The Best Things In Life Are Free, at least on the Web!

By Ekalavya B • April 17, 2007

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I was talking to a not so net-savvy group of friends yesterday and was really surprised at their ignorance. As the conversation shifted to the internet, I got complains like – checking e-mail is so painful and complaints about the enormous amount of spam they receive in their traditional email ids which are more than 2 years old. Then there were complaint about Internet Explorer as a browser and surprisingly none of them had heard of Firefox or Opera! Complaints continued about an offline email client as well as their computers being real slow while starting up.

I had just read an article on IANS which was partly similar and this inspired me to blog about some common online products, which are surprisingly not too common in India.

But first, lets begin with some International News:

Microsoft has never been much on giving things away for free. But, its new voice recognition acquisition, TellMe, is going to begin offering voice recognition directory assistance. For free. That’s right.
The theory over at the FT is that 411 will not longer be a service that is charged for by call. Over time, it will be advertising supported. No one should be surprised that Google began offering free 411 service within the last couple of weeks. The media has been impressed with the results.

Google offers most of its services for free. Be it new products or traditional ones, Google releases the product for free and worries about monetizing it through advertising later. Primarily because, it is so successful in the search text-based advertising business that it can test a number of other products and apparently feels no pressure to make money on these, for now.

Microsoft, on the other hand, charges for everything from its OS to its MP3 player. But, it has not done terribly well for its shareholders. While Google’s stock is up over 150% in the last two years, Microsoft’s has only risen about 18%.

Well especially for my non-net-savvy friends, here are some products which you should definitely look at:

GMail – Well it might appear stupid to be reviewing GMail at this stage, but you will be surprised by the number of people who are not aware of GMail.
Reasons being: No where on the main page of Google, do they state that they offer free e-mail! And then since GMail started off on the invitation only model, it could have limited its growth. And one also shouldn’t forget that GMail is still in Beta.

The original 1GB free space is up to 2.6Gb – and growing.
What’s even better is that GMail to a certain extent has overcome the bane of most free e-mail providers: spam. GMail’s built-in anti-spam tools really work - so well, in fact, that many GMail users consider their Gmail address as their primary e-mail account, since most effective anti- spam tools for traditional e-mail programs are fee-based.
Other highlights include free POP Access, meaning that you can configure and use Outlook Express etc, tagging of e-mails to make search easier and GMail also has GTalk integrated with it.

Firefox:
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably heard of Mozilla’s Firefox - the Web browser that’s giving Microsoft’s Internet Explorer a run for its money - but you haven’t tried it. There’s good reason to change that. (70-80% of people in our country still use IE as their primary browser)

The little things are what set Firefox apart. Firefox tends not to get bogged down over time, beset by spyware or other issues that occasionally prevent Internet Explorer from loading pages correctly - or at all. Firefox also prevents Web sites from annoying you. It’s easy to configure the browser to block not only pop-up ads but most ads in general. The browser also prevents other tricks - such as "sticky" sites, status bar tickers, or links that hide where they’re taking you.

RoboForm:
Though the free Google toolbar has form-filling capabilities, but they’re not nearly as nice as those of the veteran RoboForm. With RoboForm you get more sophisticated form recognition - sometimes Google’s form-filler toolbar function refuses to recognize legitimate Web forms - and a host of other Web- related time-savers
Especially with the number of Web 2.0 sites and services like Social Networking increasing by the day – something like this really comes in handy.

StartUp Monitor:
StartUp Monitor is not really an application only for Web users, but it is one that can help you prevent your Windows computer - and your Internet browsing - from slowing down over time.

The main culprit behind Windows computer that become slower are startup programs - little applications that insert themselves into your Windows startup procedure and remain there the entire time your computer is on. Although small, these applications can have a big impact on performance, as they chew up valuable clock cycles and, along with other startup programs, eventually degrade performance of your entire PC.

Startup Monitor sits quietly in the background and warns you whenever a program tries to install itself as a startup process. You’ll have the option to allow the process or deny it.

Credit: 24/7 Wall St, IANS

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