Web and Graphic Design HQ

It’s easy. There’s a “secret” website that distributes paid software for free. There’s a new produce EVERY DAY. And it’s 100% legal.

The software is fully-functional, not trial software disabled in some way.

So what’s the website?

It’s called Giveaway of the Day.

Free games: there’s even Game Giveaway of the Day!

Today’s giveaway is a free Skype recorder to record Skype audio conversations. 100% “clean” — no adware or spyware. The site even counts down how long you have to get this free giveaway!

Another great feature is having all of the previous giveaways available to view/review, including user ratings, so you can get an idea of whether the daily free offers suit your tastes, and whether you want to subscribe to the free newsletter, feed or ticker to be kept informed.

The site is even published in 9 languages.

So why does Giveaway of the Day exist? Here’s the info direct from Giveaway of the Day:

The idea behind this initiative is that many sites and publishers offer trial downloads; but only we offer giveaway downloads. What does that mean?

Basically, every day we nominate one software title that will be a Giveaway title of that day. The software will be available for download for 24 hours (or more, if agreed by software publisher) and that software will be absolutely free. That means - not a trial, not a limited version - but a registered and legal version of the software will be free for our visitors*.

The software product will be presented in its full functionality, without any limitations save for those mentioned in Terms and Conditions.

The download link will remain on our web-site for the agreed period of time, together with the review of the software product and the information about other products from the software publisher presenting the giveaway title.

Both reviews and the information on the product line will remain active even when the Giveaway period is over.

*Under specific Terms and Conditions, which limit the software usage to non-commercial only, and may also limit software updates and technical support.

So there’s a very slight catch involved, in terms of possible limits to support and updates. But that’s understandable given that you get the software for free!

You can get email or RSS feeds on the daily updates, or even add a “ticker” to your webpage or blog. It’s easy to share these free software and game sites with your friends! You’ll find links for the RSS feed or to sign up for the newsletter on the site.

I noticed an eBay auction tonight where the seller was selling — for reasonably small amounts — software that is available on the internet for free!

Don’t get sucked in to buying what you can download for free. Technically, the seller is giving you the software for free, and charging for the distribution.

It is legal to charge for the distribution. However, I question the ethics of doing this in conjunction with online delivery of the product: the software is already available online for free elsewhere. I understand, for instance, charging to get a copy on CD or DVD, or with printed documentation — but having it online at a cost could be seen as deceptive, as other online sources provide exactly the same thing at no cost.

Anyway, let’s increase some awareness of free software right now! Here is 3 of the items the seller had for sale in their store that are 100% free to download:

Audacity: audio editing software
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. I have this software and it’s great! Get rid of noise in a recording (works best when you have a section of the recording that only has noise), change volume, add effects, get rid of sections… doesn’t take long to get used to.

Don’t pay US$5.95 for free, open source software!

Open Office
http://www.openoffice.org/

Yes, I have blogged about OpenOffice before. It’s a 100% free alternative to Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. Don’t pay for it on eBay!

Includes:

• Writer (like Word) – a word processor you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book
• Calc (like Excel) – a powerful spreadsheet with all the tools you need to calculate, analyse, and present your data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics
• Impress (like PowerPoint) – the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations
• Draw (no equivalent in Microsoft Office?) – lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations (vector drawing tool)
• Base (like Access) – lets you manipulate databases seamlessly. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, all from within OpenOffice.org
• Math – lets you create mathematical equations with a graphic user interface or by directly typing your formulas into the equation editor

Nvu visual html editor
http://nvudev.com/

Nvu (pronounced “n-view”) is open source software equivalent to proprietary software like Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver. It is a visual HTML editor, used to create web pages and manage web sites. Don’t pay $5.95 on eBay when it is free to download!

Nvu is available for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users. Nvu is 100% open source and released under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Anyone is welcome to download Nvu at no charge, including the source code if you need to make special changes.

Spread the word!

So now you know — great software, 100% free — no need to buy it cheap on eBay, instead you can download it for free direct from the developer!

I see this month that the Mozilla Foundation has released the first beta version of Penelope, the open source successor to Qualcomm’s Eudora (which stopped development last year, although Qualcomm employees are helping develop Penelope).

However, it’s still early days. The current Penelope bug list is enough to ensure I wait until we get past beta versions, release candidates, the first official 1.0 release, and then at least one “dot point” release (eg 1.01, 1.1) until I come on board!

I LOVE Eudora, and its features, and am very much looking forward to Penelope, and hopefully the ironing out of the final Eudora quirk that irks me (cannot reliably forward an html formatted message)… but in the meantime, I’ll stick to Eudora and wait patiently…

Congrats to Qualcomm and Mozilla for keeping on with Eudora in its new open source guise. Eudora, IMHO, is at least 20-times better than Outlook will ever be. I spent 10 minutes yesterday showing an Outlook user some features of Eudora that had them nearly drooling… especially with handling multiple personalities, and the use of personalities within filters.

Currently working towards a couple of information products to be published, and looking at options for “making it safe” with ways to help stop online thievery.

DL Guard looks to have it properly sorted in terms of the actual download page, how many times a digital product can be downloaded (and for how long the page can be reached). There is even a FREE lite version.

Secure-eBook reminds me of the Corey Rudl style protection system: control of the content remotely. You can have a section unlocked, and then activate the remainder only after the fee is paid. You also get to set the number of computers that can view the unlocked content. My only thought is that, if you allow printing, someone could print to the PDF driver and just create a fresh pdf file with no security. Not allowing printing might cheese of legitimate purchasers!

LockLizard claims to “simply, securely, and cost effectively distribute and manage your digital content with our digital rights management products, pdf security, web page protection and copy control software.

Publish your documents, e-learning courses, PDF files, web pages, images, flash, and software applications, knowing you have full control over them at all times. Control who uses your content, what they do with it, for how long, and when.” Looks like an interesting alternative to Secure-eBook.

My thoughts are that a combination of both will assist: DL Guard to protect acquisition of the digital files, and then either Secure-eBook or LockLizard to control the content. Although, if you had either of the latter two, you may not need to worry about guarding your downloads, as they’d be safely rendered useless if either Secure-eBook or LockLizard was in place.

At least I know that kind of product is around should the need arise!