Well, lets now take a look at all the ‘free’ products as defined by PC World –

• 1 – Hulu (video site, free/ad-based) [http://www.hulu.com/] – Go check out ‘The Office’, ‘Family Guy’ and other full length episodes with short 15 second commercials
• 3 – Facebook (online social network, free) [http://www.facebook.com/] – Current Social Networking Big Dog
• 6 – Flock (browser, free) [http://www.flock.com/] – Commercial Release in November 2007 this is a fast mover. Social Networking Junkie Browswer of choice
• 10 – Wikipedia (open-source encyclopedia, free) [http://www.wikipedia.org/] – Go and read up on something, or make something up about something
• 14 – Craigslist (online classifieds and discussion, free) – [http://dallas.craigslist.org/] – the ultimate classified site
• 15 – Scrabulous (PC game, free) – [http://www.scrabulous.com/] – Scrabble anytime and everywhere
• 19 – Twitter (social networking site, free) [http://twitter.com/] – Let them know right now what you are up to.
• 21 – Mozilla Firefox 3 (browser, free) – [http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/] – Are you not using it to read this post?
• 22 – Safari (mobile browser, free) – [http://www.apple.com/safari/] – iPhone users hunt the web (geesh, what a terrible attempt at a play on words.)
• 23 – NPR.org (news site, free) – [http://www.npr.org] – The mission of NPR is to work in partnership with member stations to create a more informed public — one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.
• 25 – Google Maps – Street View (mapping software, free) – [http://maps.google.com] – Big Brother is watching
• 27 – Google Docs & Spreadsheets (Web-based productivity suite, free) – [http://docs.google.com/] – We don’t need no stinking Office
• 30 – Flickr (photo-sharing site, 200 photos free, unlimited photos and storage $25/year) – [http://www.flickr.com/] – Great source for Creative Common licensed photos
• 41 – Google Gmail (e-mail, free) – [http://mail.google.com] – E-mail conversations read with ease
• 43 – Mozilla Thunderbird (e-mail, free) – [http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/] – More than marionette e-mail.
• 45 – Washington Post (news site, free) – [http://www.washingtonpost.com/] – Bringing you more than just news – scandal too
• 46 – Yelp.com (online social reviews, free) – [http://www.yelp.com] – City Reviews by us common folk
• 48 – The Consumerist (blog, free) – [http://consumerist.com/] – Worth an RSS subscription
• 49 – AdventNet Zoho (office suite app, free) – [http://www.zoho.com/] – See #27
• 50 – OpenDNS PhishTank (security site, free) – [http://www.phishtank.com/] – You must help me I have 203 Billion Dollars which you can have 25% of if you let me know everything
• 52 – NYTimes.com (news site, free) – [http://www.nytimes.com] – More news
• 60 – Vimeo (video-sharing site, free) – [http://www.vimeo.com/] – HD Video Sharing
  
  Pulse (HD) from Jason Chen on Vimeo.
• 61 – SideStep (travel site, free) – [http://www.sidestep.com] – Search all travel sites on one site
• 63 – TellMe (mobile search, free) – [http://www.tellme.com] – Gotta love XML Voice Tech
• 69 – USB Safely Remove 3.3 (utilities, shareware) – [http://safelyremove.com] – Figure out what ‘Mass Storage Device’ you are stopping before it is to late
• 72 – Cerulean Studios Trillian (instant messaging, free) – [http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/] – Use Yahoo, MSN, and AOL all at the same time
• 78 – Mint (personal finance site, free) – [http://www.mint.com/] – revolutionary, patent–pending Mint money management software
• 81 – YouTube (viral video site, free) [http://www.youtube.com] – If you do not know about youtube, then, well – we need to have a talk.
• 90 – Ubuntu Linux (operating system, free) – [http://www.ubuntu.com/] – The linux OS that Dell load on some systems
• 92 – Digg (social news site, free) – [http://digg.com/] – Find what others are reading
• 94 – Meebo (Web-based instant messaging, free) – [http://www.meebo.com/] – No need to download a prgram to chat on MSN, Yahoo, or AOL
• 96 – Partition Logic (partitioning software, free) – [http://partitionlogic.org.uk/] – Partition Magic, Drive Image, and Norton Ghost welcome a new challenger
• 98 – Audacity (audio editor, free) – [http://audacity.sourceforge.net] – Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds
• 99 – Lifehacker (blog, free) – [http://lifehacker.com/] – Cool things to help you streamline your multitasking self.
• 100 – Jing Project (image/video production app, free) – [http://www.jingproject.com/] – Cature you desktop as an image or screencast. Pretty cool stuff – go get Jingy with it.

So there is the list of all the free products the Top 100 Products for 2008. I hope you find 3 or 20 you can use.

Defensio – Kind of sounds like me trying to speak a foreign language

Michael also bring to light an alternative Comment SPAM defense plugin to the Wordpress included Askimet. Defensio boast that it defends against 99.77% SPAM. More importantly other bloggers,both 1pixel [power by wordpress] and ActiveReload not powered by wordpress, are posting that Defensio is also not as likely to give you that false negative(i.e. trap a non-spam comment).

Full on Defensio Review

Holly over at Woman Tribune wrote a very in depth review of Defensio. If your curiostiy of this new SPAM smacker has been piqued, then I suggest you read her post. But before you do that, go grab that keyword list and add another layer of protection to your blog without consuming many resources from your server.

Google engineers all have “20 percent time” in which they’re free to pursue projects they’re passionate about. This freedom has already produced Google News, Google Suggest, AdSense for Content, and Orkut – products which might otherwise have taken an entire start-up to launch.

Google Reader uses Gears to download the 2000 most recent feed items and read them while not connected to the fire hose of information. I can now read John Chow’s latest post offline.So go, right now to Google Reader and get the capability to use it offline. Which is what we have all have been craving since we got hooked on Reader.