Chat/instant messenger
There are many different free chat programs/instant messengers. The ones I use now are Adium (for Mac users) and Skype (available for Mac and PC). If you’re on a PC, I’m told you can use Pidgin. Adium (and Pidgin) are multichat programs, which means you can use them for many different chats – ICQ, AIM (and/or iChat – for Macs), Yahoo etc.
You don’t necessarily have to use a chat program though. There’s a site that lets you chat, using most of the major instant messenger ID:s – Meebo. A note to LiveJournal users – if you don’t know how to use LJ talk and would like to, look no further. You can add it to the chat client of your choice or add it to your Meebo account. Even if you do use a chat program at home, you can access all your IM:s on the Meebo site. Very practical.
RIght now I’m only on LJ (a sort of Jabber chat) and Jabber (again). Skype uses a different software but that too is free to download and the cool thing about that is that you can use it almost as a telephone. In fact, you can buy a ‘real’ phone and use Skype in it. That means you can make phone calls for free (well, in this case they’re called voice chats, but it’s more or less the same). So for Skype you can choose between text chat (ordinary chat), voice chat and video chats. The sound quality is usually very good.
Online fiction archives
If you like to write stories, like me, you might want to upload them to an online archive. For original fiction, I’ve used Fiction.Press. It’s a sort of spinoff from FanFiction.net. It’s easy to use and posting your fics there can get you feedback from your readers. Or you can read other people’s stories and comment on them.
If you write fan fiction, there are several different options. I use
FanFiction.net
FanWorks.org
and
Archive of Our Own.
They all work pretty much the same (FictionPress too). You have to use ratings and warnings. Usually, there are different categories too.
Search engines
Many people agree that Google is the best search engine. For various reasons that I’m not going to go into, I haven’t used Google for years, but it seems I might change my mind about that. In the meantime I’ve found alternatives. Some of them are very nice.
Dogpile
Ask
Zakta
Clusty
Mamma – as everyone knows, mother knows best… 😉
Gigablast
Wikipedia – not really an ordinary search engine, it’s far more than that, but it works fine as one anyway. Available in many different languages.