Energy bills are up, gas is still expensive and tuition sure isn’t going down anytime soon. So why not take advantage of all the freebies the Internet has to offer? Legal ones, of course. Books, audiobooks, movies and TV shows can all be viewed online for free, often with no commercials or far fewer commercials than you would find on regular tube television.
Google Books
Google provides a completely free service to a wide variety of books, which are available to read online. It surprisingly includes many modern books in areas such as literature, science fiction, romance, and even many non-fiction books as well. Older ones are available to download as an Adobe PDF, while newer ones can only be read online. books.google.com
Podiobooks.com
If reading a book online isn’t your forte, you’d be happy to note that there are audio books available online, free of charge. Podiobooks offers a wide range of books, much like Google Books, but these are all available as downloads to listen to on your computer, or perhaps more importantly, your iPod. www.podiobooks.com
Hulu
Commercials are out of control and Hulu is the perfect alternative for someone who doesn’t particularly care for paying some obscene amount of money per month in order to watch 15 minutes of programming for every 15 minutes of commercials. Hulu has a wide variety of television shows and movies available to watch online, no registration required. They do have commercials, however it’s only 1 to 3 commercials for a normal, half-hour show. Plus it has the entire season of Firefly. www.hulu.com
Pandora
Pandora radio is a free internet radio station that creates music based on your musical tastes. You simply enter an artist or song title, and it will create a music station based around the musical qualities of what you entered. After that, you can tell it if a song is good or bad and it will adjust accordingly. Did I mention it has no commercials?
www.pandora.com
Winamp
Winamp is more than just a music player, it’s also a portal to an impressive range of online radio and television shows. Playing under the name Shoutcast Radio and Shoutcast TV, there is a huge variety of selections, all for free. Stations include euro trance to jazz and everything in between. www.winamp.com