College Students: Here are 40 Free, Useful Downloads and Apps
The following post was written for Science Cheerleader readers by Karen of Online College Reviews.
Coming up with money to trick out your computer after paying for essentials like tuition, books, and food can be downright impossible. Fortunately, there are tons of free web apps and software downloads out there that will serve all of your academic (and not so academic) needs. Here are 40 fantastic web apps and software downloads chosen with the college student in mind.
Budgeting and Finance
- PearBudget – This expense-tracking service is easier to use than Microsoft Money or Quicken. PearBudget is fully customizable, quick to set up, and secure.
- Buddi – Buddi is a personal budgeting service for people who have no experience with budgeting. It’s easy to use and perfect for students who don’t have a lot to keep track of.
- Moneytrackin’ – This free online tool is great for roommates and students who share expenses. Moneytrackin’ can help you track where money was spent and budget for future expenditures.
- Wesabe – Wesabe is part money management tool and part community. The service is secure and simple to use.
- Student Loan Calculator – This student loan calculator from the CollegeBoard will help you keep track of all of your student loan payments. The calculator analyzes Stafford loans, Perkins loans, and other types of loans.
Communication
- Skype – With Skype’s free software, you can make free video calls from your computer to other people who have Skype. You can also use it to chat online.
- ooVoo – ooVoo is similar to Skype, but with a few more features. With ooVoo, you can transfer files and hold video conferences with six people at once.
- Meebo – This free instant messaging and group chat service is great for students who want to be able to communicate with others on Aim, MSN, Google Talk, MySpace, Facebook Chat, and Yahoo! at the same time.
- Phonevite – With Phonevite, you can send free phone reminders and alerts to yourself and other people.
- Facebook – Facebook makes it easy to keep in touch and share class notes with other students. You can also use it to plan parties and socialize.
Computer and Internet Security
- AVG – Trusted by 80 million users, AVG is a free program that protects against viruses and spyware. AVG is for Windows users.
- Comodo – This award-winning suite offers virus and firewall protection. It scans your computer for viruses and removes anything it finds.
- Spybot Search and Destroy – This award-winning privacy software helps keep spyware and adware at bay. Spybot recently updated their scan speed and massively improved their detection range to make their free software safer and more convenient.
- Hotspot Shield – AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield keeps your information private and secure by making sure you stay anonymous online. Hotspot Shield works with wired and wireless connections.
- Kruptos – This 256 bit file encryption utility helps you keep sensitive files safe, secure, and password protected. Kruptos works with PCs and portable storage devices.
Entertainment
- Jing – This free software is designed to help you share videos and screenshots with other people. Jing can snap a picture of your screen or record video of onscreen action.
- Kongregate – With more than 10,000 free games that you can play online, Kongregate is the place to go when you’re looking for gaming entertainment.
- Project Playlist – You can create your own playlists and listen to any song for free on Project Playlist. You can also share your music with other Project Playlist members.
- Picnik – This free web service makes it easy to edit and tweak your photos. Picnik works with Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket, and a number of other sites.
- Netvibes – Netvibes makes wasting time on the Internet fun and fast. You can use it to bring together all of the online services you use and all of the websites you visit on a regular basis.
- Photoshop –Share, edit and store photos with ease.
Research Papers and Other Homework
- BibMe – This automatic bibliography maker can help you build your works cited page for reports, essays, and other assignments. Your bibliography can be created in MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian formats
- Open Office – Open Office is a Microsoft-like suite of products that can be downloaded for free. It can be used to create and open documents, spreadsheets, and other projects.
- ThinkFree – ThinkFree has a whole suite of products to help you create, edit, and store documents safely and securely online. You can also use ThinkFree to view documents on your iPhone.
- Minomo – This web-based mind mapping software is a great way to plan papers and other types of projects. You can create, edit, and share maps online without downloading any software to your computer.
- Calcoolate – Known as the “coolest calculator on the web,” Calcoolate is great for all sorts of calculations and conversions. It even keeps a history of previous calculations.
Schedules, Calendars, and PIMs
- CollegeRuled – CollegeRuled is perfect for creating free, color-coded class schedules. A message board is automatically created along with your schedule so that you can discuss assignments with classmates and members of your study group.
- HipCal – Developed by fraternity brothers, HipCal is an online calendar, to-do list, and address book. Special features include alerts and group calendars.
- mySchoolog – Designed specifically for students, this free web app can help you organize every aspect of your school life. Data can be accessed from anywhere at any time.
- Remember the Milk – Remember the Milk has so many nifty features that it’s hard to keep them all straight. You can set up and manage tasks, online, offline, and from your mobile phone. You can also share tasks, get reminders, and much more.
- TracksLife – You can keep track of almost anything on TracksLife–and if you forget to update something, you’ll get a reminder from the Friendly TracksLife Remindbot.
Taking Notes
- Notely – Created specifically for students, Notely is a an online note taking tool. It can also be used as a calendar, scheduler, and homework planner.
- NoteCentric – NoteCentric is an online note taking application that doubles as an organizer. It allows you to save notes locally or as an html file.
- NoteMesh – This free note taking service is designed for students and study groups who want to collaborate on notes. NoteMesh uses a Wiki format that anyone can edit.
- shortText – This easy-to-use tool is great when you want to quickly post text online or change notes into a URL. Unlike most free note-taking services, shortText offers instant web presence and requires no log in.
- MyStickies – MyStickies are like notes for the web. You can bookmark a page and place a little, yellow note on it explaining why you bookmarked it in the first place.
Web Research
- Web-Chops – This free web app can clip any part of a web page and save it to your own personal topic page.
- Diigo – Diigo is a virtual highlighter with digital sticky notes. You can use it to highlight and save text on any web page.
- BlinkList – BlinkList is a bookmarking tool that helps you save your links for later. It’s faster than a Google search and easy to use.
- Sync2It – This free service lets you synch your bookmarks and store them privately so that they can be used on any computer at any time. Bookmarks on Sync2It can also be accessed via wireless devices.
- Hooey – Hooey tracks and analyzes the pages you visit so that you can retrieve links and learn how to use the web more effectively.
Tags: collegeonline, free software
February 8th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Darlene and Michael,
Thank you for the link to Sync2It.com .
There is also a sister site I operate called Bookmarksync.com that has a different look and feel but works essentially the same. Besides the benefits of online bookmarking, these sites allow you to discover other sites that people are bookmarking in similar areas of interest.
Thanks again!
- Jack
Secure Data Systems
February 8th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Hi Darlene
I was recently introduced to your campaign to bring science to the people and I
really applaud what you’re doing.
I was a scientist and have now worked in the semiconductor industry for about
16 years. One of the key things that caused me to leave academic science was a
disappointment I felt around the lack of open critical discourse on new ideas.
Over the last few years I’ve been following an exciting new paradigm
that’s been built by a growing number of physicists, electrical engineers,
astronomers (e.g Halton Arp) and educated lay people.
I’d like to suggest to you an exciting area of discussion that could be
brought more into the public view. There are ongoing astronomy observations
that challenge our conventional gravity-dominated view of the universe. In
fact, a large group of scientists and engineers published an open letter in New
Scientist asking for a more open discussion on our
big bang cosmology paradigm (http://www.cosmologystatement.org/).
Briefly put, there is significant evidence that electrical currents flow
through ubiquitous plasma in space. The Aurora borealis is a very evident
example of electrical currents flowing from the sun to Earth. Plasma, in
varying densities, is known to fill space and has been shown to be an excellent
conductor. One of the leading proponents of the electrical nature of space is
Wallace Thornhill. Thornhill recently made some highly successful predictions
of how the comet probe Deep Impact would behave on nearing Tempel 1. His
predictions were very public and uniformly correct. Alternatively, NASA’s
predictions were not correct at all. Yet there is no ensuing discussion about
it. In a rational world I would expect researchers to say “Hey, that’s
interesting. Let’s explore this different model”. I’m naive, I
know.
As an outsider looking in, I’m amazed at the intransigence of the astronomy
community to even entertain a discussion about the electrical nature of space.
There are electrical engineering journals that publish work on that topic, but
astronomers don’t read those.
If ever I saw a scientific movement that was led by the public and people
outside of the science elite, it is this electric universe movement. And if
there was a scientific paradigm that was in need of popularizing, it is this
one. Hence the object of my e
mail to you.
I ask a favor. Please go look at the predictions page here:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/predictions.htm#cdi. ; Any scientific model is best
judged by the success of its predictions. And if you find it interesting,
contact Wal Thornhill at walt@holoscience.com. He’s a great guy.
Also, ponder these relevant facts that caused me to dive into this theory in
more detail:
- the solar wind accelerates as it moves away from the sun. Conventional
theory cannot explain that. An electrical field between the sun and the
heliopause does.
- Saturn has a perfectly shaped hexagon at its north pole. (See this picture
http://lasp.colorado.edu/~bagenal/3720/CLASS19/saturn_npole.jpg Really look at
the innermost dark shape.) Conventional theory cannot explain that. An
electrical current between the Sun and Saturn does.
- “Impact” craters can be hexagonal. Electrical arcs would do that.
(See this picture
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/arch08/080121mal-mimas.htm and there are
many others)
- Comets emit x-rays. Conventional theory cannot explain those energies.
However, if comets are moving from one charged plasma environment in the outer
solar system to a different charged environment closer to the sun, then plasma
interactions predict a wide spectrum of electromagnetic emissions, including
x-rays
- Saturn has “hot” poles (relative to its equator), both north and
south. Conventional theory cannot explain that but Wallace Thornhill predicted
it to be the case.
- The Sun’s temperature at its surface is 3000K but rises as you move away
from the sun towards its corona to about 2million K. The electrical model
predicts this temperature increase moving away from the sun, but it is
contrary to a fusion-only model of the Sun.
There are others. I know you must be busy and this is a long email. You seem
very scientifically curious so I thought at least you would find this
interesting. You should contact Wal Thornhill though. He is a very nice, very
balanced guy with great ideas.
Thanks
Tom Wilson
February 9th, 2009 at 7:50 am
During a few years I collect all tools about Web research, note taking Web clipping etc. Part of them are recommended for students.
You will find a short info in my blog http://zigmasb.wordpress.com
Best wishes
Zigmas
February 10th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Hi Science Cheerleader!
Thanks for mentioning us. Thanks to people like you, who find la creme de la creme technology products, Phonevite is quickly becoming the most popular community-based voice broadcasting service!
February 10th, 2009 at 1:11 am
[...] College Students: Here have been 40 Free, Useful Downloads as well as Apps … [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 8:24 am
[...] Students: Here are 40 Free, Useful Downloads and Apps You will find a list of different tools for students – 8 categories including [...]
February 12th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
HI Darlene,
Great article. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of Photoshop.com com (www.photoshop.com), Adobe’s FREE online Web site for photo organizing, editing and sharing. The web site helps students:
• Upload and organize photos in no time at all – store thousands of images for safe keeping.
• Fix imperfections or crop out an unwanted background guest with one-click tools even a freshman can understand.
• Give photos an artistic look with Black & White or Pop Color tools.
• Create fun slideshows or online galleries to impress friends.
• Seamless integration with sites like Facebook so that photos can be easily transferred.
Thanks,