Make Money with Firefox Downloads

Did you know that Google will pay you to get people to download Firefox with Google Toolbar? It's a pretty good system. The download is free, and you get up to $1 per new Firefox user you refer, based on their location.

You need to have a Google Adsense account to sign up. Then go the referal products section to find the Firefox referral link that you can use to get people to sign up with.

Most people will agree that Firefox is a better browser than Microsoft Internet Explorer. But over half of the visitors to my site use IE. So if you haven't used Firefox yet, why not give it a shot?

IrfanView - Best Graphics Viewer and Lite Editor

IrfanView is one of those sweet little programs that I keep on every computer that I use. It's a simple, quick graphics viewer that can open almost any file type that you throw at it. I use it often to take screenshots, do a little cropping, resize images, and save them in a couple different formats. It's a great program to optimize images for your website.

I love the fact that it opens very quickly. You can open and save in a ton of formats, both common ones like jpg's and uncommon ones like pcd's. Everyone should have a copy of this program on their computer, in my opinion.

OpenOffice - Free Microsoft Office Like Program

As a student, I have to write papers, make presentations, and do stuff like that, so I need an office suite like Microsoft Office to work with. But it's pretty expensive, especially for a poor student like me. That's why I love OpenOffice. It's completely free, and allows you to create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that are compatible with Microsoft Office. It's not dumbed down at all, and actually includes some pretty advanced features. You can even open Microsoft Office files with it (except for the latest Office 2007 edition files). If you want to save some cash, check out OpenOffice.

FTP Publishing Programs

I've been transferring a bunch of files to my website, recently, and I realized that I needed a good FTP client. I had been using the web-based transfer program in cpanel, but it just takes too long when you have a bunch of files. So I did some research, and found 2 great free FTP programs for you guys.

The first is SmartFTP. It's free for non-commercial use. It has a very pretty interface, and is pretty easy to use. The one annoying part is that it has a splash screen that pops up, and forces you to click OK before the program starts.

The other is FileZilla. It's open source, and although it's not very graphically pretty, it's still easy to use.

Which would I recommend? If you need a pretty interface, go with SmartFTP. Otherwise, I think FileZilla does a great job, and it gets my recommendation. But you can't go wrong with either one.

Google Pack - One-Stop Shop Freeware

Because I'm a college student, I don't have much money. Therefore, when I can get free software, I take it. I found out about the google pack a little while ago. It's basically a one-stop download for solid free programs. You can get Google Earth, Picassa, Spyware Doctor, and a bunch of other programs. I like that you can pick exactly which programs you want, and then download them all at once. If you like freeware, check out the Google Pack.