good ol days

Are you tired of the fee-sponsored links choking your Google search results pages? Return to those halcyon days of the original Google, when only clean, clear search results filled your monitor. Enter Wikia Search. Wikia Search is the brainchild of Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales. Fueled with startup capital from Amazon.com, Wikia Search builds its returned links from a mixed software + human approach, much like the trusted network concept espoused by Wikipedia. Think Google meets Yahoo! Answer meets Wikipedia meets Ask.com all bundled under one roof. Dont throw Google out with the bath water just yet, however. Wales intends to turn Wikia Search into a revenue-yielding site as soon as he can conceive of an ad-driven business model. So much for the good ol days. Go ahead and give the alpha Wikia Search site a try and then post your observations in our comments section.—Dave Prochnow

Today Napster announced a free online listening feature. It's kind of like Internet radio meets HBO on Demand meets, well, Napster. You can listen to any of the service's two million songs up to five times for no charge. After that, Napster gives you the option to purchase and download the tune or subscribe to its service. Or simply choose to part company with the song forever—particularly useful when you're just trying to get some pop opus you heard at the gym out of your head. It ain't the good ol' days, but it is a solid way to listen to a song and figure out how quickly you're going to get sick of it before you fork over your wages to buy it legally. —Joe Brown