Carputers News and Computer Tips

Individuals and small businesses that would like to have their own website will find that there are many free online resources available. These make it easy to build and maintain simple blogs and websites.  In most cases, no knowledge of coding or programming is required.

The makeuseof.com blog recently listed several free web design options.  The Smashing Apps blog also recently wrote about 13 Free Online Tools to Create and Host your Website.  Be sure to read the comments, which give additional options and tips, on both of these pages.

Edit 06/19/2009:

The makeuseof.com blog has picked their Top 4 Web Tools to Create Free Websites Instantly.

In April, 2008, we posted a .pdf to .doc Converter Comparison. Here’s a new free converter for Windows - Free-PDF-to-Word.com. In addition, the ConvertPDFtoWord.net and PDFUNdo.net websites will do this online if you happen to be on a non-Windows computer, or on a Windows machine where you cannot install software.

The Digital Inspiration blog recently posted a great guide on How to Do Everything with PDF Files.  Another of our favorites is this Mashable post from 2007 listing 40+ Tools to Rip, Mix and Burn PDFs.

Charles Knight writes for ReadWriteWeb: 

In terms of user experience, the gap between the major search engines and their alternatives continues to widen — a lot. Google has been compared to a luxury liner that turns around very, very slowly, whereas the startups are speedboats that can turn (or innovate) on a dime. I guarantee that if you try any of these top 10 alternative search engines of 2008, you won’t come away saying, “Hey, that was just like Google.” 

We’ve discussed alternative search engines here before… 

Edit 01/18/2009:

The makeuseof.com blog posted 13 Alternative Search Engines That Find What Google Can’t today, featuring specialized engines for finding music, recipes, and more.   

The Curious? Read blog recently posted this list.

By the time you’ve finished reading, we promise that your list of bookmarked sites will have ballooned and you’ll be getting more from your surfing.   

Definitely worth a read!

Edit 12/30/2008: 

The Digital Inspiration blog offers their picks for Most Useful Web Applications for 2008. 

Aibek writes for the makeuseof.com blog:

Want to send a short email to a friend and get it delivered to his/her cell phone as SMS? If you know your friends’ phone numbers and the carrier they are on then you can easily send emails to their cell phones directly from your email program. 

Here’s how: Free Email To SMS Gateways (Major US Carriers)

If you know the phone number but not the carrier (cell service provider), here’s another method.  Gizmo allows sending up to 80 characters from their web page to any mobile phone for free.

Edit 11/28/2008:

Here are some other services that do this:

The techFAQ website has a page dedicated to computer-to-SMS messaging.

txtDrop.com offers computer-to-SMS via web and desktop. 

Edit 01/19/2009:

Txt2day will send free text messages to almost any major cell phone provider in the world.  It’s 100% free, with no gimmicks!

Google has dropped StarOffice from the Google Pack, with no explanation as to why.  This is a shame.

There are, however, other free alternatives to MS Office available.

For those of you out there that simply must have MS Office, have a look at Microsoft’s Ultimate Steal program – Office 2007 Ultimate for $60 if you have (or know someone who has) an email address that ends in .edu.

Back in June, 2007, we posted about Online Photography Tools and Resources.  The Mashable blog recently featured 20 Great Online Image Editors (some free, some subscription-based) that are worth a try.  The Daily Gyan blog also recently posted 10 Online Photo Editors That You Definitely Need to Bookmark.

Online image editing has some advantages.  No software installation is required, and, like other online applications, they are platform-independent.  These attributes make using borrowed or non-Windows computers a snap when editing photos or images.

Edit 02/25/2009:

CNET recently posted a feature comparison of a group of 15 online photo editors–big and small, to see what each one is capable of.  All but two are free.

Following three years of continuous improvement, OpenOffice.org has now released as of this week the landmark version 3.0, with a host of new features.

OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.  It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Follow our previously posted directions for making OpenOffice.org 3 save in Microsoft-compatible file formats by default.  The procedure is still the same for this new release. 

Edit 12/21/2008: 

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now also available as a Portable App, which will run directly from a USB drive.

Mary Hunt writes for Woman’s Day:

As much as I love the word (free), I have to admit it makes me suspicious…  But every now and then an exception comes along that’s truly free-no strings attached, no hidden agendas. Here are my favorites, and all you really need is an Internet connection to go online. 

She has several of our favorites listed, from free software to services to free business cards… 

Lee Mathews writes at Download Squad: 

Now, it’s not my intent that anyone actually follow this horrible, horrible advice. It’s just that so many people seem to think this type of behavior is perfectly normal computer use. 

So here it is: my 5-point method for turning your computer into a quivering pile of malware-infested, hacker-friendly trash. 

Though this is written tongue-in-cheek, it is good advice! 

Unfortunately, as is the case with most good advice, it is indeed a pity that the people who would benefit most from it also are the least likely to read and heed it…