If these are the sort of questions you've found yourself wondering about (or even Googling about with limited success), there's a new resource out there that you should be aware of. It's this incredible spreadsheet of all known Android devices and their technical specifications. And it includes smartphones, netbooks, e-books, PMPs (personal media players), MIDs (mobile Internet devices), TVs, cars and more.

The spreadsheet, which is a publicly available Google Doc, sorts Android devices into different categories (phones, netbooks, TV, etc.) using tabs across the top. Smartphones are even further divided into "Android mobile phones 2010" and "Android mobile phones 2009." Since the spreadsheet is currently linked to from the electronics company's website, we have to believe that it has plans to keep it updated as new devices are released.

That would make this spreadsheet one of the best resources we've ever come across for tracking Android's incredible growth, the numerous supported devices, not to mention its spread to non-smartphone devices like netbooks, PMPs and even TVs and cars.

While we're at it, we should also point out that Portable Electronics Ltd. maintains a pretty great list of the top free Android APKs (apps), too, and a list of recommended Android applications, games, stores and more.

ReadWriteWeb has kept a close eye on not only the latest innovations of Facebook, but also on extensive privacy concerns, as well as what happens when you try to cancel your account. These 25 posts highlight what's trending in the first half of a busy year for Facebook.

1. Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login

Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services. You can however click here and become a Fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook, to receive our updates and learn more about the Internet. To access Facebook right now, click here. For future reference, type "facebook.com" into your browser address bar.

2. What Happens When You Deactivate Your Facebook Account

Last night I met a man who walked to the edge of the cliff and nearly deactivated his Facebook account. He took a screenshot of what he saw after clicking the "deactivate my account" link on his account page - and it is pretty far-out. That man considered quitting Facebook because it was having an adverse emotional impact on him and I'll spare him and his contacts from posting the screenshot he shared with me. I have posted below though a shot of the screen I saw when I clicked that button myself. Check it out. I bet you haven't seen this screen before, have you?

3. How to Delete Facebook Applications (and Why You Should)

To the end user, these changes may sound overwhelming and even scary. But there is something very easy everyone can do to minimize their risk and that's delete the Facebook applications you no longer use.

4. The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now

The tool, a dialog box explaining the changes, appeared at the top of Facebook homepages this past month with its own selection of recommended settings. Unfortunately, most Facebook users likely opted for the recommended settings without really understanding what they were agreeing to. If you did so, you may now be surprised to find that you inadvertently gave Facebook the right to publicize your private information including status updates, photos, and shared links. Want to change things back? Read on to find out how.

5. Facebook's Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December. In a six-minute interview on stage with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Zuckerberg spent 60 seconds talking about Facebook's privacy policies.

6. The Man Who Looked Into Facebook's Soul

This Wednesday, Warden will make Friend, Fan page and name data from hundreds of millions of Facebook users available to the academic research community. It's a move that Facebook has to have seen coming, a move that many in the data-centric community have been calling on the company itself to do for years, and an event that's been complicated by Facebook's recent privacy policy changes, which have muddied the waters of right and wrong but rendered even more data available for outside analysis.

7. Why Facebook is Wrong: Privacy Is Still Important

Has society become less private or is it Facebook that's pushing people in that direction? Is privacy online just an illusion anyway? Below are some thoughts, based primarily on the pro-privacy reactions to Zuckerberg's statements from many of our readers this weekend. Though there is a lot to be said for analysis of public data (more on that later), I believe that Facebook is making a big mistake by moving away from its origins based on privacy for user data.

8. "How Do I Delete My Facebook Account?" A Fast Growing Query

Google Suggest, the drop-down box that offers suggested search query completions based on absolute and recent upticks of popularity, now guesses that if you start typing "How do I..." that you'd like to know how to quit Facebook.

9. Facebook's High Pressure Tactics: Opt-in or Else

Facebook users who choose not to link their user accounts to Facebook's public Pages are ending up with blank profiles containing no information at all. If you haven't experienced this problem, it's probably thanks to the somewhat high-pressure tactics Facebook is using to get you to accept these changes.

10. Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook

Why can't privacy and connectedness go hand-in-hand? That's the question being raised by those behind the new Diaspora project, an ambitious undertaking to build an "anti-Facebook" - that is, a private, open source social network that puts you back in control of your personal data.

11. Facebook Open Graph: The Definitive Guide For Publishers, Users and Competitors

Facebook's vision is both minimalistic and encompassing - but its ambition is to kill off its competition and use 500 million users to take over entire Web. Whether we like it (pun intended) or not, we have to understand what this move means. It impacts users, publishers, competitors and, of course, Facebook itself. In this post, we summarize what Facebook announced and ponder the impact this will have on everyone. The Open Graph is a set combination of publisher plugins, semantic markup and a developer API.

12. "Likejacking" Takes Off on Facebook

Security researchers are warning of the newest Facebook threat, something they're calling "likejacking," a Facebook-enabled clickjacking attack that tricks users into clicking links that mark the clicked site as one of your Facebook "likes." These likes then show up on your profile and, of course, in your Facebook News Feed where your friends can see the link and click it, allowing the vicious, viral cycle to continue.

13. The Internet is Hard

Earlier today, we had a runaway hit of a post that went viral within a few hours, getting unbelievable pageviews and hundreds of retweets and comments. The trouble was, it wasn't because of the post's content. Due to some interesting SEO magic, the post was one of the first search results for the term "Facebook login." As a result, hundreds of confused readers bombed us with angry comments about how much they hated the "new Facebook," a.k.a. our Facebook Connect comment login.

14. How to Trick Users into Liking Facebook Pages They're Not On

Yesterday, Facebook launched a new widget called the "Facebook Like Button," which, simply put, brings the Facebook like button to the entire Internet. Website owners can implement the new button on their site using a small bit of code. In fact, you don't even have to be a developer to make your own like button - there's a little wizard that generates the code for you. Then it's as easy as copy-and-paste to get the button onto your site. However, there's a small problem with this new, easy-to-use new tool: it's possible to trick users into liking anything - even pages they've never visited!

15. Is the New Facebook a Deal With the Devil?

Facebook blew people's minds today at its F8 developer conference but one sentiment that keeps coming up is: this is scary. The company unveiled simple, powerful plans to offer instant personalization on sites all over the web, it kicked off meaningful adoption of the Semantic Web with the snap of the fingers, it revolutionized the relationship between the cookie and the log-in, it probably knocked a whole class of recommendation technology startups that don't offer built-in distribution to 400 million people right out of the market.

16. More Web Industry Leaders Quit Facebook, Call For Open Alternative

Tonight leading video podcaster Leo Laporte announced that he's closed his Facebook account and made a financial donation in support of Diaspora, a project working to create an alternative social network outside of Facebook's control. Laporte said he was convinced to make the move by a post written by entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, in which Calacanis called Facebook a "monster" and called for users to throw their support behind OpenID and advocates of distributed social networking as open as the internet.

17. XAuth: The Open Web Fires a Shot Against Facebook Connect

The gist here is that XAuth will make it easier for sites around the web to find out what social networks you are using, let you log in to those easily, access your permitted information from those networks in order to better personalize your experience on their site and easily share their content back into your social network. It's like Facebook Connect, but for every other social network.

18. Facebook's New Policies Make Harassment Easy

North Africa has become a testing ground for a new sort of online harassment, and ReadWriteWeb is in the middle of it. Groups of Islamists are using the proliferation of Facebook's public pages to single out users they consider ideologically unorthodox (a broad category indeed by their definition) and then using Facebook's public ban process to stop their mouths.

19. The Half Truths of Mark Zuckerberg

Today's changes were good for users concerned about privacy, but Zuckerberg's tone on the call was odd. He said a number of things that seemed of questionable...truth. Those were: that settings weren't changed arbitrarily when all this began in December, that the changes weren't driven by advertising and business concerns and that Facebook makes its decisions based not on criticism but on metrics or its belief in what the right thing to do is.

20. CONFIRMED: Facebook Gets Faster, Debuts Homegrown PHP Compiler

Facebook officially announced the project, titled HipHop, this morning and confirmed that it would be released as open source this evening. Facebook will be hosting a talk at 7:30 PST with PHP developers to get into the specifics.

21. Facebook Granted Patent on the News Feed

Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook found the patent first and says it could be "one of the most significant social web patents" in a decade. If all algorithmic ranking and delivery of social activity updates to social network users falls under this patent Facebook applied for in August 2006 (one month before it launched its controversial Newsfeed) then there's going to be a whole lot of trouble for sites all over the web.

22. How US Government Spies Use Facebook (UPDATED)

The US Department of Justice this week released slides from a presentation deck titled Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites. The document was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

23. Facebook and the Future of Free Thought

So Facebook is the web's most popular subscription-enabled place to read news; be it from links shared by friends or by becoming a Fan of news organizations like Facebook is now encouraging. That doesn't mean that Facebook is yet a better news-reading service than dedicated RSS readers are. But it has certainly caught on as a way to read news far better than dedicated news-reading software has.

24. The Facebook Backlash Has Begun...

The knee-jerk reaction has begun. Friend after friend after friend is posting the same chain-letter-like status update with simple directions on how to opt out from Facebook's new sharing capabilities. It's spreading like wildfire, but we have to ask - has anyone considered the up side to any of these changes?

25. Privacy, Facebook and the Future of the Internet

Today is the 3rd annual international Data Privacy Day and a whole bunch of companies are listed on the organization's website as participants. Google, Microsoft, even Walmart. Facebook is not listed as a participant and has stirred up a lot of controversy with changes to its privacy policy lately.

These tasks comprise a quick to-do list that will leave you feeling competent and prepared for the decade that approaches. Also, you can play the condescension chip and start chiding friends who haven't checked off these items yet.

Facebook's maelstrom-causing privacy changes have given quite a few of us a head-scratching good time trying to figure out just how much of our private lives are to be made public. Before the new year begins, take a look at your settings on sites such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LiveJournal and any other places you might be sharing personal content to make sure what you display is consistent with the public image you want to project. As more recruiters and employers hit the Web in search of info on individuals, it's becoming ever more important to monitor and control our own identities. If you look back to the origin dates of some of your accounts, you might be surprised at what you thought was appropriate to share online in 2005.

Also, while considering what's private and public, take time to evaluate what a "friend," "contact" or "follower" means to you and what types of information you share with different groups.

2. Change your passwords.

Safety first, friends. Social web security threats in 2009 were sweeping and surprised more than a few users with spam DMs, hacked accounts and malware of all kinds. Check out the password management tools recommended by a recently high-profile hacker (scroll to the last few paragraphs); for free or cheap, they'll help you generate strong, random passwords and manage them from your computer.

3. Own your name.

I've conducted many a web search on many a professional geek this year, and I've been disappointed by how few of us have staked a meaningful claim to our online identities. If you haven't already, buy a URL - preferably one that relates to the name you use professionally - and make friends with Google. If you don't show up in the first results when you search for your name, get a crash course in SEO and ask friends to link to you. It's good for your social life and your career if you seize the opportunity to tell the searching world about yourself rather than relegating that responsibility to LinkedIn, Facebook or some weirdo with the same name as you.

4. Prune your feeds.

When going through your RSS feeds, do you find yourself impatiently scrolling more than you're intently skimming? Is your list of unread items becoming unmanagable? The end of the year is a perfect time to get rid of the content you're not reading and group the stuff you are. Take some time this week to organize, delete and add feeds, thereby optimizing your feed-reading experience. Try tools such as NetNewsWire's "dinosaurs" and "least attention" features that weed out unread or dormant feeds, and consider implementing tools such as Lazyfeed or Guzzle.it that can bring relevant results from fresh sources. And make sure the feeds you own are easy for others to find, too.

5. Find a better mobile.

If you don't have a smartphone already, chances are you'll desperately need one next year. And if you already have one, think long and hard about whether you're happy with your service, network and interface.

While you might not be able to run out and buy your dream device before 2010 rolls around, visit a few retailers, read some reviews and have your eye on a good mobile to purchase next year. Mobile tech keeps on booming, and you'll want to ensure a frustration-free year as new apps and OSes roll out.

6. Update copyright notices on your website.

Here's a simple, obvious and necessary reminder. Does your website currently claim a copyright year of 2007? While it doesn't put you on the foul side of the law, it does look a bit silly as we head into a new decade. The Next Web has a good bit of dynamic code for site owners.

7. Revisit your blog.

That poor, neglected old beast might be long overdue for a design facelift, a blogroll refresh or even just a few new posts. While you're at it, why not set automatic reminders to periodically bug you about posting in the new year? On a more mission-critical note, you'll also want to make sure you're using the most updated version of your CMS; not doing so can can lead to problems from broken plugins to getting hacked. And while you're at it, the year's end might also be a good time to consider switching up your CMS service altogether.

8. Back up your data.

Hacks and hardware failures happen. Before 2010, make sure as much of your data as possible is protected. From calendars and contacts to blog posts and work projects, more and more of us are relying on networks of servers and startups to keep us running. So, now might be a good time to download and back up files of LinkedIn contacts and WordPress posts - anything that's valuable to you and portable. Think of it this way: You - or at least parts of you - live in the Internet. If the Internet caught on fire, what would you grab to carry with you out of the blaze?

We hope this list helps you all get a few housekeeping items squared away in time for a great New Year's Eve filled with peace of mind and a smug sense of superiority over your fellow nerds. If you can think of any must-do year-end tasks, please let us know in the comments!

You may be wondering why you should use a Firefox plugin to create a wish list instead of simply using Amazon's new universal wish list service. The reason is openness. Where Amazon's tool comes from what is somewhat of a closed platform, Giftag is using an open data format: hProduct.

hProduct is an emerging data standard that is suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. The format will be related to several other microformats like hListing and hReview. Since we like to support open standards here at RWW, we like what Giftag has done.

The Giftag Homepage

How It Works

Using Giftag is simple, especially if the site you are on already supports hProduct. You just click the button in your Firefox toolbar and, at the bottom of the screen, a tray will appear where all the information about the product (name, description, price, etc.) displays. All you need to do is select which of your lists to put the item on. If the retailer's site doesn't support hProduct, you're still able to add items to the list by drawing a box around the item, but you'll have to fill in the information about the product yourself.

All the lists you create can be selectively shared with others. You could choose some lists to be shared with family and friends and others could be shared publicly. You can also share your items with your friends on Facebook via the Giftag application. Developers can access Giftag APIs to build applications of their own.

The value of the hProduct standard is clear when you use an application like Gifttag. Given Best Buy's involvement, we hope that this will push more retailers into adopting the standard on their own sites. A web of retail sites that support the same standard could open the door to even more applications that take advantage of the standard - and that's something we would like to see.

But given how fast things develop on the web, we thought we would revisit this topic again this year and look at some of the most useful Web 2.0 tools that have the potential to help students do better in school, collaborate with their fellow students, and save them time.

1) Evernote

Evernote is a great note taking application, but that only scratches the surface of what it can do. If you are in a lecture, for example, you can also take a picture of the blackboard with your phone, upload it to the Evernote server, and thanks to Evernote's clever OCR algorithms, even pictures of handwritten notes become instantly searchable.

You can also use it to bookmark web pages and write down your own lecture notes. Best of all, you can use a web app, a Windows or Mac desktop app, or a Windows Mobile and iPhone app, all of which seamlessly synch with each other, so that your notes are always up to date.

2) Google Notebook

The Google Notebook is one of Google's lesser know products, but, thanks to a very well designed Firefox extension, it's a great tool for when you do most of your work in a browser already. If you do some of your research in Google Books and Google Scholar, you can also easily clip excerpts from books and articles into your Google Notebook.

One additional nice feature is that you can invite collaborators to work on a notebook with you. If you are doing a research project in a group, for example, you can easily share your research with your whole group.

Online Office Suites

3) Google and 4) Zoho

Word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation apps are probably the single most often used tool among college students, and while none of the online offerings can yet beat Microsoft Office (which, for students, now only costs around $60 for the Ultimate Edition), the online office suites from Google and Zoho do have some distinct advantages. Office obviously has a lot more features, but not only are both Google Apps and Zoho free, they also allow easier sharing of documents and working on projects collaboratively.

And while the online tools to create presentations are still a bit crude compared to Powerpoint or Keynote, they are both worthy contenders, especially if you don't feel the need to add lots of fancy transitions to your presentations.

If we had to choose between Google's and Zoho's offering, our vote would probably go to Google, as the Google apps have a slightly more organized and professional feel to them, which, in the end, is going to make it easier to focus on the content of your documents.

Bibliography

5) Zotero

The standard tool for doing extensive bibliographies in academia is Endnote. While that is a great tool if you are writing a dissertation, Zotero is a great choice for less extensive research projects - and it's free. Zotero is a Firefox extension, so it is not technically a web app, but in its next version, the developers are promising the ability to synch your bibliographies to a web version of the tool, so that your books and notes will become available everywhere.

For now, Zotero lives in the status bar of Firefox, and it pops up a little icon in your URL bar every time it recognizes a compatible website. Zotero already supports the databases of a huge amount of libraries worldwide, as well as a lot of standard academic databases such as JSTOR, LexisNexis, InfoTrac, PubMed, or ScienceDirect. Besides curating your citations, you can also add notes, tag items, or add attachments (like pdf files of articles). Once you are done, Zotero will create a bibliography for you in most standard formats, including APA, MLA, or Chicago style.

6) EasyBib

If you just need to create a short bibliography, Zotero might be more than you need. EasyBib will just help you to quickly create a bibliography entry in MLA format - a favorite among literature teachers. It can also handle the APA format, but you will have to subscribe to the pro version of EasyBib.

If you really hate figuring out where to put a comma and where to put a semicolon in your APA style bibliography entries, those $7.99 a year for the pro version might just turn out to be a bargain.

Also, if you only need a quick bibliography entry for a book, check out OttoBib, where you just have to enter the ISBN number and it will give you a fully formatted citation.

Staying Organized

7) Google Calendar

There are lots of great online calendars out there, including 30 Boxes and Yahoo's calendar app, but our favorite is the Google Calendar, simply because it is dead easy to use, integrates nicely with GMail, allows for importing and exporting your calendar, and lets you publish a site with your free/busy information with the click of a button, so that your friends know not to bother you while you are cramming for that test.

8) Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk might just be the tool that will keep you on track. And to make things even easier, Remember the Milk also integrates nicely with Google Calendar, so you can manage everything in one place.

Picking the Right Class

9) Rate My Professors

As much as teachers don't like sites like these, Professor Performance and Rate my Professors can be useful tools when you decide which class you want to take. While almost every university makes you rate your professor at the end of the semester, schools never make this data public, so whenever you get a choice between professors, you really have no idea who the better teacher is. We like Rate My Professors a bit more than Professor Performance, simply because its search is a lot easier and the site is a bit more up-to-date. The site now also features a Facebook application.

Keeping in Touch

10) Meebo

As much as your teachers would like to think so, college isn't just about classes, papers, and long ours in the library. If you want to stay in touch with your friends no matter what computer you are on, Meebo is a great universal IM client that lives on the web. It supports, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk, as well as Meebo's own IM architecture.

What are we missing?

Are there other tools you use in school that we missed here? Let us know in the comments.

Flickr image by laffz4k.

And thanks to a new application from Simplify Media, you can now even access all that music from your desktop while on the road.

Simplify Media does something Apple should have built into the iTunes Remote already: it allows you to stream the music in your iTunes or Winamp library right to your phone or iPod touch, no matter whether you are on your home wifi network or the cell network. The interface is very similar to that of the regular iPod application, but adds some nice touches to it, including automatically downloaded lyrics and artist bios.

In order to use Simplify Media, you have to first install a small application on the machine that hosts your music and set up an account with Simplify Media. The application is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and installing it is extremely easy. As a bonus, you can also share your music library with up to 30 of your friends and family members.

We mostly tested the application over AT&T's 3G network, where songs started within seconds. Our tests on the EDGE network were also successful, but it just takes a bit more patience as you have to wait for the buffer to fill up just a bit longer.

Simplify Media is available for free for the first 100,000 users and will cost $3.99 after that. As of now, the app is still available for free on iTunes.

2) Pandora (iTunes link)

The music discovery service Pandora has been a long-time favorite here at RWW. Pandora, if you are not already familiar with it, lets you create your own radio station, based on songs or artists you like. As you listen to more songs, you can vote them up or down, which allows Pandora to calibrate itself to your music tastes. If you like a particular song, Pandora gives you the option to directly buy it from iTunes, or to bookmark the song so you can buy it later on.

Pandora's iPhone interface is similar to that of its web interface and, like most of the music apps listed here, is somewhat reminiscent of Apple's own iPod app.

One thing we noticed was that there is a trade-off between sound quality and network speed. If you are on a wifi network, you get a high bitrate and stereo sound, but if you are on a cell network (even 3G), the bitrate is adjusted to only 64kbps and the sounds is only available mono, which can sounds a bit tinny, but is still quite acceptable while you're driving in a car.

Overall, we love the Pandora application because it has allowed us to discover more new music than any radio station ever would.

3) Last.fm (iTunes link)

Last.fm is somewhat similar to Pandora, but it has more social aspects built into the app. You can, for example, play stations from your friends on Last.fm. The Last.fm application also displays any upcoming concerts by the band that is currently playing.

One limitation of the Last.fm iPhone application is that it can't look at your favorite music on your iPod and make recommendations based on this ('scrobbling'), which has always been one of the main selling-points of Last.fm on the desktop. This is probably due to the limitations of the iPhone SDK and won't feel like much of a limitation to new Last.fm users, but if you are used to this functionality, using the iPhone app will feel limited.

Once you are logged into the app, you can listen to songs you can listen to recommended songs you have already scrobbled on your desktop, listen to your friend's recommendation, or start a new station altogether. If you like a particular song, you can immediately buy it on iTunes.

Last.fm offers a higher audio quality than Pandora, but the price of this is that we experienced longer delays and more drop-outs when streaming over the 3G or EDGE network.

4) AOL Radio (iTunes link)

The AOL Radio application lets you listen to online radio stations, though the selection is mostly limited to CBS owned stations and AOL's own special interest stations (think 'All German Folk Music 24/7'). While it might seem backwards to want to listen to radio on the iPhone given that you have so many other options, a lot of the specialty AOL stations are actually quite good. There is also a nice selection of talk radio stations available, including one called 'Psychic Radio' (their motto is 'We Know You are Listening...").

The application organizes stations by location (and it can use the built in GPS of the iPhone to find your own local stations) or music genre. If you like a particular song, you can, as will all the other apps, buy it on iTunes, or bookmark it, though you can't really do anything with those bookmarks besides buying the song later on.

One restriction of AOL Radio is that some stations are only available while you are on a wifi network and there is no way of telling which stations have this restriction and which don't/

5) Tuner Internet Radio (iTunes link)

If you want more Internet radio stations and the ability to add your own streams, Tuner Internet Radio is for you, but you will also have to pay $5.99 for the privilege. While it is overall quite similar to AOL Radio, you get a lot more options and even a built in OpenGL based visualizer. One area where Tuner Internet Radio shines is in its selection of international stations. While AOL Radio mostly features CBS stations, Tuner Internet Radio also features BBC and PBS stations, among many others.

Tuner Internet Radio can play any AAC+, MP3, PLS, and M3U stream, but note that it does not support RealPlayer or Windows Media stream, which might be quite a limitation if your favorite Internet stations use these formats.

Whether buying this is worth the $5.99 is a personal decision, but if you don't mind the price, Tuner Internet Radio is, in our view, a better application than AOL Radio.

• Peepcode - Peepcode offers a collection of professionally-produced Rails programming screencasts that sell for $9 a piece. These are some of the best reviewed screencasts in the Rails community.
• Railscasts - Ryan Bates, one of the most prolific screencasters in the Rails community, has put out over 100 free screencasts over the past 14 months. He has a great voice, reminiscent of Bob Ross, and a background in video that makes for excellent production values.
• Ruby Plus - Over 75 Rails screencasts since last December? Bala Paranj is trying to give Mr. Bates a run for his money! (Then again, screencasts on both sites are free.)
• Pragmatic Programmer - Coders have long loved the Pragmatic Programmer's line of web dev books, and this month the company added screencasts hosted by well known personalities in the development community.
• ShowMeDo - A collection of screencasts from around the web (including some from sites mentioned on this list) focused on free and open source software. Ruby, Python, and Java have the most tutorials on the site, but there are also screencasts covering graphics and productivity software.
• TechScreencast - Like ShowMeDo, this site aggregates technology screencasts from across the web on programming, web development, database, graphics, security, and other topics.
• DimeCasts.NET - A new site offering .NET screencasts that are under 10 minutes each.
• ScreenCastsOnline - One of the most well-known screencast sites offering tutorials for how to use OS X, Mac software, and the iPhone/iPod. 140+ tutorials for $49 per 6 months -- also available on DVD.
• ScreencastCentral - Over 400 software learning screencasts, as well as over 1000 more aggregated from video sharing sites like YouTube. $7.95/month.
• The Screencast Blog - Screencasts on a wide variety of technical topics. Unfortunately, not updated very often these days.
• Demo Girl - Molly McDonald, aka Demo Girl, has created hundreds of screencasts over the past 2 years, mainly demoing web apps. She also does custom work for anyone looking to have a pro create a screencast for their app. Demo Girl absorbed Screeniac in March.
• Screencasters - Inkscape (an open source Photoshop alternative) screencasts can be had at this site.
• Video Professor - You may have seen their late night infomercials offering screencast DVDs for free. Video Professor sells DVD and online screencasts for popular Windows software.
• Screencast-o-matic - A web app for creating screencasts, this site also has a gallery of screencasts created using their application.
• FreeScreencast.com - Like Screencast-o-matic, this site offers free software for making screencasts and provides public hosting once they're recorded.

We know this list isn't complete, so please share your favorite places to find good screencasts in the comments below. If you want to try your hand at making one, Spread Firefox is holding a screencast contest right now.

• Mango Languages: 12 different online language courses presented in conversational format with prices starting at free.
• Vocabulix: Free vocab building lessons in Spanish, German and English, as well as other languages, with a baked in social network.
• Pod Network: Spanishpod - Frenchpod - Chinesepod - Free online lessons in three languages.
• BBC Languages: A host of language learning tools and self-contained online courses from the BBC.
• eLanguageSchool.net: Free lessons for learning 10 different languages online.
• Linkua: An online marketplace of real-life language tutors. There's nothing like learning a language directly from a native speaker.
• LiveMocha: This site combines lessons, with an online community allowing you to practice speaking with native speakers, which dovetails nicely into the next set of sites.

Now that you've learned the basics, you need to practice. That's not always easy if you've been learning on your own and no one around you speaks your new language. The sites below will help you hook up with a native speaker -- usually over VoIP -- to practice speaking.

Practice Speaking

• SharedTalk: A language exchange covering 113 languages from the makers of the popular RosettaStone language learning software.
• xLingo: A language exchange that lets users create and share flashcards with each other.
• Palabea: Reviews of language learning software in addition to an online language exchange.
• iTalki: A language exchange with a Yahoo! Answers-style QnA site, and a wiki-based public knowledge base for 10 different languages.
• Huitalk: Forums, articles, vocabulary lists, and a language exchange using Skype.
• Interpals: A large language exchange from a popular penpal social network.
• Mixxer: A free language exchange using Skype built by Dickinson College.
• TT4You: A free global language exchange site.
• Language Buddy: A free language exchange with 115 supported languages.
• Convesation Exchange: Text and voice chat, email, or face-to-face meetings can bet set up via Language Buddy to improve your conversational skills.
• Lingozone: Build vocab skills by playing game of Word Ladder and Hangman, while making friends with whom to practice speaking.
• Language Exchange Network: Think Craigslist for language learning; this site has super-simple language exchange classified listings.
• MyLanguageExchange: One of the oldest online language exchanges (this site was a Yahoo! Internet Life pick in 2001), it claims over 1 million members speaking 115 different languages.
• Language Exchange: A language exchange application for the Facebook platform.

Bonus Site: ASL Fingerspelling: Test your American Sign Language chops by watching online spelling demos and guessing the word.