10 Free Items I Can’t Live Without

Talking to a client this morning,  I surprised her by admitting that I rarely pay for software. Not that I pirate it, I just have a lot of stuff that comes for free.

I’m not hard-line about it. While I admire the aims of the Free Software movement – I’m not actually against paying for stuff.  I’m writing this on a PC, with a licensed version of Windows XP. I have plenty of commercial software, MS Office, Webposition Gold, Quicken, etc, that I use pretty much daily. I just would prefer not to wherever possible.

So, for the recession-minded among you, here are the 10 free items that I use most often:

Firefox
#1 with a bullet. I love Firefox. There was much rejocing in the streets with the recent news that FF had overtaken IE6 for the first time. I was astounded. People still use IE6? Why?

I tried Chrome when it came out, and was fairly underwhelmed. Certainly, at the time, there was no reason for me to switch. I love my Add-ons.  I hate working on another computer that doesn’t have Web Developer or Favicon picker or Colorzilla, and so on.

If you’re one of those that hasn’t made the switch yet (about 30% of this site’s users are reading this in Internet Explorer), I urge you to today – you won’t regret it.

Tweetdeck
I tried Twitterfox, which was ok for a while, but as the number of followers increases, a stronger tool is required to effectively manage Twitter.

Hello Tweetdeck. Customizable colors, ability to sort people into groups, and built in search functionality. Why would I use anything else?

Paint dotNet
I’ll be honest. I downloaded GIMP, the ‘Open-Source Photoshop’ that everyone raves about, but it’s too complicated for me. The same is true of Photoshop itself. However, the much smaller, much more friendly Paint dotNet works great for my very limited needs. It has layers. It does transparancy. It loads in an instant and is pretty self-explanatory. Next!

Filezilla
Even though I use Dreamwweaver which has its own FTP client, I still prefer to stick with Filezilla. No frills, but easy to use, stable and does exactly what you need.

Well, assuming that ‘what you need’ is an FTP client, obviously.

Google AdWords Editor
We manage a lot of Google accounts. Each one has a lot of Campaigns and AdGroups. To try and keep everything updated via the web interface would just be a nightmare. The Editor, though, makes things a breeze. Find and replace your ’25% off’ ad copy with the new special in every ad takes seconds. Setting up Broad, Phrase and Exact matches for keywords, even less.

Whether you look after one account or one hundred, you’ll find life easier with this tool

CutePDF Writer
I’m not a huge fan of PDFs, but sometimes they’re needed. A client sends me their latest menu as a Word document and asks me to put it on the website – what to do? Click Print, select CutePDF Writer. Job done.

Picasa 3
It took a while for me to jump on board with Picasa. Now I’m hooked.

Brings the power of Google to your stored photos – tagging, editing and organizing made simple. Plus you can share online with one-click. Oh, and the latest version also works with videos.

SyncBack
Ever have a computer die and take all your stuff with it? I have. Hopefully next time I’ll be more prepared, thanks largely to a great big external hard drive, and the free version of Syncback. I don’t have to worry about backing up my work/music/photos/videos as it does it all for me.

If you think this might be something you need, there’s a great How-to here.

Skype
All my family are still in the UK. I work with a Flash designer in Italy. One of my best friends lives in Tokyo. I never pay anything to talk to any of them, thanks to Skype.

The video calls on Skype 4.0 are better than ever. It has a chat feature. And it’s coming to the iPhone and Blackberry next month. Join us! You owe it to yourself!

iTunes
It’s not all work, work, work! Working by myself, without the distractions of co-workers, I have to have some kind of background music. I use Last.FM and Pandora for finding new music, but I’m iTunes through and through.

Like most Apple stuff, it’s intuitive, easy, and looks great. It also doesn’t lock me into Apple. I can buy the ridiculously cheap albums from Amazon and automatically have them show in iTunes. It grabs all my podcasts from everywhere. It manages my Audible account for audio books.

Oh, and it also plays movies and tv shows, so I can catch up on Friday Night Lights from anywhere. Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose, indeed!

So, that’s my free ride. How about you? What am I missing?

The Easy Way to Increase Your Sales by 23,000%

Another ‘Free-conomics’ Success Story

With so many people from author Neil Gaiman to Nine Inch Nails (who released the best selling album of the year on a Creative Commons license ), now giving away free work to generate sales, the idea is no longer the novelty it once was. But for those who continue to doubt the power of the web, Monty Python give us what is surely one of the biggest indicators yet.

Apparently fed up of seeing their clips being pirated all over YouTube, they took an unusal step. They formed the Monty Python channel, collected all their stuff themselves, and simply gave it away. But not solely from the goodness of their hearts,

“We’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there! But we want something in return. None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.”

The channel has been a huge YouTube hit. with most clips having 100,000+ views in the first couple of months alone. The real success though is in how these free videos have led to real sales. Lots and lots of real sales. In fact a 23,000% increase in sales, and moving them to the number 2 spot on the Amazon tv bestsellers list!

I think that this shows us two things. Despite all the hype about pirating of music and movies, people are still willing to pay for what they like. As I was working yesterday I heard a song I liked on Pandora radio, so immediately hopped over to Amazon and bought it. It just needs to be made easy for people to do it, without tying them down to contracts, DRM-locked files and other hindrances.

It also demonstrates the amazing power of Youtube for getting your product seen. It seems such a regular part of daily life that it’s hard to believe YouTube is less than four years old, but in those 4 years great strides have been made. Widescreen, HD videos, with captions, links to buy and so on make Youtube one of the most valuable places to be seen on the web. Just ask the Monty Python guys, who are leading the way in making money by selling products which are available for free.

If that isn’t a web 2.0 success story, then I’m a dead parrot.