Google concedes to Rupert Murdoch

You may recall a few weeks back that Rupert Murdoch had threatened to pull all of his new properties from the Google Search Engine in a bid to increase profitability and decrease the number of unpaid hits coming from the outside. He was widely mocked at the time for thinking FoxNews, WSJ, etc. could stay relevant if they were delisted from the search giant. Instead, Google has given NewsCorp a major concession with its new "First Click Free" feature in Google News. Under this new algorithm, the first 5 times that a user clicks on an article in Google News that lives behind a pay wall, they are allowed thru. Then the 6th time, they are redirected to the "register (and pay) to view" site for the newspaper.

Seems like a reasonable compromise. At the same time, it is unclear why the NewsCorp sites couldn't do this themselves, rather than pawning off the functionality to Google. Technically, it is not a big challenge to implement. Perhaps this is merely a way to prove NewsCorp has power in the online world.

This law has been proven at my work countless times

Dr. Horrible - For Free, For Now

I have been avoiding talking about this, because I think it may be too much of a geek in-joke. But as of now Joss Whedon's DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-A-LONG BLOG is up for viewing for free and for a limited time. I have been following along this series on iTunes and have really been enjoying it. It is worth a watch if you grew up with comics or comic book cartoons. I believe as of sometime next week, it will be withdrawn for free an will only be available via iTunes or DVD.

OpenPhone Finally Ships

Okay, enough theopolitics. How about some tech news?

The OpenMoko phone is finally shipping, although only in Europe and Asia at the moment. Mod-Bog readers may remember the OpenMoko platform as an attempt at an "free" (as in freedom) iPhone competitor. It has a touchscreen with Wifi, cell voice and data coverage, a powerful processor, and is built on the free Linux operating system. While the iPhone is a "walled garden" where you are not allowed to modify the underlying OS and you can only install apps that Apple approves, OpenMoko is hackable on all levels, from hardware to software.

Don't think this kind of thing has a hope of penetrating the market in light of Apple's iPhone, Microsoft's WindowsMobile, and Google's Android? You may be surprised, as the two-GPS system "Dash Express" is built on the designs originally published for OpenMoko.

Build Your Own Font

Ever wanted to build your own font? It used to be that you would have to sit there with expensive software and lots of patience. Now, you'll still need patience, but at least it's free. I've only gotten as far as the letter A, but Fontstruct lets you create and download your own type interface for personal, non-commercial use.

Free Christian Music

iTickets.com is offering a free Christian single of the week in exchange for registering. I have just registered, so I can't comment on the amount of spam, but as always when registering with an unknown site, use an e-mail address you don't care about. You can get the free song here.

Free Streaming Music

Last.FM, having been bought out by CBS has announced that the four major labels will offer free streaming content at Last.FM. The catch? You can only listen to full albums 3 times, unless you delete your cookies.

How I Got a Free iPod Nano

I'm a sucker when it comes to free contests. I'll go to car dealerships just to get the freebies they give out. Having been stuck in the mindset of wanting an iPod but not being able to justify the cost to benefit ratio, iPodsweepstakes.com interested me. Upon signing up, you get 200 points free. By filling out online forms for offers, information, etc. you get points towards a free iPod, iPhone, or iTunes gift card. 1,000 points gets you a free 1 GB iPod Shuffle or $75 iTunes gift card. 2,000 points gets you a free 4GB iPod Nano. 3,000 points gets you a free 80 GB iPod Classic. Finaly, 5,000 points gets you a free iPhone (although in the comparison specs they show an iPod Touch).

While it took at least a year of on and off filling out forms (most of the free offers are only a few points), we received our iPod Nano yesterday. If you're like me or you just want $75 to iTunes, this could be for you. One of the nice things is that you can get it on your own without having to pay any money and without having to rope in your friends. (That being said, you do get 100 points for getting five friends to sign up. The link above is not my referral link. I will post my referral link in the comments to keep this post mostly spam free.)

WARNING: You WILL get a tons of junk mail and junk e-mail by signing up for these things. I suggest you use a separate e-mail address that you can kill off after getting your reward.

Another way to watch TV online

While I still believe iTunes is the best way to get TV online, a number of competitors are trying to compete with free or low-cost alteratives. Comcast has just released FanCast which has a very nice interface and will allow you to view a number of popular programs for free at home. It is worth a look if you missed any recent episodes of your favorite shows.

Free Music

inpop records is offering a free download of their iPop 2008 album. It includes a few bands I've heard of such as Newsboys, Tree63, and Newsboys as well as some I haven't heard of. Great chance to grab some free music.

Note: You should receive the e-mail to the download immediately. When I entered my e-mail address in FireFox, it did not send me an e-mail. When I re-entered it in Internet Explorer, it worked fine.

Music: Free and Legal Downloads

I heard about this from Wired, but today was the first time I went to RCRD LBL. What is RCRD LBL? To quote their about page, "RCRD LBL is a network of ad-supported online record labels and blogs offering completely free music streams and downloads from emerging and established artists." The good? They offer music that you can stream or download for free. You don't even have to create an account. It seems that they might get that giving away music is a cheap form of advertising. The bad? The site design needs some help. It took a while to figure out how to download a song. The trick is to "Jump to an artist" from the main recrdlbl.com page (don't go to one of the sub-pages or you'll have to make sure the band you want is part of that sub-label), click on tracks, and then click the download icon that looks like a down arrow above a line. Not easy or user friendly, but it is free. You won't find the big, popular bands here, but I did find a song by a group called Cold War Kids that I saw on an episode of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno so they're not completely obscure bands either.

Update 1: Looks like some songs, such as tracks by the aforementioned Cold War Kids, are available for streaming only.

Free text messaging via Yahoo Mail!

Yahoo has apparently upgraded their webmail and part of the experience is free text messaging to phones in the USA and Canada!

The new Yahoo! Mail enables people to select how they want to communicate with their online contacts: via e-mail, instant message or text message to a mobile phone number. With the introduction of this text messaging feature, which is built on Yahoo!’s IM platform, people can now choose to send free text messages from Yahoo! Mail to mobile numbers in the US, Canada, India and the Philippines in real-time without leaving the Web mail experience. The feature is seamlessly incorporated into the new Yahoo! Mail, and is as easy as entering a mobile phone number, typing a text message and hitting send.

Very cool. And for iPhone users, an easy way around the 200-per-month limit on your AT&T text messages. Of course, it is only free on the SENDING side. Per-message charges may still exist on the RECIEVING side, so be sure to check before you send.

Free Text Messaging Possibilities

One of the downsides of AT&T/iPhone vs the T-Mobile/Sidekick is that you only get 200 text messages a month from AT&T while T-Mobile provides unlimited text messages. While most months this will be no problem, some months 200 may come awfully fast. In preparation for that possibility, I have been collecting different methods for text messaging that are 100% free (Assuming you already have an internet connection).

If you know the provider of your target, you can use these sites to text message them for free:
T-Mobile: Click here
Verizon: Click here
Sprint: Click here
Universal Sender App: Click here

To send a Text message via e-mail:
AT&T Wireless: [cellnumber]@txt.att.net
T-Mobile: [cellnumber]@tmomail.net
Virgin Mobile: [cellnumber]@vmobl.com
Sprint: [cellnumber]@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: [cellnumber]@vtext.com
Nextel: [cellnumber]@messaging.nextel.com

[cellnumber] = your full phone number including area code. For example 123-456-7890 would be 1234567890@txt.att.net