Lets face it, everyone loves getting something for nothing. Thats why you should definitely be taking advantage of all these amazing free services and products that are out there, but hardly anyone knows about. These might just save you a lot of money.
Entertainment:
Project Gutenberg – Free books
OpenLibrary – download out-of-copyright books, borrow in-copyright books,
LibriVox – Free audiobooks
Podiobooks – free audiobooks mostly from self-published authors
Documentary Heaven – Free documentaries
Top Documentary Films – more free documentaries
Free Documentary – and more
Last.fm – Keeps track of your listening habits
Songza – Playlists for whatever mood you’re in
8 Tracks – Another playlist service with playlists created by users. Internet radio created by people, not algorithms.
Popcorn Time – http://www.reddit.com/r/PopCornTime
Media Hint – Allows for US Netflix and Pandora access for those of us living abroad. Turns out Media Hint are now charging but here’s a workaround
ZenMate – (Chrome extension) MediaHint alternative
Hola Unblocker – Same as above, allows access to US Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, etc. but be warned.
Soundozer – it’s kind of like Pandora, but you can listen to any song you search for and you can create a station based on that song. You don’t have to register either.
Grooveshark – free music, online radio, streaming.
Jango – Free music – internet radio that plays what you want, great for those who can’t access Pandora
Courses and tutorials:
Class Central – Discover free online classes (MOOCs) from top universities like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc.
Future Learn – Learning for life, provided by UK and international universities
iTunes U – iTunes University offers many free open courses from leading university
Yale Open Courseware – actual video lectures for the class so you can get the in-class experience. Lots of classes over lots of subjects
EDX – Free courses from the best universities, you can even get a diploma for a few dollars
Khan Academy – Free maths learning tutorials
Patrick JMT – making free and hopefully useful math videos for the world!
Codecademy and LearnStreet – Free interactive coding tutorials
Become a programmer, motherfucker – If you don’t know how to code, then you can learn even if you think you can’t
Duolingo and FSI Language – Free language learning
Memrise – Learn vocabulary, languages, history, science, trivia and just about anything else easily using flashcard techniques
Anki – Similar to Memrise. Anki is a program which makes remembering things easily. Intelligent flashcards
TED Talks – Free talks and lecture about anything and everything
Wolfram Alpha – Your one stop shop for calculations and questions about anything
Mathway – Awesome math problem solver
A giant collection of Computer Science books made freely available
Free Rice – Answer vocabulary questions and rice is donated to charity! Be sure to turn off adblock when using this site, as that’s how they supply the rice!
Mendeley – The best free way to manage your research. Organize, share, discover. Great for when writing a paper, it manages all your referencing/bibliography in many different available notations
Self-Help/Advice:
7 Cups of Tea – Free, anonymous, and confidential conversations with trained active listeners. Please don’t spam the site, they offer a great service
Thrive On – Not completely free, but aims to bring affordable online mental health programs to those who would otherwise go without. Starting next month
Blah Therapy – Online listening service. “Experience the rewards of venting to a stranger or lending an ear.”
MoodGYM – Learn cognitive behaviour therapy skills for preventing and coping with depression.
Social Services; resources – a subreddit created by a professional Social Worker who has spent a career procuring resources for those in need.
Software/Add-ons:
Ninite – update/install all your programs at once
Portable Apps – load several apps on a thumb drive to run on any Windows PC
SlimDrivers – Cloud based program that detects what drivers need to be updated. Incredible–especially after formatting an operating system. No need for CDs or trying to remember which model card, adapter…etc. you have
Copy – Online cloud storage. Start with 15gb free. Or 20gb with a referral code. Here is the Copy referral train. Free storage for everyone!
BitTorrent Sync – Secure, unlimited file-syncing. No cloud required
SyncThing – opensource alternative for bitsync. its recommended if you care about your privacy and security of your files
Mega Desktop Sync(50GB) and Symform (Unlimited, but you must share back!) – both cloud storage services
Calibre – Free ebook library management
F.lux – Changes the colour of your screen as the day progresses
GIMP – Free photo manipulation software
Paint.NET – Windows application designed to be the much needed upgrade to MS Paint
Pixlr – Online photo editor. web-based equivalent to an old version of Photoshop from 2005 or something. Very functional for occasional use manipulating images, and seeing as it’s web-based and doesn’t require an account it’s super easy to use from anywhere
Sumo Paint – Powerful graphics editor for your web browser and pc
Blender – Open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation
Prey Project – Multi-platform anti-theft software
RES – Reddit Enhancement Suite – A must have for all you redditing needs
KeePass – free, open source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager.
LastPass – free (with premium for multiple platforms), easy-to-use password manager.
Dictionary Pop-up extension, double click on a word that you don’t know the meaning of and a dictionary definition pops up. Firefox extension powered by dictionary.com. Chrome extension powered by Google
ClipCube – clipboard history. I missed this when using Windows
ClipX – a tiny clipboard history manager. It is sweet, it is free, use it. ClipCube alternative
LeechBlock (Firefox add-on) – simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day
StayFocused (Chrome extension) – Chrome alternative to LeechBlock
Reaper – Audio workstation. Reaper warning
Audacity – free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds
MuseScore – Free music composition and notation software
Notepad++ – a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages
Sublime Text – a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. Note that it is a never-ending free trial, but you should consider paying for the service to support the developers
Sublime Text ColourCoder – this plugin for Sublime Text will highlight every variable in its own, consistent color (feature known as semantic highlighting, variable-name highlighting, contextual highlighting) you name it
Atom Editor – A hackable text editor for the 21st Century
Komodo Edit IDE – Powerful free editor for Python, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Tcl, Javascript and other major web languages
CeltX – Free scriptwriting and all-in-one production studio
Rainmeter – Windows desktop customisation. Similar to Conky for Linux
Handbrake – open source video transcoder
YouTube Video Converter – coverts YouTube videos to MP3, AAC, MP4… Recorder, Converter and Downloader
Pocket – a great site for saving articles, recipes or whole pages for later offline viewing, and cloud syncs with all your devices
Feedly – Read more, know more. RSS feed. They also have an awesome app
OpenOffice – Free office software
LibreOffice – offers much more up-to-date software than OpenOffice
TeraCopy – designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed. It skips bad files during the copying process, and then displays them at the end of the transfer so that you can see which ones need attention
MyNoise – Custom-shaped Online Noise Machines
Privacy Badger – developed by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and is a browser add-on for Chrome and Firefox that helps lower your internet footprint and stop third party trackers from following your movement around the web
DistroWatch – Put the fun back in computing. Use Linux, BSD. This site gives detailed information on each Linux distribution and provides links to their respective communities
Rufus – Easily create bootable USBs [Windows], burning bootable OS ISOs
UNetbootin – allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
CloudForge – Free Subversion and Git hosting
Spoon – Use your software and files from any desktop. free virtualization startup that lets users launch full desktop apps from any browser without having any of them installed on your computer
