It is time I thanked the universe for all the software I use everyday for free.
I make money out of using these tools (because they help me do my job) and it doesn’t cost me anything.
So here’s a list of my top 6 (in order of “most thankful”):
1. Gmail
What is it? Email/Webmail
Who made it? Google
What am I thankful for?
- That it’s free
- Cutting edge spam filtering
- Accessing my 6 email accounts in a single place (POP3, SMTP, IMAP)
- 7GB of online storage space so I never have to delete an email or get stupid “your email account is full” and having to save stupid Outlook archive files to my computer
- Email search that is just as clever and easy to use as Google Web Search
- Filters that keep my inbox clean and tidy
- Labels instead of folders (so a single email can be in more than one place at once)
2. WordPress
What is it? Blogging & Website Content Management System
Who made it? Matt and the world (open source, collaborative)
What am I thankful for?
- That it’s free
- Powerful CMS software that means I can build super-cool websites for clients (all it costs me is time)
- Powerful plugins that extend the capabilities and functions of my clients websites
- A community of theme developers that make it easy to make the website look great with just a click
3. Apache / PHP / MySQL
What is it? The 3 components you need for a website server. Apache: the software that runs on the web server. PHP: the programming language. MySQL: the database software
Who made it? Nerds.
What am I thankful for?
- That it’s free (for web hosting companies)
- And super-cheap for me because the web hosting companies have low costs
- Since it’s open source, it’s super popular, so there is thousands of people contributing to forums which makes any question easy to answer, every technical difficulty easy to solve
4. Picasa
What is it? Photo organising software
Who made it? Originally by IdeaLab, now by Google
What am I thankful for?
- That it’s free
- An easy way to store and access all my digital photos and videos
- Easy upload and sharing to Picasa Web Albums (1GB of storage free)
- One-click email (resizes on the fly, interfaces with Gmail)
- One click back-up to DVD for peace of mind (and next time it remembers which files have already been backed up)
5. Skype
What is it? Instant Messaging/Web Chat, Phone Calling, Video Calling, Screen Sharing
Who made it? A bunch of Sweedish/Estonian entrepreneurs
What am I thankful for?
- That it’s free
- Free international phone calls
- Free video calls with my dad to show him his grandson
6. AVG
What is it? Anti-virus software
Who made it? AVG Technologies (formerly known as Grisoft)
What am I thankful for?
- That it’s free
- It just does its job and doesn’t get in my way
- So I don’t have to pay Norton
More Free Software That I Am Thankful For:
- Firefox (My window to the world, with truck loads of useful plugins available)
- Google Analytics (Website statistics)
- Open Office (Just as good as Microsoft Office, and completely free)
- Google Calendar (Keeps me organised)
- Google Docs (Online document storage, excellent for collaborating on documents with others)
- LimeSurvey (Powerful survey software, and completely free)
I’d be completely rooted if these companies started to charge (especially Google).
More Free Software That My Twitter Friends Are Thankful For:
- Gimp (Photo editor similar to Photoshop) @AudaciousGloop
- Zoho CRM (Customer Relationship Management) @AudaciousGloop
- Seesmic Desktop (Desktop client) @ShotByRobins
- Faststone Screen Capture @ShotByRobins
- uTorrent (Torrent client) @ShotByRobins
- Copernic (Desktop Search) @ShotByRobins
- VNC (Virtual Network Computing) @ShotByRobins
- Hootsuite (Twitter client) @WebSam
- Sylpheed (Email client) @WebSam
- Thunderbird (Email client) @DeepWebDesign
- Tweetdeck (Twitter client) @DeepWebDesign
- Oolite (Addictive online game) @DeepWebDesign
- Faststone Image Resizer @DeepWebDesign
What Software Are You Thankful For?
Add your thoughts to the comments below.
http://www.tungle.com – appointment scheduler
http://www.nch.com.au/scribe – transcriber
http://www.nchsoftware.com/invoice/index.html – invoice application
http://www.nch.com.au/talk/index.html – softphone
Mikogo – http://www.mikogo.com – free desktop sharing, although Skype does this now as well.
iContact – not free, but very low cost simple email marketing solution
Thanks Chris!
My favourite free software right now is definitely WordPress and it’s comprehensive suite of themes and plugins – with WordPress you don’t need to be a web designer to set up, customise and maintain your own website/blog. Too easy.
Agreed Michelle, WordPress rocks my world.
Last night I found a bug in Google Analytics but I was having trouble describing how I generated the error so I decided the best way to explain it to the Google technicians was to record what I was doing on screen to generate the error. I needed audio too so I could describe what I was doing.
I started looking for free screen capture software or “screencasting” software, and downloaded and installed a few different programmes which either sucked or ended up being trial versions with price tags. I was sure I could find something decent for free.
Finally I found what I was looking for! CamStudio, on this hideous looking webpage.
It’s open source so it’s completely free. It required a little bit of tweaking to get what I wanted but it works very well. Here’s a better looking website that you can download CamStudio from
Try http://screenr.com/ . It’s supposed to be pretty cool 🙂
Thanks for the link Mark.
It looks like that Screenr may be the easiest screen capture software ever. You don’t even need to download software, all you need is Javascript enabled and it records whatever you can see on your screen and is super easy to share via Twitter.