Amazing how there is so much free technology today. No wonder the economy is down, everyone is giving their products and services away for free. Well I guess that is not entirely true, but it is incredible what you can get for free (or almost free). I love it. Here is a list of free technology I used today.
- Internet - There are lots of places I can go and get access to a world wide network for free. What is more amazing is all the sites I can visit that have so much information available or tools to use all for free.
- Hosting- You can get your blog or website hosted for free. Our you can pay some ridiculously low price ($5.00 per month) and get your site hosted with almost unlimited resources.
- WordPress- There is so much open source software available that you can get for free. WordPress is a great CMS/blogging software you can get for free. Not to mention all the WordPress themes and plug-ins that are free.
- Skype- There are lots of free tools to do communications on the Internet. Skype is just one of them, but it is a cool one.
- Google Analytics – An online application that will give you great information about the traffic to your web site. This is a great tool.
- TweetDeck – A desktop tool that makes using Twitter much easier.
- iPhone apps- Software that lets me do stuff on the little box that I carry around in my pocket.
How it is possible that all this is free? I don’t know for sure, but I am glad that is it.
Someone on Twitter asked today if using free software was going to put them out of business. I responded “No, it just enables you to focus more on the things that are still not free like content and customer service.”
I remember reading in business book about the idea of thinking about what your business would be like if you could give your product or service away for free. It is was in interesting question. I guess we are getting to see the answer every day. Many of the companies that give their main product away for free (Google, Skype) have found other ways to make money based on the fact they have so many people using their free product or service.
Here is an interesting article that talks about giving it away for free: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123335678420235003.html
I give stuff away for free all the time because I like to help people, but I don’t think the technology providers are that altruistic. I just think they have figured out a very cool way to do business. It is a great time to be alive, but the challenge for a successful technology company is now to be able to compete with getting the same thing for free.
What is your favorite free technology? Can you solve the problem of giving your products or services away for free?
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I like to solve problems with technology. In this blog, I'd like to share some of my ideas and also tell you about solutions I am currently working on. Welcome, and please share your own ideas with me by leaving a comment.
This blog post really hit home with me as a young professional being “groomed” in a constantly evolving, technical world. I hope that what you said is right, that if the technology is free, it “enables you to focus more on the things that are still not free like content and customer service.” Perhaps once cost (or lack of cost) is no longer an issue, companies will truly attempt to differentiate themselves based on the service and experience they provide their consumers. Thank you for that truly valuable insight.