Everybody talks about Britney Spears too much.

Who really gives a crap about what some over-rich immature celebrity is doing right this second? ........... A lot of people apparently.

I just feel like talking about something close to my inner geek.

The amount of 'free' software that is being released so far makes me wonder. What's really 'free' ? I like free stuff, but in my experience there is always a cost. Whether the gain is monetary or serving a specific purpose. Nobody does anything for 'free'. Everyone needs money to live.

There might be one or two people 'living' off the land, sequestering themselves away from society. However even these people need money because governments will eventually find them and take away whatever they can if they dont have money to pay taxes (one of only two sure things in life).

So what free applications do I like?
A few pieces of software that I enjoy.

Fotoflexer
I just discovered this one...For an online photo editor it's pretty amazing. Too many features to list, but just the ability to 'remove' someone from a photo easily is worth checking out. Also, the fact that every feature seems to have a demo video so anyone can do amazing things almost immediately.

OpenOffice
Im not sure why OpenOffice is free, but it's pretty good. Considered by many as THE alternative to MS Office, if you dont want to shell out hundreds of dollars and dont need the fanciest office bells and whistles... it is pretty impressive. I use it at home and havent got/heard any complaints.

Google Applications
Specifically Reader, GMail, Picasa... Blogger. If you dont mind the ads, the amount of applications that keep piling up under the Google umbrella is pretty astounding. All you have to do is click on the 'More' link on the google homepage to see em all. Sometimes they're in the Labs section if they're not quite ready for an official release.

I use Google Reader everyday... any of my favorite websites that have an RSS feed gets a subscription and it saves an amazing amount of 'surfing' time. It just brings everything to you in one place and you can get a summary of what's new without having to visit all your favorite destinations. When you first install it as part of your 'google' account, you can select 'packages' of subscriptions in categories you might be interested in. I was introduced to quite a lot of pretty cool content that way.

Anyways, Im not a tech blogger (or much of a blogger at all lately) and there are a lot of other cool 'free' applications out there... In my experience, NOTHING that is good will stay free so take advantage of this stuff while you can.