Free online tools or ‘web applications’

Free online tools or ‘web apps’

eresources@cambridge: We recommend that your first point of call for resource searches is eresources@cambridge. Much of the high quality material it contains will not be indexed by general web search engines such as Google – it is ’hidden’ behind search boxes and login gateways.

On campus, a large selection of software is provided through the Managed Cluster Service (MSC, formerly ’PWF’). Note changes made this summer 2011 for academic year 2011-2012.

The resources listed on this page are free to use (but may require free registration) or, where stated, are provided free of charge to University members via eresources@cambridge (with Raven password off campus).

Web links will be added to all items below in due course. Please search in Google – most should be easily findable.

Page contents

• Directories of web applications
• Webmail services
• Web based office suites and document collaboration
• Feed aggregation, reading and other feed services (RSS/XML/Atom feeds)
• Link collection, sharing and discovery
• Online citation/reference management
• Personal start pages
• Online photo display and sharing
• Weblogs, wikis and related applications
• Online file conversion
• Online presentation/slideshows
• Online graphics applications
• Open courseware
• Reference

Directories of web apps

• The unofficial web applications list http://www.webapplist.com/
• Open directory project/web apps http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Web_Applications/
• AppUseful http://appuseful.com/ “discover useful web applications and services”

Webmail services

• Google Mail (or GMail) http://mail.google.com
• Windows Live Mail (was Hotmail) http://www.hotmail.co.uk or http://mail.live.com [owned by Microsoft]
• Inbox http://www.inbox.com
• GMX (Global Mail Exchange) http://mail-eu.gmx.com/

Web based office suites

• Zoho Office http://www.zoho.com
• Google Apps http://www.google.com/apps/
• ThinkFree http://www.thinkfree.com/
• Adobe Buzzword http://www.adobe.com/acom/buzzword/ online document creation and collaboration

Feed readers and other feed applications (RSS, XML, Atom feeds)

• Bloglines
• Google Reader
• Rojo

Sharing and discovering links (online bookmarking applications)

• Delicious http://www.delicious.com
• Diigo incorporates what was once ‘Furl’
• Digg
• Stumbleupon
• Twine http://www.twine.com/

Web based reference management tools

• CiteULike http://www.citeulike.org/
• Connotea http://www.connotea.org/ more science based than CiteULike (and owned by Nature Publishing)
• Mendeley free desktop application with full online capability including ‘social’ features. See how Mendeley compares with other reference managers (Endnote, RefWorks, Zotero and Papers).

Personal start pages

These also include services such as RSS feed readers

• Pageflakes
• Netvibes
• iGoogle
• Protopage http://www.protopage.com/
• Guzzle.it http://guzzle.it/

Online photo display and sharing

• Flickr (owned by Yahoo!)
• Picasa web album (owned by Google)

Blogs, wikis, etc.

Freely hosted (sign up and start posting)

• WordPress http://www.worpress.com free hosted blogs powered by WordPress (as used by this weblog)—and www.blogsome.com
• Blogger free hosted blogs at http://www.blogger.com (owned by Google)
• Blog.co.uk http://www.blog.co.uk free hosted blogs powered by b2evolution
• OnSugar http://www.onsugar.com/ free hosted blogs using Drupal, a free open source content management system (CMS)
• Tumblr http://www.tumblr.com free hosted mini blog or ’Tumblelog’
• Posterous http://posterous.com/ ‘dead simple way to put anything online via email’  No sign up or set up.
• Wikihost.org http://www.wikihost.org/ free hosted wiki powered by GeboGebo wiki
• PBwiki free hosted wiki powered by pbwiki at www.pbwiki.com
• Twitter http://www.twitter.com popular online so-called ‘micro-blogging’ or messaging tool - max 140 characters per message or ‘tweet’ (also functions via mobile telephone text message)
• Identi.ca http://identi.ca/ A Twitter-like ’micro-blogging’ service based on the free open source Laconica tool.

Online file conversion

• Zamzar http://www.zamzar.com/ convert almost any file format to any other file format
• PDF-to-Word http://www.pdftoword.com a free “surprisingly accurate” conversion tool
• NewOCR http://www.newocr.com/ Free online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) service

Presentation applications

• 280slides
• SlideShare

Graphics web apps

• Picnik http://www.picnik.com photo editing—owned by Google (from March 2010)
• Pixlr http://www.pixlr.com/ impressive new online photo editor with Photoshop-like interface
• Pixenate http://www.pixenate.com photo editing
• Sumo Paint http://www.sumopaint.com paint application
• Splashup http://www.splashup.com advanced image editing tool
• Raven vector editor http://aviary.com/tools/raven
• Pheonix image editor http://aviary.com/
• Graphity Diagram Editor http://live.yworks.com/graphity/ ‘can be used to quickly and effectively generate drawings and to apply automatic layouts to a range of different diagrams and networks’. Requires that your browser has Flash (it probably does).

Audio web apps

• Myna audio editor http://aviary.com/tools/myna

Open Courseware

• MIT OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu/ the first and best known collection of free online course material (1,800+ courses)
• Academic Earth – http://academicearth.org/ video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars
• Open Culture http://www.oculture.com/ “The best free cultural & educational media on the web”
• Lectures on YouTube (YouTube is owned by Google)

Other

• Google translate http://translate.google.com/?hl=en# Around 40 languages available. Copy and paste some text into the box, choose the language to translate from and to and an understandable translation results. Some languages work better than others. You can even paste in a web page url and see that web page magically appear in another language complete with all other formatting!
• SpiderScribe mindmapping http://www.spiderscribe.net/ Online mind mapping and brainstorming app. Organize your ideas by connecting notes, files, calendar events, etc. in free-form maps. You can collaborate and share those maps online.

Reference

• Snappy Words http://www.snappywords.com/ Free visual online dictionary.