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Google Drive
 , a new home for you to access Google Docs including documents, presentation, spreadsheet, form and drawing in a simple folder within a file organizational system. It allows for users to easily create, share and edit files in real time online, or upload an existing file to the system with 5GB of free storage. (Review)
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Zoho Docs
 unites Writer, Sheet and Show and supports most file types with 1 GB of free storage. Sporting a useful toolbar menu for editing, it also features tabs for easy access to multiple documents, with various collaboration options available. (Review)
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Office Web Apps "offers free online versions of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft OneNote. Even better they are giving users 25 GB of free online storage to store their documents on Microsoft’s SkyDrive service." (Review 1, Review 2) See also Windows Live SkyDrive.
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7-PDF Web Portal converts a wide range of documents into PDFs. You can set a page range and image compression for the conversion. Just choose a file to upload, click Convert to PDF button and a PDF file is downloaded automatically for you. (Review)
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PDFescape, a PDF editor with form filler and designer. You can add text, links and sticky notes, whiteout contents, draw shapes, add form fields or fill up forms. Maximum file size 2 MB or 50 pages per file for free accounts. (Review)
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ILovePDF, a nice tool to merge or split pdf files easily. You can merge up to 10 PDF files in one, extract or split pages in a PDF, subject to a maximum file size of 8 MB.
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Nitro PDF offers free online conversion from PDF to Word/Excel via PDF-to-Word Converter and PDF-to-Excel Converter. Both are helpful and easy to use—choose the file you need, click the Convert button and check your inbox for the converted files. See also Free File Converter.
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Web2PDF lets you convert any webpage into a PDF document and save it to your computer with various options such as setting paper size. Simply paste the URL and click the button, or you can drag the bookmarklet to your toolbar so you don’t have to revisit the website. (Review) See also PrintWhatYouLike.
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CodeBox's PDF to Flash Page Flip converts your pdf file into a flash file with a smooth turn-page animation effect—upload a pdf up to 10 MB and receive a zip file containing html and swf files for viewing in a browser or a flash player. (Review)
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DigiSigner, a useful tool to digitally sign your PDF files and verify signatures, and you can assure that the important PDF documents are not tampered with. (Review)
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Google Docs Viewer, keep your computer clean as you can read a file without the need to download it—enter a document URL, press "Generate link" for sharing, and click "view here" for reading. Supported file types: doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pdf, xps, pages, ai, psd, tiff, dxf, svg, eps, ps, ttf, zip and rar.
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Scribd, a great tool to upload and view documents of various formats in full screen, mark them private and accessible by a specific URL, share them with millions of readers, or embed the viewer into a website or blog.
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SlideShare, search and download Powerpoint presentations from the web, or upload and share your slides, word or pdf documents publicly or privately. You can also view slides in full screen, or read transcripts and outlines.
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ShareText.org, share your text with anyone in three simple steps: 1. type or paste your text, 2. click the Post Text! button, 3. copy and share the URL link to your text. Simple and clean user interface, easy to use, no signing in or out of accounts is ever needed.
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Crocodoc, a convenient tool to collaborate on PDFs, Word and Powerpoint documents. You can highlight, add or strike out text, and add a note to a document shared by an URL. Adding password protection is limited to paid-for accounts.
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PocoDoc shrinks the Office files for you while retaining the original file formats in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. In some cases, the service claims that a compression of up to 95% can be achieved. (Review)
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Google Calendar lets you quickly schedule events and keep track of appointments. You can share your schedule with your co-workers, family and friends, sync to your mobile phone's built-in calendar, get notified by email or have a text message sent right to your mobile phone.
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Time.is
 , find out the exact time at any locations around the world, check the accuracy of your clock, and compare time at different locations. Find also calendar, sunrise and sunset times, time zone offset, daylight saving time, latitude, longitude and other info of your chosen location. Mobile browser friendly.
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TimeAndDate.com "is the most versatile I have found from the many sites available. It allows you to see the time and date of virtually any city in every country and set for a custom clock with all the time zones you care about." (Review)
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Time Zone Genius displays up-to-date time zone information for cities in the world. You can check current times for cities you choose, or find out offset from GMT, daylight savings time adjustments, sunrise and sunset times of a city.
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Time Online "offers Time Sheet recording, reporting and invoicing with no restrictions on the number of projects or users. Invoicing is built in so there's no need to have Excel installed." (Review)
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SlimTimer makes time tracking easier on your tasks or sharing them with your co-workers. You can print reports with selected report type, date range and other options, or save reports to your computer in csv format.
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Online-Stopwatch, a simple yet powerful timer for stopping watch and counting down, featuring full screen, split lap timer, egg timer, and even Custom Countdown to make your own countdown timer.
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Kuku Klok, a well designed alarm clock to wake you up with the sound of Classic Clock, Cockerel or other choices. Once loaded, it will work even if the Internet connection goes down.
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Klokoo wakes you up at the alarm time you set for today or tomorrow. Easy to set up—just select a time, click set or stop the alarm clock with a selectable sound.
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Zoho Notebook does an amazing amount of things—you can save text, image, audio and video objects, aggregate them in one place, keep track of changes and share a whole book, page or just an object on a page by granting read/write permissions.
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Evernote "is an outstanding product that provides you with an excellent solution to manage notes and snippets of information. You can create notes or cut-and-paste them with text and images." Desktop software is for syncing notes across computers if needed. (Review)
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Springpad, quickly and easily save and organize notes, tasks, bookmarks, clippings, media or anything you want to remember in one place. You can also share your stuff, set reminders and sync them with your mobile device. (Review)
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Remember The Milk lets you organize tasks into various lists, set due dates, postpone or repeat tasks, add notes, print lists and so on. It integrates with Gmail and other services with add-ons.
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Toodledo allows you to add and organize your tasks by folders, contexts, due dates and priorities, share your tasks with coworkers, friends or family. You can add multiple and repeated tasks, notes and tags, import and export your data or customize the service to suit your needs.
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TeuxDeux gives you a week overview of what needs to do in a clean user interface. It's easy to use—type in a box to add a task, move it to another day by drag and drop, or click to check off a done one or remove it.
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Postica, a sticky note which is clean in design and easy to use, with a quick layout, filter, printer-friendly view, and allows you to attach files to your sticky notes, send notes to yourself by email or via twitter, and even add notes to friends' whiteboards too. (Review)
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Listhings, clean interface and ample space for your notes, flipping between screens made easier with tabs, and there's even a handy option which downloads the current canvas as an HTML file for a backup in case the web site ever fails. (Review)
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Doodle, a brilliant way to organize a meeting that suits everyone to get together to celebrate a birthday, anniversary or new job with a group of close friends and family, or to get together with a few colleagues. (Review)
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Needtomeet, use a simple calendar and schedule a meeting time that works for everyone in three simple steps, no more emailing back and forth or wasting time to call everyone couple of times in a day.
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ScheduleOnce, mark with green to propose times for your meeting for a fixed duration and send a link to your invitees for feedback. Better still, it allows for checking out your free time and scheduling a meeting in your Google Calendar after connecting to it.
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ReqMan is a good choice for businesses and organizations that need a project management tool. It's extremely flexible and configurable. You can view it as a bunch of “legos” that can be put together to fit your specific needs. (Review)
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ClockingIT, manage your projects with timelines and assigning tasks, view the overall progress with an interactive gantt chart and scheduling, run flexible reports or get notifications via email and more.
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whenintime, create your timelines easily—just enter the dates or times of a series of events and they will be displayed on a timeline that you can scroll and zoom in your browser. Each event can include an uploaded image file and allows for collaboration or sharing. (Review)
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PlanningWiz3, a useful tool to partition rooms and arrange furniture in them easily, with good example plans and allowing you to save, print or export a layout plan to an image file.
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Autodesk Homestyler allows you to create your home in 2D and see it in 3D. Along with the generic items, you can include branded pieces from manufacturers, save your masterpiece or export it in jpg, dwg or rvt format.
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ExhibitCore Floor Planner, plan your home, garden, office, room, or any other layout just by dragging, dropping and rotating, you can then export your finished design to a PDF file. (Review)
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OneBudget, set up your budgets, manage income, expenses and other financial accounts, assess your net worth and cash flow, and track outstanding bills all in one place. Useful features include adding your own accounts manually in addition to a list of supported banks.
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Mint "an attractive personal finance on-line service helps budgeting and keeping track of your finances. Users need to create a Mint account before adding bank, credit card, home loan and investment accounts." (Review)
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Yahoo Finance offers up-to-date information and basic tools for personal finance management. It also allows for setting up your portfolios and getting quotes for your stocks with interactive, basic and technical analysis charts for the period you choose.
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TaxACT allows you to prepare, print and e-file your tax returns to IRS of the US Department of Treasury. It's fast and easy to use and you can add mini-schedules to most fields. See also other free online tax filings suggested in this Review.
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PayPal offers a secure and convenient way to pay when you shop online, send money to friends and family, or receive online payments from your clients. It's free to open an account but fees are chargeable on certain conditions for sending or receiving money.
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Thinklinkr, a great tool to organize ideas and information in outlines, and allow for multiple users to edit them in real time, with useful features including auto save, drag and drop, import and export, and a lot more.
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Knowcase, a distraction-free outliner to organize your ideas, notes, todos and other information by topics, and share them or collaborate with your team, friends or customers.
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Mind42 (Mind For Two), a neat and useful collaborative mind mapping tool for brainstorming and managing ideas in a tree-like diagram with node attributes, easy for publishing and distribution.
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Wikipedia allows users to type a word or phrase to search for useful information from millions of articles written collaboratively online by volunteers around the world. It's a good and handy encyclopedic reference and a frequently updated news resource for you.
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LDOCE, an online version of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, provides a quick search for a word or phrase, with widgets available for adding to your browser search bar, blog or personal website.
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Wordnik, "you don't get just a definition when you look up a word. You get example sentences, related words, charts, images from Flickr, pronunciations, etymologies, tags, Twitter segments and more." (Review)
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Thesaurus.com, a popular site to search for word definitions, synonyms and antonyms with filtering by parts of speech or word classes and suggestions for nearby words.
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Google Translate, enter text, a webpage address, or upload a document for translation from one language into another with auto detection of the source language. The translated result from an uploaded document is presented without preserving the layout or embeded images though.
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Bing Translator, translate texts or entire web pages from one language into another, with auto detecting the source language and other features such as synchronized highlights and bilingual viewing layouts for a webpage translation.
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WeRelate, a highly recommended site for anyone whose focus is web publishing or collaborative research, with people, places, sources, families, etc., created as wiki articles. Note formatting, strong image and document support. You can also upload and download GEDCOM files. (Review)
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Epicurious, search top-rated or other delicious recipes from Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Self, renowned chefs and cookbooks, print a combined shopping list for selected recipes, or share your recipes with friends and family. A resourceful tool for all kitchen lovers.
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Instacalc gives you instant answers as you type and allows you to embed a live calc in your website. It also has other modules to calculate home loan, hourly pay, unit conversions and more.
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SpellCheckPlus, paste text up to 2,000 charaters into the box, click Check Text for any grammar and spelling errors which are then highlighted with explanations for you. When tested and compared with others, this tool was quite impressive and the clear winner for detecting grammatical problems. (Review)
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PaperRater checks your document for grammar and spelling errors. On top of that, it helps you to improve the document's readability, word choice and style by an in-depth analysis. (Review)
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After the Deadline, check your writing in a text box and get feedback on spelling errors, grammar and style suggestions. You can also drag the bookmarklet Add Proofreader to your browser's bookmark bar so that you can use it on any webpage with a text box. (Review)
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Digital Dutch Unit Converter "comes with a cleaner web page, instant response and ease of use, with commonly used units available and divided into 16 categories." (Review)
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OANDA Currency Converter, "one of the popular web tools for currency conversion with daily and historical rates for over 164 currencies, available in multi languages." (Review)
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Free-OCR, upload an image up to 2 MB in pdf, jpg, gif, tiff or bmp format for optical character recognition and get the real text result right on your screen. No registration or email address is required. (Review)
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Goformat, a simple utility for you to convert any text to either lower, upper, proper or sentence case with just one click without refreshing your screen, and remove unwanted characters or replace them with what you enter. See also Text Fixer.
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Aboqe Flip, a handy tool to flip or turn your text upside down sıɥʇ ǝʞıן or vice versa. Create one for your secured password or make fun characters for your social site like Facebook or Google+. Generators for other cool text formats and symbols such as Carty, Encool, Rusify, Small Caps, Tarty, Wavy and Wide are available.
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2. Best Free Online Home and Office
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Comments
I notice that hotmail (outlook.com) and skydrive and other MS products (online calendar/word) are for some reason missing from this list. I am not saying they are the best but they are free and unlike some of the google products they do not (as much) use your private data to make money (ie sellyoursoleware)
Skydrive and other Microsoft products such Office Web Apps are in the list Bryan. A quick way to check whether an item is in the list is to press Ctrl-F on a browser then type in the item name. Hope this helps.
The categories i was talking about are:
Best Free Online Document Viewer and Sharing
Best Free Online Calendar
Best Free Online Notepad / Notebook / Notes Organizer or Best Free Online Sticky Note (see also Private Note)
Best Free Online Webmail (see also Disposable Email Address)
Best Free Online Web Search
Best Free Online Navigation
The glide thing looks super-neat.
I've just discovered WeatherSpark. Looks neat, and there are tons of weather info there actually.
However, the question is, how accurate are the forecasts for my region?
Your Best Free Online Download Manager - KeepVid - does not seem to be really free. I visited the site today hoping to download it when I noticed it says that one will need to purchase a licence before one can start using it; only the downloading seems to be free.
You're spot on Rajendra Rai. The program for Windows is not free, but it's totally free when you use its online download service without needing to install the program.
This article focuses on the online applications and services. With them, you don't need to download and install anything into your computer for using them—you just need to open up a browser and access them online.
http://www.yourdictionary.com/
This is the best online dictionary for me. It's uncluttered, clean and most importantly provide meanings that can be understood by any layman.
After trying typingstudy (in the speedtest department) I have found that some of the material don't work.
With some searching I've found that typeonline.co.uk is a fairly good ONLINE typing tutor. It simulates word processing in a more "natural" manner, allowing you to back-track and make corrections in your typing. Most other typing tutors don't allow you to do that once you hit the spacebar after typing a word.
One other thing I like about typeonline.co.uk is that I don't have to worry about cookies (I use Sandboxie FREE anyway) - something I try to minimise as much as possible. [This is why I haven't tried typingweb after reading their policy.]
Users in the USA will have to put up with the UK spelling of some words though - a small fee I think.
All in all, the most comprehensive typing tutor IMHO is Kiran's Typing Tutor. It's only drawback is it's not "online" meaning you have to sacrafice a bit of hard drive space.
Hello!
File Encryptor from Best Free Online File Encryption Utility is no longer availible.
Your feedback is appreciated Ivan. File Encryptor is now removed from the list and replaced with another online service Encryptur. Give it a try if that works for you.
Hi!
Notice: in "Home and Office / Best Free Online PDF Tools" category PDF Hammer is no longer available. Now Nitro PDF Professional is suggested at PDF Hammer's website.
Thanks for your feedback Arcedo. It's now removed from the list.
free image resizer is free and totally free and supports lots of formats. works not just on xp but also vista and win 7
freeimageresizer.net
This is not an online app or service, or is it?
I would like to suggest http://www.textslave.com/ . Thank You
I would like to suggest two sites for GPS mapping batchgeo.com and gpsvisualizer.com/
for your home office section.
In Home and Office, you should mention http://reminderguru.com which provides free reminders by email, sms or phone call -
There a a few more music streamers that need to be looked at and evaluated. I have attached the links. I'm biased on Sockso because of it's customization abilities. I have used all three in the past but I still currently use Sockso.
Sockso
http://sockso.pu-gh.com/
Vibe Streamer
http://www.vibestreamer.com/
Subsonic
http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
Thanks Pbouthil for the suggestions but the software products do not fit into this category of online apps and services as defined in the Introduction section.
Sorry. I thought I was under the right category.
Best Free Online Applications and Services - Page 4
Best Free Online Music Streaming
I also like http://www.unziponline.net this is a nice application to zip and unzip online!
Very nice tools you share!
JayCut go bye bye... any other ideas for free online video editing?
thanks ,its very useful
Typo: Klokoo waits you up... should be wakes.
Useful article. Thanks.
You're spot on and thanks for pointing out. The typo is now fixed.
Very informative post.
Please add http://www.syscloudsoft.com//Free_Archive_Export_Google_App_Service.aspx
Its a free Google Apps archiving tool to archive and export all your Google Apps data including Gmail, GDoc, contacts, calendar and sites to your local PC.
I use to be a Gizmo member years ago until you partnered up with another organization. I loved your newsletters and so did miss them. I could not believe my luck when I came across your website. And from what I have seen so far you appear to be holding to your high standards. A true admirier of your dedication.
Here is a free pasting tool http://www.pasteit.in for debugging the code, similar to any other pastebin website but has support for all major languages syntax. The diff tool lets the programmer/debugger see what changes other user has made in the original code.
This may sound pretty self-centered of me, but have you guys tried Bob? It will fit perfectly under the education section of this site. It is a new site where students can go and ask for help or provide help to other students. But because it is new (less then a month old), there isn't much content on it yet.Stating that, it has had a promising start in my school. It's URL is [edited out]
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