Frugal Friday | Free Stuff

Parks, museums and art galleries

Parks, museums and art galleries in the UK are usually free and there is a lot of public open space too. I took this photograph in a park this week and if you have a digital camera it’s a good place to find interesting landscapes. In museums you can find all kinds of treasures, in my local museum and art gallery I found lots of local history exhibits. Where I live there are also nature trails and farms that are open to the public.

Social networks

Most people are aware of and possibly using Facebook, which has lots of applications like games. There are other social networks like Twitter that allows you to send a kind of text message to all of your followers. I tweet links to my blogs! LinkedIn is a professional network and very useful. You can ask questions of other members on LinkedIn and get answers. There are also groups on LinkedIn, I’m in an expert group, groups for writers and so on. There are groups for most interests and you can make friends by joining in. You do better on social networks if you ask what you can do for others rather than what they can do for you. The latest social network is Google +, time will tell if it’s going to be a success.

The Internet

There are lots of freebies on the internet and search engines now are really useful. You can type a question in like ‘what time is it in Beijing’ and get an answer; it’s 18:45 as I write this! I use Google Chrome and so I type my question and press alt-enter and it opens in a new tab and I keep my other tabs open. I am linked to my blog and a few websites that I can access quickly. You can also highlight a word or phrase with Google Chrome, right click and it gives you the option to search for that word or phrase. Google Chrome also has a spell checker and so when I’m writing something like a comment online it checks my spelling. It translates for me too, when the website if in a foreign language and will even translate Chinese when I look at stuff on Qzone (a social network in China). There is also Google maps and you can get information about places and directions. I like Street view and you can see where I live just by entering the postcode! The area where I live has the code WS10 and so you can take a look around using Street view for free!

I also use Windows Live programs a lot. The suite of programs is free and includes an email client, instant messenger, blog writer (that I am using), movie maker and windows live photo gallery. I also use Fotosketcher which will convert your photograph into a work of art. You can also draw and do interesting things with Smoothdraw 3 also freeware and free! There are lots more freeware programs on the internet. I can do PDF’s with Primo PDF and I fix registry problems with Ccleaner. I do have the free Microsoft Security Essentials running with Avast to protect against viruses. You can search for them using a search engine.  

Competitions

There are lots of free competitions on the internet. I entered a couple of free draws this morning run by the post office. I found them on the Competition Box website.

Education and libraries

There is less free courses now at colleges and adult education centres but they still exist and although libraries are being cut back and closed where I live, you can still get books, DVD’s and of course they have computers you can use.

I hope I have given you some ideas of what you can get free and of course if you enjoy the parks, nature trails and free leisure activities you get free exercise; cheaper than joining a gym! You can find links to more blogs on my Home Page and you might like yesterday’s Thrifty Thursday blog. 

Related articles

• A Monday ramble… (mike10613.wordpress.com)
• Google+ is now open to all (baptiste-wicht.com)
• 10 Best Google Chrome Extensions [MUST HAVE] (techebook.wordpress.com)

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