Best Free Stuff on the Web

The tough hit the road and look for a good place to stay. Travelaxe helps by scouring nearly two dozen travel and hotel Web sites for the best deal on hotel rooms. To use the site you first install a small app. Select the start and end days of your trip on a calendar, use the drop-down menus to choose your destination, click a button, and you'll get a screenful of offers you can compare side-by-side. Travelaxe won't book the room for you, but takes you to the appropriate reservation site to close the deal. At the time of this writing, Travelaxe tapped listings for 35,000 hotels in 535 different locations in 36 countries.

If your profits--or your mental health--are riding on the next release of a vital application, turn to BetaNews for the scoop on when it's coming, what the prerelease version does, and where you can get it. The site updates news frequently on beta programs and services, freeware, and shareware. Many stories have beta tester comments and direct links for downloading the app. A useful companion site, VersionTracker.com, monitors thousands of shipping shareware, freeware, and commercial programs for PCs, Macs, and Palms. Each citation notes the version, the system requirements, what the program does, and what's been changed, along with a download link.

Annual reports usually get tucked under a short table leg, but if you're researching a competitor or a client, they provide valuable financial and cultural information. If you need data on American companies, turn to Annual Report Service, which provides links to annual reports on corporate firms from A to Z. Carol takes a nearly identical approach but includes European firms. Searching, however, is more precise at Carol. You can sift by business type (for example, "Banks Commercial" or "Banks Retail"), region (the United States or Europe), and stock exchange. (And don't forget about an old, reliable source if you need a quick hit: A free search at Hoovers.com supplies snappy company summaries and, often, quarterly financials.)

Google's great, but Google Alert makes it better, by performing automated searches on a regular basis and e-mailing you the results. You can do a simple search, or hone it by including or excluding words, sifting through updated pages only, searching a particular Web site, picking a specific format (say, PDF), and more. Google Alert includes a useful miniature browser for viewing results--just click on the link at the top of the e-mail message the service sends you. Note: Google Alert is not affiliated with Google.

On the run? Having a senior moment? Let the automatic e-mail reminders from Time Cave give you or someone else a helpful nudge. Just enter the e-mail address, type your message, and pick a delivery time (from 1 minute to three years in the future). Time Cave does the rest. It's a handy tool if you're busy or you're on the road without your normal office programs (or a handheld device) to nag you.

If you can't find what you want at Amazon.com, hie thee to AddAll, which searches used- and antiquarian-book dealers all over the world. You can search by author, title, ISBN, binding, price range, and other attributes. The results page details each book's condition and vintage, as well as the store's contact information. More important, AddAll delivers results. When we searched for books by the 1920s humorist Robert Benchley, for example, AddAll ferreted out 480 titles, while Amazon.com found only about 25.

Your fridge contains onions, lemons, and some pork; the pantry holds flour and baked beans. This is dinner? You bet. Head over to Cooking By Numbers, check off what you have from the site's list of 50 staples, and voilà--relevant recipes appear, rated 100 percent (if you have all the ingredients) or a lesser percentage (if you lack a few). While gourmet cooks may find the pickings slim, the site is perfect for the desperate parent or the forgets-to-shop bachelor. A great companion site: the Cook's Thesaurus, which has the scoop on any ingredient--how it's eaten and prepared, how to tell when it's no longer fresh, alternative names, and acceptable substitutes.

Black Viper walks you through a Windows XP installation. The site shows you the series of screens you'll encounter.

If you don't mind scrolling around a bit, check out Black Viper for Windows and Linux (Red Hat) installation guides, as well as general PC tips, buying advice, reviews, and PC-user postings identified simply as "rants." The site also provides help when you want to install more than one operating system. AnandTech and Arstechnica.com are helpful as well. AnandTech is chockablock with incredibly detailed reviews, analyses, and hardware news. Arstechnica features lots of primers ("Guide to Video Capturing"), buyers guides, and system tweaks.

When it comes to handhelds, few nexuses are worth visiting. An exception is Dave's PDA Place, a full-featured site with reviews, generous FAQs on Palms and Pocket PCs, buying guides, and more. The site even lets you build tables to compare PDAs on the fly. Brighthand.com likewise covers both Palm and Pocket PC platforms, with news, forums, and interviews. Its tightly formatted reviews dig into audio, video, battery life, and wireless issues. For serious info on Pocket PCs, hit Pocket PC FAQ. The site has detailed FAQs that tackle an exhaustive number of topics. Feeling cheap? Put on your shades and check the scads of Pocket PC freeware at the gaudy but useful CeBeans.

Some call it heresy; we call it common sense. The Mac and PC gotta talk, and Macwindows.com delves into every aspect of Mac and PC integration problems. You'll find solutions to connecting PCs and Macs on the same LAN, reading Mac floppies on a PC, sharing printers, and more, thanks to oodles of tips, tutorials, relevant news, and in-depth reports. The site is updated three times a week.

When it comes to all things CD, Andy McFadden's CD-Recordable FAQ is the place to go. In addition to details on what different formats offer, the site tells you how to diagnose disc problems, how to take advantage of recordable features, and more. Be prepared: The site is basically one big hypertext page with lots and lots of links. It's well organized, however, and it offers nuts-and-bolts details to satisfy pros while remaining clear enough for newbies. For a terrific (and similar-looking) FAQ site covering all things DVD, seek out DVD Demystified.

Russell Brown's Web site is devoted to Photoshop tricks. The example here is a tutorial on enhancing the lighting in the background of an image.

By his own estimation, Russell Brown is one heck of a Photoshop guru. His puckish site offers lots of tutorials on basic to advanced Photoshop skills, from removing wrinkles to distorting text. Tutorials come as text documents, PDFs, and narrated QuickTime movies. Computer-Darkroom is a good adjunct. It offers a ton of tutorials on manipulating images in Photoshop, scanning, and calibrating monitors, along with user reviews of products like photo printers.

Some people might describe Daypop as the Google of blogs. It can search 35,000 blogs, news sites, and other feeds. It also lists the top 40 links showing up in blogs, the top blogs by citation and linking, and stats of all kinds. Type Windows, for example, in the search field, and you'll find a slew of links to great tech-related blogs. Or try Technorati, which finds out which blogs link to which sites--type in the URL, and you get a list.

Online phone directories come and go, and their accuracy can vary over time. As we went to press, two stood out: Addresses.com and AT&T's AnyWho. Both offer white and yellow pages, reverse and toll-free directories, and more. Addresses.com has useful extras (prefab phone books for airlines, hotels, and car rental agencies; e-mail address searches), as well as silly ones (celebrity e-mail addresses). AnyWho has a more logical interface, international yellow and white pages, and a more capable search engine for toll-free numbers.

Want to know the safety record of a regional airline? Or how many crashes your favorite national carrier has had? For answers to these and other knee-knocking questions, head to the FAA's Aviation Safety Data Analysis Center. This Web site isn't for window-shoppers, nor is it easy to navigate. But if you want the real story, dig in. For example, to get a list of accident reports, click the Databases link, select NTSB Aviation Accident and Incident Data System (NTSB), and then choose NTSB Data Query Tool. In the form that opens, pick the factors you're interested in (such as 'Operator Name' or 'Injury Level'), and then click Submit. You might think twice about flying on some airlines.

The answer is often no. Consumer WebWatch wants to change that. The site is a grant-funded project of Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. You'll find in-depth reports evaluating Web commerce overall and by genre (such as online hotel booking), and lots of links to various groups committed to Web credibility, consumer protection and advocacy, privacy, and more.

The motto at RefDesk.com is Avaritia Facit Bardus--greed makes you stupid. That's why RefDesk is free, says creator Bob Drudge (Matt's dad), and it's clearly a labor of love. The home page looks like an old Sears newspaper ad, but it's packed with links to useful resources. The emphasis is on, well, everything: news (and links to major sources); health, science, and technology stories; virus threats; over a dozen reference sites; a grab bag of miscellany (Harper's Index, the Internet Health Guide); and more.

Federal Web sites can out-shovel anyone when it comes to free data, but they often lack interface niceties. Still, for certain kinds of statistics, there's no better place to poke around. FedStats is a gateway to stats from federal agencies. Just pick a subject (Environment, say), and a list of relevant agencies, from EPA to NASA, pops up. Click the Key Statistics link to get quick hits on notable studies. You could also turn to the Social Law Library's State Law Page for a comprehensive and current list (organized by state) of links to state agencies, courts, and laws.

Web newsletters appeared minutes after the Web debuted. One of the first and best is The Scout Report, a weekly digest of useful sites with an academic bent. (Specialized spin-offs are devoted to physics, life sciences, and math/engineering/technology.) A typical 20-item report might reveal new figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an archive on the free speech movement, a cool online collection of sheet music, and a special focus on a topic in the news.

Sometimes you need more medical advice than Scrubs can provide. The gold standard is MedlinePlus. Once the preserve of physicians, Medline's formidable database is now easier for laypersons to use and is open to everyone. You can easily search for a symptom, condition, or disease, and get quick links to studies, definitions, and the like. Other sections of the site provide direct access to news about clinical trials, a dictionary of strong drugs, and an illustrated medical encyclopedia. And unlike other medical sites, Medline doesn't pelt you with ads or other sponsored editorials. If you want heavy-duty medical information, go to United States National Library of Medicine and the core Medline database for tools.

Consider it the Consumer Reports of the nonprofit world. Charity Navigator tells you where the money goes, how solvent the organization is, who runs it, and more. The site's star ratings provide a useful thumbnail guide to an organization's standing, and the site's various charts illustrate how an organization compares with its peers in the same field. Need more detail? The National Center for Charitable Statistics stores copies of thousands of charities' IRS Form 990 (the nonprofit equivalent of a 1040).

Three skeptical Web sites allow you to double-check Internet rumors. TruthOrFiction.com provides a list of out-and-out urban legends, disputed tales, and true stories, all searchable. A good backup is About's Urban Legends and Folklore site. Concerned about medical hoaxes? Quackwatch zeroes in on dentistry scams, health fraud, quackery, and homeopathy, to name just a few. You'll also find advice on how to pick a doctor, how to spot scams, and more.

Home improvement: personal hell or personal fulfillment? Either way, you need help. Hometime.com, a searchable how-to site built around the popular PBS and TLC Syndication show, covers all the bases, with lots of illustrations and real-world tips. (Cutting tile? "If you're using a utility knife, shorten the blade to keep it from breaking easily.") Thetiledoctor.com sports how-to slide shows, a lot of design help, and a nifty tile calculator (so you buy just the right amount of tile). For more-specialized assistance and advice, seek out Toiletology 101, a funny site with dozens of illustrated lessons on everything from toilet anatomy to septic tanks.

Allmusic is the uber music reference site. It tracks about a half million titles. Each album listing has a digestible summary.

The ultimate music reference site for most genres is All Music Guide. Search by artist, album, song, style, or label, and you receive detailed bios, discographies with user and AMG experts' ratings, and superior suggestions for similar artists to check out. When we examined the site, the listings covered 589,466 albums and 4,711,160 tunes. While the emphasis is on available albums, you'll find a lot of out-of-print titles, too. The user-run MusicMoz is a good flip side. This discography-cum-metasearch site whips through billions of Web pages looking for info on your favorite artist. It also has a gangbusters Yahoo-like catalog with links to MP3 sites, musician resources, shopping sites, composer's tools, and more.

The standard reference for television programming is The Complete Directory of Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, but TV Tome comes pretty close. For each listed show you get summaries; air dates; episode lists with specifics; cast listings with links to bios; notable goofs; reader forums; and cross-links to related material. The site is hardly complete--at the time of this writing, it has 1400 guides available, with over 2700 new ones in development.

Forget all that paint-and-canvas stuff. Thanks to the Web, interactive digital art is all the rage. And the Whitney ArtPort is your portal to electric, eclectic, and Webcentric art. The site has five areas: gates (entree to artist Web sites), commissioned work (a recent show: interactive art generated by code that could not exceed 8KB), exhibitions, collections, and links to other digital galleries, museums, and similar sites.

Here's an old wine in a new bottle--The New York Times' Crossword Games site. To get new puzzles and multiplayer tricks, you gotta pay. But slide down to the Classic Puzzle link, and you can summon a challenging crossword from the paper's archives, updated weekly. Puzzle fanatics should check out Ray Hamel's Crossword Puzzles page. Hamel's site lists 250 puzzle sites, foreign language crosswords, solver sites, articles, software, and anagram generators.

For fans of twisted music, there's no better place than Otis Fodder's 365 Days Projects, which features daily downloadable MP3s of the most baffling audio around, from corporate minimusicals that push photocopiers to Barbie-and-Ken duets. It's so addictive, you'll need a second hard drive just to hold all the files you'll download. Good tagalongs: Incorrect Music from WFMU radio, featuring "an asylum of crackpot and visionary music," and Miserable Melodies, where Travolta, Shatner, and others sing!

For boob tooberie, we suggest Modern Television, which distorts TV coverage (especially news) for comic and political effect. Some of the topics can be a little dated, though. For a frivolous diversion, try The Oracle of Starbucks to get an analysis of your personality based on your beverage selection. Demented science fans should roam the Annals of Improbable Research, a site devoted to "genuine, and genuinely funny, research." Marvel at such (real) studies as "Feline Reactions to Bearded Men" and "Nano-Pasta--Thin Film Realization of Ultra-Fast Cooking Pasta Using Glancing Angle Deposition." Sign up for the newsletter and get the madness delivered to your in-box.

You may not know your grep from your gruff, but that doesn't mean you can't learn the commands to install Linux like a pro with a little help from the Web. The first stop for any novice should be Linux Online, which offers detailed tutorials for almost every Linux distribution plus additional tips on getting the OS to work. Another great resource--designed for experts but with plenty for newcomers too--is The Linux Documentation Project. Geeks help geeks by answering specific questions at LinuxQuestions.org and on Google Groups at comp.os.linux. Just visit the appropriate category (hardware, setup, security, and so on), and some kind soul will probably throw a little charity your way.

Parlo un po' d'italiano. That means "I speak a little Italian." And you'll certainly pick up a little Italian (and most other languages) on the Web, if you want to learn for free. None of the freebies will make you a master, but a few of them will at least get you started: Fodors.com has tons of travelers' translations (with audio) for common phrases, but no real instruction. MyLanguageExchange.com pairs up members in a sort of buddy system, each looking to learn the other's language. It's free, but it requires a partner with an equal level of motivation. Italian.about.com is another good resource, with essential phrases for travelers, an audio lab, and dozens of common Italian hand gestures explained. (No, polite ones.)

Ever attended an enormous cocktail party and found yourself so bored you were folding the napkins into, well, folded-up napkins? Turn your downtime into a creative endeavor by learning the ancient art of origami. Your first stop has to be Origami.com, which includes comprehensive how-to instructions for hundreds of classic and modern designs. Origami Heaven and Paperfolding.com are targeted at beginners and more-advanced levels; the truly lost should check out the animated Flash tutorials to find their feet.

Sick of working for The Man? Get back at him by writing a business plan for your own start-up--say, while you're on company time! The Small Business Administration makes a good first stop, with a comprehensive list of things to think about in putting together your plan. Businessplans.org has great example plans along with helpful advice, and NASA actually has a good outline (even for non-space-oriented businesses). The free sample plan at Bulletproofbizplans.com is incredibly detailed and highly worth cribbing from. To download sample plans based on industry (manufacturer, retailer, and service provider), try the CCH Business Owner's Toolkit.

--Christopher Null

A handy, tiny app, IP Search Toolbar provides many of the tools your browser lacks. From a small toolbar, you can fetch an IP address, run a Whois search, ping sites, sync your PC's clock to a reliable Internet source, and get details about an e-mail address. Fast and free (IE and Netscape).

This tool allows you to share your IE favorites with others by turning IE's multifolder clutter into one HTML file. You could also use the file as a start page. Free (IE).

Slow or pricey connection? Teleport can download part or all of a Web site for browsing offline. You can capture pages based on a word search or file type, and follow links off the site. Teleport is free, but to remove capacity limits, you need to register the product for $40.

IDcide lets you know if a Web site is tracking you and blocks the offending party. In addition, you can adjust the protection level to suit your preference (no protection, medium privacy, or high privacy). Unfortunately, IDcide currently does not work with IE 6; a version to support IE 6 is in beta. Free (IE).

The blog-building tool at Blogger.com lets you keep your blog private until you're sure you're ready for prime time.

There's no faster way to share your thoughts than with a Web log, or blog. These instant Web pages let you post text, images, and links in a jiffy. Start with BlogSpot and Blogger, its template-based blogging tool. BlogSpot will host your blog for free, if you don't mind a few ads alongside your prose, and if you can live without images, among other limitations. (For $15 a year you can lose the ads.) You might be ready to compose and post from Blogger itself, but the program's text-editing functions are basic. Instead, use Notepad or another text editor to write and edit your message, then copy and paste the text into Blogger.

BlogSpot gives you the option of hosting your blog on your server, but users ready to manage their own blogs should check out Radio UserLand, a blogging system. It lets you try out the service free for 30 days (full price is $40). Journalists will appreciate the News Aggregator built in to Radio UserLand, which lets you capture items from news sites and add them to a blog almost as soon as they appear. The system also makes it easy to publish a Rich Site Summary stream for other blogs to pick up. For maximum control over your blog, including the ability to integrate files with your entries, try Movable Type. Its server-based publishing system is free for personal use ($150 for commercial use).

The next time you're planning an event, why not create a Web site to provide information to invitees? Unlike sites such as Evite, some services let you give your guests a single URL to check for updates, and they offer you more control over the appearance of the site. The Tripod service from Terra Lycos lets you post such a site for free, complete with a calendar and an e-mail link for invitees to use. When it's time to poll your guests about their food preferences, for instance, browse over to CreateSurvey.com to put together a free survey.

Join sellers on such sites as EBay or Yahoo Auctions and get cash for your junk. Check out the sites' own advice on how to get started. Take EBay's audio tour, and read Yahoo's advice.

To help your auction attract lots of bids, make sure that you provide all the information prospective buyers expect. For example, buyers appreciate close-up photos, as well as detailed descriptions (take care to point out any flaws).

If you would like to know how many people viewed your auction listing, you might want to add a free traffic counter by Andale. The Andale tracking feature works on auction pages at EBay, Yahoo, and Amazon.com. Read "Make Your Trash Someone's Treasure" and "How to Make Cash on EBay" for more selling tips.

Everybody's got opinions about books, movies, PC products, and everything under the sun. One way to share yours is to write a user review. For electronics, books, music, movies, and more, you have a built-in audience at Amazon.com. Remember the writer's mantra: Keep the reader in mind! Don't skimp on specific details, especially if your review is negative. If you are describing bands or singers, try to find other artists you can compare them to. And if you're reviewing a book or movie, don't give the ending away! See Amazon.com's guidelines for reviewers. And for a broader examination of user reviews along with a look at review sites, read "Public Opinions: Inside User Reviews."

If you're hankering to do your part to help your community, why not volunteer your time at nonprofit Web sites? Make VolunteerMatch.org your first stop. Click the Virtual Volunteering link, and you can get involved in all kinds of activities, such as newsletter writing. To find other sites that need volunteers online, check out the list of resources available at the Coalescence Web site. You could also volunteer your services at WebJunction, an organization devoted to technology and public access for libraries and other related groups.

--Dennis O'Reilly

Worried about who's looking at your health records--and what they're doing with the data? This watchdog group shows you how to protect your privacy, advocates for changes in laws and business practices, and issues reports that inform (and often sway) policy makers.

Dr. Jason Catlett and his site are a thorn in the side of spammers, telemarketers, indifferent ISPs, and others who spread junk mail and invade your privacy. A superb resource that names names and supplies advice on stemming the flood.

If you think your credit record is bad now, wait until someone steals your identity. The ITRC is there to help, with guides (how to prevent it, what to do if you're a victim), forms, shopping tips, and even tips on testifying in court. You get solid advice on protecting yourself and, if your identity is stolen, on cleaning up the mess.

This site, tied to the book of the same name, has comprehensive news, as well as tips on stopping and complaining about spammers, protecting your kids, blocking Messenger spam, and more. Expect to see a few discreet plugs for the book.

If you love Star Wars, belly up to this bar of parodies and homages, such as "The Vorzyd Gambit" and "Death Star Repairmen." Great silliness and surprisingly good filmmaking. TFN FanFilms is home to the classic parodies "Hardware Wars" and "Troops." Even if you're not a die-hard fan, you'll still enjoy the fun.

The musicmatch player is elegant and free. If you want to make the most of the player, pay $3 to $5 per month to listen to (but not save) all the music you want. The Musicmatch MX service gives you access to 500,000 tracks, and you'll also find some free MP3s and WMA tunes.

A great look back at TV's so-called golden era of the 1950s and 1960s. A ton of video excerpts from Batman to the Jolly Green Giant, and a ton of commentary and gossip, too.

This site offers comedy gone digital--shorts, parody ads, and Swedish flicks. Click the Recommendations link for leads to dozens of other like-minded sites.