RFP: WordPress Template, Installation and Importation

Come and listen to a story about a man named Kent
A poor tech writer, so to Blogger his blog went,
Then one day he was readin’ at some feeds,
And up through Rick’s blog came a troubling need.

No more FTP that is, SOL, up the creek.

Well the first thing you know Kent’s blog needs a new home,
Louis says “custom domain,” but Kent wants to go alone
Thinks WordPress is the place he ought to be
So he wants you to move Newsome.Org to WP.

WordPress that is, on his server, custom template.

I’ve been using Blogger, via FTP publishing, in combination with my beloved Live Writer, to manage my blog since 2004. There have been challenges along the way, but over the years the experience has been very positive. Rick Klau is great, and has been extremely helpful when issues arose. Matt Cutts was also helpful, when I reached out to him once in the midst of a particularly frustrating problem. In other words, I have nothing but great things to say about the Blogger/Google folks.

But I was a little bummed, even if not surprised, when Blogger announced yesterday that FTP publishing was going to be discontinued. Rick has a post about it here, including a discussion we’re having in the comments about Blogger custom domains as an option. My friend Louis Gray moved from FTP publishing to a Blogger custom domain last year and says the experience has been positive. He discusses the situation in a blog post today.

I use the custom domain approach for GoodSongs.Com, my music recommendation site, via Tumblr, and it works pretty well (though I am very aware of the risk that Tumblr eventually goes the way of Geocities). Since I have a server and all of my blog content is already on it, I think I want to keep my content on my server and use WordPress to manage it. I’m not completely bound to that decision, but that’s what I’m thinking at the moment. I will probably experiment with Blogger’s custom domains with Err Bear Music, my publishing company. We’ll see how it goes.

But for now, I need to move Newsome.Org, in-tact, to WordPress. And I’m willing to pay to have it done right.

Which means I need to hire an experienced, qualified WordPress expert to install WordPress (and any necessary plug-ins) on my server, create a custom template, and import all of my blog posts, with the page links in-tact. I don’t want to break any inbound links, etc.

I am soliciting proposals from WordPress experts who meet the above criteria and are interested in performing the above services.

First, some info.

1) I use Blogger to manage my content, but the content is hosted on my dedicated server.
2) My index and post pages are .shtml pages. I’m not concerned about that going forward, but preserving existing page links (e.g., permalinks) is critical.

Now, the job at hand.

1) Setting up WordPress (and any necessary plug-ins) on my server.
2) Moving all of my content over to WordPress (approximately 1600 posts) while preserving the permalinks. I don’t want duplicate post pages.
3) Creating a WordPress template reasonably close to the one I use here. I have the CSS, etc. that I can provide. See 4 below.
4) While I want to maintain enough of the look and feel to preserve branding, I am willing to consider alternative designs. The thing I like the most about the current design is the way it sizes itself based on the reader’s screen. I hate reading a narrow box of content on a big computer screen.

Please ask any project-related questions in the comments, so I only have to answer once. Proposals, schedules and prices should be delivered via email. I will keep the terms of all proposals confidential. Please include references and/or summaries of other similar jobs you have done.

If you haven’t done this before, don’t learn on me. I need this done right.

I’ll write new posts as I navigate through this process. In the meantime, Blogger has set up a dedicated blog to assist refugees. I hear Bono is planning a benefit concert.

More as it develops.

Five Indisputable Tech Facts for 2010

I stayed out of the annual New Year’s prediction derby, because my stock buying history proves without a doubt that I have no predictive abilities.

But I will give you five indisputable tech facts for 2010.

First, if the $1000 price point rumors are accurate, the much discussed Apple Tablet will be more sleep inducing than world changing. Few people in the real world want a tablet computer to begin with. Almost no one in the real world will pay more for a tablet than they plan to pay for their next desktop. Oh, sure, the Appleheads will gush over it for a day or two, and then it will fade into the same cloud of communal apathy that swallowed the Palm Pre and a horde of earlier supposed world changers. I would love a nice, iPhone looking and acting tablet. But not as much as I’d love $1000 in my pocket.

Second, Google Docs are not even remotely close to being a legitimate alternative to Microsoft Office for document-intensive users. Anyone who tells you different has never had a real job. Look, I tried. Really hard. The formatting incompatibilities, printing limitations, inability to create useful document comparisons and a slew of other glaring deficiencies made me run back to Office, with my tail between my legs and my credit card in my hand. Microsoft isn’t going to commit corporate suicide by giving us a reasonably featured, free online Office suite. The only chance we have of getting a half-way usable online word processing suite is via Open Office. Unlike Google Docs, Open Office is a legitimate Office alternative. I don’t know if there are plans for an online version, but the right people could create something really useful with Open Office supplying the underlying applications. But Google Docs? Honestly, they just piss me off. Worrying about collaboration is a complete waste of time when the tool you’re collaborating with sucks so bad.

Third, blogging, sadly, is dead. Facebook has all the non-nerds guzzling the Kool-Aid (in between shifts of Farmville), and has become the new AOL. Twitter has the attention-challenged (as well as the spammers). In our ADD culture there’s just no place for depth. Which makes newspapers, record albums, and blogs dead media. The momentum may swing back the other way at some point- and I certainly hope it does. But for now, anything that has more meat than a chicken foot is out of favor with the masses. Sure, some of us try to continue blogging, but can you name even one person who’s really into it? I used to wonder if I could blog my way into the Technorati Top 100 (not that there are many real blogs on that list anymore). Now I wonder if I’ll even finish this post.

Fourth, if Microsoft wants to finally get something right on the internet, all it has to do is put OneNote online, and make it free. It is by far the best information aggregator on the market. Only the cost and, more importantly, the lack of an easy way to synch and access your information stands between OneNote and complete dominance of the space. Sadly, Microsoft probably won’t do this, since it is such a good idea. But if it did, I’d dump Evernote in a heartbeat. That would teach them to ignore my repeated requests for folders.

Fifth, as the Twitter hysteria begins to fade, we are witnessing the end of one of the worst things to ever happen to business: the idea that free is a business model. It’s not, and it never has been. It’s just smoke and mirrors used to puff up valuations in the hope that some greater fool will wander by and start throwing money at you. Sure, some free things have always been a part of good business plans. Like samples or maybe even “lite” versions of something you want to entice people to buy. If all you have is free, you’re a charity not a business. You make money by selling something, and you can’t sell something that has no perception of value. There’s no better way to create a perception of no value than to give all of your goods away. The death of this non-business model is a very good thing that will eventually lead to real innovation. When the barriers to entry are higher, the quality of the goods that make it to market is higher.

That’s my five. What are your indisputable tech facts for 2010?

Best Google Voice Transcript Ever

So Delaney calls me today to ask if I would write a song for her. Somehow Cassidy and Raina end up picking up other phones. What starts out confusing ends up hilarious thanks to the Google Voice transcription.

Why Does Real Time Always Equate to Twitter?

I think Google’s introduction of real time search results is interesting and potentially a step forward in the web search experience. If, for example, I want to search for the latest development in Tiger Woods’ utter and complete implosion, it would be fun to sit back and watch the stories- and new alleged mistresses- float by. In an ideal world, a real time Google search would be like an instantaneous Google Alert, notifying me close to immediately if an article or blog post is published on a topic I am interested in.

What I totally and completely do not get is why whenever people talk about real time, the next word you hear is Twitter. . .

First of all, the large majority of substantive Twitter posts are links to other content. That has been posted somewhere else. Already. So by definition and math, much of what is posted on Twitter is not only not real time. It’s after the fact. Wouldn’t it be better to talk about real time results from the actual source of the content?

Secondly, does anyone without skin in the game really- I mean really– think Twitter is all that informative? To index and serve search results of Twitter posts, in real time or otherwise, is like recording elevator conversations and calling them feature films. I search Twitter from time to time to see who’s talking about topics that interest me (alt. country music, my hometown, etc.). 80% of the results are spam, 15% are other nonsense, 4.9% are things I’ve already seen and .1% are things that might interest me. That’s a really bad success ratio, particularly compared to a regular old Google search that generally gives me relevant results. Or used to.

In sum, there is almost nothing that originates on Twitter that I’d want to see in my search results, real time or otherwise.

Compared to MySpace, however, Twitter is like the New York Times. The fact that Google includes MySpace in any search results makes me actually pull for Bing. Or maybe not.

Seriously, who decided this was a good thing? I feel like everyone talking about this dropped acid while I was chugging Red Bull.

Are Good Ideas and Big Business Mutually Exclusive Concepts?

I knew when Intuit purchased the up and coming personal finance site Mint, it was only a matter of time before Mint lost its freshness and became another stale online business. What I didn’t know was that the transformation would begin so quickly. Let’s be honest, trying to up-sell a “free credit report” is one more bad decision away from urging folks to yank out their gold teeth and send them to Cash4Gold. Or, even better, to Cats4Gold.

It just sounds desperate, doesn’t it? I mean, if this is what Intuit brings to the table, why did it even bother? Seriously.

As we talked about yesterday, News Corp, perhaps trying to prove that it can do something even dumber than buying MySpace, is thinking about yanking its books out of the Google card catalog. Microsoft, trying to put the world back in order after a rare PR success with the launch of Windows 7, seems to be willing to pay News Corp to do so. Someone up in that cloud of arrogance and wealth has to know this won’t work. Which means that they are really just using consumers as fodder in a jealousy-induced feud with Google. No thanks. I’ll pass.

Elsewhere, the web is littered with the corpses of abandoned projects and services that were acquired by big companies, only to die on the balance sheet. Over and over, ideas are hatched, nurtured until some bigger fish takes the bait, sold. . . and die. Leaving all the users that created all that alleged value out in the cold.

There seem to be a couple of repeating patterns.

One, someone creates a service that is some combination of really cool or really hyped. Lots of traffic results, and some big company with lots of money gets fooled (again) into thinking all those eyeballs can be monetized. The big company buys the cool/hyped service, tries without success to stuff the free-formed service into a dollar-sized hole, and ends up shuttering it or selling it at a huge discount.

Two, companies realize that they can’t beat the competition on the field by creating and promoting a good product, so they conspire to change the rules. This is kindergarten politics, engaged in by the super-rich, at the expense of the rest of us. Yep, it’s the man getting one over on us. Again.

Even so, none of this is good for the purchasing company. Certainly, none of this is good for the consumer, who gets dragged all over the place and then abandoned. The only ones making any money on these deals are the serial service creators and the early investors who invest a little money in order to get a big chunk of the purchase price. Numbers being what they are, a few hits can finance a lot of misses. And, again, consumers get taken for a ride.

At the end of the day, I don’t see how this does anything other than discourage innovation. With everything being based on either ads, which no one likes, or getting bought by Google, which is becoming more and more of a long shot, there is little incentive to try to create the sort of value that people would- hold your ears- pay for. When did paying for value become so out of fashion?

Or is it that many of these services aren’t as value-producing as some would have us believe?

One thing is for sure- if the developers don’t believe in their product enough to charge for it, then why should users believe in it? This is the root of the problem, because lots of people would happily pay for a good, reliable service that isn’t likely to disappear or get sold to a big, clueless mega-company.

Want an example?

I pay for a premium account at Remember the Milk, solely because it integrates so well with Gmail and Google Calendar.

I would gladly pay for Disqus comments, if they could make the “Reactions” feature work reliably (it doesn’t presently).

There are plenty of others.

We just need to figure out how to make good ideas and big business compatible.

Screwing Over Users Is Not a Business Plan

Let’s all say it together: the way to make money on the internet is not to screw over your users.

Once more: if you have to make things worse for users in order to make money, maybe your business plan sucks.

First, I read a little more about this ad.ly thing. How in the wide world of sports can any portion of the legitimate internet embrace, applaud or permit what looks to me like nothing more than organized, high tech spam? Seriously, if I am going to un-follow someone for tossing another idiotic multi-level marketing scheme in my Twitter feed, why in the world would I accept blatant ads from people? Legitimize an in-Tweet ad-based economy within Twitter and you will be overrun by a horde of eyeball prospectors whose sole or substantial objective is to entice eyeballs inside their tent in the name of money. If the philosophy isn’t enough to make you say “hell no,” then spend about one second considering the impossible logistics. Twitter can’t keep the spammers off the line now. Imagine how bad it will get if in-Tweet ads gets blessed by Twitter. You’ll see a ton of automated links to stuff we’ve already seen, purely as a set-up for the ad-hosting, money seeking Tweet. Spam may kill Twitter as things stand now. Why make it easier?

If you still aren’t convinced, then remember that Tweets are short, 140 character posts, most of which are either completely un-newsworthy or link to content elsewhere. If you want to pay people for Tweets, then you better pay them for links. And recommendations. And good karma. Word of mouth is the benefit of a good product, not the product itself. If I tell my friends to watch a particular TV show, I don’t expect to get paid for it. And if I did, the value of my suggestion would be nil.

In sum, this in-Tweet ad business may just be the worst idea ever. Other than this one.

Microsoft has proven that it can’t get its ducks in the same zip code where the internet is concerned. So rather than create something that gets the herd to migrate voluntarily, it is apparently considering trying to buy the herd via some thankfully doomed from the start deal with News Corp, the other big company that doesn’t get the internet. Here’s the thing: people are going to use Google, that’s why it’s a verb. If you take your content out of the Google search results, people won’t see it. Merchants go where the people are, not the other way around.

And if you pay someone else to take their content out of those search results, I, for one, will consciously avoid whatever corral you’re trying to force me into. That’s just not OK. If you want eyeballs, create something people want to see, and make it easy for them to find it. There’s way too much internet content supply to artificially manipulate the demand. So don’t try to gain customers by making things harder. It won’t work.

The things that make money are the ones that are good for users. Not unnecessary obstacles that only serve to leverage off of them.

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Open Office

open office

Everybody’s talking about the office suite for the next decade. Microsoft Office 2010 is in beta. Google is waging a vaporware offensive, trying to convince people that it is about to engage in some much needed alchemy with Google Docs. Meanwhile, Open Office just plugs along. Being just as free as Google Docs, and, at least, just about as good as the ever-bloating Microsoft Office suite.

I’m all about free, and I live in the cloud. There are free and cloudy apps for just about everything. But the choices for word processing applications are slim, which is odd given that today’s computers are the offspring of yesterday’s typewriters. But fear not. Here’s the bottom line on office suites, with an emphasis on word processors.

Google Docs

I have moved my email and calendaring activity to Google Apps, via the standard (e.g., free) version. With Better Gmail 2, Gmail is a great, free and accessible email application. Google Calendar is far superior to the calendar in Microsoft Outlook. On the other hand, Google Docs, Google’s word processing app, is- to be kind- not ready for prime time. Sure, it’s fine for a light home user who wants to write a letter every now and then. But to try to use it for business purposes is to submit yourself to a digital hell. Among the multitude of problems: no tracked changes feature, which is an absolute must for business users; and formatting chaos when you upload a formatted Word document. In sum, it’s a non-starter. Google wants us to believe that this will all change. In the meantime, though, we have work to do.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft has a deep and valuable franchise in the corporate world. One that became a virtual, if not actual, monopoly when WordPerfect committed suicide at the hands of Novell and Corel. IT managers know Word. More importantly, secretaries and administrative personnel know Word. To monkey around with the status quo on the corporate desktop is to move a whole lot of cheese. In sum, inefficiency and rebellion would result.

Nevertheless, Microsoft is trying to open the door for a competitor. No one- and I mean no one- in a corporate office wants the menu structure he or she has used for years to be replaced by some confusing ribbon or whatnot. As Microsoft continues to force old dogs to learn new tricks, the remote odds of meaningful corporate word processing competition get less remote. The name of the game in 2010 will be simple and easy. Not bloated and complicated.

All of which favors the other alternatives.

In fact, for purely home users, I can’t think of a single reason to pay for Microsoft Office. Fortunately for Microsoft, however, most home users require the ability to open, read and edit work-related documents from time to time. Documents that were almost certainly created in Microsoft Word. I certainly do, and that has complicated my effort to go completely free and cloudy for word processing.

Open Office

So I find myself uninterested in paying for Microsoft Office and unwilling to put myself through the agony of using Google Docs as my exclusive word processing app. Until recently, Open Office was sort of like Bigfoot. I’d heard of it. Maybe I’d seen a purported picture or two, but I was still a little scared of it. Recently, however, my dilemma caused me to read up a little more on it. Then I took a deep breath, downloaded it, and gave it a spin.

And was pretty impressed.

It feels like a slightly stripped down version of Microsoft Word. It opens Word documents without destroying them. There is a way to show and review document revisions. Shoot, it saves documents in Word format. There’s even a plug-in that lets me open from and save to Google Docs.

All the votes aren’t in yet, but I’m about ready to call Open Office a winner.

The Face(book) is Familiar

I’ve spent lots of blog space and podcast time pooping all over Facebook. Saying how it is for kids, that it’s AOL 2.0, that it’s the internet kiddie pool. I was right, and I was wrong. Mostly wrong.

Facebook is all of those things, of course, but perhaps in an evolutionary- and not a pejorative- way. More than anything else, Facebook is like Brawndo: it’s got what people crave. Over time I have mostly capitulated to Facebook, simply because it’s the only path to a lot of people I want to interact with. I create almost all of my content out here on the big, scary web, but I push a lot of it into Facebook. And I visit Facebook several times a week to see what all the non-nerds are talking about. Granted, there’s a lot of talking over each other, but there’s a little interaction. Which is more than you can say for Twitter.

With all that, I started to wonder just what makes Facebook so popular.

It’s partly the ready-made platform to connect with other people. It’s partly momentum. It’s partly that MySpace sucks so completely.

But mostly I think it’s the names. You know, those things beside the users’ photographs. One thing Facebook got totally right is the absence of anonymity. Anonymity is like cars- it brings out the inner asshole in people. It has killed before, and given the chance would do so again.

Anonymity, with a helping hand from Google, killed newsgroups. Those of us who have been on the internet long enough to remember when news readers were for reading Usenet posts, as opposed to RSS feeds, miss the days of the old-school newsgroup. It was all kinds of good, until anonymous assholes and spammers killed it. I haven’t read a Usenet newsgroup in years, and don’t even have a news(group) reader on my computer.

Then came the message boards. For a decade or so, message boards proudly carried the banner of online interactivity. The combination of better technology and community moderation generally kept the spam under control. But a large population of anonymous users first diluted the perceived content value of message board sites to the point that advertisers stopped buying ads, and ultimately destroyed the entire message board culture, via bad information, bad behavior and general mayhem. All of which could be doled out at will without fear of reprisal because of anonymity. Sissies grow giant stones behind the safety of a windshield or a message board handle. It’s gotten so bad that I don’t even frequent the message board sites I founded. Rather, I create Google alerts or FriendFeed pages for topics I’m interested in. It’s not as fun as the old message board days, but it’s better than watching a revolving group of anonymous jerks litter my screen with nonsense.

Meanwhile, over at Facebook, people are sharing information under their real names. Sure, you can create a fake identity and set up a Facebook account, but users who are prudent with their Friends lists can easily avoid most screen clutter. You generally know who you are talking to. With a name comes accountability, and there is a direct correlation between accountability and behavior. All of which creates a better experience for the users. Which draws more users and, in turn, more advertisers. Ultimately you have digital high tide that raises all ships.

Which is why I ended up with the rest of the world on Facebook. Even if I still find it vaguely embarrassing.

Compute Easily and Cheaply With Cloudy, Free Software Alternatives

My computer was getting a little long in the tooth, so when Windows 7 was released, I decided to buy a new one. I also decided, following my earlier move to Google Apps, to create my application toolbox with as many cloud applications and free software alternatives as reasonably possible. Here’s what I did, for those who want to simplify their computer toolbox and put some extra money in their pockets.

The Computer

I bought an HP Pavilion Elite e9280t. I’ve had good luck with HP computers, both laptops and desktops, so I decided to stay with what was working. Plus, it seems to me that you get more bang for your buck from HP than other PC makers. I went with the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Professional, because it will give the computer a longer lifespan and I’ve only rarely had problems getting my software and hardware to work under the 64-bit versions. I also bought 9GB of RAM, because I do a fair amount of video editing and music mixing and the extra memory will make the computer faster at that sort of resource intensive activity.

When the computer arrived, the first thing I did was to remove the bloatware. HP has gotten a lot better about bloatware, but there is still some clean up required. I would rather bathe in computer viruses than use anything Symantec/Norton related, so I immediately uninstalled Norton Internet Security and Norton Online Backup. Rather, I’ll use the free Microsoft Security Essentials and my HP MediaSmart server. I was a beta tester for Microsoft Security Essentials, and I think it works very well. Plus, it’s free. I deleted the screen litter for eBay (which I use, but I don’t need a shortcut on my desktop), and the various online services. Finally, I deleted all those HP games. It’s absurd that HP makes you manually check every one separately during the uninstall process. I interpret that to mean that some of these game developers are paying HP to pre-install this junk. Regardless, they’re gone.

My Data

Next, I copied over the data I need from my old computer, via an HP Personal Media Drive. Photos, MP3s, videos, in process song mixes, and some, but not all, of decades worth of Word files I have accumulated. My new documents are created via Google Docs, but I have some old documents I want to save, just in case. I like the Libraries feature in Windows 7, which basically lets you use multiple folders for your music, photos, etc.

I saved my old Outlook emails, now uploaded to Gmail, as PST files, and copied them to my new computer’s “Old Files” Library, just in case.

Software and Applications

Now for the fun part. Here’s what I elected to use in lieu of software I used to pay for.

My first download, of course, was Firefox. A quick install of Xmarks allowed me to import my bookmarks. I’m trying to go relatively light on add-ons. So far I have installed the mandatory Adblock Plus, Better Gmail 2, PhotoBucket Uploader, Read it Later and Xmarks. All of the foregoing are free.

No more Microsoft Office. I now use Google Apps (the “standard” or free version) for my email, calendar and documents. The Gmail interface, with (but not without) Better Gmail 2 is an excellent email application. Google Calendar is far superior to the Outlook calendar. And of course, I can now access all of my data from almost anywhere. And, again, for free.

For my task list, I use Remember the Milk. It works flawlessly within Gmail and Google calendar via a gadget. I have a premium account, but there is a free version.

Next, I installed my beloved Windows Live Writer, for blog posts. Yep, free.

In lieu of the bloated Nero, I installed CDBurnerXP. It works great, and it costs nada.

For photo management, I couldn’t decide between Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery. So installed both. Both are free.

Photo editing may be a challenge. I use Picnik for basic (read easy) photo editing. I may try Gimp as a Photoshop replacement, but I am a long-time Photoshop user, and I have a license already. So at the end of the day the one expensive software program that finds its way only my computer may be Photoshop. We’ll see. If anyone has a recommendation, please send it along via a Comment.

For video editing, I installed Windows Live Movie Maker. I’m a long-time Ulead VideoStudio fan. Corel bought it, though, so it’s only a matter of time until it dies a painful, bloated death. Since I have a license for the current version (VSX2), I may install it on my new computer. I doubt, however, that I’ll buy any upgrades. Hopefully, Windows Live Movie Maker or some other free or open source program will work for the long haul. If anyone has a recommend
at
ion, please send it along via a Comment.

Of course, I installed Evernote. I am a huge Evernote fan, but the developers’ failure to add folders- or to even respond to my repeated inquiries about the possibility- are dampening my devotion. Either they need to listen to my good advice or I need to move on. Let me take a moment to digress. I have written about issues with HP and Microsoft products in blog posts, and been contacted within hours with offers of help or information. I have written to Evernote at least twice and asked about the plans, or lack thereof, for folders, and have never received a reply. That is simply bad customer management. For now, there are no better alternatives, but at some point there may be. We’ll see, but for now, Evernote remains one of my most used apps.

For FTP, I use FileZilla, which is free and superior to every paid app I have ever tried.

For radio, I use Pandora and Slacker Radio.

Web site development and HTML editing proved to be a problem. I installed the free and wonderful Notepad++, which is great for text editing. I read good things about WYSIWYG editor KompoZer, but I hated the way it reformatted the text in my HTML files when I opened them. I uninstalled it immediately. I may not need a WYSIWYG editor, but if I do, I don’t know of a free and powerful option.

The Cloud

For backups and large data storage and redundancy, I use my HP MediaSmart server. While I was immensely frustrated with my old server, the newer models have more memory and a much better GUI. I love the media collector feature, that automatically grabs media files from the various network computers, backs them up and allows network access to them. While I have not done it, you can easily configure your server to allow remote access over the internet. There’s even an iPhone app.

For general cloud cover, I use Dropbox for most of my needs. I also have a Box.Net and a DivShare account that I use from time to time. If today’s Google news is any indication, all of our cloud needs may eventually float over to Google. I want GDrive and I want it bad.

For online photos, I use Flickr for my family photos, etc., PhotoBucket for other image files I want to save, and Picasa for reference-related graphics (e.g., maps, reference cards, etc.). For online videos, I use YouTube, Qik and Vimeo. All are free, though I pay for a Vimeo premium account so I can upload larger, HD videos.

And of course, I share certain things with friends via Facebook and Twitter. Both free.

The Result

I have a lean, mean new computer with mostly free, web accessible, organized applications. It feels really good- and the change in my pocket jingles when I surf.