There seems to be a new site every day that allows you to accomplish something you’ve always wanted to (or never needed or cared about). Trying to sift through the multitude of sites is daunting, so when you happen to find one that works for you, just bookmark it and hope you can find it again. Below are some sites that you may want t o add to your bookmarks or at least check out to see if they can add any value to your life.
Be forewarned that many of the free sites are indeed free, but there may be advertising to live with or the site may not have the most user friendly routines. But heck, you can decide if the pain is worth the free experience or not.
- Free long distance and international telephone calls. http://www.talkster.com/ – Free calls to pretty much anyone, anywhere on the globe. You can even do up to 5 party conference calls. The catch is that all of the parties need to use a special dedicated phone number the site gives you (it is yours to keep and use in the future) and then you need to call the person and then have them call you back.
- Free online image editor. http://www.pixlr.com/editor/ – This is a nifty site that allows you to manipulate your photo’s and other graphic files.
- Free outgoing faxing. http://faxzero.com/ – If you have very light faxing needs (like most of us should since scanning and emailing is the norm nowadays), this may be the tool for you. The downside is that the cover page says faxZERO and you are limited to 2 faxes a day.
- Free 411 Phone number lookups. Live Search 411 (800/225-5411) – No more paying the high 411 fees from the telco’s. Use the free Microsoft service to look up numbers, get driving directions, and more.
- Free online videoconferencing. http://www.tokbox.com – High quality, large screen videoconferencing without the client or firewall hassles. The upside is that there is no program to install and your quality is only limited by the bandwidth you have. You can even do multiparty calls!
- Free document to text conversion (OCR). http://www.ocrterminal.com/ – Upload your PDF file and have a Word document come out so you can edit the file. Limited to 20 pages free per month.
- Free document sharing. http://drop.io/ – Upload your large files here and then email out a link. Up to 100 megs of space and no need to sign up. No more worrying about emailing large files again.
And some of the usual suspects
- Free email. http://mail.google.com – Gmail is great so do not overlook this tried and true email system.
- Free Backups. http://mozy.com/ – Mozy works great and you get up to 2 gigs free space so there is no excuse to not be backing up your files.
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