Internet Resources
Web Resources
May, 2004
By Tech News Staff Writer Catherine Friesen
Highlighted here are five great free and low cost resources from software, research, virtual marketplaces, free email, and marketing tools.
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Tech News invites you to contribute your tips for Free and Low Cost Web resources for this article! Drop us a note and watch us expand our coverage. Editors' Note: Tech News does not endorse any particular resource listed in this article. |
TechSoup Stock
Nonprofit organizations and schools with valid 501(c)(3) status can obtain products for a mere administrative fee on TechSoup Stock (formerly Discount Tech). TechSoup offers an alternative to purchasing full-priced software by distributing donated software for a modest fee, such as $20 for Microsoft Office 2003 Professional. With 240 products from 25 major providers, TechSoup Stock is a money-saving resource that nonprofits should take full advantage of.
Certain software donations have restrictions on how often the software can be ordered or what types of nonprofit organizations can obtain them.
Wikipedia, a service of the nonprofit Wiki Media Foundation
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia which covers a vast range of subjects in multiple languages. It has over 270,000 articles in the English language version alone. Wikipedia is unique in that the articles have been generated by the efforts of more than 6,000 volunteers and it continues to be revised and expanded through user feedback. The site is primarily about sharing information. Accordingly, users are granted free access to copy, modify, and redistribute Wikipedia content with the provisions that they must allow the same freedoms to others and acknowledge the authors of Wikipedia articles.
Craigslist - New York City
Craigslist is now the most visited web site in the New York Metro area and serves as a valuable marketplace for many area nonprofits which utilize the service for free classified listings. A nonprofit/commercial hybrid that founder Craig Newmark described as "non-commercial" in a recent National Public Radio interview, Craigslist was started in San Francisco in 1995 as a volunteer effort. Operations are funded by charging fees to employers in the San Francisco Bay area. Craigslist has grown to over 14 full time staff that develop tools to serve major cities throughout the world.
Devoid of graphics and animated advertisements, the site is designed in a simple and straightforward format that makes Craigslist a breeze to navigate.
For budget minded community-based organizations it serves as a great tool for everything from Nonprofit Sector Job Postings, Volunteer Opportunities, to Buying/Selling Used Furniture.
Gmail will heat up the competition among free email service providers.
| Currently Google is running a beta test with a small group of web-based email users. If successful, this storage space will be huge for a free mail service. The user interface is uniquely Google and easy to navigate. When released, Take a sneak peak at Gmail. |
 GMail - Proposed 1000 MB Storage Yahoo Mail - 4 MB Storage Limit Hotmail - 2 MB Storage Limit |
Online PDF Writer from Adobe
Create Adobe PDF Online is a web-based tool that provides the ability to convert most documents into the 'Adobe Portable Document Format' Adobe PDF files. The service offers a free trial to create five PDF files and can be extended for a $9.99 per month subscription with unlimited PDF writer capabilities and faster processing time.
PDF files can be viewed using the free Adobe Reader. A valuable tool, PDF's allow documents to be viewed as they were intended with fonts and colors in place without having specific software like Word or Illustrator installed on another user's workstation.