Many major businesses, organizations, and services buy similar-sounding TLDs in order to prevent others from encroaching on their territories. When a business owner doesn’t take that level of care, bad things tend to happen. (The Whitehouse.gov/.com debacle of a few years ago comes to mind.) By adding a near unlimited amount of TLDs, site owners find themselves having to buy ten or twenty new names instead of just four or five. Added to that is the fact that in order to buy the domain suffix outright, the purchaser has to put at least $185,000 down and offer up another $25,000 a year formaintenence. ICANN feels that the new domains could lead to “one of the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history.” Others, such as Verizon vice president Sarah Deutsch, don’t have such a rosey view on things. “It costs companies hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, to enforce their trademark rights in the existing space, so imagine how expensive it will be when Verizon gets infringed in a thousand new domains,” Deutsch told USA Today. As far as she is concerned, the new TLDs are nothing more than a “form of extorsion.” As always with stories such as this, we’ll keep you updated with latest information as it comes available.

And finally: With what must seem like a trend, the mighty Google is once again on top of the search engine heap. Roughly 72.34% of all search traffic traveled through Google last March, an 8% increase over the previous year. The once — and if current trends indicate anything, future — runner up is Yahoo, which clocked in with a 16.36% market share, a 19% decrease compared to this time last year. Rounding out the top four are MSN Search (5.5% share; a 17% decrease) and Ask.com (4.07% share; a 1% decrease overall).

Hulu is now the fourth most popular online video site in the US, according to research firm comScore. The much-talked about site gained a staggering ten million users over the course of the last month, bringing their total viewership to a shocking 37.4 million users. Many within the industry say the sharp rise is due to the site’s creative advertising campaign, which features the likes of Alec Baldwin and Family Guy creator/generally controversial figure Seth MacFarlane as alien invaders. Other rankings of note include YouTube (99.3 million users), Fox Media/MySpace (53.7 million users) and Yahoo (41.6 million users).

In other news, Facebook isn’t the only social networking site of note undergoing a drastic design change. LinkedIn, the network geared towards business people and the folks who love them, have recently unveiled their own set of improvements. The first thing that you will notice is the inbox … or rather, the total lack of one. Instead of it looming large over your front page like it used to, the inbox now only appears when there are actual messages to be read. Once inside, you’ll run into the second major improvement — tabs. These are designed to make both reading and sorting your mail a quick and painless experience. The new inbox is just one of many planned improvemnet aimed at increasing productivity and usability. The mailbox of your dreams is available now for all users.

And finally: A slate of classic films have finally received a new lease on life. The folks at Warner Brothers have just put the finishing touches on the “Warner Archive,” a video site that specializes in “forgotten classics.” The Archive features over 150 long out-of-print films made before 1986, such as “Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” the golf-centric silent film “Spring Fever,” and Paul Simon’s “One Trick Pony,” which is more remembered for the song “Late In the Evening” than the actual film. What makes the Archive special is its “on demand” nature. Unlike most DVD-based services of this type, the actual disc is created only after the user orders the film. Not only does this method cut down on labor and storage costs, it makes the concept of “niche entertainment” economically viable. The discs from the Warner Archive start at $20 a pop. Digital versions of the film in question are available for $15.

While the “DVD-on-demand” concept is still considered to be a fairly “recent” idea, it is by no means new. Anyone who has attempted to purchase a high school football retrospective or lesser-known professional wresting DVD in the past ten years have seen the on-demand concept at work. Many smaller video companies, such as Smart Mark Video and Pittsburgh-based Digital Horizons, have built their distribution systems on variations of that very concept. Amazon also utilizes on-demand as a way to sell their severs full of children’s programming from the 1990’s.

Expect to see more on the topic of video creation and distribution on an upcoming episode of the Free Line.