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12 Days Of Christmas Gifts For Your Computer
by Bonnie Boots
December 25th,
the day on which retailers traditionally celebrate the biggest
selling season of the year, will soon be here. And this year, with
the world economy in decline, the retailer’s urgings that we “Buy,
buy, BUY!” seem especially intense.
Alas, those
commanding messages fall on ears deafened by news of bank
closings, job losses and big bailouts. And some are predicting this
could be the year the Grinch finally wins the battle against
Christmas. There will be no joy in Whoville, they say, if our credit
cards are taken away.
Humbug! I say
you can have a fine holiday without spending a single Who-cent. And
I’ll prove it by mapping out 12 totally free gifts you can give
yourself, one for each of the 12 Days Of Christmas. I’ve picked out
tools that will be of particular interest to people making digital
products and doing their own internet marketing.
Let others run
from store to store, fretting over the rising cost of partridges and
the plummeting availability of pear trees. You’ll be safe at home,
snuggled up to a warm laptop as you download these totally free and
fabulous gifts for your computer:
On the First
Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
Mozilla Firefox Version 3.
Yes, I know
Microsoft almost forces you to use Internet Explorer. But
it’s your computer, isn’t it? You pay the bills? You show ‘em
who’s boss and switch to a web browser that’s focused on giving you
control, not taking it away from you.I began
using Firefox because it’s more secure than IE. But what I’ve come
to particularly like about Firefox 3 is the massive
library of add-on programs that can take your browsing
experience
from simple to spectacular. Add-ons are helpful little applications
that increase the number of things you can do with a browser.
For
example,
Hyperwords is aFirefox browser plug-in
that renders any text on any Web page clickable. Highlight a word or phrase, and a pop-up menu
lets you submit the highlighted text to search engines, reference
sites, online merchants, and more.
Categories for
add-ons include ways to manage bookmarks, RSS feeds and news as well as photos, music, videos and much more. The
library lets you search through hundreds of candidates (most have
user ratings to help you choose) so there’s bound to be something to
fill your ever want and need.
On the Second
Day of Christmas, the internet gave to me
Windows Movie Maker
You’ve surely
noticed that video is all the rage on the web and cameras that allow
you to shoot and upload directly to sites like YouTube are hot. But
once you’ve gotten past the thrill of seeing your first shaky
efforts online, you’ll undoubtedly begin to yearn for a way to make
your presentations a little more polished.
That’s when you need a
video editing tool. And amazing as it seems, Microsoft want to give
you one for fre! With Windows Movie Maker 2 you can create movies
using drag and drop commands, as well as edit your footage so only
your best scenes make it online. Windows Movie Maker helps you share
your video on the web, in email or on a CD.
Spielberg isn’t going to
edit his next opus on Windows Movie Maker, but if you’re just
getting started in video, this very respectable editor will give you
everything you want for free!
On the Third
Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
Mozilla SeaMonkey.
Want a cool,
all-in-one tool for all your internet activities? Mozilla’s
SeaMonkey is an open-source, does-it-all internet application
suite. It comprises a web browser, advanced email and newsgroup
client, IRC chat client and HTML editor all in one application. It
even lets you sync your address book to PDA’s.
Because it’s open
source, volunteer developers are always working to make SeaMonkey
better. If you’re tired of opening all sorts of programs and trying
to get them to work with one another, you’re probably a good
candidate for SeaMonkey.
On the
Fourth Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
WordWeb. If you spend as much time writing as I do, then
give yourself the gift of WordWeb for Windows. With one click, this
handy utility provides an English-language dictionary and a
thesaurus that work in any application on your computer.
It works
off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia. To use it, simply highlight a word and
press Ctrl-Alt-W (or click the taskbar icon) to get a definition,
synonyms, and other information.
On the Fifth
Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
OpenOffice Impress Presentation Software. Microsoft’s
PowerPoint
is probably the most widely-known slide presentation software, but
it comes in a pricey package. I much prefer the Impress presentation
software that comes as a part of the free OpenOffice Suite, and not
just because it’s no-cost. This outstanding freeware
outperforms PowerPoint in several ways. It's truly built to Impress!
For
starters, it can handle all sorts of multi-media, 2D and 3d clip
art, special effects and animation. It comes equipped with
high-impact drawing tools and even handy tools like color eyedropper
and cropper mean you don’t have to open an image editor to make
simple alterations. Impress lets you export simple slide shows to
Flash, which is so handy when you want to put your slide show on
your web page. (When I tested an older version, it couldn’t export
animations, but this may have changed..) The nice folks at
Presentation Helper even have
a set of free templates to use with Impress.
If you needed
one more reason you should dump Microsoft’s overpriced packages and
download OpenOffice, Impress may just be the tipping point!
On the
Sixth Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
Ta-Da Lists. Ta-da Lists bills itself
as the web’s easiest to-do list tool and I bill it as one of the
best ways for anyone that lives mostly online to stay organized.
Make as many lists Ta-Da Lists as you like, for all the things you
need to do.
A little check box appears in front of each item. When
you finish a task, just check it off . It’s very satisfying—and
motivating!- to see those little check marks building up in your
list. You can access your Ta-Da Lists from your browser or iPhone.
Keep your lists private or share them with friends for collaborative
efforts.
On the
Seventh Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
FreeMind –free mind mapping software. People who study how
the brain gets creative say mind mapping is one of the best ways to
eek out and organize new ideas. FreeMind mimics the way your brain
actually organizes things—not in a linear row of folders, but in a
free-form outline that looks much like the head of a tree.
Branches
of ideas give birth to nodes and sub nodes. Each node can contain
text, images, icons and special formatting. You'll find it very
useful for taking those random flashes of inspiration and plotting
out their path to becoming profitable new products.
On the
Eighth Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
Audacity
Despite the fact that I have a Mac full of pricey
audio and video tools my average workday finds me on my PC where
Audacity is my tool of choice for recording and editing audio.
This
simple sound-file editor can import audio files in a variety of
formats and can export them as .wav, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis files. It’s
perfect for recording making your own audio products. Or use it as I
do, to record webinars that won’t be available as a download. I
simply make my own recording and time-shift my listening to a more
convenient hour.
If you hanker
for more complex audio experiences, open-source Audacity has
a large community of users providing all sorts of add-on filters.
On the Ninth
Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
Revo Uninstaller.
Revo
Uninstaller is simply the best way to uninstall and remove unwanted
programs from your computer. If you normally use the Windows “Add or
Remove Programs” control panel, then you've unknowingly left lots of bits and pieces of old programs laying around your hard
drive like dust bunnies. And you’ve probably run across programs
that Windows can’t uninstall, so you end up just leaving them to eat
up valuable space on your drive.
Revo Uninstaller is faster, more
thorough and powerful approach to removing unwanted programs. And
it’s very easy to use.
On the
Tenth Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
HandBrake, an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform,
multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Say—whaaa? No,
I don’t understand half of that description either. All you really
need to know is that HandBreak is a free program that lets you put a
DVD in your computer’s DVD player and have the contents of the disc
stored on your hard drive in a format that can be read by almost any
media player. Great for the traveler that wants to watch their own
movies without dragging their DVD’s along on the trip.
On the Eleventh
Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me
Pandora Internet Radio
Life can’t be
all about work. There must be music as well! That’s why I like
Pandora. It’s a radical new idea in radio stations. Pandora only
plays music you like! No, it’s not psychic. You simply type in the
name of a song, composer or artist you like and Pandora will make
suggestions for other tunes that have similar qualities.
Somewhat
like Amazon’s “may we suggest,” Pandora’s suggestions are based on
selections made by people sharing your taste. Register to create
your own stations that can be accessed anywhere, any time. Pandora
will spoil you for all other radio stations.( Because of copyright
issues, Pandora is currently only available in the U.S. )
On the
Twelfth Day of Christmas,
the internet gave to me enough
Google tools for Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet,
Cupid, Donder and Blitzen,Rudolph, the Grinch,
Cindy-Lou Who and even YOU!
If you’re the last person on the planet
without a Google account, go get one now. Don’t make me come and
find you. Google makes more great applications available for free
than any other single source I know of.
The list of
Google products is so extensive it’s hard to get a handle on
them. I’m indebted to the users of WikiPedia for building this list.
It’s a jaw dropper—sure to keep you busy through all the days of
Christmas and well into the New Year!
Desktop
products
Standalone
applications
Desktop
application to manage a
Google AdWords account. The application allows users to make
changes to their account and advertising campaigns before
synchronising with the online service.
Open source web
browser.
Desktop search application, that indexes e-mails, documents,
music, photos, chats, Web history and other files. It allows the
installation of Google Gadgets.
Virtual globe
that uses satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS over a 3D
globe.
-
Gmail/Google Notifier
(Mac OS X, Windows 2000/XP)
Alerts the user
of new messages in their
Gmail account.
3D animated
Chat program. This service will be closed on December 31st 2008.
Collection of
computer applications -- some Google-created, some not -- including
Google Earth,
Google Desktop,
Picasa,
Google Talk,
StarOffice and
Mozilla Firefox.
Slideshow
screensaver as part of Google Pack, which displays images
sourced from a
hard disk, or through
RSS and
Atom Web feeds.
Photo
organization and editing application, providing photo library
options and simple effects.
-
Picasa Web
Albums Uploader
(Mac OS X)
An application
to help uploading images to the "Picasa
Web Albums" service It consists of both an
iPhoto plug-in and a stand-alone application.
VPN client for
Google WiFi users, whose equipment does not support
WPA or
802.1x protocols
-
SketchUp
[(Mac OS X and Windows 2000/Windows XP)
Simple 3D
sketching program with unique dragging interface and direct
integration with Google Earth.
Application for
VoIP and
instant messaging. It consists of both a service and a client
used to connect to the service, which uses the
XMPP protocol.
-
Visigami
(Mac OS X Leopard)
Image search
application screen saver that searches files from
Google Images,
Picasa and
Flickr.
Uses various
caching technologies to increase load speed of web pages.
Desktop
extensions
These
products created by Google are extensions to
software created by other organizations.
-
Blogger Web
Comments
(Firefox
only)
Displays
related comments from other
Blogger users.
Collection of
mini-applications including
Gmail,
Blogger and Search History.
A browser
plug-in that enables development of off-line browser applications.
Input Method Editor that is used to convert
Chinese
Pinyin characters, which can be entered on Western-style
keyboards, to Chinese characters.
Allows users to
send text messages to their mobile phone (US only) about web
content.
Web browser toolbar with features such as a Google Search box,
phishing protection, pop-up blocker as well as the ability for
website owners to create buttons.
Mobile products
]
Online mobile products
These
products can be accessed through a
browser on a mobile device or a standard desktop web browser
such as
Firefox.
Only available
on some US networks. Allows you to post to your
Blogger blog from a mobile device.
Read a list of
all
Google Calendar events from a mobile device. There is also the
option to quickly add events to your personal calendar.
Access a Gmail
account from a mobile device using a standard mobile
web browser. Alternatively, Google provides a specific mobile
application to access and download Gmail messages quicker.
Access
Google News on a mobile device using a simpler interface
compared to the full online application.
Makes any web
page mobile-friendly.
Simple version
of
iGoogle - you must visit the information page to choose which
modules to display on your personal mobile version as not all
modules are compatible.
Updated version
of the previous Froogle Mobile
View
Google Reader on a mobile device.
Search web
pages, images, local listings and mobile-specific web pages through
the Google search engine. If a webpage is not tailored for a mobile
device Google will provide a simple text version of the webpage
generated using an algorithm.
Lets you view
photo albums that you have stored online.
View and add
notes to your Google Notebook
Downloadable
mobile products
These
products must be
downloaded and run from a mobile device.
A downloadable
application that has many advantages over accessing Gmail through a
web interface on a mobile such as the ability to interact with Gmail
features including labels and archiving. Requires a properly
configured Java Virtual Machine, which is not available by default
on some platforms (such as Palm's Treo).
Mobile
application for viewing maps on a mobile device, available for
BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, J2ME and Palm OS smartphones or
any phone with a properly configured Java Virtual Machine.
-
Mobile
Updater
(BlackBerry only)
Keeps all
Google mobile products up-to-date. Also allows installation or
uninstallation of these products.
Synchronizes a
BlackBerry calendar with multiple Google calendars using a Google
Account.
VoIP
application exclusively for BlackBerry smartphones.
A downloadable
application for viewing YouTube videos on selected devices.
Web products
These
products must be accessed via a
Web browser.
Advertising
Advertisement program for
Website owners. Adverts generate revenue on either a per-click
or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis, and are adverts shown are from
AdWords users, depending on which adverts are relevant.
Google's
flagship advertising product, and main source of revenue. AdWords
offers
pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising
for both text and
banner ads.
-
AdWords
Website Optimizer
Integrated
AdWords tool for testing different website content, in order to gain
to the most successful advertising campaigns.
Radio
advertising program for US businesses. Google began to roll this
product out on
15 May
2007 through its existing AdWords interface.
Calling system
so users can call advertisers for free at Google's expense from
search results pages.
Internet ad
serving provider.
Scheme for
non-profit organizations to benefit from free Cost-Per-Click
advertising on the AdWords network.
CPM-driven
television advertising scheme available on a trial basis,
currently aimed towards professional advertisers, agencies and
partners.
Communication &
Publishing
Google 3D
Warehouse is an online service that hosts
3D models of existing objects, locations (including buildings)
and vehicles created in
Google SketchUp by the aforementioned application's users. The
models can be downloaded into Google SketchUp by other users or
Google Earth.
Custom
domain and service integration service for businesses,
enterprise and education, featuring Gmail and other Google products.
Weblog publishing tool. Users can create a custom,
hosted blogs with features such as photo publishing, comments,
group blogs, blogger profiles and mobile-based posting with little
technical knowledge.
Free online
calendar. It includes a unique "quick add" function which allows
users to insert events using natural language input. Other features
include
Gmail integration and calendar sharing. It is similar to those
offered by
Yahoo! and
MSN.
Document,
spreadsheet and presentation application, with document
collaboration and publishing capabilities.
Social
networking site built specifically for use on mobile phones. Users
text their location to the service, which then notifies them of
crushes, friends, friends' friends and interesting venues nearby.
News feed management services, including feed traffic analysis
and advertising facilities.
Google Friend Connect
Mini-applications designed to display information or provide a
function in a succinct manner. Available in Universal or Desktop
format.
-
Gmail
(Also known as Google Mail)
Free
Webmail IMAP and POP e-mail service provided by Google, known
for its abundant storage and advanced interface. It was first
released in an invitation-only form on
April 1,
2004. Mobile access and Google Talk integration is also
featured.
Free voice
communications product that includes a
POTS telephone number. It includes a follow-me service that
allows the user to forward their GrandCentral phone number to
simultaneously ring up to 6 other phone numbers. It also features a
unified
voice mail service.
-
iGoogle
(Previously Google Personalized Homepage)
Customizable
homepage, which can contain
Web feeds and Google Gadgets, launched in May 2005. It was
renamed to iGoogle on
April 30,
2007 (previously used internally by Google).
Web clipping
application for saving online research. The tool permits users to
clip text, images, and links from pages while browsing, save them
online, access them from any computer, and share them with others.
Communicate and
interact in a virtual world, this new beta was launched on
July 9,
2008.
Jaiku is mobile
micro blogging and presence service.
A knol is an
authoritative article about a specific topic.
Web conferencing software, used internally by Google's
employees. Google acquired the software from creator
Marratech on
April 19, 2007. Google has not yet stated what it will do with
the product.
Social networking service, where users can list their personal
and professional information, create relationships amongst friends
and join communities of mutual interest. In November 2006, Google
opened Orkut registration to everyone, instead of being invitation
only.
Webpage-publishing program, which can be used to create pages and to
host them on Google's servers.
Online photo
sharing, with integration with the main Picasa program.
Web-based
news aggregator, capable of reading
Atom and
RSS feeds. It allows the user to search, import and subscribe to
feeds. The service also embeds audio
enclosures in the page. Major revisions to Google Reader were
made in October 2006.
-
Sites
(Previously Jotspot)
Website
creation tool for private or public groups, for both personal and
corporate use.
Web page
sharing system, incorporating a Share
bookmarklet to share pages, as well as a page for viewing the
most popular shared items. Pages can also be shared through third
party applications, such as
del.icio.us or
Facebook.
Launched
September 2008, allows users to create and subscribe to channels
over SMS. Channels can be based on
RSS feeds.
- Questions
and Answers (Google Russia Only)
Community-driven knowledge market website. Launched on June 26, 2007
that allows users to ask and answer questions posed by other users.
[1]
Popular free
video sharing Web site
which lets users upload, view, and share
video clips. In October
2006,
Google, Inc., announced
that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion
USD in Google's stock. The
deal closed on
13 November
2006.
Development
Open Source
mobile phone
platform developed by the
Open Handset Alliance
A
tool that allows developers to write and run web applications.
Google's site for developers interested in Google-related
development. The site contains
Open Source code and lists
of their
API services. Also provides
project hosting for any
free and open source software.
Web
Mashup creation with publishing facilities, as well as syntax
highlighting and debugging.
A set
of common APIs for building social applications on many websites.
Allows developers to create custom search results that Google users
can add to their search pages.
Sitemap submission and analysis for the
Sitemaps protocol. Renamed
from Google Sitemaps to cover broader features, including query
statistics and
robots.txt analysis.
An
open source Java software development framework that allows web
developers to create Ajax applications in Java.
Mapping
Mapping service that indexes streets and displays satellite and
street-level imagery, providing driving directions and local
business search.
Imagery of Mars using the Google Maps interface. Elevation, visible
imagery and infrared imagery can be shown. It was released on
March 13,
2006, the anniversary of
the birth of astronomer
Percival Lowell.
NASA
imagery of the moon through the Google Maps interface. It was
launched on
July 20,
2005, in honor of the first
manned
Moon landing on
July 20,
1969.
An
Internet tool for viewing the stars and galaxies, you can now access
this tool through a browser version of "Google Sky".
Taxi,
limousine and shuttle search service, using real time position of
vehicles in 14 US cities. Ride Finder uses the
Google Maps interface and
cooperates with any car service that wishes to participate.
Public transport trip planning through the
Google Maps interface.
Google Transit was released on
December 7,
2005, and is now fully
integrated with Google Maps.
Search
Search engine for the blind and visually impaired. It prioritises
usable and
accessible web sites in the
search results, so the user incurs minimal distractions when
browsing.
E-mail notification service, which sends alerts based on chosen
search terms, whenever there are new results. Alerts include web
results,
Groups results news, and
video.
Google submission database, that enables content owners to submit
content, have it hosted and make it searchable. Information within
the database is organized using attributes.
Weblog search engine, with
a continuously-updated search index. Results include all blogs, not
just those published through Blogger. Results can be viewed and
filtered by date.
Search engine for the full text of printed books. Google scans and
stores in its digital database. The content that is displayed
depends on the arrangement with the publishers, ranging from short
extracts to entire books.
Search engine for over 6,600 print catalogs, which are acquired
through
Optical character recognition.
Online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at
simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. Webmasters
can choose to implement Google Checkout as a form of payment.
Search engine for programming code found on the Internet.
Collection of links arranged into hierarchical subcategories. The
links and their categorization are from the
Open Directory Project, but
are sorted using
PageRank.
Navigation directory, specifically for Chinese users.
Options for testing new interfaces whilst searching with Google,
including Timeline views and keyboard shortcuts.
Searchable US business news, opinion, and financial data. Features
include company-specific pages, blog search, interactive charts,
executives information, discussion groups and a portfolio.
Web
and e-mail discussion service and
Usenet archive. Users can
join a group, make a group, publish posts, track their favorite
topics, write a set of group web pages updatable by members and
share group files.
[2]. In January, 2007,
version 3 of Google Groups was released. New features include the
ability to create customised pages and share files.
Game
that induces participants to submit valid descriptions (labels) of
images in the web, in order to later improve Image Search.
Image
search engine, with results based on the filename of the image, the
link text pointing to the image and text adjacent to the image. When
searching, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed.
Collection of linguistic applications, including one that allows
users to translate text or web pages from one language to another,
and another that allows searching in web pages located in a specific
country or written in a specific language.
Search engine tailored towards everyday needs, such as train times,
recipes and housing.
A
specialised search engine that obtains Film showing times near a
user-entered location as well as providing reviews of films compiled
from several different websites.
A
site containing links to a large archive of Chinese pop music
(principally
Cantopop and
Mandopop), including audio
streaming over Google's own player, legal lyric downloads, and in
most cases legal MP3 downloads. The archive is provided by Top100.cn
(i.e. this service does not search the whole Internet) and is only
available in
mainland China. It is
intended to rival the similar, but illegal, service provided by
Baidu.
Automated
news compilation service
and search engine for news. There are versions of the aggregator for
more than 20 languages. While the selection of news stories is fully
automated, the sites included are selected by human editors.
Feature within Google News, that allows users to browse articles
from over 200 years ago.
Search engine to search through millions of
patents, each result with
its own page, including drawings, claims and citations.
Price engine that searches
online stores, including auctions, for products.
Google China's search trend
site, similar to Google Zeitgeist. Currently part of Google Labs.
Search engine for the full text of scholarly literature across an
array of publishing formats and scholarly fields. Today, the index
includes virtually all peer-reviewed journals available online.
List
of items generated when the user enters a few examples. For example,
entering "Green, Purple, Red" produces the list "Green, Purple, Red,
Blue, Black, White, Yellow, Orange, Brown."
Mobile phone
short message service
offered by
Google in several
countries, including the USA, Japan, Canada, India and China and
formerly the UK, Germany and Spain. It allows search queries to be
sent as a text message. The results are sent as a reply, with no
premium charge for the service.
Auto-completion in search results while typing to give popular
searches.
Listings for search engines for university websites.
Search engine and Personalized Homepage that exclusively draws from
sites with a
.gov
TLD.
Video
search engine and online store for clips internally submitted by
companies and the general public. Google's main video partnerships
include agreements with
CBS,
NHL and the
NBA. Also searches videos
posted on YouTube.
Non-premium phone service for searching and contacting local
businesses
- Web
History (Previously Google Search History / Personalized
Search)
Web
page tracking, which records Google searches, Web pages, images,
videos, music and more. It also includes Bookmarks, search trends
and item recommendations.[citation
needed]
Web
search engine, which is
Google's core product. It was the company's first creation, coming
out of beta on
September 21,
1999, and remains their
most popular and famous service. It receives 1
billion requests a day and
is the most used search engine on the Internet.
Statistics
Traffic statistics generator for defined websites, with strong
AdWords integration. Webmasters can optimize their ad campaigns,
based on the statistics that are given. Analytics is based on the
Urchin software and the new
version released in May 2007 integrates improvements based on
Measure Map.
Data
trend viewing platform to make nations' statistics accessible on the
internet in an animated, interactive graph form.
Graph
plotting application for Web Search statistics, showing the
popularity of particular search terms over time. Multiple terms can
be shown at once. Results can also be displayed by city, region or
language. Related news stories are also shown.
Collection of lists of the most frequent search queries. There are
weekly, monthly and yearly lists, as well as topic and country
specific lists. Closed 22 May 2007 and replaced by "Hot Trends, a
dynamic feature in
Google Trends".
Hardware
products
Hardware device that can be hooked to corporate intranets for
indexing/searching of company files.
Reduced capacity and less expensive version of the Google Search
Appliance.
Other
products
Google's
directory assistance
service, which can be used free of charge from any telephone in the
US and Canada.
About the Author
Bonnie Boots publishes The Internet Wizards Magazine
and the companion The Internet Wizards Blog to teach self-employed
people and small businesses owners how to leverage the internet for
advertising, marketing and promoting their business. To stay in
touch with her, type your name and email into the subscriber box in
the left column of this page. You'll be glad you did!To republish this article in your
newsletter, you must agree to reprint the article in its entirety
and include the author's information box. If you have questions or
comments, contact the author here. |
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