Computer Chit Chat

Archive for the ‘Free’ Category

If you’re online than you know there is a lot of information out there. One of my favorite sites is About.com. Web Design Basics sectionom because you can find information on almost anything on that site.. The  of About.com contains a treasure trove of information and it free to use. The topic of web design basics is separated into the sections Elements of Good Design, Fonts and Typography, How to Use Color, Graphics and Images, Web Layout Basics, Tackling Navigation, Accessibility and Usability, and Web Design Software. The articles are all easy to read and understand. If you’ve been wanting to learn about web design this is an awesome resource.

• Sumo Paint
• How do you sell online?
• HP offering free online classes

Everyone likes free stuff, don’t they? Giveaway of the Day is a site that offers a different licensed software download every day. The titles are only available for free for one day. There’s no way to get advance notice of what title is going to be given away next so you need to check the site daily to see what they’ve got for that day. It’s a neat site and I’ve found some terrific software there. Check it out and let me know what you think.

• 25 free magnets
• HP offering free online classes
• Sumo Paint

I have a thing for domains. I’ve mentioned previously how much I like Godaddy, for their pricing and their control panel. If you’re a Buy.com shopper, or are in the nmarket for a new domain, here’s how to get a  GoDaddy.com Free Domain Name.  When you go to the Buy.com site check the “Check Here” box found on the GoDaddy banner on the Buy.com cart summary page and you will receive a unique redemption code for a free domain. This is a limited time offer, so don’t wait too long!

• Free games
• 25 free magnets
• How do you unzip?

Toodledo is a web based to do list that I recently learned about. Toodledo can be integrated into your mobile phone, Calendar applications, the Firefox browser, instant messaging, RSS feed readers and your email inbox. Your list can even be shared with others for collaboration on projects. If you’re already using another task manager you can import the content from it so you don’t have to worry about losing or reentering everything. Two of the features it offers that I like the best are inline editing and time tracking. Toodledo is free to use and also has two paid versions available with enhanced features.

• Famundo
• Anyone at Mozilla listening?
• Color picker Firefox addon

Every day more and more people are using digital cameras to have fun and preserve memories. Another photo sharing and storage site has thrown it’s hat into the ring - Mypicturetown. This service is sponsored by Nikon. The site is free to join and members have 2gb of storage space, which is pretty nice. You can upgrade how much space you have for an additional fee. The site works much like other photo sites in that you can access your account from any computer with an internet connection, share pictures, post pictures to your blog, create albums and view images in a slideshow. The one downfall I found is that you have to create an account just to look around.

• Famundo
• Create free online invoices
• Places to find free pictures to use on your blog

Do you use several chat clients? I’ve been signed up for AIM for nearly forever, and for ICQ for almost just as long. I can also use Google Talk. I’ve been asked to chat using MSN and declined because I didn’t want to have yet another chat client open. Pidgin alleviates that problem. Pidgin is a free, open source, universal chat client all of the popular clients that you’ve heard of such as AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, IRC, MSN Messenger and Yahoo as well as a bunch of other clients I’m not familiar with. In the Windows environment, Pidgin sits in the system tray. Once you download Pidgin you can log in to all of your chat networks at once. Neat!

• Color picker Firefox addon
• Create free online invoices
• Pixel Pick, a free color coding tool

SUMO Paint is free software that allows users to create and edit images online. The application opens in your browser. The software does offer support for layers and filters. I was surprised to see that it offers many of the same tools as expensive image editing software, such as shape tools, a brush tool, an ink tool, a text tool, a stamp tool, an eraser tool, a gradient tool, shape tools, a magic wand tool, a lasso tool, a line tool and a curve tool, just to name some.

• The cost of software
• Places to find free pictures to use on your blog
• Work smarter and healthier with Dragon

I get a newsletter by email from HP every once in a while. In the edition that I got this week some free online classes were mentioned. Expecting to find only one or two, I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot more. The HP Learning Center offers courses on Microsoft Office, Adobe and Macromedia titles, as well as servers, pcs, networking, operating systems, programming, internet and graphics. There are also courses for business skills. I’m going to check a couple of them out.

• The cost of software
• 25 free magnets
• Looking for a free alternative to Office?

I have known about the software named Dragon Naturally Speaking for many years. When I was in computer sales I sold more than a few copies. Never having used it, I thought that what it did was type what you say. I didn’t know until I saw the below video, which was made by a fellow blogger named Brett, that Dragon can also transcribe recordings.

How cool is that! Brett’s also shared some information on how Dragon will quickly pay for itself, part of which I’ve shared below.

This is an excerpt from a white paper discussing how bloggers can earn more money through several different monetization and freelance writing services. It shows that bloggers that utilize Dragon Naturally Speaking can earn more money through these various services and how fast these extra earnings will pay for the software itself.

Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Blogger Break Even Analysis with TextBroker.com Earnings

I would like to walk you through several different scenarios to help all of us understand better what our words are worth.
I would like to start first by talking about a company that pays people to write. They pay them to write based on the number of words that are written. The company is called text broker.com and they are out of Germany and relatively new. I’m starting with TextBroker.com because the business model is very simple. The models will get more complex as I go through some of the other popular blog revenue sources.

Text broker.com will pay a person approximately 7/10 of a cent for a single word. They charge their customers approximately 1 penny per word. And they sell this service at increments starting at 100 words and go up from there.
That’s what they do; now let’s see how Dragon Naturally Speaking can pay for itself!
So, I’d really like to talk about how much you can earn from them based on how fast you type.
If you type 35 words per minute, and you typed for 50 minutes straight, you could theoretically type 1750 words.
Now at seven tenths of a penny per word, that work would be $12.25 per hour assuming that you take a ten minute break every hour. If you work four hours a day doing this, that would be forty-nine dollars per day.
If you could type 105 words per minute, that would be 5250 words in a fifty minute period of time. At that rate, you would earn $36.75 per hour assuming the same ten minute breaks every hour.

Obviously you can earn more if you can type faster.
If you could type 150 words per minute, then under this formula you could earn $52.50 per hour. That’s almost 5 times more than you can earn if you type thirty-five words per hour.
So in this example there is definitely a value in typing faster!
There is a cost associated with being able to type as fast as well. You could go and take a typing class and learn how to type 150 words per minute. That might take you many months of school, and many years of practice.
It’s also possible, that you may never be able to achieve that speed with your fingers.
Alternatively, you could buy Dragon NaturallySpeaking and be able to do it before the night was out. Dragon NaturallySpeaking costs $99 for the basic version and $199 for the preferred version.
As I write this, there are coupon code or discount code offers that you can use to save more money off that price. The coupon codes vary from $25-$50 off the price. Typically a bigger discount is offered for the preferred version, which I use myself.
Now in our example, if you bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking for ninety-nine dollars, and you did not use the coupon code to save twenty-five dollars, you would be able type 150 words per minute, and if you could previously type 35 words per minute, then based on the extra money that you could earn by typing faster, you would be able to pay for Dragon NaturallySpeaking in less than three hours of work using textbroker.com.
It kind of seems like a no-brainer. In many ways, it is a no-brainer with one exception. Not everybody writes for textbroker.com.
If you consider how much additional money you might earn by using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and consider how much more work you could do by being able to type at 150 words per minute, then you might be able to figure out how long it will take you to pay off the software with your earnings.
I will cover a number of other situations, which will highlight this using other examples where people that typically write a great deal, could benefit from using Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
If you have an example that you would like to share, please let me know, and I will be more than happy to share it with everyone.

Nuance is allowing us to offer our readers a 25% Discount Coupon CODE Exclusive for Dragon Naturally Speaking, but you must click the image below and use this code (DNSMSBG) Together. Code will not work from other sources.

Get Dragon Naturally Speaking using Discount code DNSMBG. You can get 25% off Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred.

If you’re interested in reading the rest of the white paper, it’s available at http://www.softduit.com/mavenmappersinformation/category/software/dragon-naturally-speaking/

Thanks Brett, for the terrific info and letting me share it! I found the video and white paper very interesting and informative, and it gave me food for thought. I plan on picking up Dragon for myself after my next computer upgrade.

This post sponsored by Nuance.

• Work smarter and healthier with Dragon
• The cost of software
• OIO Publisher on sale for $20

I got an email from my host a while back to check out BambooInvoice and I’ve finally gotten around to it. BambooInvoice is a site where you can create client invoices online. The site is based on open source code and was made with the small business owner in mind and is free to use. After registering for an account you can customize your business and invoice settings - things like company name and info, logo, currency and tax info. From the main screen, or root, you can view all invoices, drilling down to show open, closed and overdue. From that same screen you can view all clients. Users can even generate some simple sales and revenue reports. I think the site is extremely easy to use and would be helpful to anyone that has the need to create invoices.

• MyPictureTown
• 25 free magnets
• So many menus