Free | Money Tip Central

Free Credit Report from the Government

Free Credit Report from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion

This might be old news for some but for others it might be new. You can get a free credit report from each of the three credit reporting bureaus each year. Every twelve months Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion will give you a free credit report. The only downside is that you don’t get your actual score. You only get the report. The report will show you all your open accounts, payment history, and much more. The only thing it won’t tell you is the actual number of your credit score. Beyond using it for bragging rights or knowing where you are on on the credit score scale the number isn’t all that useful.

If you want to monitor your credit you can spread out each report and pull one every four months. By spreading out the time you pull the reports you can see any changes that are out of place. So, in January you’ll get your report from Experian. In May you’ll get it from Equifax. In September you’ll get it from TransUnion. When January comes around again your year waiting period will have passed with Experian and you can apply again. If you want email reminders sent to you try LetterMeLater.com. They will send you emails in the future so you won’t forget.

Please visit www.annualcreditreport.com to get started.

Tagged with: credit report • free

Ultimate List of Free Music Online

If you like free legal music then this list is for you. Please leave a comment if you have more ideas.

Internet Radio on Steroids

Thesixtyone.com features independent music, newly signed bands, and bands you might not hear on the radio. Sorry, no Backstreet Boys here.

Make a profile and try to rack up points by “bumping” good songs early, referring people, and listening to “the rack”. Thesixtyone.com encourages a lot of interaction between bands and listeners. Many of the bands give away their music for free and allow you to download as you listen. Others provide a link so you can buy it. To say the least thesixtyone is an indie music paradise.

Deezer
With super simple sign up you’ll be listening to music in no time with Deezer. Create you own playlist or have Deezer suggest new songs based on songs you’ve suggested.

Pandora will suggest new music based on their users listening habits. A huge database drives the listening experience. As you listen you teach Pandora about your tastes. It learns your unique preferences and makes new recommendations. It is scary how good Pandora is at picky music you like. It’s awesome.

Tell musicovery your favorite genres and mood and it will do the rest. It has a playful interface you’ll love from the start. Yea! Bubbles!

Social Media Music

imeem: where artists, fans and friends share their tastes and discover blogs, photos, music and video.

Last.fm connects you with your favorite music, and uses your unique taste to find
new music, people, and concerts you’ll like.

Do you have a great place to discover music on the web? Please leave a comment.

Tagged with: free • internet radio • music

Ultimate List of Free Essential Software

Note:If you enjoy this list of software you might find these online applications & tools helpful. No need to install or download anything, they work in your browser.

Free software can save you hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars. The software listed below is completely free, doesn’t have malware or adware, is completely legal, and I use each of them personally. Most of them are Open Source. If you aren’t familiar with what Open Source is please read The Free Software Definition.

This list includes the most popular software within their categories. You’ll find a software solution for all of your daily needs. If you have any suggestions or ways to improve the list please leave a comment.

Operating System

Ubuntu – Designed as a Linux alternative to Windows or Mac operating systems. A free operating system makes really cheap PC’s possible. Ubuntu is getting better all the time and its getting easier for the average user to install. One thing you’ll notice is that Ubuntu is FAST. Starting up your computer is fast, download times online are faster, and programs open quickly. If you know someone (read: parent) with a slow computer that always gets viruses and has a frustratingly slow computer install ubuntu. If you have an old computer/laptop install a copy and start getting used to it. You’ll be happy you did.

If you are thinking about upgrading to Windows 7 or getting a new computer Ubuntu is a great alternative. Ubuntu is designed for everyday use. The biggest downside is that it can’t run most of the big games for Windows. Smaller applications can be run inside a Windows emulator. Ubuntu comes pre-loaded with a bundle of free Windows alternatives. Ubuntu is gaining momentum and becoming more popular each day. If you use Ubuntu and like it please share what you know with your friends and family.

Anti Virus

AVG Anti-Virus – the most popular free solution available at no cost to home users and provides the high level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers.

Easy to use, low system resources
Automatic update functionality
Real-time protection as files are opened and programs are run
AVG’s Virus Vault for the safe handling of infected files

Note: Avast also offers top rated anti virus protection

Personal Firewall

Comodo – The Award-Winning Free Firewall Software

Complete protection from Hackers, Spyware and Identity theft
Secures against internal and external threats
Host Intrusion Prevention System stops malware ever being installed
Delivers total end-point security for Personal Computers and Networks

Web Browser

FireFox – I’m an avid fan of Firefox for many reasons. Between the design, usability, and lack of features Explorer had me unsatisfied. Explorer has tried to update their browser but it looks like a thinly veiled ripoff of Firefox. In addition, the new Explorer froze up more often. Works with Windows, Linux, OS X

Most people that start using FireFox can’t live without it. The tabbed browsing and the customizations are very hard to beat. These other features are icing on the cake:
*Improved Tabbed Browsing
*Spell Checking
*Session Restore
*Web Feeds (RSS)
*Pop-up Blocker
*Phishing Protection
*Protection from Spyware

FireFox also has over 1,000 add-ons to choose from. You are sure to find something to make FireFox your own.

IM Chat

IM all your friends in one place! This little power house is compatible with everything. All your chat accounts will work here. It supports: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, Zephyr.

Note: Try the ‘Off the Record’ plugin for added security. Everyone you chat with needs to have the OTR plugin installed too. For offices and regular conversations this added bit of privacy is nice.

Email

Mozilla Thunderbird – It’s now even easier to organize, secure and customize your mail.

Office Software

OpenOffice – Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. Includes a robust word processor (Word), spreadsheet (Excel) , presentation (PowerPoint), and database (Access).

Photo Organizer

Google’s Picasa – The easy way to share and manage your photos.

Picasa is a free software download from Google that helps you:

* Locate and organize all the photos on your computer.
* Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks.
* Share your photos with others through email, prints, and on the web: it’s fast, easy and free.

Take your photos further with Picasa from Google.

Direct link: Picasa for Linux

Music Player & Organizer

A big thanks to Brian for leaving a lot of great suggestions in his comment. He’s right, iTunes can make me crazy sometimes. I guess I have a soft spot for it because it helped me get into podcasting. But one of his suggestions is a downright winner (sorry iTunes).

SongBird – Not only does Songbird have everything you’d want in an audio program it also comes with a full library of add-ons. Customize your player ’til your hearts content.

Drawing & Photography

Gimp – is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

If you’re used to Photoshop Gimp takes some getting used to. I still use it regularly because there is such a strong community providing great help and resources.

Screen Capture/Recording

CamStudio replaces expensive Camtasia recording software.

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer
and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in
SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly
Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

Here are just a few ways you can use this software:

You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software program
Or how about creating a set of videos answering your most
frequently asked questions?
You can create video tutorials for school or college class
You can use it to record a recurring problem with your computer
so you can show technical support people
You can use it to create video-based information products you can sell
You can even use it to record new tricks and techniques you discover
on your favourite software program, before you forget them

CD & DVD Burning

CDBurnerXP – a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Everyone, even companies, can use it for free. It does not include adware or similar malicious components.

Media Player

VideoLAN – VLC media player – Thanks to Steele in the comments for suggesting this one. From the short time I’ve used it VLC supports a huge amount of video and audio formats. The interface is simple and clean. I know this will be a program I use for a very long time. Thanks again Steele!

From VLC’s website:
* It is a free cross-platform media player
* It supports a large number of multimedia formats, without the need for additional codecs
* It can also be used as a streaming server, with extended features (video on demand, on the fly transcoding, …)

Audio Recording

Audacity – a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

* Record live audio.
* Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
* Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files.
* Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.
* Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
* And more!

3D Modeling

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems.

Features include:

Revolutionary non-overlapping and non-blocking UI delivers unsurpassed workflow
A range of 3D object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves, metaballs, vector fonts (TrueType, PostScript, OpenType)
Fast skeleton creation mode
Automated walkcycles along paths
Diffuse shaders such as Lambert, Minnaert, Toon, Oren-Nayar, Lambert
Realtime 3D/Game Creation
View all the features

Video Editing

Avidemux – a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.

Video Capture

Virtualdub – a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images.

File Compression/Zip

7-zip

Supported formats:
Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
Self-extracting capability for 7z format
Integration with Windows Shell
Powerful File Manager
Powerful command line version

FTP Software

FileZilla – a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface.

Easy to use
Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX and more
Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
Drag & drop support
Configurable Speed limits
Filename filters
Network configuration wizard

Tagged with: free • software

Microsoft Office for Free – Word, Excel, and Powerpoint

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about stealing Microsoft Office. You can have all the functionality of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint without spending $324.99 on Office 2007 .

Here’s where I tell you I lied. You actually get all the functionality of office without the cost but you don’t get Microsoft Office exactly. There’s a program I’ve recently downloaded that I LOVE and it’s free! Yes, it is completely legal and everyone is encouraged to use it. The program is called OpenOffice.

OpenOffice includes a database (like Access), word processor (Word), spreadsheet (Excel), presentation (PowerPoint), and even throws in two extra programs; Math and Draw.
Installation
The installation was easy to do and there were no problems. The download was easy but it took a little while to finish. Once I unzipped the package things went smoothly.

Writer

You can see from the tool bar and menus are very close to what you are used to in most word processors. There are two features that I really like about Writer: 1) There is an auto complete that offers a suggestion for the end of the word you’re typing. If you agree with the suggestion simply hit the space bar and OpenOffice will finish the word for you. 2) They offer an export to PDF button in the menu.

One of the best features about OpenOffice Writer is that it can open almost any file type. It doesn’t matter if it’s a .doc, .wps, or .xml it will open it. That feature alone is invaluable.

Calc

Calc is OpenOffice’s spreadsheet program. It looks to have a robust set of tools and standard features like you’d see in Excel. The one thing I’ve really appreciated is that Calc has many of the word processing featured built in. The spell-check-as-you-go works great. It saves me the embarrassment of sending out a spreadsheet riddled with my poor spelling attempts.

Base

Base is a database creator like Microsoft’s Access. Like the other applications it allows you to open and edit third party files. If you were to buy Access you’d have to pay extra for it because it’s generally not included in the standard office suite.

For a startup business OpenOffice’s Base could be a life saver.

Impress

Impress offers a wide range of tools and resources to make eye popping presentations. Because the community is so active you won’t have any problems finding new templates or add-ons to spice up your presentation. Impress definitely rounds out the OpenOffice offering, making it a very attractive tool for all your business needs.

Draw

OpenOffice Draw provides the flexibility you might not find in a word processor or a power point slide. Draw gets out of the way and allows you to make a page with video, audio, charts, graphs, shapes, text, and more if you’d like. If you had a notepad and you were trying to write down all your ideas Draw gives you the same flexibility. So cut loose and create something fun with this one.

Summary

OpenOffice has done a great job in providing an alternative to the standard office suite. There has been a lot of thought put into each of these applications. In many ways they have invented a better mouse trap and are giving it away for free.

Download OpenOffice