I started being interested in what free online software there is out there when, one day last year I was in a computer store lining up to pay. When a random guy came up and asked me if I knew anything about computers – I told him ‘yes’ and he asked me to show him where Microsoft Office was for his daughter. (not sure why I needed computer knowledge for that – but being British we say nothing at the time, but are sarcastic afterwards!)
When I showed him, I watched him visibly deflate as he looked at the price and realised he could not afford what his daughter was told she needed for school. So I took a couple of minutes to share with him about openoffice.org and he was so happy – cause his daughter could do his work and he would not have to put a weeks wages out on a bit of software. It is amazing the different that free software can make!

For the last couple of years there has been a covert migration happening that many people have not been paying attention to.
Applications have been leaving the desktop and headed for the internet. This is well worth having a look at for at home or work – you could save yourself a bundle.
The obvious (and high profile ones) have been applications that Google have been putting online in a bid to take away market share from microsoft. These include Google writer and spreadsheet. This was only the beginning of the migration of tools, I have compiled a list of applications that are no longer tied to your desktop.

The first – zoho.com – is a sleeping giant. It is like Microsoft Office – but online and better. It includes a writing application, spreadsheet, presentation, online meetings, wiki’s, chats and more- it is well worth checking out. It even has plugins for microsoft office so you can edit your documents online and offline!!

Then a gem that I recently discovered was jumpcut.com – online video editting software that is free. This was aquired by Yahoo – I guess they know genius when they see it. You upload your footage or pictures and the editting is so simple (just drag and drop) that anyone could do it. It is not a decent alternative to final Cut Pro – but for home videos it is definately worth a look at.

For online photo editting, why not have a look at www.picnik.com – it is entirely web based and easy to use. lots of people have free client based applications like picassa – but if you need to do something whilst not having access to your usual editting suite – this could be a great replacement.

For web collaboration there is 37signals.com – designed for small business almost as an online intranet – where you can share files, make to do lists and do basic project management!

These are just some of the applications out there – there are loads of web applications springing up. If you have any online applications that you use – I would love to hear about them – leave a comment and let me know what you use and how you rate it!