I remember back in the early 90's (yeah, I'm an early web user) when the net was just starting to develop(well back when Yahoo was the only search engine), the web was once such a wonderful place. New stuff was comming out everyday, there was even a link on the Netscape toolbar labeled "what's new" which lists the newest sites. It was the era of rapid internet growth, with far less ads and almost everything free. Free news, free streaming music, free software, free email, free web space...etc. That's what it's all about, generosity. The spirt of the web was once "everything free".
Then came the internet bubble burst, taking a lot of the free stuff down. Maybe, people thought, it was just a little too generous. Then websites started to want people to pay. First, email spaces started to shrink, and they want you to pay for extra storage. Then they started to take down some of the other free services. Later on "registering" started to be all over the place, some free, some not. At last, the ultimate advertising era, with mail boxs full of spam; adware that don't charge you money but overwhelm you with ads; pop up ads everywhare; then automaticaly self-installing ad serving programs.
Now they are really getting on our nerves. People started to fight back. Now we have spam killers, pop up blockers, ad blockers that take out the ads from a page. I've even heard of a site called "bug me not" that do something like regestering for you.(well, the free ones I guess, but I haven't tried it)
But now, we are not only fighting back, we are making it better. People are doing more and more free projects that are open for anyone to contribute, eg. wiki, open source software. Great free services are comming back, and better too, with Google's Gmail taking the lead. What's more people are using free stuff to revolutionize media, with blogs and wikis, trying to do better then traditional misleading media. The whole internet community of the globe is pitching in to make improvements, and counteract the greed of big corporate behemoths. Now the web is finally improving once again.
Then came the internet bubble burst, taking a lot of the free stuff down. Maybe, people thought, it was just a little too generous. Then websites started to want people to pay. First, email spaces started to shrink, and they want you to pay for extra storage. Then they started to take down some of the other free services. Later on "registering" started to be all over the place, some free, some not. At last, the ultimate advertising era, with mail boxs full of spam; adware that don't charge you money but overwhelm you with ads; pop up ads everywhare; then automaticaly self-installing ad serving programs.
Now they are really getting on our nerves. People started to fight back. Now we have spam killers, pop up blockers, ad blockers that take out the ads from a page. I've even heard of a site called "bug me not" that do something like regestering for you.(well, the free ones I guess, but I haven't tried it)
But now, we are not only fighting back, we are making it better. People are doing more and more free projects that are open for anyone to contribute, eg. wiki, open source software. Great free services are comming back, and better too, with Google's Gmail taking the lead. What's more people are using free stuff to revolutionize media, with blogs and wikis, trying to do better then traditional misleading media. The whole internet community of the globe is pitching in to make improvements, and counteract the greed of big corporate behemoths. Now the web is finally improving once again.
Here are some great free stuff!
1. Blog hosting: Blogger.com (now owned by Google)
2. The wiki stuff:
- Encyclopedia: Wikipedia.org
- Dictionary: Wikitionary
- News: Wikinews
>Gmail beta (not open to all yet, you need an invitation, but I'm sorry to say that I haven't got a single invitation to give since I got in)
>Many other older email services has ballooned to 250MB thanks to Gmail
4.Open source software:(which should be free)
>Linux OS(Although I'm not familiar with this, it's so significant that I must mention this, you can do a research, if your intrested, though)
>Mozilla.org- A spin off of Netscape, with many projects, including:
- Firefox browser that's rapidly gaining ground, with pop-up blocking, and tabbed browsing.
- Thunderbird mail application with spam filter and other great features.
- The up comming Sunbird calender application
- a mobile browser called Minimothat's coming to cell phones soon.
- And of course, the old Mozilla browser suite(built on the old Netscape code) is still alive.
5.Other freeware:
>Skype- free VOIP net phone6. Creative commons- see how people are sharing intellectual property, including music, texts and more.
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