Do you try out just about every program with “freeware” slapped on it? Does your computer have seven programs that all do the same thing? Are you on a first name basis with many developers?
If any of these are true, you may be addicted to freeware. As a fellow sufferer (Hello, my name is Jimmy…), I have a suggestion for you. No, it’s not therapy. It’s a social network for software users. If your computer is going to be full of free software, why not share your experiences?
If anyone ever asks me what I know about the stock market I’ll probably just blink a couple of times, smile wide, then walk away. If however, someone asks me about my opinion on video game sales I’m likely to talk their ears off until they smile wide and walk away.
Luckily for people like me, the internet has spawned yet another reason for us to avoid that crazy place we call the real world. It’s called the simExchange, an online prediction market that centers around the real world sales numbers of video games.
Hey MUO readers! For those of you that know me, you’ll also know how much I LOVE FREE stuff. I use lots of different methods to try and find answers. Search engines, asking my group of international admin’s and finally other web resources.
My company has had a subscription to Experts Exchange for a long while now. I guess I got spoiled because when the subscription ran out and the big wigs decided it was a waste of money expendable I started looking for a new solution with just as much information online. I searched for a while until I came upon IT Knowledge Exchange. It was just what I was looking for….a free version of Experts Exchange. A user-powered tech support community. I started by looking through their database of questions and found some interesting tid-bits.
I once had a professor who openly admitted that his musical tastes were frozen in time when his first child was born. I swore from that day that I wouldn’t fall into that trap - and do all I could do to stay on top of new popular music. My favorite weapon to this end is Last.FM.
A popular proverb states you don’t get anything for nothing in this world. This wise statement certainly holds true for the websites below. They are free in that you don’t have to pay money to take advantage of the service they offer. However, what they will cost you is some time and dedication.
(1) Couch Surfing / Hospitality Club - These two are completely independent communities, however the idea behind both projects is very similar, thus they share spot #1. Check out video below for a quick intro.
Couch Surfing
You may be well familiar with biggies like Youtube, Digg, Wikipedia, and StumbleUpon. They are all big and 100% user-powered websites. However, what about the smaller ones, focused on a single aspect and still able to attract a huge user base. So here you go, six really cool and fast growing communy-powered websites that you should definitely see.
1. Instructables - Extremely useful, entertaining and rather addictive online community where people share what they do and how they do it. Here you can find hundreds of excellent home-made DIY (Do It Yourself) guides detailing how to turn some of the garage junk into cool stuf, like invisible book shelf, hairspray-powered potato cannon or even making a wallet (from an old keyboard). See pic below.
I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from people regarding my post on helping to create user-generated content on the web. So since this seems to be something that people find interesting, I decided to “do a George Lucas” and write a sequel! A long time ago in an internet far far away…..
To me, the internet is the best invention since someone slapped a piece of cheese on a slice of bread, stood too close to the fire and subsequently discovered grilled cheese sandwiches. But the World Wide Web has the potential to get MUCH better when the average internet user actively participates in adding content to the web and validating what’s already there. Now I’m not talking about revising your My Space profile or updating the viagra offers on your website but instead taking part in some of the voluntary online projects or web services that are trying to “evolve the web” and make sense of what’s already out there. You only need donate a couple of hours a week which in itself would make all the difference. Here’s a snapshot of what you can get started with :
Just last week makeuseof covered ‘HowTo’ sources, extremely handy services listing thousands of all kinds of user-contributed ‘HowTo’ guides. While these services provide an excellent solution for all ‘HowTo’ type questions, they’re of little help when it comes to other range of questions, i.e. What … , Where… , When … , Why…. , etc.
And that’s what this post is about: popular and totally free Question and Answers (Q&A) communities where users can
‘HowTo’s (HowTos, HowTo’s, or whatever you prefer to call them) are excellent problems solvers: they provide quick, easy-to-follow and non-overwhelming solutions to one or another problem that pop-up during daily routines. People love them, especially when they’re free, regardless whether it’s a step-by-step guide or a couple of minutes long video.
Good news, the amount of freely available, user-contributed HowTo’s out there is staggering. There is something for everyone: ranging from fun stuff i.e. how to make invisible book shelf, imitate gunshot wounds and even open up a Coke machine to more practical stuff i.e. how to negotiate a raise or tie a Tie. All categorized, commented and rated by users like you and me. Below you’ll find all ‘HowTo’ services we could find, as always all free, well-categorized and hopefully objectively ranked. Plus a bonus ‘HowTo’ search engine at the end. Enjoy!
We have already reviewed bunch of google services but only 2 services from Yahoo, so it is a right time for Yahoo Answers, one more application with 100% user generated content.
Yahoo Answers is a place where you can ask and answer questions. And unlike many other similar services and forums, things happen extremely fast here. Most of the questions receive multiple replies within a one day of posting. It is like free consulting service.
43 Things is a handy website created by the guys from The Robot Co-op. 43 Things i an online community where peopla can create and track lists of the goals they want to achieve or have already achieved and share their progress with others. This service is designed to help people to achieve their goals by bringing them together with people who have same or similar goals.
How does it work?
It is really simple, but before you can start you are required to sign up with the service (email only). Once you have registerd you can start creating you goals (cut my hair, get a dog, tarvel to space, buy Porsche, graduate from Harvard, learn photography etc).
UrbanDictionary is another web service which truly illustrates the power behind user generated content. By giving power to users this website managed to build a practical words reference and entertainment platform, as Digg (profile) did with news, del.icio.us (profile) with bookmarks and Wikipedia (profile) with content. This website can actually be thought as a little funny sibling of wikipedia.
UrbanDictionary is quite popular website where users are able to to provide their own definitions for words. Terms are not limited to standard english language words but also any kind of sayings, comments, slangs and jargons that are used by people. After being online for a while it produced huge database with original, unique and in some cases funny and yet practical definitions. For instance, term porsche has several definitions 3 of which are:
Youtube is another web application that has stormed the web and created a whole new global community. Youtube.com is the biggest online video sharing site, serving more then 100 million videos views daily. Around 65.000 videos added to the database daily.
So what can you do with it?
If you are not using it yet, then you are missing something…Wikipedia is the biggest online encyclopedia, which is 100% edited by users. Nowadays, wikipedia has articles in almost any language you can think of. Below You can see number of articles wikipedia had in different languages at the time this post was published.
Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website belonging to Yahoo that let’s you store, share and organize yours and discover others favorite links. While this may not sound very enticing as many people can simply store their favourites on their computers, there are two main things del.icio.us gives that your locally stored bookmarks don’t. Firstly, by storing your favourites on del.icio.us server you can access them anytime from anywhere as long as you are connected to the internet. Secondly, and most importantly it provides you an access to favourites of other del.icio.us users, and there are millions of them.
This is really interesting, widely popular and one of my favorite websites. It’s more like a social network of web enthusiasts where you can discover various websites that were recommended by members with similar interests as yours. The best part of it, is that you can use this service right from the browser toolbar which comes with it(pic below) .
Digg.com is one of my favorite sites and so is for 800.000 (and growing) people that visit it on a daily basis. So, what is all the fuss about it?
If you visit traditional news sites regularly, you probably have experienced that a big portion of news you get either about something you have no interest in or just boring. Digg.com solves this problem by providing you only with news which were recommended by other readers. And it turns out to be just the right way
Subscribe to MakeUseOf and get daily updates about new cool websites and programs in your email for free. Plus get free cheat sheets to your favorite programs.
