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Free stuff for bloggers and other online types

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:08:01 +0000

1. Free business cards, from Vistaprint.

There are lots of freebies available for bloggers and other online types. (Photo by Jenny Rollo - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/975867)

2. Free phone number with voice mail and other features, from Google Voice. Unfortunately this is still in beta, and you have to request an invite, which may not come soon. They don’t seem to be allowing uses to give away invites, at least yet, judging from the fact that I don’t have any to give away in my account. Another option is Simple VoiceBox.

3. Free blogging software — WordPress. Of course.

4. Free photos: Flickr and stock.xchng are two sites where you can find photos that you can use online for free. You normally have to credit the photo, of course, and respect the creator’s wishes as far as how it’s used (commercial, noncommercial, etc.).

5. Free FTP software, for uploading and downloading sites to and from your site — Filezilla (you want the client version, not the server version).

6. Free photo and image editing, online. Pixlr.com is a web app that allows you to edit photos and other images the same way you would with a lightweight desktop program, such as Photoshop Elements. You won’t get all the features you get in a desktop app, but Pixlr.com is still quick, easy and free. (Note, if you’re using open source images from Flickr or stock.xchng, it’s generally OK to resize them for the web, but the terms of service frequently prohibit major changes, such as turning a color photo black and white or otherwise altering the image.)

7. Free CSS and HTML debugging utility. If you want to get your hands dirty and write or edit code for your site, Firebug is a great Firefox browser plug-in that can help.

8. Free email, calendar, file sharing and web site creation. Google Apps Standard Edition brings Google’s apps (such as Gmail and the Google Calendar) to your domain, backed by Google’s robust server farms.

9. Free conference calls. FreeConferenceCall.com offers a free conference call service that allows you to have conference calls. The company even offers free recording, so you could use it, for example, to record a podcast. In case you’re wondering, this company makes its money by upselling customers to offerings with more features.

10. Free advice. There’s a lot of information and advice out there, of course. Not all of it’s good. But among those I really like are Darren Rowse’s Problogger.net, Brian Clark’s Copyblogger.com and DavidRisley.com.

There’s lots more free stuff, and free advice, on the Web. What are some your favorite freebies? Please share them in the comments.

Six links on social media, content marketing and online public relations

Mark Tosczak — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:24:10 +0000

I’ve found several interesting blog posts, articles and other links in the last few days and thought I’d clear them out with a blog post.

Guy Kawasaki has a good, but somewhat controversial post, about “How to use Twitter as a twool.”
If you have a blog or other content site, and you’re using an email newsletter as part of your outreach, Problogger Darren Rowse has some great ideas about how to use your email newsletter and an autoresponder to drive even more traffic to your web site.
Think social media is just for big brands with big budgets or dot-come type companies? Think again. A pest control company has adopted social media strategies as a significant, long-term component to its marketing.
The New York Times asks if new data mining technologies will track us across the Internet and through our mobile communications and ultimately erode our privacy. Might notions about privacy be redefined for the next generation?
Amazon tries “user-generated public relations.” Is this really new, or just old-school PR techniques applied online?
ReadWriteWeb says we should stop using TinyURL on microblogging services such as Twitter. I agree – I’m using snipr.com.

Jason Calacanis retires from blogging

Mark Tosczak — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:28:10 +0000

Jason Calacanis, an Internet entrepreneur, says he is retiring from blogging. Simultaneously, he has launched a limited subscriber newsletter. You might want to join it, if it’s not too late. Click here.

In his email to that list yesterday, Calacanis explained why he is retiring from blogging.

It became clear to me last night after my email to y’all.

One hundred of you responded with amazing suggestions to my email last night. After that I realized that blogging is not longer the medium for me–email is. 100 amazing suggestions in 12 hours from a pool of around 500 email subscribers. That’s 20% response rate with really considered words and no drama.

This is really interesting (and it’s not April 1, so I assume this isn’t some kind of hoax or prank, though you never know). Calacanis was co-founder of Weblogsinc.com, one of the first big commercial blog networks. It was sold to AOL in October 2005 for a reported $25 million or so. So Calacanis is someone who really knows blogging and has been doing it for a long time.

You can still a lot of his online movements, of course. In addition to the email newsletter, there’s his Twitter stream, his photos on Flickr, and more in the right sidebar of his blog.

Update: Scoble says Calacanis is playing us. Could be right.

Is email the new blogging?