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Technology

Software too good to be free

if-it-sounds-too-good-to-be-true-it-must-be-true

Previously I motivated you to donate to your favorite open source projects. This time I’ll show you really useful online services that require no installation and cost you nothing!

Maybe five years ago you would have to install (and pay) to get most of this features. Today you just connect to the internet and it’s all there, for free. Let me introduce you some of most useful websites out there.

  • If This Then That. Put the internet to work for you, that’s the company motto and that’s precisely what they do. The service is quite simple – when something happens (trigger) do something else (action). For example, if I publish a new blog post, then share that link on Facebook and on Twitter. Currently they integrate with almost everything you can think of, even your lamp! I use this service since it’s launch and it’s amazing how they keep such a useful service free, no strings attached.

  • Virus Total. Do you suspect a file contains a virus? Upload the file to Virus Total and they’ll scan it using 54 antivirus tools (including BitDefender, Kaspersky, Norton, McAfee, ESET, …) and give you a report. No install. No cost. Amazing.

  • All to All. Did you ever needed to convert a JPEG/PNG to a PDF? Or maybe a WMV to an AVI? Or if your the music type, a FLAC to an MP3? You would need to find the specific converter, just to find out it was a trial, and find another, just to find out it was malware, and so on. Today you only need to visit OnlineConvert and most of those conversions are available. For free. No install required.

  • Clip Converter. Do you want to download a Youtube video? Paste the video’s url, choose the quality/resolution and download. No install. Free. Quick too.

  • Listen To Youtube. Oh you want just the music of that video? Then visit this site, paste the video’s url, and download. No more those extensions that slow your browser. No more malware. No more torrents. Online and free.

  • MP3 Cut. Oh you want to trim the beginning and the end of the song? Fine: upload, crop, preview in realtime, download. It also works for videos. Doesn’t get any better than this.

  • Wordle. Do you want to create a beautiful word cloud? This is the right place. My books’ covers were made using this precious website.

  • Dillinger. You’re more the writing type? And you happen to like Markdown? Well now you can write, preview, save to Dropbox or Drive, all on your browser. No installation required.

  • F*ck Yeah Markdown. And now you need that great article you found online formatted in Markdown? If only there was a way to automatically transform the webpage’s content into plain Markdown… but there is! Paste url, hit convert, save it. #fuckyeah

  • Online Toolz. If you’re a programmer then you’ll love this website, since it aggregates several tools you need on a daily basis. Validate an XML using an XSD? Check. Test a XPATH expression with a given XML? Got it. Test a regular expression instead? Got it too. Minify a Javascript file? Yes. Automatically format or indent an XML or HTML? They also do that, but for SQL files I recommend this other. #kthxbye

  • XML Sitemap Generator. If you create websites you’ll like this one. It automatically traverses your website and generates a sitemap XML file, containing the structure and urls of your website. Later on search engines can use that file to better index your pages.

  • Is it down or just me? Sometimes you just can’t access a website. Maybe it’s blocked on your country. Maybe it’s really down… but how can you be sure? Just ask the internet this website. Quick, easy, useful!

  • Feed the Bot. Did you enable compression on your recently created website? Submit your url and the bot will tell you which compression your website is using and how many bytes were saved by using compression. But there’s more! They have a lot more tools available (SEO page spider, Google guideline check) and tips to speed up your website (Leverage browser caching, Prioritize visible content, Defer loading of JS).

  • Woorank. This is a true gem, although not as free as when it was on beta. By providing your website’s url it performs a full analysis over your website and gives you a detailed report (SEO, Usability, Social, Conversions). And for each test it tells you how much impact it has on your overall score and how you can fix it.

  • Anki. In order to memorize what what you learned today you can use Anki. It’s a simple program that lets you create, manage and use flash cards which are really handy when you need to memorize something. I used it to memorize the meaning of some (weird) English words like “whereas”. This one requires installation but is available on Win/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS. Is that enough?

  • Day of the Shirt. That’s it. After reading this post you are now wiser… and geekier. You deserve a t-shirt. This site aggregates daily promotions and t-shirts on discount from several websites. From Star Wars, to Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, it’s all there. Yoda’man ;)