35% of ‘The 100 Best Products of the Year’ Free

The 100 Best Products of 2008 - Provided by PC World PC World in all their wisdom have brought forth the Top 100 Best Products for 2008. Even though there are 7 fun fill months left in the year we can get the Best Products now, well in time for Christmas. Looking through the list I began to notice that there were a lot of ‘free’ products. So, I composed a list of all the ‘free’ products so you could enjoy them without having to go through the whole list. Some of them are old favorites, and some are ‘Johnny-come-lately‘ sites. The number one product is a new video site called hulu which provide HD content. one of the cool things about hulu is the ability to create ‘clips’ and embed them on your site as below:

Well, lets now take a look at all the ‘free’ products as defined by PC World –

1 – Hulu (video site, free/ad-based) [http://www.hulu.com/] – Go check out ‘The Office’, ‘Family Guy’ and other full length episodes with short 15 second commercials
3 – Facebook (online social network, free) [http://www.facebook.com/] – Current Social Networking Big Dog
6 – Flock (browser, free) [http://www.flock.com/] – Commercial Release in November 2007 this is a fast mover. Social Networking Junkie Browswer of choice
10 – Wikipedia (open-source encyclopedia, free) [http://www.wikipedia.org/] – Go and read up on something, or make something up about something
14 – Craigslist (online classifieds and discussion, free) – [http://dallas.craigslist.org/] – the ultimate classified site
15 – Scrabulous (PC game, free) – [http://www.scrabulous.com/] – Scrabble anytime and everywhere
19 – Twitter (social networking site, free) [http://twitter.com/] – Let them know right now what you are up to.
21 – Mozilla Firefox 3 (browser, free) – [http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/] – Are you not using it to read this post?
22 – Safari (mobile browser, free) – [http://www.apple.com/safari/] – iPhone users hunt the web (geesh, what a terrible attempt at a play on words.)
23 – NPR.org (news site, free) – [http://www.npr.org] – The mission of NPR is to work in partnership with member stations to create a more informed public â€” one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.
25 – Google Maps – Street View (mapping software, free) – [http://maps.google.com] – Big Brother is watching
27 – Google Docs & Spreadsheets (Web-based productivity suite, free) – [http://docs.google.com/] – We don’t need no stinking Office
30 – Flickr (photo-sharing site, 200 photos free, unlimited photos and storage $25/year) – [http://www.flickr.com/] – Great source for Creative Common licensed photos
41 – Google Gmail (e-mail, free) – [http://mail.google.com] – E-mail conversations read with ease
43 – Mozilla Thunderbird (e-mail, free) – [http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/] – More than marionette e-mail.
45 – Washington Post (news site, free) – [http://www.washingtonpost.com/] – Bringing you more than just news – scandal too
46 – Yelp.com (online social reviews, free) – [http://www.yelp.com] – City Reviews by us common folk
48 – The Consumerist (blog, free) – [http://consumerist.com/] – Worth an RSS subscription
49 – AdventNet Zoho (office suite app, free) – [http://www.zoho.com/] – See #27
50 – OpenDNS PhishTank (security site, free) – [http://www.phishtank.com/] – You must help me I have 203 Billion Dollars which you can have 25% of if you let me know everything
52 – NYTimes.com (news site, free) – [http://www.nytimes.com] – More news
60 – Vimeo (video-sharing site, free) – [http://www.vimeo.com/] – HD Video Sharing

Pulse (HD) from Jason Chen on Vimeo.
61 – SideStep (travel site, free) – [http://www.sidestep.com] – Search all travel sites on one site
63 – TellMe (mobile search, free) – [http://www.tellme.com] – Gotta love XML Voice Tech
69 – USB Safely Remove 3.3 (utilities, shareware) – [http://safelyremove.com] – Figure out what ‘Mass Storage Device’ you are stopping before it is to late
72 – Cerulean Studios Trillian (instant messaging, free) – [http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/] – Use Yahoo, MSN, and AOL all at the same time
78 – Mint (personal finance site, free) – [http://www.mint.com/] – revolutionary, patentâ€“pending Mint money management software
81 – YouTube (viral video site, free) [http://www.youtube.com] – If you do not know about youtube, then, well – we need to have a talk.
90 – Ubuntu Linux (operating system, free) – [http://www.ubuntu.com/] – The linux OS that Dell load on some systems
92 – Digg (social news site, free) – [http://digg.com/] – Find what others are reading
94 – Meebo (Web-based instant messaging, free) – [http://www.meebo.com/] – No need to download a prgram to chat on MSN, Yahoo, or AOL
96 – Partition Logic (partitioning software, free) – [http://partitionlogic.org.uk/] – Partition Magic, Drive Image, and Norton Ghost welcome a new challenger
98 – Audacity (audio editor, free) – [http://audacity.sourceforge.net] – Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds
99 – Lifehacker (blog, free) – [http://lifehacker.com/] – Cool things to help you streamline your multitasking self.
100 – Jing Project (image/video production app, free) – [http://www.jingproject.com/] – Cature you desktop as an image or screencast. Pretty cool stuff – go get Jingy with it.