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We all love free. I mean, who doesn't want free stuff? We spend our hard-earned coin on so much these days, and after numerous purchases, we like to get at least a little something for the price of zero.

At HubSpot, we strive to provide a top-notch paid product, but we also like to throw in some things that are -- you guessed it -- free!

This past week was no different, as we launched a boatload of very impressive stock photos for free -- along with some advice on sales processes on the house, complimentary Photoshop tips so you can design like a pro, and even some free expert insights from HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah.

So, set aside some of your free time (clever, right?) today to check out some free, in-depth content that'll make your life easier. Or at least make you sound really smart at the water cooler.

200+ Stock Photos That’ll Put the Cheer in Your Holiday Marketing [Free Download]

Yes -- believe it or not, the holiday season is right around the corner (yes -- I miss summer already as well). While you may not have your travel plans for Thanksgiving or Christmas figured out yet, there's something we offered this past week that can make your holidays considerably brighter: more than 200 holiday stock photos -- all for free. 'Tis the season to rejoice, marketers. Enjoy :)

Writing Code and Content Your Customers Love

"Delight" is a term used all the time at HubSpot. The term was used often by our co-founder, Dharmesh Shah, at INBOUND 2013 back in August, and in his latest post for Inbound Hub, Dharmesh highlights customer delight tips from fellow panelists he's seen present at the Business of Software conferences in years past. Check out the wise words from these esteemed business minds.

30 Keyboard Shortcuts to Help You Photoshop Like a Pro

Photoshop: It's the best friend of some marketers, while it scares the you-know-what out of others. Trying to design on it can be time-consuming for many pros ... that is, if they don't know the numerous keyboard shortcuts for the software. With the latest post from our own Ginny Soskey, you can learn all of the easy (and immensely helpful) shortcuts for Photoshop that can help you create and alter images in record time.

How to Calculate the Lifetime Value of Ecommerce Customers

Ever wonder how much your customers are worth? If you're an ecommerce marketer or business owner, you can get the answer. Learn how to do the sometimes-complicated LTV calculation in this how-to blog post that'll add a little helpful math to your marketing repertoire.

The Quick and the Dead: Why Responsiveness Matters in Sales

Speed is an essential component to be a successful salespeson. The quicker salespeople get in touch with leads, the more likely they are to engage them accordingly and convert them. Learn from guest contributor Mark Gibson why it's vital for salespeople to get in touch with prospects early and often to be the closer they want to be.

What was the most interesting thing you learned this week on Inbound Hub? What do you want to see more of? Leave your feedback in the comments!

Image credit: Ken Hawkins

Earlier this week in Indonesia, a driver of one of Google’s Street View cars, which travel the world capturing current pictures of their surroundings for the company’s mapping services, hit two minivans and a truck before being detained by police, the AFP reported. The man was apparently afraid of the cost of the first incident, and fled. Pictures of the banged-up Google-branded Subaru can be found here.

An anonymous reader writes "Professors at the Ohio State University are embracing MOOCs, with a Massive Open Online Calculus Course — it is completely open source; everything is on github. There is are free videos, free online assessment system, and a free textbook!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year, home improvement company HomeAdvisor.com underwent a monumental rebranding effort that included switching more than 10 million URLS from their previous company name to their new brand. With over $200 million in revenue at risk and thirteen years worth of online brand equity,...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Turns out hashtags were only the beginning. Now, Facebook is testing another Twitterish staple: Trending Topics.

The social network is trying out a feature on its mobile site that populates a topic other Facebookers are talking about, as reported byAllThingsD. Users can click on the topic, and up will pop information from friends talking about the subject, as well as comments and posts from people they aren't friends with.

Trending Topics is currently in beta testing with a small number of U.S. users, Facebook said in a statement sent to TechCrunch.

The feature is in very early testing, the statement noted, and the FB team will share more "if we decide to roll it out more widely."

Search this graph

The Facebook crew isn't just tracing Twitter's footsteps today. The company is also expanding Graph Search, launching it for anyone who has U.S. English set as their language.

So if you've been dying to search for "Friends of friends who live nearby and like playing tennis," and you're a U.S. English speaker/reader/user today is your lucky day.

Facebook also noted that it is starting to retire the "who can look up my timeline by name" setting. Hasta la vista, as they say.

• What's old is now new in the News Feed. Read on to see what we mean.

David Howard, corporate attorney for Microsoft:

We think it’s clear that Google just doesn’t want Windows Phone users to have the same experience as Android and Apple users, and that their objections are nothing other than excuses. Nonetheless, we are committed to giving our users the experience they deserve, and are happy to work with Google to solve any legitimate concerns they may have. In the meantime, we once again request that Google stop blocking our YouTube app.

Open always wins.

Netflix Profiles have finally gone live on the service, with up to five allowed in each household.

Profiles has been one of the most-requested features for the streaming service for some time now - TechRadar exclusively revealed back in 2012 that Netflix was looking into offering multiple accounts.

Netflix is hoping that by offering up individual accounts it will mean that its recommendations will be, well, more personal.

The new feature will be added to the service for no additional cost and users will be able to choose their own avatars to give their profiles the personal touch.

Given that this feature has been a long time coming, TechRadar asked Eddy Wu, director of product innovation, why the wait?

He explained: "We have acknowledged [the profile] problem for some time but wanted to get it right. We worked on the profiles in-house for nine months, then launched it on to a public test."

Testing times

To make sure that the version of profiles that's being released was as good as it could be, Wu explained that myriad versions of the feature were built and offered to the public as testers.

"We built five versions of profiles, blindly allocated them to customers and then sat back and saw the results come in. We wanted to see whether they would use the features we were offering."

Although Netflix profiles are rolling out today – Wii users will have to wait a few months and there's no word on Android unfortunately – it may take up to two weeks for everyone to get them.

Once they arrive, you will be able allocate a Facebook account to each one, something Wu hopes will bolster Netflix's social side.

"Social definitely has a role to play with our recommendation systems," notes Wu.

"Netflix by itself is already powerful as we have strong recommendations. But social gives us an extra flavour as we see that individuals see what people have been watching, which makes it more of a communal experience."

As for Netflix Kids, TechRadar has been assured that this won't disappearing even though children can also have profiles.

"Having profiles will make Netflix Kids easier to use," said Wu. "We need kids to have a safe place on Netflix and profiles will help us achieve this."

Look closely at the moves of the three main consumer operating system vendors. Each has become infatuated toward expanding into a new area from its strength among the landscape of hardware, software and service. For Microsoft, which has long been strong in software and has gained strength in services, its clearly tablets (as a broader hardware beachhead), or at least in defending its PC franchise from them. For Google, which was born on services, its software via its operating systems and -- to a lesser extent -- hardware where its Nexus brands and Motorola acquisition are areas of growing relative importance. And for Apple, which has made its name tightly integrating hardware and software, services have become critically important.

Apple's track record with services has mostly been one of struggle. It tried to launch cloud offerings even before they were called that. Rising from the pre-Jobs ashes of eWorld, Apple introduced iTools, then .Mac, then MobileMe and then finally back to the "i" convention with iCloud.

iCloud started mostly as a simple shuttling service for documents. iTunes then jumped into the cloud with the the undramatically named "iTunes in the Cloud" (paralleling "Documents in the Cloud") and iTunes Match. Apple also saw success in the cloud with iMessage. Things seemed to be going well until the arrival of Apple Maps, the makeshift attempt to build independence from Google Maps justified by many features that Google Maps would soon add and for which Apple apologized.

The Maps fiasco, though, hasn't shaken the company's resolve. Later this year, it's pressing ahead with two new cloud services -- iTunes Radio and iCloud Keychain. The former, a competitor to services such as Pandora, Slacker and iHeartRadio, is a natural move for a company that has owned such a franchise in music for which consumers are now turning to streaming services. It will complement and feed the pay-as-you-go model of iTunes.

Extrapolating OS X's Keychain feature across Apple devices, iCloud Keychain will not only remember your password for you but even suggest hard-to-remember ones. It addresses a real problem in the days where many Web sites seem to have different rules for password generation and an email address change may lock you out of a site forever, but it's also one that has been attacked in the marketplace by offerings such as 1Password and LastPass.

The availability of passwords -- particularly ones that have been automatically generated and are thus impossible to remember without the service being available -- will place a new burden of reliability on the company's services. It would represent a big leap of faith for consumers requiring great trust in Apple that faces tough timing given the recent controversy over NSA inquiries as well as painting a bullseye on iCloud among black-hat hackers. The company assures that all iCloud Keychain information will be encrypted and that the passwords will not be tied to a person's Apple ID. This way, even someone who gets access to a stolen iOS device won't be able to unlock an iCloud Keychain master password.

Still, Apple seems in a position to integrate with hardware and build in a fingerprint reader or some other biometrics to further differentiate and secure this particular cloud service. After all, unlike many consumer cloud services such as Pandora, Netflix, Dropbox and OnLive, it's Apple's focus on its own customers as opposed to Internet users at large that set it apart.

Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin.

Reality Absorption Field: Apple's cloud comeback originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 01 Aug 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NobleSavage writes "We all knew it was just a matter of time. With the rush to put more and more appliances on-line Japanese toilet-maker Satis, one of Japan's largest commode companies, has finally networked the toilet. Just as you would have predicted, the information security company Trustwave Holdings has published an advisory regarding Satis-brand toilets. According to Trustwave, every Satis toilet has the same hard-coded Bluetooth PIN, which means any person using the 'My Satis' [Android] application can control any Satis toilet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.