The most worthful freebies on Internet

I will never forget the joyousness, excitement and the stimulation i felt, logging onto a website nearly 10 years ago in the Jurassic period of the world wide web. The service and speed was slow, but it was still amazing to unleash the whole new virtual world of possibilities. There was less compelled content, but i was irresistible to everything that i was blinded to before.

The Internet has evolved beyond that prehistoric phase, and these days no longer do I think of everyday online features like e-mail, news feeds, and instant messaging, as things I am getting for free—I expect them as a condition of basic service. But I still have that wanderlust, and I continue to search for other free goodies online that would cost me cold hard cash if I walked into a store.

Some of the most worthful free websites providing incredible services are mentioned here.


divShare (www.divshare.com)It's free to upload videos to YouTube and photos to Flickr. But on ad-supported site divShare, you can upload an unlimited amount to one personal account, keep them there forever, and access them without having to redownload to your hard drive. You can't do that with those other sites.


T35 Hosting (www.t35.com)There's no fee to start your own ad-supported site host like Yahoo! (YHOO) Geocities, but disk space and bandwidth are usually limited. Not so with T35 Hosting. You can use as much space and bandwidth as you want—the more you use, the more ads you host.




Skype (www.skype.com) With more than 200 million users, Skype is still the most popular VoIP service. Calls from one Skype user to another are free, anywhere in the world.


Gizmo Project (www.gizmoproject.com)The leading competitor to Skype, SIPphone's Gizmo Project has some unique features like voicemail and free calls to the landline or mobile phone of another Gizmo user



Mint: Personal accounting software (www.mint.com) Register anonymously for online accounting software Mint, and keep multiple credit and bank accounts organized in one place, with alerts for upcoming bills and low balances. Mint also analyzes your spending patterns and suggests ways to save.



CAREER
Land a Job


Emurse (www.emurse.com)Most online job hunters have different versions of their résumés scattered across job boards like Monster (MNST) and Yahoo! (YHOO) Hotjobs, as well as networks liked LinkedIn and MySpace. At Emurse, build a simple online résumé with a short domain name where you can direct potential employers to an updated CV.



(www.indeed.com) How do you choose between national online job boards like Monster, regional job boards and industry-specific job boards? You don't have to with Indeed, a site that searches these databases and others for jobs that match your skills.

VistaPrint (www.vistaprint.com)Having a business card is a must, but if they aren't provided by an employer they can put a dent in your wallet before you land a job. At Vistaprint, you can order 250 customized color business cards with graphics, for free. The only catches: a small ad on the back, and a $6 charge for shipping

ENTERTAINMENT
Rock Out

Pandora (www.pandora.com)Select an artist or a song you like, and Pandora creates a playlist of similar songs based on deep data about melody, harmony, rhythm, and instrumentation. As of this year, the site is ad-supported.

Critical Metrics (www.criticalmetrics.com)If you sift through stacks of magazines, newspapers, and blogs looking for a consensus on the best new albums and singles, cancel your subscriptions and head over to Critical Metrics. The site sifts through reviews from Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Pitchfork and more to create a list of the top recommended songs at any given time—and links to streaming audio and video for most of them.

DVD Flick (www.dvdflick.net)If you have a number of video files of various formats clogging up your hard drive, use DVD Flick to turn them into a fun home movie. With the open-source software, any video you can view on your PC can be burned onto disc, and personalized audio and subtitles can be added.

Motionbox (www.motionbox.com)Motionbox might be the simplest-to-use video editing tool on the Web—and most of its features are free. After you upload videos, you get a frame-by-frame view that makes cutting and reordering scenes a breeze.

GIMP (www.gimp.org)Adobe Photoshop is a powerful graphics program, but with a $999 price tag, few can afford it. Open-source download GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) performs many of the same image editing and retouching tasks for free.

Hugin (www.hugin.sourceforge.net)Can't quite capture that majestic panoramic view with a tiny 3.5" by 5" photo? Take several photos and stitch them together with a free downloadable software program called Hugin.

Flickr—photo sharing (www.flickr.com)It's the most popular place to share photos on the Web, and new features make it easier to stay current with friends and family. Make a list of contacts, and you'll be notified each time they upload new pictures.

Joost (www.joost.com)Still in beta stage, Joost has more than 250 on-demand channels and more than 15,000 shows, including some from content partner Viacom.

Veoh (www.veoh.com) Download the Veoh Player, and you can record shows you like from the site for later, offline viewing—much like a digital video recorder.

The Channel Channel (thechannelchannel.tv)The closest thing to TV Guide for Internet TV is the Channel Channel, a site that plays one-minute previews of online video channels, which you can subscribe to and watch on certain media players.

WWITV (wwitv.com/portal.htm)Ever wanted to watch news reports from Fiji? Or sports broadcasts from Latvia? WWITV streams more than 2,600 TV channels from more than 100 countries, sorted by country or genre.

PRINT MEDIA
Read a Book

Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org/wiki/main_page)When the copyright expires on a popular book, it frequently goes into Project Gutenberg—an online collection of more than 20,000 free e-books. Recent additions include works by Charles Dickens and Joseph Conrad.

UPenn Online Books Page (onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu)The University of Pennsylvania also hosts a large database of public domain e-books. Its page of New Listings is available as an RSS feed.

LibriVox (www.librivox.org)LibriVox solicits volunteers to record readings of books in the public domain, then offers the recordings for free on their site. It currently has over 1,000 titles available for download as MP3 files.

PRINT MEDIA
Get Published
Lulu (www.lulu.com)Aspiring novelists and scrapbook hobbyists go to Lulu for free book layouts, including text sizing, cover art, and binding style. Then, they set the price and take 80% profit from each book that's printed and shipped.

AROUND THE HOME
Eat In

Epicurious Recipes and Menus (www.epicurious.com/recipesmenus)Running out of new ideas in the kitchen? You could pick up Joy of Cooking for $23 on Amazon.com (AMZN), or you could check out Epicurious.com's database of thousands of recipes, organized by season, cuisine, and difficulty.

To be continued.....!