Free Stuff --- Freeware, Open Source Software, And More!!!
This is a list of some of my favorite freebies including free or open source software downloads and also online software products/services that are available!
Lulu is a killer resource for self-publishing books. They have professional options, a popular store, and connections with Amazon. But, they don't stop there. They also enable you to publish artwork, posters, music, ringtones, fonts, movies, ebooks, etc. It's a great way to go if you're just starting out and want to sell your creations to the rest of the world. Lulu offers some great tools to format your digital content, and a powerful marketplace with storefronts and advanced listing. Lulu is the eBay of self-publishing, and a valuable resource.
Blurb is a great site that makes self-publishing easy for anybody who wants to create Photo Books, Portfolios, Business Books, Wedding Books, Blog Books, and much more. They offer free downloads of their software that simplifies the process of layout and design. Users can create a book for free and sell it in the Blurb at the base price or higher amounts to turn a profit. Blurb books are popular as gifts, and they are great for first-time authors.
Bryce is a powerful piece of software that is capable of generating natural looking landscapes in 3d formats. Daz offers version 5.5 for download at Download.com. Upgrades to the latest version are usually inexpensive. Visit the Mac download page, or visit the Windows download page.
If you are serious about buying and selling on Ebay, the free Ebay Desktop application is a must have. It provides a centralized dashboard where you can search feeds, item reminders, and persistent filters as well as get outbid alerts and eliminate the need to refresh during the last-minute of an auction!
Adobe Kuler is a designer's dream. It's a powerful color picking program that you can use online at http://kuler.adobe.com/ or download and run on your computer as a desktop application or dashboard widget.
Free 411, SMS, YouTube, Google Maps Mobile, and more. With the development of a new mobile platform on its way, Google has introduced some powerful, free apps for mobile phones and devices. These are already extremely useful tools and are quickly becoming staples for gadget gurus everywhere.
Google Earth has been the ultimate advance in home-based exploration and geographical study from day 1. Stargazers and astronomers will appreciate the new 'Sky' features in Google Earth for exploring images of stars, planets, and galaxies. Google also has a project dubbed Google Mars http://www.google.com/mars/ where you can view some of the most detailed maps of the red planet available.
Expand your horizons with the power to read other languages. With Google's Language Tools, you can get translations of text blocks or complete web page translations. You can also get the Google interface in your native language or visit the Google sites for numerous countries and do country specific searches.
Blogger is Google's free Blog service and is an ideal way for simple people to accomplish the complex task of online publishing. With advanced tools and the ability to completely customize templates and even host blogs on your own server, the tool has become a powerful web builder and content management system that can be utilized by professionals as well.
Google Notebook is an amazing tool that is perfect for storing ideas for future reference, storing information from web clippings that you don't want to lose, organizing your thoughts, link lists, research, and trying to just keep up with all the new stuff that is happening. It is a vital resource for anyone who is trying to learn anything and who has a less than photographic memory. Notes are easily categorized, nested, and organized. And, thanks to Google's robust search technology, it's almost impossible to lose anything. Another valuable component of Google Notebook is the auto-save capabilities. Even your deleted items are still available in the Trash until you empty it. The software is smart and very easy to use. Get organized with Google Notebook!
Google Docs is a powerful online suite of office tools including a word processor, spreadsheet editor, and a presentation builder. This is one of the best free office suites available anywhere, and it integrates well with Gmail. Not too many people know this, but you can launch these tools from the 'Documents' link in the top menu of your Gmail account. Google Docs is compatible with major document and presentation formats including .doc, .xls, .ppt, as well as open-source formats that can be used with Open Office. One of the best new features is the ability to easily create click-through presentations that can be embedded in web pages and blogs complete with a simple player. This can be used to create e-cards for your Mom's birthday or a presentation for your boss. You really will want to check it out. To give the presentations tool a try, just navigate to NEW >> PRESENTATION and begin having fun!
Gmail is fast, searchable email with intense spam reduction. The Calendar system works great and has the ability to send you reminders. And, the chat system is very clean and unobtrusive. It's really nice to be able to chat with friends while checking your email and without having to open a separate program.
The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life. If you haven't tried Firefox, now is the time to give it a go. The utilities are incredible, and there are countless developers creating great extensions that make Firefox a truly spectacular tool. Browse the expanding list of extensions!
FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. After it installs, FireFTP is available in the 'Tools' menu within Firefox. This package is very useful for anyone who needs to transfer files to an FTP account.
GENERATE your own Favorites Icon for your website. Favicon Generator converts images on your hard drive to favicons in the .ico format. It's simple, free, and easy to use!
FatFreeCart is the free version of E-junkie shopping cart. It works inside your website, your blog and will even work from your MySpace page. It is simply a copy-paste cart and does not require you to register with us or install anything.It works with PayPal and Google Checkout. It supports product variations, shipping, handling and sales tax.
Celtx is the world's first fully integrated solution for media pre-production and collaboration. It replaces old fashioned 'paper, pen & binder' media creation with a digital approach to writing and organizing that's more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share. Celtx is for film, theatre, radio, and AV professionals.
RSSOwl lets you gather, organize, update, and store information from any compliant source in a convenient, easy to use interface, save selected information in various formats for offline viewing and sharing, and much more. It's easy to configure, available in many many languages and the best of all: It's platform-independent.
Señor Staff is an open-source music composition app for Mac OS X. It is a good companion to GarageBand because it allows users to edit and save midi files. It features a staff-based interface (rather than a tracker interface) for natural entry and readability, and supports playback to any MIDI device.
WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows. Legacy SCP protocol is also supported. Its main function is safe copying of files between a local and a remote computer or server. It also has code editing capabilities and can launch Putty as a terminal client.
Lightning is a great addition to Thunderbird. It makes Thunderbird a more robust replacement for Outlook because it adds the ability to accept appointments via email and manage a calendar in Thunderbird. Sunbird is a standalone calendaring system that is good for personal scheduling.
Smultron is a free text editor for Mac OS X which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to not confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. It also integrates well as an editor for Cyberduck.
Cyberduck is an open source FTP and SFTP (SSH Secure File Transfer) browser licenced under the GPL with an easy to use interface, integration with external editors and support for many Mac OS X system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, the Keychain and AppleScript. It works great with Smultron.
A complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for "new view") makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.
FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of MindManager because of one-click "fold / unfold" and "follow link" operations. It can publish vector or bitmap images that can be used in Photoshop or Illustrator.
Probably the best free desktop video player out there, VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
iSquint is an iPod video conversion app for Mac OS X. It's many times faster than QuickTime Pro, works with almost all popular video formats, and it's infinitely free-er. It's also really easy. Just drag in your file, and click Start.
Daz Studio is a very powerful 3D figure poser, and the best part about it is that it's free. You can pose, light, and animate your figures in 3D space. Then, you can render detailed images or video right on your desktop computer. Daz also offers a variety of downloadable 3D models and other content in their store.
trueSpace3 is a 3D tool which Computer Graphics Magazine described as: "a remarkable program that stands out for its modeless interface...there's no question that at a suggested retail price of $795, this program delivers value that is tough to beat." Now you can have this remarkable 3D authoring tool for free!
OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. Components include: Writer (Documents), Impress (Presentations), Math , Draw (Flowcharts/Graphics), Calc (Spreadsheets), and Base (Databases).
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. It has some very cool tools, and can be very effective in graphic design work.
SketchUp is one of the simplest 3D programs to learn, and Google offers a free version! It is perfect for doing simple architectural renderings and layouts. Even the kids will love this one because of its ease of use. The free version can render architectural style sketches, and is very cool.
7-Zip is open source software. Most of the source code is under the GNU LGPL license. The unRAR code is under a mixed license: GNU LGPL + unRAR restrictions. 7-Zip is a Windows application, but there are unofficial versions for Mac OS X and Linux.
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. It is simple and easy to learn. Just be sure you get the LAME encoder for making MP3's.
Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. Its interface is tough to learn at first. But, after some hours with video tutorial instruction or books it becomes a very valuable asset to your personal production pipeline.
GIMP is the leading photo editor in the open source world. It works like other (proprietary) raster editors including Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paintshop Pro and Microsoft Paint. You can learn more about the software and even download a copy at http://gimp.org.
Lulu is a killer resource for self-publishing books. They have professional options, a popular store, and connections with Amazon. But, they don't stop there. They also enable you to publish artwork, posters, music, ringtones, fonts, movies, ebooks, etc. It's a great way to go if you're just starting out and want to sell your creations to the rest of the world. Lulu offers some great tools to format your digital content, and a powerful marketplace with storefronts and advanced listing. Lulu is the eBay of self-publishing, and a valuable resource.
