The trick is to tune out all the promotional chatter and get to the valuable stuff quickly. But to find the good giveaways, you often have to waste time rummaging through heaps of ill conceived, poorly executed and just plain useless stuff. In fact, we did a fair bit of slogging to find the items listed here. This time around, we searched for innovative or little-known free stuff that leverages the Net's strengths of interactivity and multimedia capabilities.
Looking forward
What's next for free Web services? The latest trend is "trading up", which happens when you upgrade the basic service - enlarging your e-mail inbox, say - in exchange for a small fee or for signing up friends. Some services will let you opt out of ads this way. In general, though, free Web sites will remain advertising-driven, making them better suited to home users.
Keep in mind that today's free Web services may be too expensive tomorrow. Fortunately, competition in the free online service market is fierce, so if your favourite site suddenly starts asking for money, feel free to go elsewhere.
FREE SITES AND SERVICES
FREEWARE
Ram charger
Open sesame
COMMUNICATION FACILITATORS
Fight for your right to e-party
Making a list
Who loves ya, baby?
HEALTH
Medicine man
Survive and thrive
REFERENCE AND DO-IT-YOURSELF TIPS
Hail, Britannica
Learn your lesson
Mystery solved
Home repair helpers
PHONE AND MAIL
See me, hear me
GAMES AND ENTERTAINMENT
Interactive sports
Coming soon to a PC near you
All trivia, all the time
FREE SUPPORT
Intro
A gathering at the forum
Do your own background check
Usenet newsgroups
Knowledge base abyss
PCs and Windows
Applications
Peripherals
BEYOND FREE E-MAIL
Intro
Add a security blanket to free e-mail
PIMs
Web hosting
Web storage and backup
