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

By Tyson on Jun 3, 2008 in Featured, Observations, Web Tools

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 — 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, patent–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.