Raditaz launched earlier this month with promises 14 million licensed tracks, compared to the "more than 900,000" currently offered by Pandora. But guess what?

Still no Liz Phair. And now, seemingly, no Pixies either.

Update: Raditaz spokesman Tom Brophy emailed to say that the lack of Pixies tunes was because of a "snafu" with Warner Music and that it should be resolved in about a week. And the service does, in fact, have those Liz Phair songs I can't get on Pandora.

"I actually will admit that you made some fair points," Brophy said in an email. "We are in the process of significantly upgrading the platform, and in particular, the algorithm that powers Raditaz stations. Our upgrade should be completed in approximately 30 days. We are also doing some work on better integrating Likes and Dislikes."

Why Pandora Is Better

In my tests, Raditaz loaded slower than Pandora.

Overall, in fact, the Raditaz interface was rather ugly and not nearly as intuitive as Pandora. Like the music I listened to, of course, the latter is a matter of personal opinion. But Pandora does have some objective pluses, including lyrics for many of the songs, as well as artist bios.

Beyond that, I felt that Pandora did a better job of finding music I like based on my rankings. When I gave a "thumbs down" on Raditaz for a Cake song, Raditaz immediately loaded another Cake song. Substitutions for artists not on the service was also weak: I was given Sheryl Crow and Kate Bush when I set up a station based on Liz Phair. At least Pandora gives me slightly better substitutes, including Lily Allen and the Cowboy Junkies as options similar to Liz Phair.

I may be imagining this, but I also felt that, overtime, Pandora is much quicker about learning what I like and don't like and turning me on to new artists. After spending several hours listening to Raditaz, I can't say I've found any new music that I like: that just doesn't happen when I spend the same amount of time listening to Pandora.

Why Raditaz Is Better

Beyond its promise of more songs, Raditaz also promises no audio ads (both sites have ads on their Web interface; Pandora also plays an audio ad every few songs).

Raditaz also geo-locates listeners to create "most popular" by location lists - something I frankly could live without. So far, the geo-location seems more about targeting ads than it is about improving listener experience.

And perhaps its biggest sell is that, unlike Pandora, you can skip through as many tracks as you want. Pandora, because of its licensing agreements, only lets you skip through so many songs in any given listening session.

Then again, unlimited skips is something I really needed to make it through my test of Raditaz since it missed so frequently in trying to match me up with music I actually wanted to listen to.

Indeed, it may have seemed like that at the beginning. But as even third-rate tin-horn dictators learn from the pioneers in the field of online tyranny, these technologies have become as much a tool of oppression as they ever were of liberation. The problem is, much of the public, and a great many influential western politicians and diplomats, still believe it is the way and the light.

Opportunities and Vulnerabilities

As the founder of the Committee to Protect Bloggers, the first organization devoted to the safety and liberty of bloggers worldwide, I was always acutely aware of how vulnerable social media users were. The majority of people we found who were getting arrested initially were doing so because they made no effort to hide their names, believing that what they were doing was in some sense "private." Not only was it not private, the truth was that governments were watching the web.

These days, tech savvy oppressors use filtering, special state security investigators and an invariably friendly relationship with the (largely American) creators of this technology to hunt down and seize those trouble-makers who do not have the politesse to write out their full name.

So Morozov's notion that both the public and diplomats overemphasize the power of the social web to effect democratic change may seem discordant given the Jasmine Uprising that has (perhaps) successfully changed Tunisia and Egypt. But I don't think it is. Here's why:

Although some in those countries, most prominently Wael Ghonim, have advertised how much Facebook in particular was instrumental in effecting the changes there, most of their compatriots it seems do not. I think their compatriots were right. Not because the people were the agents of change, although they were. But because the social tools were used not as mysterious planes of soul-changing existence through which the people or country passed, but as communications tools that amplified and extended what the people were already doing. In this respect, the social web is extremely important to democratic change. Of course it is. Communication is paramount. But it's important because it is, used well, an extremely effective tool not article of faith.

Samizdat

OK. Back to the book. Morozov makes the argument that the current belief in the redemptive effects of communications technologies comes from the U.S. experience of the cold war, in which copy machines and fax machines were smuggled into the U.S.S.R. That, combined with the enduring fiction that Reagan, and not the "structural conditions and the inherent contradictions of the Soviet system" were responsible for that country's downfall, has led the diplomats and politicians of the U.S. to the belief that next generation technology and a strong leader will do the same thing for Islamist states and post-colonial dictatorships.

That belief, Morozov claims, is unrealistic. I agree. Further, I believe that if your mission is change, as well as preservation of life, extension of liberty (whether domestically or internationally) and you favor your hugable ideology over effectiveness, you're in the wrong business. Even those who are self-declared pragmatists can number among those Morozov calls "Internet centrists," people who place the tool over the cultural and political contexts necessary for real change. Those folks can retard change toward democracy as much as any of the ideologically ham-strung.

This combination of cyber-utopianists and Internet centrists create what the author calls the Net Delusion. His book attempts to salvage the Internet as a tool for social change by acknowledging this delusion.

Morozov examines Iran's "green revolution," as a case study for overemphasizing the effect of the social web and efforts of change. He mentions the empathy that witnessing the protests with less mediation than normal gave people a feeling of investment.

"(S)uch networked intimacy may have also greatly inflated popular expectations of what it could actually achieve."

What it actually achieved was, arguably, not much, not on the ground for those who took part. Yet the discussion of Twitter, of how this was a "Twitter revolution" was widespread and non-stop.

Panem et Circenses

In his chapter "Orwell's Favorite Lolcat," Morozov points up a thing we tend to gloss over if we spend any time online reading, or participating in, instances of democratic change. Most people don't. And even we do not spend most of our time doing any such thing. If I have a minute, am I more likely to read Foreign Policy or the Libyan Twitter stream; or am I more likely to read a quick post on io9? The latter. And I'm not alone.

For most governments, and perhaps repressive ones more than others, the use of the Internet as a modern arena for ludicrous and distracting ludi is a salvation.

The Western notion that informational outreach to repressed nations would create revolution is, Morozov says, off-base. The wall between "I'd like those blue jeans" and "I'm willing to risk jail and torture" is extremely high. Not to mention the fact that, if information as a whole is tainted, you probably aren't going to accept a new information stream from that same tainted well.

The Anti-Bloggers Fund

Iran and China have large, competent cadres of technical types and hackers who serve the state. Some search out, shame, report and censor their fellows. Others engage in more overt attacks, country-to-country.

Egypt had, at least prior to its uprising, a group called the Anti-Facebook Police. The Cuban government called upon its "journalists" to man the PR ramparts. And Nigeria tried to set up the Anti-Bloggers Fund.

"(It was) intended to raise a new generation of pro-government bloggers to engage in online battles with anti-government opponents."

There are people who fear change, others who believe in the ideology or family that's in charge of their countries, or fear those who they believe would fill the vacuum. Still others simply need the cash. The social web allows a repressive government to employ people to muddy the social media waters. In other words, social communications technologies are a double-edged sword and governments have long ago lost any reticence they may have had to swing it.

Slacktivism

At the Committee to Protect Bloggers, we quickly discovered that the blogosphere was good for one important thing, one unimportant thing and little else. The important thing was quickly attracting attention to the plight of an imprisoned or threatened blogger. The unimportant thing was racking up clicks on a petition. The "little else" we did was not a function of the distributed nature of the blogosphere but old-fashioned activism. For instance, we found - through friends and phone calls - an attorney from Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Prize-winning practice willing to represent a young Iranian accused of "immorality" (he had posted satirical pictures of Iran's leaders). This was not a crowdsourced activity. By definition, it could never be.

Raising awareness to a point where coverage by news organs of social media users' troubles is common was a good thing. But it was what it was. It was limited. People will click a button to "free" someone. It makes them feel good. But has button-pushing ever freed anyone? I think it's the longer-term activities, that use the social web as a tool to, again, amplify and extend the reach of the people behind them, that creates change.

The efforts by governments like the U.S. to encourage the formation of Facebook groups devoted to democratic change are on a par with a business telling its social media specialist, "Do us up one of them 'viral videos.'" Wishing does not make it so. If the social web has a role to play in change it is, again, probably in the area of communicating information to a group of people predisposed to positively receive that change. This happened recently in Tunisia and Egypt. It is not happening to speak of in Saudi Arabia. The reason is, it is not Facebook per se that makes a difference, it is the people in their specific context.

Technology is Neutral

In his conclusion, Morozov warns against the "banal" belief that technology can be neutral.

"(C)ertain technologies, by their very constitution, are more likely to to produce certain social and political outcomes than other technologies."

We are obliged to regard the "affordances" of these technologies. Affordances are the perceived qualities of action inherent in objects or technologies, such as the affordance of sitting a chair possesses. Comparing the affordances in a technology should give us an idea as to its overall utility, or danger. Morozov rejects the notion that the technology itself is neutral, that it depends wholly on who is using it for its ethical coloring.

"(U)nder no circumstances should we be giving technologies - whether it's the Internet or mobile phones - a free pass on ethics."

Asserting that "because it can be done, it will be done" technologically, Morozov warns policymakers, and us as adjuncts to them, to analyze the affordances of information technology prior to promoting them as tools for democratic change. When we examine issues of democratic change, stop the cyber-utopianism, stop the Internet centricity and stop to consider the implications of what a product or process can do.

In other words, stop believing and start examining. While you may be able to believe a non-existent thing into being, you cannot believe an untrue thing into truth. If we wish to encourage the creation of native democracies, we may wish to spend carefully on training and strategy (on people, in other words) instead of blindly on machines.

Morozov's "cyber-realism" encourages thoughtful consideration not of sociological ideas, but of specific situations and how a given technology might effect them. The former, in the end, are hard to get wrong, given their squishy vagueness. The latter, in the end, are hard to get right, but when you do, you change the world.

Gesticulating Morozov photo by Nurgeldy | samizdat via Raquel Baranow | quadriga photo by Martin | Slacker poster from Wikipedia | Da Vinci drawing from Wikimedia Commons

The absolute best thing about the phone, and the single-most influential reason for which I bought it, is the high-resolution screen. Upon turning on the phone for the first time and looking at the icons and text of the home screen, the quadrupling of pixels is immediately noticeable. Videos, photos, apps, and text all look absolutely amazing on this screen and I am very excited to see more devices, like the iPad, include the technology.

The second best feature, in my opinion, are the major improvements made to the phone's outward-facing camera. The camera takes surprisingly great shots in poorly-lit conditions, and the flash works great as well at capturing crisp images with a short exposure. The camera also takes great close-up photos, and can focus on objects roughly three inches away. With the excellent assortment of apps to edit photos, some great shots are sure to come from the device, like the one on the right of my TV remote.

The Bad: Battery Life & The Antenna

There are several bad things about the phone as well, and its hard to pick which is the worst. The first big negative I noticed, and was surprised by, is the battery life. Other media outlets with pre-release devices reported using the phone for over 30 hours with normal everyday use, but personally I have not seen this myself. I have found the battery life to be equal to, if not a little worse, than that of its predecessor, the iPhone 3GS.

The other issue that falls in the bad category is the antenna and the problems caused by holding the phone. From my own tests, I can submit that, yes, holding the phone in the most normal of fashions is likely to have some effect on signal. While holding my phone, I steadily watched the bars tick down from 5 to 1, and at times to an entire loss of signal. To make sure this was an accurate representation of the signal, I tried sending a text message, which hung on about 90% on its progress bar. Upon releasing my grip and letting the phone rest in my palm, the message sent almost immediately.

I have not found myself lacking a strong enough signal to send and receive calls or text messages when holding the phone during normal use, however. The only time holding the phone has been a problem was during my tests when I held it for a prolonged period of time and with more pressure than one would normally apply.

The antenna issue does, however, have an influence on the behavior of users. While the antenna problems are not likely to have a direct effect on signal in normal use, it exists enough to make you aware of how you hold the device when you are trying to assure you have enough signal to complete various tasks. I have found myself resting the device in my palm as a form of early troubleshooting if I can't seem to load a webpage or update my Twitter app. The fact that the problem exists is enough to make users of the device think twice about how they hold device, whether it is the real solution to their signal problems at that time or not.

The Meh: FaceTime

I tried FaceTime on a few occasions from various WiFi connections. It seems the most important factor in the quality of video calls is the WiFi connection. Attempting to FaceTime with a friend using public WiFi at a Starbucks was a terrible experience, but it was far better when both of us were on secured private networks in our homes. Even then, however, the call failed once and we had to redial each other. Hopefully this will get better in time, but for now, once the novelty of video calling on a mobile device wears off, FaceTime may not be that exciting.

The Huh? Strange Bugs and Quirks

The iPhone 4 is buggy. Very buggy. One of the most annoying ones, especially for a user like me who takes a lot of photos, involves the deletion of photos from the camera roll. Almost every time I delete a photo while viewing the camera roll, some error occurs where the photo is replaced by an immovable black box.

I have noticed, however, that deleting items while viewing them (by tapping the trash can icon while viewing a photo, for example) does not produce the same problem. It only seems to occur when marking one or more items with the red deletion check mark that it happens. Usually, syncing the device in iTunes will fix the issue, but sometimes that will even make things worse. I have had several photos disappear and deleted videos reappear unplayable in my camera roll, which was only fixed with another iTunes sync.

The mail app is also very bug-prone. I noticed some strange things happening with mail back on my 3GS before switching, and now they are better, but still odd. Before, emails would appear and quickly disappear in my inbox, only to be re-downloaded, or sometimes not. Now, the mail app seems intent on peppering my inbox with emails from the distant past (or future depending on how you look at it). An email with no sender, no subject and no content, sent on 12/31/69 has appeared on more than one occasion, though it has been less frequent in the last day or two.

The Multitasker's Dilemma

The other source of bugs comes from apps that do not support or properly implement the phone's multitasking capabilities. I have had some apps break or become unusable, and the only solution was to delete them from the multitasking menu and "relaunch" them. While this is not really Apple's fault, it does, however, create a new level of thinking for users when it comes to their apps and troubleshooting.

Previously, apps started from scratch whenever you clicked their icons. Now, for better or for worse, some apps resume from their last active state. In the case of messaging apps, this can be useful. In the case of apps like Settings, it can be annoying when you last closed the app after digging several levels deep into various sub-menus.

To truly "relaunch" an application, users must now click the home button, then double tap the home button again to launch the multitasking menu, then hold down their finger on an app until it begins to wiggle, and finally click a red minus sign icon to remove it. In most cases this isn't really necessary, but when an app is not responding correctly, I find myself using this tactic as a crude form of "ctrl+alt+del." Here's an example of when this problem occurred.

One Hot Phone. No Really, I Mean Hot!

When out doing errands, a strange thing happened with my iPhone. I found myself with 5 bars of signal and 3G service but unable to refresh my stream of messages on my Twitter application. It couldn't be the reception, I had 5 bars, so I clicked the home button and then re-entered the app, but it still didn't work. That is when I deleted the app from the multitask menu, effectively force quitting it, but another attempt still didn't work.

Then I tried other apps, and I quickly discovered nothing was working. I made sure the phone wasn't trying to use some random WiFi, so I turned WiFi off. Still nothing. I flipped airplane mode on and off to reset the connection to AT&T, but that still didn't work. Then I noticed how the phone felt in my hand - it was hot. Very hot. And not just because I was in 100 degree Arizona weather. It still felt hot in my cool air conditioned car.

The phone had overheated, and while I could navigate to apps and menus, sending or receiving any data was impossible. I turned the phone off and immediately noticed the temperature of the device drop significantly. I turned it back on and all was back to normal, but as you can see from this example, the complexity added by multitasking changes the way users will approach troubleshooting problems on their device. The entire time I was trying to no avail, the phone was resting in my palm, a testament to the paranoia also caused by the antenna.

Final Nitpickingly Annoying Thoughts

I remember when I first heard of the very first iPhone, the biggest thing that excited me was the ability to combine my phone with my iPod. No longer would I have to keep carrying both items, and I would never miss a call while listening to music ever again. Needless to say, I am an avid listener of music. I am disappointed not only in the fact that the newest iPhone didn't get the standard 64 GB storage bump many had assumed was coming, but also that iOS 4.0 changes some behaviors for the iPod app.

Now that double-clicking the home button brings up the multitasking menu, the way controlling music and podcasts works is slightly different. Previously, I used the double-click to launch music controls from wherever I was on the phone. I don't mind having to the side the multitasking menu to the right to view the controls, but the behavior of the double-click in another situation is causing me grief.

When the phone is sleeping and the screen is off, a double-click of the home button always brought up the music controls, whether anything was playing or not. Now, it seems hit or miss on when this function works the way I expect it to. When music is playing, double-clicking usually works to bring up the controls. When nothing is playing, a double-click will only bring up the regular lock screen without controls, unless the iPod app was active when I hit the sleep button. Sometimes. The reason for this strange behavior is elusive, and annoying.

So between the great added features and the upsetting disappointments, things are kinda so-so with the new iPhone. I'm still glad I bought it, and the good outweighs most of the bad. But I still find it odd how many bugs and quirks the phone has, and I guess I will have to master the the triple click if I want the music controls to work my way. Other than that, it's a great device.

For the sake of this review, we won't look at the Nexus One hardware in great detail. Suffice to say, the 1GHz Snapdragon processor makes the phone extremely fast and the 3.7 inch AMOLED screen simply looks gorgeous. While it isn't much bigger than the iPhone's screen, the difference in resolution (800x400) is quite noticeable. We didn't get a chance to formally test the phone's battery life, but unless we made extensive use of the GPS, it easily got through a day's use without needing a recharge.

The phone's five megapixel camera works just as advertised - though the camera app isn't the prettiest app on the phone. Picture quality was generally on par with pictures from the iPhone 3GS, though the built-in LED flash gives the phone an important additional feature that Apple doesn't currently offer.

In the long run, the big difference between the two platforms isn't the hardware but the operating system. After all, the iPhone 3GS is also quite fast and we haven't heard a lot of complaints about the iPhone's screen. Android 2.1 isn't a major step up from version 2.0, but it does introduce some notable new features, including the ability to use voice in every application that brings up the built-in virtual keyboard.

Android 2.1

While the Nexus One isn't an iPhone killer, it's already on par with Apple's phone in many regards. As Google and the developer community that has grown around Android continues to improve the OS, it is only a matter of time before Apple will have to react with an updated version of its iPhone OS.

Here are some of the features that make the Nexus One and Android 2.1 a winner in our opinion. We should note there are some unresolved customer service and hardware issues that have made headlines over the last few days. We didn't experience any of these problems ourselves, but your mileage may vary.

Nexus One and Android 2.1 vs. the iPhone

• Google Navigation: When it was released for Android 2.0, we described Google's own GPS application as the first "killer feature" for Android. Google hasn't really updated this app in 2.1, but it remains one of the signature features for Android. This is also one of the many apps that showcases Android's ability to multitask. On the iPhone, for example, you have to exit the GPS app while you check your email. On an Android phone, the app simply continues to run in the background and continues to give you voice prompts.
• Voice Recognition: We were quite skeptical about this feature at first. Every time Android 2.1 brings up the keyboard, you now have the option to dictate text into the phone. This works surprisingly well and makes writing a quick email or tweet very easy. Some apps, including Google Navigation, can also handle more complex voice commands. On the iPhone, the newly updated Dragon Natural Speaking app works similarly well, but suffers from the fact that it isn't integrated into every application on the phone.
• Multitasking: Other smartphones like the Palm Pre also feature multitasking for third-party apps and handle switching between these apps better than Android. At the same time, though, one of the iPhone Achilles' heels is its inability to run more than one non-Apple app at a time. No such problem with Android, though running a lot of apps in the background can put a lot of strain on the battery.
• Back Button: Besides the volume controls, the iPhone only features one button. The Nexus features quite a few more (back, menu, home, and search, plus a trackball). The back button is likely the most useful of these and works just like your browser's back button. On the iPhone, whenever an app takes you to a browser, the app quits and opens up the browser, leaving you no easy way to get back to the app. On Android phones, you simply click the back button and you're back to where you started.
• Google Voice: If you use Google Voice, you are surely aware of the controversy around getting the Google Voice app on the iPhone. On Android, it's simply a built-in feature and works perfectly. You can even set up the phone to route international calls through Google Voice by default.
• Photo Gallery: Google worked with Cooliris to integrate the company's signature 3D-view of your photos into the Android photo gallery app. This is easily the prettiest and most useful default gallery app we have seen on any phone to date.
• Google Integration: If you are heavily invested in the Google universe, then setting up Android is as easy as it gets. When you first start up the Nexus One (or any other Android phone for that matter), the phone will ask you for your Google Account credentials. Once you enter these, the phone will set up all the Google apps on the phone for you. The phone sets up your email accounts and downloads contacts from Google Contacts. The gallery app connects to Picasa and the calendar connects to Google Calendar.

Areas for Improvement

But there are also some areas where the iPhone is still a clear winner:

• Music: For now, Android's music app doesn't come close to the iPhone's native iPod app. While it's not woefully bad, it also doesn't come close to the design and functionality of the iPhone.
• User Interface: While Android 2.1 looks pretty nice and offers some cool new eye candy like animated wallpapers, Apple is still one step ahead of Google when it comes to the fit and finish of the built-in apps. Also, while we love the back button on the Nexus One, using the menu button isn't very intuitive and quite a few people we showed the phone to struggled to understand its functions.
• App Store: No doubt, Apple's App Store features far more applications than the Android Market. Especially when it comes to games, Apple beats Google hands down.
• OS Updates for Everybody: You can reasonably assume that the iPhone you buy today will be supported with OS updates for the two years of your contract. With Android, you can't be so sure about that. It's still a moving target and quite a few early adopters are still stuck with Android 1.5 because their vendors never updated the phone or because their phones don't feature the necessary hardware to run later versions of the OS.

As we pointed out last week, the Nexus One and Android 2.1 aren't quite ready for the enterprise yet, and Google has to work on the security features of the phone and software before it can become a major player in this market. Google, however, is aware of this and is already working on an enterprise version of the phone.

Verdict

Overall, we were very impressed with the phone's hardware and software. Android 2.1 could still benefit from some design work, but in terms of features and functionality, Android can now easily compete with the iPhone.

Disclaimer: Google provided us with a loaner unit and a working SIM card free of charge.

After a document has been uploaded, users can easily set different security settings, and decide if a document will be available for printing or download. Backboard allows its users to decide if they want a document to be available only to invited reviewers, or if the documents Backboard page should be secured with a password. The document can also just be hidden behind a 'secret' URL.

Where Backboard stands out, though, is in how easy the application makes it to leave feedback. Reviewers can simply use a virtual pen to mark a document up in Backboard's excellent document viewer, or, in a text document, they can highlight parts of the text, and a form for leaving comments will automatically pop up (this feature feels a bit similar to Word 2007). Thanks to this stripped-down but powerful user interface, even an inexperienced user should be able to open a document and start reviewing it within minutes.

Comments appear in real-time in a sidebar on the right. To enable these real-time comments, Backboard has partnered with Orbited.

Another feature that makes Backboard stand out is its close integration with Microsoft Office 2007 and Apple's iWork productivity apps. After installing the respective plugins, Backboard users can easily upload documents to the service from within their productivity apps.

Pricing Plans

Backboard features an interesting pricing model. Unlike some of its competitors, all pricing tiers feature unlimited document storage, but the tiers are differentiated by the maximum file size of these documents, number of users on the account, and security features. The free version, for example, is limited to documents smaller than 5 MB (which should still be enough for all but the most complex documents) and doesn't feature a secure SSL connection. Users who use the free account also won't be able to restrict access to a document to specific users. Paid plans start at $6 a month for one user and $25 for teams of up to five members.

Backboard also features a special 'proofing' plan for freelancers who do client-facing work, which allows users to add their own branding and a custom URL. This plan starts at $10 for one user.

Feedback Made Easy

We have seen a lot of interesting collaborative feedback products that are quite similar to Backboard, but a lot of them are geared more towards freelancers. Backboard is definitely a great tool for this group of users as well, but at the same time, it is also geared towards groups in the enterprise. In many ways, it is this degree of flexibility that makes this tool so powerful. While the company isn't necessarily marketing its tool this way, Backboard could also be a great tool for giving feedback in a school or college setting, where students often write multiple drafts and teachers spend a lot of their time marking up papers.

Thanks to its focus on security, Backboard will surely be attractive to security-conscious businesses as well, and the company will also happily work with its enterprise customers to implement solutions that comply with HIPPA and other industry-specific regulations.

Overall, Backboard turned out to be one of the most flexible and easy to use tools of its kind, and if you are looking for a better solution for gathering feedback and getting approval for documents, it is most definitely worth a try.

• 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.