The Web's Best Free Programs

Inkscape: The poor man's Illustrator

Forget spending over $500 on Illustrator: Inkscape is a highly-rated Open Source vector graphics editor, is easy to learn (I taught myself!), and FREE. I use it every day.

dafont: Endless fonts

Sick of Arial and Times New Roman? Need something a little more fun than Comic Sans? Then get thee to dafont.com, my go-to source for free fonts.

VLC Media Player

VLC is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Basically, it just plain WORKS. Windows, Mac, or Linux? Not a problem.

Picnik: For the photo-editing novice

New to editing your photos? Before dropping coin on Photoshop, try Picnik. It’s and easy to use web-based program (so there’s nothing to download), and it’s so non-overwhelming that it’s absolutely perfect for beginners.

Gimp: The next step in photo-editing

Feeling more savvy? Ready for the next step in editing your photos? Then download Gimp. It’s still free, but more advanced than Picnik.

BeFunky: Turn your photos into art

BeFunky is a super-easy and fun site that turns your boring photos into wall-worthy prints.

OpenOffice Suite

Microsoft Office Alternative. 100% compatible and free!