Ah… the homemade “tribute” music video. What better way to show your love for a celebrity, professional wrestler, or animated series from Japan than to commit low-level copyright infringement in their name? If this is a racket that you want to get in on but believe that your video editing skill are lacking, check out Animoto. Simply upload some images, upload a song of your choice, and Animoto does the rest. The results are surprisingly good.

Say that you’ve graduated past the random “still” image. Maybe you want to incorporate actual video into your tribute or business video. Don’t worry, because MuveeMix has it all covered. MuveeMix takes in your music, throws in some video of your choice, and then edits it on the fly. The result? A professional quality music video. As always, MuveeMix is completely free of charge.

Some of us, however, might not be as content letting a website do the work for them. For all you control freaks hands-on types, there’s JumpCut, from Yahoo. JumpCut is like a web-based iMovie, allowing you to edit, splice, overlay, and more, all from your browser. One of the coolest features is that you can import media directly from your Facebook page or your Flikr account. You also get a special email address, that your friends can use to send you clips from their mobile phones. All you need is a Yahoo ID (those are free as well) and a video camera.

If you want more out of a video editor than what JumpCut can provide, but at the same time not willing to take out the small bank loan it takes to afford Apple’s Final Cut Pro, then EyeSpot might be for you. It’s not as powerful as Final Cut Pro, but it has more bells and whistles than JumpCut. And for an added feature, it even allows you to embed the video editor into your website, allowing other people to come in and mix up and edit videos that you put on your website. A 100 MB upload limit doesn’t get you very far with video content, though. Hopefully, they’ll up this limit soon. If not, someone will. There’s no stopping the Free Line.

And now for the big one. Are you ready for this? Your not…there’s no way. What we’re about to show you is going to change the very meaning of online video. Kaltura is a…wait for it… a free and open source VIDEO PLATFORM! Well, what does that mean, you ask? I thought you might. It means that now anybody can add a full featured video solution to their website for free! Functionality includes uploading, transcoding, remixing, annotating, sharing, search, and just about anything else you can think of. A plugin has just been released that let’s you add Kaltura video to a wiki and a WordPress plugin is coming soon. Keep your eye on our own Free Line wiki. We’ll be implementing this very soon. Its just too cool.

Yahoo has gone open source, in a way. The brain trust behind the second biggest search engine in the world announced the creation of BOSS, a service that will allow perspective search moguls to roll their own search engine. BOSS users will able to perform a wide range of functions, from re-ranking search results to removing all traces of the distinctive Yahoo logo. Yahoo will eventually allow BOSS users to advertise their specialized engines on the Yahoo site. At press time, Yahoo’s web, images, and news engines are available for tinkering, with video search coming soon.

Anyone who has used the Internet in the past ten years should be familiar with the concept of “mirrors” - one website located on several different and independent servers. Doing this with blogs, however, can be the very definition of “headache inducing.” Copying and re-copying the same data on several different platforms is not the easiest thing in the world to do. This is where switchAbit comes in. SwitchAbit takes away the frustration of blog mirroring by automating the entire process. Copying your WordPress blog into your Facebook account is as easy as logging into a website. While the service is still working through a few bugs, the switchAbit team promises that everything will operational in the first stable.

Hot water is for squares, man! Well, not really, but it isn’t a necessity when washing your clothing. According to the lovely people at Seventh Generation, ninety percent of all the energy used in one load of laundry goes to heating up the water. If facts such as that bother you but still aren’t keen on giving your boxer shorts an ice bath, have no fear. They are here to help. All you have to do is take their “cold water” pledge and you get a copy of their book Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe and Healthy, Non-Toxic Cleaning absolutely free. Free reading material telling you how to save both money and the environment… sounds great to me.

Believe it or not, your cell phone can do more that take calls, send text messages, check emails, download music, and surf the web. It can now also record and stream video online. Qik is a handy little service that turns your average looking Windows or Symbian-based cell phone in miniature HandyCam. Just connect using your cell number and within seconds, you will be recording and streaming video for the world to see. The video output will then be available from either the Qik website or from previous Free Line all-star PicLens. A bit of warning though: Qik can eat up its fair share of bandwidth. So unless you subscribe to unlimited data plan, I’d think twice before starting production on the cell phone remake of Gone With the Wind.

To finish up the week, we have Plurk. Now on the surface, Plurk seems to be just another Twitter clone. Look closely, however, and you will see that it is much, much more. Utilizing a horizontal layout and cute graphics, Plurk is perfect someone who enjoys microblogging, but wishes to have a little whimsical fun while doing it. And honestly, everyone needs a little fun in their lives, even those towing the Free Line.

The way that advertising appears on social networks is about to change… if Google has anything to say about it, that is. The current reigning “king of all that is searchable” is trying to patent a new algorithm they call “FriendRank.” FriendRank is similar to its older brother, PageRank, only it uses social networking and friends lists to create popularity data. The idea is to find the most influential friend in a group of friends on a social network, and then display ads on their profile. The end result? Targeted advertising for less dollars and a possibly a few new friends to boot. Not a bad deal at all.

In other Google news, it looks like the US Justice Department is investigating the advertising deal between Yahoo and Google. There are worries that it could be breaking antitrust laws, and that the two together would create a monopoly of Internet based advertising. They are requesting documentation not only from the two web giants, but also from all web advertising companies. Google’s general council Keith Walker still considers the deal to be “pro-competitive.” We will keep you abreast of this developing situation.

In other legal news, a judge has officially ordered YouTube owner Google to give all of its user information to Viacom. Viacom is aiming to prove that illegal, pirated videos are more popular online than the “traditional” videos made by users. A victory would be huge for Viacom, as it would leave Google open to a contributory infringement charge. Although Google has since complied with the ruling, the company has yet to comment publicly on the matter.

While the big brass at Google might be staying silent, those actively working on the search engine are letting their voices be heard. A Google search of the term “Viacom” has two news articles concerning the ruling ranking above the media giant’s corporate website, both with a distinct “anti-Viacom” slant. The article from CNET labels Viacom as “corporate bullies,” while the eCanadaNow piece quietly bemoans the breach of privacy. Both the articles and the search results prove that the pen - and, in this case, the search engine - is mightier than the legal summons. We’re now saying that Google skews the search results for their own political ends, but it sure is a big coincidence. Don’t you think?

Ever wish you that you could smash ten pages of Amazon.com customer reviews into ten lines? You can now, thanks to Pluribo. This handy little Firefox extension strolls through a product, checks out the reviews, and converts them into a compact, easy to read summary. Pluribo is a great way to get the gist of what everyone is saying without actually sifting through those tedious reviews yourself. Oh… and it’s completely free. Can’t beat that.

We’ve talked about Blender before. For those new to the Free Line, Blender is a free, open-source 3D graphics tool comparable to expensive programs such as 3DS Max and LightWave 3D. The Blender Institute, the group behind the feature-length film “Big Bucks Bunny,” is currently hard at work on their first video game. Tentatively titled “Apricot,” the game centers around a chipmunk looking for his nuts. The game, which is still in early stages of development, currently has no release date.

Summize is a simple Twitter search engine.

Travis Campbell sent us a video tutorial on some free software that can search through images and videos in a snap. The software is called Picklens, and it works in almost every single web browser on the market.

AT&T launched its own streaming video service yesterday, allowing MobileTV capable cellphones access to all of your favorite television shows for just 15$ a month.

We have a link to a free and informative video on WholeSaleTraffic.com that will show you how to beat Google at it’s new game. The video shows you how to get your Adwords clicks at wholesale prices, make over ONE MILLION dollars in less than 9 months and easily TRIPLE your ROI from Google Adwords. If you took a monetary hit from Google’s recent change in the way it does Adwords, you need to watch this video.

People wanting to see a fight between two web giants will be disappointed, as Microsoft walked away from its Yahoo bid on Saturday, after raising it to 47.5 billion dollars. Yahoo turned down the higher bid, and instead of taking it to the shareholders like Microsoft originally threatened, they just let the whole thing go.

The folks at StomperNet recently released a video with a look Inside StomperNet — it’s an inspirational three act story about the actual results online business owners have gotten inside the world’s leading internet marketing training organization. It passed 3000 views on YouTube and is the most watched video on Vidilife so far today. If you’re an internet entrepreneur and want a little inspiration, follow this link to watch this video.

New York Times.com design director, Khoi Vinh, said in a recent interview that they hand code every single webpage — and getter faster and better results in their cross-platform browser consistency.

We have a link to an article on Wired’s How To Wiki that will show you how to improve Amazon’s automated suggestions. It’s a cool and easy way to both save time and find more stuff you’d like — automatically.

Google recently talked with the New York Times about a new approach to visual search that could be as revolutionary for searching images as PageRank was for text based searching. They’re calling it VisualRank, and it’s an algorithm for blending image-recognition software methods with techniques for weighting and ranking images that look most similar.

The time and date has passed for Microsoft to “do something” in their attempt to purchase Yahoo. The latest Wall Street Journal article with three bylines cites no sources, specifically, but says Microsoft is considering both a move to elect Microsoft friendly directors or to take the fight directly to the shareholders.

Wesabe just released a new tips feature that gives you advice on where to shop.  They show you places that carry the same stuff you usually buy, but at a cheaper price.

Here is a link to a free tutorial that shows you how to build a sleek website in Photoshop.

The MySpace Application Gallery is finally out of beta, and works a lot like Facebook’s Application Gallery works.  You have a list of Applications you can install, a brief description and then a button to put it onto your MySpace page.

Yahoo is letting a limited number of developers try out their new SearchMonkey platform, which allows websites to customize their Yahoo search results listing.

From Search Engine Journal we have an article on the top Back Link Checking tools that actually help.

Six Apart’s new tool Blog It enables you to simultaneously post to almost any blog platform including Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Tumblr, TypePad, Vox, and WordPress, from within your Facebook profile.

Facebook  can now import photos from other websites with a just a few clicks.  Flickr, Yelp, Picasa, and del.icio.us are supported, with more to come in the near future.

Yahoo has purchased IndexTools, a web analytic software similar to Google Analytics, and plans on offering the full suite of tools for free to its current partners and clients.

SEOBook has released a new FireFox plugin called RankChecker that gives you a fast and complex ranking results for your website.

A recent comment on this website from Azzam alerted us to a cool new tool called Comment Sniper, a free utility that can help you be the first to comment when new articles post to your favorite blogs.  Thanks Azzam! and thanks to everyone else who’s contributed. Keep those comments coming. We always love to hear from you, and who knows? Your suggestion may end up in the next Free Line Report.

Remember the days of mix tapes? Back when you could create a compilation for a friend or loved one, using just your stereo? Well, those days are back again, and pushed into the next generation with MuxTape. This handy website let’s you create Mix Tapes with MP3’s, and then allow anyone to view them in your web browser. It’s free and easy to use, all you need is the 80’s spirit and collection of MP3’s you want to share.

On Wednesday FotoFlexer released a snappy new interface to compete with it’s main opposition in the web based photo editing field, Picnik. This interface is far easier to use, looks nicer and supports many new features like typing text directly onto a photo and adding animations.

A group of monks looking to grab a record contract with Universal music sealed the deal by uploading a video onto Youtube. Universal was very impressed, signing a deal right away, with a recording set to start in April.

We’re all about free stuff here on the Free Line Report, and this week we have a link to the top free things you can get online. This list is massive, giving you tons of great tools like free office software, free file storage, free hard drive backup tools and tons of other fun stuff that should keep you busy for hours on end.

**中文版视频：

今天我们来谈谈80年代，我想知道，有多少人还记得混音磁带？回溯到那个年代我们会用一个磁带机去录下自己的音乐合集，通常是为了心仪的女孩。那些日子又回来了，不过变成了下一代的MuxTape。通过这个小网站你可以用MP3去创建混音磁带，然后发布在网上供朋友们欣赏。它免费且简单易用，你需要的只是一点80年代的精神，一些你想分享的MP3音乐，和一个女孩儿。

上周三FotoFlexer发布了一个新的程序界面，以在“在线图片编辑领域”里面与另一个主要对手Picnik相竞争。这个界面比以前简单了许多，看起来更漂亮而且多了很多新功能比如在图片上直接编辑文字及动画效果。

下面一则新闻是关于一个音乐团体如何利用YouTube去吸引最大的唱片公司环球唱片的注意的。这次是一个僧侣团体希望能和环球唱片签约，并把他们的视频传到了YouTube上。环球公司非常感兴趣，立刻跟他们签了约，并计划在4月开始录制第一张专辑。

在FreeLineReport上全部是关于免费的东西，所以这一周我们献给大家一个免费的热门网络工具大集合。这个列表应有尽有，你能找到好多有用的工具，比如免费的Office软件，免费的存储空间，免费的硬盘备份工具和无数其它你将来能用的着的和用不着的好玩的东西。

Apple has released a new version of the Safari web browser, but this one works on Windows. That’s right – Safari is still free to download and no longer just for Macs. There may even be a Linux version in the near future. Plus, this new version of Safari is sleek and smaller than before, and it supports all the latest web technologies like HTML 5 and CSS 3, and it allows you to use web applications like Gmail and Google Docs — offline.

Ajax and javascript can really improve the look and feel of your web site, but unless you’re a javascript programmer, that doesn’t help you very much. The Six Revisions blog for web development and design has links to ten cool scripts – all free – that you can install yourself to spice up your site. The list includes a free site tour creator and one called Image Flow that lets your visitors scroll through a group of images, just like an iPod.

Yahoo brought out a new three year plan to grow their revenue by 73 percent. Most of the projection involves beefing up key components like the click thru rates in search, display and video ads. These projections seem a bit optimistic juxtaposed against their current financial woes, but we’ll see.

Adobe announced that with Apple’s release of the iPhone Software Developers Kit, they can start making a version of Flash that will work on the iPhone. Until now, lack of Flash support on the iPhone has meant a weaker web browsing experience for iPhone users who could not access anything created in Flash — like half the internet.

Backed by Hummer Winblad, Slide Rocket is taking the functionality of Power Point to the internet, and even improving upon its features. Right now, the program is in private beta, and getting impressive reviews. When it is released later this year there will be a free version and two paid versions, giving you yet another way to create slick web based presentations.