Two amazing things available through the magic of the web that are cheering me up at the moment are Spotify and Quake Live.

Spotify is a cross-platform music player that streams tunes to your computer from its own servers. You type in an artist's name and back comes a list of all the tracks they have in their system. A double-click later and you're listening to a track of your choosing. You can create and share playlists and share links to tracks provided the person you're sharing with has signed up too. The free version is punctuated by advertising messages but paid accounts are available. I'd be happy to hand Spotify details of my entire iTunes library and, provided they achieved an 80% plus match to tunes I already had then I'd sign up. One day we'll have consistently fast data connections everywhere and local file storage will be a quaint relic of a bygone era.

Quake Live is essentially Quake 3 but accessible through your web browser. It's only available on Windows / Explorer / Firefox setups at the moment. I cannot believe the original game came out in 1999. Given I remember Wolfenstein and Doom when they first came out I feel old. Still, mulitplayer Quake is fantastic and I like this pure pick up and play version with persistent statistics.

Isn't it great that these things are essentially free?