The amount of things you can get online these days are insane. This is probably all due to one word, marketing. As you probably all know advertisers have found a new avenue for the consumers, which is online. Because of this many of you may obtain "free stuff" through this venue.

I. Free Software
Games:
Holic, Maplestory, 9 Dragons, Dofus (http://www.nexon.net/NX.aspx? PART=/Main) - These are only a few of the selection of games available online for people to play for free. PC games are now starting to be free as more indie developers produce free games. Large computer developers are also finding out that the marketshare of pc gamers are shrinking as console games are starting to dominate. There's also other business models where games are free so they can make their money off of selling virtual items or advertisements.

Productivity:
OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/), Mozilla Suite, Google Docs, StarOffice8 - Did I say marketing as the main cause for free software? I also meant to say open source is the other main cause. As more people start making programs for the people leaving their code for the world to see, many of these programs are made for non-corporate in mind. Corporations in the software sense have become so littered with negative publicity that others are providing a free alternative which bypasses the barriers of entry.

Utilities:
AVG (antivirus), ZoneAlarm (firewall), Spybot S&D (antispy) - These are free versions of utilities that are ranked in the top, not to mention that they're totally free and constantly updated. Why purchase things you can get for free: http://www.download.com/

II. Free Swag
Samples: Walmart(http://walmart.triaddi gital.com/Free-Samples.aspx):
The oldest trick in the book, give you something for free so that you'll be hooked onto buying later on. Walmart have tons of free samples from their corporate partners which you can get for free. While its not a lot, it builds up over time. And there are countless amount of free samples scattered around the websites of corporations. You just need to know where to look: http://www.fatwallet.com/c/22/

III. Free Books
Ebooks: Putting scans/texts of books for the world to obtain for free. Its ambitious, and... its FREE! While most of the headlines came from Google's way, they're probably the worst for free ebooks. The ones that are really making headway are those nonprofit channels. The Gutenburg Project has made a lot of headway in delivering free ebooks: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/ Main_Page

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