Free Technology? Dream no longer

Written by: Leah Maclean

March 3, 2008

Calm Space - Dreaming about free technology

Having you ever dreamt about getting some new technology but all you could see were dollars signs flashing before your eyes?

Well dream no longer.

The current edition of Wired Chris Anderson talks about “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business” -

It’s now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned.

Some of the businesses jumping on the “freeconomics” bandwagon are technology companies. Here are just a few.

Office Software

For many years we all thought that the only way to have quality “office” software was to fork out the big bikkies for the Microsoft product. You now have an endless number of options for free office-suite applications. Some of the more popular ones include -

OpenOffice - is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and is compatible with all other major office suites (which is a biggie). It has word processing, presentation, spreadsheet, database and drawing applications in built.

Google Docs - provides web-based word processing and spreadsheet applications that you can use alone or collaborate with others across the web.

Zoho Suite - offers an office suite, which includes Writer, Projects, Sheet, CRM, Show, Creator, Wiki, Planner, Suite, Notebook, Chat, Meeting and Mail.

Thunderbird - is the sister product to the Firefox browser (also free). It is a fully featured, secure and highly usable email application, as well as having an inbuilt RSS feed reader. It also filters away junk mail accurately and can be upgraded with many add-ons (also free).

Images - Software & Sharing

Irfanview - is a lightweight, lightning fast image viewer, editor, and processor that is the darling of many web-based business owners.

Picnik - is another image editing application that allows you to tweak, edit and get creative with your images. It has a great range of one-click filters as well as creative tweaks that are normally only found in some of the larger box-based tools.

Picassa - is Google’s free image management application. It allows you to locate and organise all the photos on your computer, edit and add effects and share the images via email or the web.

Animoto - this is one of my favourite web-based applications of 2008. Have a look at the write up that I did about Animoto here. These guys are definitely going somewhere.

Personal Productivity

Remember the Milk - there are a plethora of web-based task managers that have been released in the past couple of years. According to Lifehacker, “Remember the Milk stands head and shoulders above the rest”.

Telecoms

Skype - is my main telecommunications provider and has been for more than 3 years now. It is simple - free calls from one skype user to any other skype user anywhere in the world. You can also have conference calls with up to 10 people. They now have Skype mobile as well - the Skypephone is provided by ‘3′ and lets you call and instant message people on Skype, free wherever they are in the world.

Talkster - You can make free international and long distance calls from your mobile phone, landline, or computer. No registration or credit card is required and you don’t need any new software or downloads to use Talkster’s service. A short advertisement or offer covers the cost of each call without being disruptive to callers.

So what now?

I think that there is enough free technology there to keep you going until at least July I’m interested to know if you have any free favourites. Let me know below.

Leah Maclean - demystifying design and technology for small business women | http://www.thecalmspace.com/about#leah

Comments

4 Responses to “Free Technology? Dream no longer”

angela on March 4th, 2008 10:27 am

I love my free pdf program. I love that I don’t need to know how it works, it just does. The one I use is Cute pdf at http://www.cutepdf.com
karen on March 4th, 2008 1:58 pm

Leah I am amazed at how much free technology stuff there is! I never knew half these things existed. Makes you wonder how the really expensive software is selling these days…

I love Picasa, and this magazine wouldn’t run without Google Calendar so everyone has access to the schedule and themes when they need them. I couldn’t run my business without Skype. And I have you to thank for introducing me to all this wonderful technology…
chris on March 11th, 2008 5:27 pm

Oh Leah I already love Google Docs, Skype, Picasa, and Irfanview.
I’m gonna go explore Remember the Milk right now and Talkster sounds interesting as well.
Another free one I like is for my Palm PDA called HandyShopper.
It allows you to create a shopping list for the supermarket.
I have slowly developed a list of all the things I ever get and I flick through that database tick the ones I want this week and set it to only show those items to me. Then off I go the supermarket. (this will make me sound like an OCD candidate) but you can also set what aisle number the item is in at your local store and then your shopping list is also in order of the aisles!! Yeah I know I’m a bit weird or at least addicted to systems!!
angela on March 11th, 2008 10:17 pm

Not weird at all, Chris. It saves a lot of time, not to mention frustration, if you have your list sorted into aisles. You are not alone.