Lending and borrowing the various stuff in your life can be complicated to keep track of. Even if you're good about it, there's always someone on the other side of the transaction who might need a reminder. ReturnMyPants.com is a site that makes tracking the things you're sharing really simple.

You can start using ReturnMyPants by clicking Lend or Borrow, and then filling out the appropriate info. Let ReturnMyPants know what you're lending, to whom, and for how long, and it does the rest. When you log in, you'll see a list of all the things you're lending and borrowing, with "time remaining" counters and the option to add photos.

RMP can also send out an email to the other party, letting them know the item's being tracked.

So Microsoft has partnered with Yahoo!, and Bing will now provide the heavy lifting when it comes to search. When I read the news this morning, I immediately thought of all the Yahoo bloatware I've seen over the years on certain OEM systems - I won't single out anyone like HP for this.

Live (and now Bing) would have been the default search engine on all these systems, were it not for the Yahoo! bundle. Now, after years of this and Y! Messenger sneaking the Yahoo! toolbar onto the machines of my click-first-and-read-later customers, it looks like Microsoft is going to win back all that search juice.

And the default search engine swap to Yahoo! was perpetrated by more than their own software. Loads of applications - like the non-slim version of CCleaner - come bundled with the toolbar. It all adds up to a big time win for Bing on the desktop.

All without end users lifting a finger to make their own choices. That's important, because many of them weren't paying attention the first time around.

Sharing pictures on FriendFeed is nothing new, but now it's just as easy to share other file types on the popular social network. You can either upload a file on the FriendFeed website, or email it as an attachment to share@friendfeed.com. The feature is intended for stuff like PDFs and spreadsheets, but you can also upload music files like mp3s and m4as.

Mp3s are playable and downloadable on the site, but there's a 3-a-day limit on the number of audio files each user can share. You can't upload movies, and limit on mp3s suggests that media files aren't the main focus here. Based on their blog post, FriendFeed mostly intends this feature for groups who use FriendFeed to collaborate and need to pass files around, and that's how the FriendFeed team has been using it internally.

While Microsoft is taking steps to web-ify its offline office suite, Adobe is joining the crowded field of companies offering web-based office applications. Adobe is buying Virtual Ubiquity, makers of Buzzword, a new online word processor. At the same time, the company is launching a beta of a new document sharing service cleverly titled "Share." (Don't worry that's just an internal codename. Rest assured it will probably be renamed something like "Adobe Share" by the time it's officially launched).

Buzzword was already built using Adobe's Flex environment, which means it runs inside of a web browser using the same Flash player you need to watch YouTube videos. An offline version of Buzzword is expected next year.

It's a full-featured word processor, with support for tables, images, page breaks, and pretty much anything you'd want in a word processor. Well, almost. Apparently it doesn't support hyperlinks, which is a bit baffling. Adobe plans to integrate Buzzword and Share, letting you create documents, store them online and share them with other users.

Eachday is an online location that is a little more personal than your typical social network setting. The free online service allows users to upload photos and text, preserving and sharing a moment in time.

Ok, so now that all the soft and gushy stuff had been layed out, what is this all about? Eachday believes that it is more 'meaningful' that other online storage albums, but what does that mean? Well the way it collects photos for instance. Eachday sorts collections, as it calls them, based on the date the photos were taken using its Memory Stream. So instead of lumping photos all together, memories (photos, videos, audio and text) are stored along a timeline. Allowing for a more realistic approach to photo sharing.

In all, its nothing too extraordinary, but the concept is great. Photo storage and sharing is photo storage and sharing. So when it comes down to the bottom line storage capacity is the number one feature. This just adds a little more feeling to a normally stale digital look at images. But with a limited cap on uploads per day, Eachday is a little disappointing.

Firefox is a great browser 'n all, but if you've been looking for a way to create a manual backup of your bookmarks or - *gasp* - try a different browser on for size, exporting your 'marks might not be the most obvious of processes (by the way: BonEcho in our screenshot is simply an Intel-optimized branch of Firefox). Sure, you can go up to the File menu to import bookmarks, but Export is nowhere to be seen... unless you open the Bookmarks Manager from the Bookmarks menu. That manager is where the File > Export command lives (Mac users: simply make sure that Manager window is front-most when checking the File menu), allowing you to save your bookmarks for backing up, sharing or porting to another browser.

If you're currently using DivShare to store, host and share files you should be pretty excited about this new feature. And if you don't use this DivShare's free service, it could make you want to start.

DivShare launched a Power Uploader application that adds simplicity to the whole uploading process. This new tool provides users with a drag and drop interface with folder tree and file previews for quick and effective uploading of up to 10 files at once.

The uploading tool is a Java Applet and ActiveX Control that provides a pipeline between your hard drive and your DivShare account. Setting for the uploader can be accessed in your main Account page.

There are many different options for sharing content and transferring files between contacts, or between different workspaces.

Egnyte is a relatively new company which provides a content sharing solution with up to 1GB of data that adds organization and search capabilities, as well as a continuous synchronization feature.

To get started with the free service, Egnyte requires you to install an uploader. Emails, word, excel, images, and pdf's can be chosen to be upload and backed up, as well as tagged with keywords creating a fully indexed and searchable online workspace. The data can then be exported onto any computer once it has been backed up. If you care to share files between contacts, specifying files to share can be done by choosing the specific files, choose folders or tags that you want to share.

Egnyte's uploader is available for Mac and PC platforms, and works with Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail and POP enabled mail for email backup and storage.

Coming out of a private beta, Scribd lets users share and store their stuff, because we all have a lot of stuff to share.

Scribd's users can upload Text files, PDF's, MP3's, MS Office files into a public database. Descriptions and tags can than be attached to the ever-growing database of stuff, making it easier for other users to find, categorize, and vote on. Once uploaded, any items can then be embedded as html, or flashpaper documents onto other social networks or websites..

The Scribd site is filled with a ton of, stuff. With everything from Witty mid term answers to beautiful photography. When viewing documents, depending on formats, you have the option of downloading them in PDF, Powerpoint, Word, and Txt formats. You can also choose to listen or download the mp3 files with a built in player through Scribd's text-to-speech.

So what's the purpose of Scribd? Some say it's a text version of YouTube, I'm not so sure yet. It's a giant social network library of miscellaneous things. I guess its now up to the users, and what they want to accomplish with the service. The team has just got a fresh stack of cash from Angel investors to throw towards development.

Photobucket is set to make an announcement that will allow users of its personal media management service -- which stores and shares images and videos -- a way to utilize flash to edit video's online.

The free service is said to be open in beta this month to premium customers, and rolled out to everyone in March. The web based video editor will be timeline based and allow users to mix photos and videos stored in Photobucket with captions, soundtracks, and effects through a drag and drop interface.

Photobucket allows users to upload photo and video content to create interactive collages, scrolling images, slideshows, animated image stamps, share video clips, and buy prints. This new initiative will most likely see its approximately 35 million current users increase drastically to see if the flash based video tool can benefit them.

Vox, a Six Apart blogging community I admittedly am enjoying more and more each day, has just launched a few major new features, the most notable of which is Groups. Vox members can now create public or private groups for sharing anything you can already publish on Vox: posts, pictures, videos, books and more. Group owners can allows others to admin the group, and members can post either directly to the group or by clicking a button on content from their own Vox blog. I went through groups and added myself to a few before penning this post, and I can say that Vox thought this new feature through pretty well during development.


Below each post composition window now is an 'add to group' button, making it easy to publish content simultaneously to your own blog and any relevant groups. A minor gripe, however, is that they don't employ check boxes here; you can only click on one group at a time, though I don't imagine the greater majority will be adding too much content to more than one group at a time.


Also above all posts and other content on your blog (when you're signed in, of course) is a new 'add to group' button, keeping Organize panel (the admin area) visits to a minimum.

The other big feature in this new release is the much-requested ability to create custom banners for your Vox. A post on their new design.vox.com blog specifically designed to help users build the beest banner(s) they can has all the details, but basically: you can create a banner up to 940px x 200px in size, while anything smaller gets aligned to the bottom right. If this feature gets your creative juices flowing though, definitely check out the new Vox Design blog for all the info you need.

So far I love this new feature, though I must also curse Vox in the same breath for making such a cool community even cooler. Vox has been described as 'MySpace for the literate,' and I tend to agree. Pretty soon I'll be furiously refreshing my home page every chance I get, anticipating every new comment and message from readers and my Neighborhood. Thanks a lot, Vox.

There are a lot of file sharing/hosting/storing sites out there. A lot. So one of my first predictable questions for DivShare co-founder David Altschul was of course, "Why use DivShare?" His answer: "DivShare sets itself apart from other free file hosts in a number of distinct ways, most notably in that we offer unlimited uploads and downloads, no waiting lines for files, auto image galleries, no popups or spam, an intuitive member dashboard, and all files stay online forever. Perhaps the biggest reason why bloggers and webmasters should choose DivShare over the other free file hosts is our co-branding options. Blogs can quickly and easily add their name, URL and logo to their hosted file pages via the dashboard. An example of co-branding can be seen here (warning: the link may also start a download - you can cancel it - but it's actually a pretty good song).

I have to admit, everything David says sounds great (files stay online forever?!). But how does it actually perform? Well, the aforementioned song downloaded at an average rate of 550KBps, which isn't bad at all. I uploaded a 10MB video, and though there's no fancy Flash-Ajax upload timer, it took less than 2 minutes to complete. On an upstream-weak cable connection, that's pretty darn good. Since DivShare launched this month, only time will tell if the service remains as excellent as it is right now. Happy uploading!

P.S. You can't upload files larger than 100MB.

If you have many things to remember, and don't want to clutter your desk and computer with a sticky note mess, try out Helipad. Their online hosted note application makes it easy to create notes and tag them with keywords for easy locating. With the free online application you can draft up anything that you normally would in a word processor--all you need is an internet connection. Helipad's auto save timer helps you remember to save your document in intervals you set. It also has support for mobile devices, and in true Web 2.0 fashion, you can share your documents with your friends.

Take a peek at some screenshots of the Helipad interface after the jump.