by Tricia
(NOTE: Well, it’s time to get back into the groove of things. I started compiling this list on Thursday and planned to finish it up on Friday and post it Friday but that didn’t happen. So, I finished it up today. I hope you find it useful.)
Some of the Best Free Things on the Net
I’m not talking about signing up for freebies. I’m talking about sites that you can use every day that can make your life a little better and they are the best price of all…FREE! Here are some sites I either use or plan to use.
Pandora.com – Pandora.com is your own personal jukebox on the web. You tell the site a name of an artist that you like to create a channel. The system will play music that is related to that artist to try to generate songs that you will enjoy. I have multiple channels varying from country to hard rock. If you’d like, you can even take those channels and make mixes out of them to shuffle up the music. I love having tunes going while I am working.
Blingo.com – Blingo.com is a search engine powered by Google that offers random prizes. You can win movie tickets up to a brand new Ford Escape (or $20,000 cash). All you need to do is use Blingo.com to search for things like you normally would. If you happen to search at the right time, you can win! If you decide to sign up and would like to be my friend, use this link (otherwise use the first link I gave). What that means is that if you win, I will win as well. Once you join, you can invite your friends and then if they win you can win. It doesn’t cost a dime to join, and you can win awesome prizes for what you often do anyway (search the internet).
Google Calendar – Google Calandar is a free service from Google that lets you set up a calendar that can you can open from any computer with a web connection and a supported browser. I recently learned about this site and it is perfect for me because I often am on different computers. I can easily pull up my calendar wherever I am and I can set up email reminders. Sometimes remembering when balance transfers expire is difficult and this will help me keep track of things 😉
Freecycle.org – Freecycle.org “It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns.” My area doesn’t have too many members as of yet but it’s slowly growing. I’ve given away some older exercise equipment and have received some craft items. And it’s all free!
MIT Courses – Massachusetts Institute of Technology has many online courses that you can take for free! You can’t earn a degree with the courses, but if you are looking to further your knowledge then this might be the right thing for you! Once I have some more free time, I’m interested in taking some of their writing courses.
If you’d like more free things, you may be interested in a great article that a reader sent me: 23 Surprising Things You Can Get for Free.
Enjoy! 🙂
I love Pandora and use it all the time. I’ll have to check out some of these other items. Thanks!
P.S. Good to see you posting again 😀
Awesome sites, I love the google calendar, it’s a must-use! And for what it’s worth, I’m so happy I found your blog too!
Great stuff…. I am also a Google calendar junkie. You really can’t go wrong with all the free resources out there… Here are a few more….
SKYPE.com – free computer-to computer phone calls anywhere in the world
FREECONFERENCE.com – free conference calls for up to 50 people
Oh my, I wish you had never showed me Freecycle…
I’m going to need to buy a pickup truck now just to get all of the free stuff! Not to mention we have a garage FULL of junk from when we moved I need to get rid of.
Pandora is awesome – I usually use it tied to last.fm at http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/ – I’m a nerd and I track all the stuff I listen to.
I just can’t get into Google Calender – I tried to, but it’s just not fluid/fast enough for me, and I can’t convince my wife to use it (she prefers the dry erase board).
21W.735 was a great writing course. I’m a new reader here and it doesn’t sound like you need it, but it was fun practicing some of the nuances of writing for certain audiences.
Here’s another free music site along the lines of Pandora: http://www.musicovery.com
pandora doesn’t work right at the moment for me as my IP address comes up as Spain, instead I listen to yahoo music. Everyone can have itunes I prefer (free) subscription based music channels. I have to listen to the odd commercial but it’s a minor annoyance. To me the best part of internet music is discovering loads of new bands.
I didn’t know MIT had free online courses. I will check this out…!