Absolutely Free Software -
Best Free Online Productivity Tools

This page is updated regularly. Last update: October 13, 2005.

Free Online Office Suite

ThinkFree ThinkFree Office Online

added 10/13

This is quite remarkable. Clones of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that run in your browser. Very well. For free.

These are java applications and take about a minute to open up the first time you run them, but after being run once, they can be opened very quickly.

ThinkFree opens and saves to standard Microsoft Office formats: DOC, XLS, PPT. They can even save to PDF, something that MS Office doesn't do yet. To make this clear, you open up local files and can save them on your hard drive. If you want to save them to ThinkFree's servers, they give you 30MB of storage space.

One neat trick that this web app does is allow direct posting to your blog. This means you can use a real word processer to create your entries instead of your limited blogging tools.

All the standard word processing functions are here, including immediate spell-check, headers & footers, footnotes, field entry, tables, even a clip art gallery. Similarly, the PowerPoint clone, ThinkFree Show, looks and acts almost exactly like its Microsoft counterpart, with templates, animation effects, notes, etc.

I'm most impressed with Calc, the Excel knock-off. It has auto-correct options, 300 functions, chart wizards and auto-fill along with a variety of print options.

Truly impressive.

http://online.thinkfree.com/

Free Online Personal Information Manager

Backpack Backpack

My Yahoo My Yahoo

Backpack is essentially on online note taker. It allows you to input text, insert images, create to-do lists and attach files. You can schedule reminders that will email you or contact your cell phone. One of the best things about Backpack is how clean the interface is and how quickly you can do things. It's a beautiful example of modern web applications.

Yahoo used to be king of the internet and was one of the first to popularize the concept of an internet portal. They tried to be all things to all people and got their fannies whipped in the search engine market by Google. But they haven't stopped innovating.

Yahoo has the most complete, integrated package of free web services. My Yahoo contains a full suite of PIM (Personal Information Manager) tools that truly are excellent. To-do lists, notes, task managers, calendars, they're all here. Additionally, they integrate with every major PIM software package like Outlook and Palm. You can certainly find better individual tools for various tasks, but as an integrated whole, Yahoo is untouchable.

Yahoo might not be cool anymore, but they are constantly updating their services. If you haven't used them in a while, you should give them another shot.

http://www.backpackit.com/

http://my.yahoo.com/

Free Online To-Do Lists

Remember The MIlk Remember The Milk

new! added 10/12

If your idea of organization centers primarily on to-do lists, this is the application to use.

Remember The Milk is very similar to BackPack, but it has a some different features, focusing more on lists than notes. You can create as many different lists as you want and schedule tasks in real English such as "next month" or "Tuesday 9AM".

If you're a user of the popular David Allen's "Getting Things Done (GTD)" system, this is an excellent companion.

A few things make this online application stand out.

Other features include:

The interface is fast and clean and very intuitive to use. Highly recommended.

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

Free Online Project Manager / Project Tracker

Basecamp Basecamp

Made by the same company that created Backpack, Basecamp is a solid project management system. The free version allows you to track one project at a time, but allows an unlimited number of clients.

It's primary functions are to share, prioritize and assign tasks and to schedule due dates and milestones. You can, of course, also share notes within your organization.

If you outgrow the free version, there are several different level of premium packages you can license.

http://www.basecamphq.com/

Free Online PDF Creator / PDF Converter

Online PDF Converter Online PDF Converter

DocMorph DocMorph

new! added 10/11

Online PDF Converter converts an amazing number of formats to PDF files. If you desire, it will watermark your PDF or encrypt it using Adobe's Acrobat encryption method. Limit of 1MB per file.

DocMorph will convert fifty different file formats not only to PDF's, but also to TIFF's, text, or even to synthesized speech.

http://convert.neevia.com/

http://docmorph.nlm.nih.gov/docmorph/docmorph.htm

Free Online Unit Converter

Online Conversion Online Conversion

new! 10/11

In their words, "Convert just about anything to anything else. Over 5000 units and 50,000 conversions."

http://www.onlineconversion.com/