Nearly everything I use online is free. My email, the software that runs my blog and most of the websites I visit. Most people will tell you that this is how the internet should remain.

Bullshit. Nothing online is free. Every blog costs time, every app costs money and every program is created by someone looking to solve a problem. And we take that completely for granted.

We bitch when something has bugs, we complain when a piece of software can’t do exactly what we want and we moan about downtime. Enough. Support the stuff you use. Give them feedback. Offer to help (which tons of people do with open-source projects).

The plugins that I use automate a ton of things. One in particular scans my posts for related articles I’ve published and recommends them for me. It also connects to blogs by other people that I’ve endorsed as members of my networks. It exposes me and the readers to other opinions on similar topics. This plugin, Arkayne, connects me, for free, to a vast amount of knowledge.

So thank you, Arkayne programmers. Thanks for doing what you do to help make this blog a little smarter and a little more networked.

Thanks for helping make us smarter.

(Arkayne is currently running a contest where one winner is picked at random if they write a post about Arkayne and tweet about it. While I am definitely entering this contest to win an iPod Touch, their mentioning of a prize for a random reviewer made me feel like giving them a thank you for making my blog a little better, prize or no.)