Technically, 3 Dimensions refers to objects that are constructed on three plans (X, Y and Z). The process of creating 3D graphics can be divided into three basic phases: 3D modeling, 3D animation and 3D rendering.

Three dimensional (3D) computer graphics are widely used and they are almost too common to see anywhere, let it be movies, products designs, advertisements, etc. Although they are commonly seen, that doesn’t mean they are easily created. In order to interactively control a 3D object, it must be created in a 3D authoring tool which usually cost a lot to a non-professional user.

A 3D model is usually originated on the computer by engineer using some kind of 3d modeling tools. Creating 3D models is not easy and the software alone can cost a fortune Therefore, we thought it might be interesting to check out the availability of open source 3D modeling tools out there. Crawling from sites to sites, reading through end users comments and feedback, we bring you 25 Free 3D Modelling Applications You Should Not Miss.

 

1. Blender

   A
   free and open source 3D modeling and animation application which can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, water simulations, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulations, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications.

   

2. K-3D

   K-3D is free-as-in-freedom
   3D modeling and
   animation software. It features a plugin-oriented procedural engine for all of its content, making K-3D a very versatile and powerful package.
   K-3D excels at polygonal modeling, and includes basic
   tools for NURBS, patches, curves and animation.

   

3. Art of Illusion

   Art of Illusion is a
   free,
   open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. Some of the highlights include subdivision surface based modelling tools, skeleton based animation, and a graphical language for designing procedural textures and materials.

   

4. SOFTIMAGE|XSI Mod Tool

   A
   free
   3D modeling and animation software for aspiring game developers and modders. The Mod Tool is a
   free version of XSI for non commercial game creation. It is made for everyone needing a powerful 3D
   application to make and mod games. The Mod Tool plugs into all the major game engines and development frameworks for next-generation games, casual games, mods for existing titles and even Flash-based 3D games.

   

5. Zmodeler

   ZModeler (or Zanoza Modeler) is a
   3D modeling
   application developed by Oleg Melashenko. It is aimed at modelers who model for computer games. ZModeler is capable of complex modeling, even though it does not support important modeling functions such as extruding, or beveling.

   

6. TopMod3d

   TopMod3d is a
   free,
   open source, portable, platform independent topological mesh modeling system that allows users to create high genus 2-manifold meshes. It can also create solid models that can be prototyped using various rapid prototyping technology.

   

7. Google SketchUp 6

   

   Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create, share and present 3D models. Whether you want to design a new deck for your house, build models for Google Earth, or teach geometry to your fifth-graders, you can use SketchUp to see your ideas in 3D. And when you’re done, you can export an image, make a movie or print out a view of what you made.

8. AutoQ3D Community – 3D Editor

   AutoQ3D Community is an easy, light and fast 3D model editor tool that uses the full power of your PC´s graphics hardware, allowing you to rapidly prototype your 3D designs. Its interface is intuitive and easy to use and provided at no charge. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License so it will be free to use, modify  and distribute within any educational, professional or commercial purposes.

   

9. Anim8or

   Anim8or is a
   3D modeling and character animation program which allows users to create and modify 3D models with built-in primitives such as spheres, cylinders, platonic solids, etc.; mesh-edit and subdivision; splines, extrusion, lathing, modifiers, bevel and warps,

   

10. Seamless3d

    Seamless3d is
    free
    open source 3d modelling software which designed for the artist who is realistic about the time it takes to learn any tool that’s going to offer creative freedom.

    

11. BRL-CAD

    BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform constructive solid geometry solid modeling system that includes an interactive geometry editor, ray-tracing for rendering & geometric analyses, network distributed framebuffer support, image & signal-processing
    tools.

    

12. 3DPlus

    With 3DPlus you can create outstanding 3D designs in just a few minutes – with no need for any complicated VRML or other programming. 3DPlus is the amazing 3D design software that enables you to create stunning 3D graphics for your home, school or business – no experience required!

    

13. 3D Canvas

    3D Canvas is a real-time
    3D modeling and animation tool that incorporates an intuitive drag-and-drop approach to
    3D modeling. Complex models can be constructed from simple 3D primitives, or created using 3D Canvas’ Object Building
    Tools. Modeling
    tools are provided to deform, sculpt, and paint 3D objects.

    

14. eDrawings

    eDrawings is a freeware utility which will give the user the power to view, create and share 3D models and 2D drawings. eDrawings offers unique capabilities like point-and-click animations that make it easy for anyone with a PC to interpret and understand 2D and 3D design data.

    

15. Blink 3D

    Blink 3D is an authoring tool for creating 3D environments. The 3D environments are immersive, just like today’s modern games and can be viewed using the a Blink 3D Viewer on the Web or locally.

    

16. Minos

    MINOS extends the capabilities of your existing 2D-or 3D-wireframe-based systems, so you can take advantage of all the benefits solid modeling offers right away. MINOS makes it easy to design 3D parts and assemblies. The design methodology is based on defining simple geometric elements including lines, curves, and circles, and then linking them together to form contours.

    

17. freeCAD

    freeCAD is a basic 3D CAD with advanced Motion Simulation capabilities. It is suitable for anyone interested in learning 3D CAD and Motion Simulation for
    free before using more sophisticated packages. Its motion simulation capabilities are comparable to the best and can provide accurate answers to engineers and scientists in diverse fields.

    

18. Bishop3D

    Bishop3D is an interactive modeler and animation tool for the popular freeware raytracer POV-Ray™, a world-class renderer for creating three-dimensional photo-realistic images. Bishop3D allows you to model the scenes interactively and it will automatically generate the correspondent POV-Ray SDL script. It offers native keyframe animation support, POV-Ray SDL import and a powerful texture editor.

    

19. K3DSurf

    K3DSurf is a program to visualize and manipulate Mathematical models in three, four, five and six dimensions. K3DSurf supports Parametric equations and Isosurfaces. K3DSurf can be used by every one interested in 3D Mathematical drawing functions and don’t require any special competences by users.

    

20. DesignWorkshop Lite

    DesignWorkshop is a three-dimensional modeling program for architectural design and related endeavors. Its unique interface makes it more profoundly “Mac-like” than any prior modeling software. This interface allows it to support actual design in three dimensions, as opposed to just recording design ideas already worked out with other media.

    

21. GDesign 2.0

    GDesign 2.0 is a 2D/3D
    free generative art
    application for Windows. With GDesign you can interactively build, test, and edit complex models. You can create, edit, build and preview huge 2D and 3D objects with extended LSystems and Cellular Automata
    tools.

    

22. Sweet Home 3D

    Sweet Home 3D is a
    free interior design
    application that helps you place your furniture
    on a house 2D plan, with a 3D preview. Sweet Home 3D helps people to design their interior quickly. The user may: draw the walls of his rooms upon the image of an existing plan, change the color or the texture of the walls, import additional 3D models created by himself or downloaded from different Web sites, change the size, view the changes in the plan simultaneously in the 3D view, either from an aerial view point, or from a virtual visitor view point, print the home plan and the 3D view.

    

23. trueSpace

    trueSpace7.6 is a fully-featured 3D authoring package that will let you model, texture, light, animate and render 3D content. As well as traditional images and movies, you can also make 3D content for online shared spaces, and for Virtual Earth.

    

24. Alibre Design Xpress

    Alibre Design Xpress is a rich and capable 3D solid modeler for creating mechanical parts, assemblies and 2D drawings – and is
    free.
    Alibre Design Xpress equips the person needing basic 3D design capabilities.
    Alibre Design Xpress has a rich set of integrated tutorials that you can use to learn the product quickly.

    

25. 3DVIA Shape

    3DVia Shape is a
    free online
    3D modeling
    application that eases you to create, publish and share ideas in 3D. There are 3DVIA archive of prototypes and modeling software you can choose to create three-dimensional. Each model can be viewed at any angle, spun around and zoomed-in on.

    

Today screensaver is used to liven up the computer with displaying a funny image or animation or useful information instead of preventing screen burn. It is also an outlet for the work of creative computer users and used for entertainment or security with customized configuration when the computer is idle.

Speaking from programmer and blogger standpoint, screensaver is used as an adornment with informative or eye-catchy animation during periods of user inactivity. A pure black screensaver turns your monitor into a lower power mode but don’t you think this is a bit boring?

Here’s 25 coolest screensavers we’ve collected from Internet for you to decorate your computer with little fun.

 

1. The One Ring

   This freeware screensaver has been specially created for all the fans of The Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien. If you liked the book or the movie, this screensaver will make a great addition to your collection.

   

2. Cities of Earth

   Cities of Earth is a free 3D screensaver which shows biggest cities of our planet. Many of cities with information about its population and country names. So it’s a good educational content. The positions of all cities corresponds to its real world coordinates.

   

3. Time Machine (Mac Only)

   Hongkiat insisted I include this. Time Machine screensaver comes perfect with your Time Machine wallpaper. When your Mac goes idle, the screensaver activates as though it’s coming from the wallpaper. It’s a perfect match.

   

4. System 47 Star Trek LCARS Screensaver

   System 47 is a nice screensaver that will display Star Trek LCARS interface on your screen with various interesting animations. System47 was just a generic name made up for an arbitrary planetary system. Though the program has started and will continue to include more non-planetary displays in the future.

   

5. Beijing 2008 Olympics Screensaver

   If you’re still in Beijing 2008 Olympics fever, here’s the collection of Beijing 2008 Olympics screensavers. There’s total up to 7 different types of Beijing 2008 Olympics screensavers.

   

6. The Matrix Revolutions 3D Screensaver

   Float through Matrix code as it forms images from the trilogy. It works fine with multi-monitors.

   

7. Live 3D Earth

   Live 3D earth is a realistic 3D earth model which will rotate on your desktop with photo-realistic colourful graphics and music.

   

8. Loppy

   Loopy is the desktop screensaver application that is looping and showing the pictures at random for good. The most imperactive key ingredient of this application is the integration between the flash technology and RSS, that is provided by Flickr.

   

9. Twingly

   If you want to experience the true blogosphere, download the twingly screensaver, a very cool
   desktop screensaver that lets you visualize global blog activity in real time.

   

10. Twittearth

    Twittearth is eye-candy at its finest – a mesmerizing and mostly useless diversion that sticks you in space and whips you around the globe to see a new geo-located tweet every ten seconds.

    

11. RSSMore

    RSSMore is a free rss screensaver that lets you subscribe to any number of RSS/XML feeds and view them in your rss screensaver. The RSSMore RSS reader screensaver loops through the list of feeds and shows the items and their contents in transparent text boxes over your background images.

    

12. Digg Screensavers

    You can now pimp out your desktop and catch more of the good stuff submitted to Digg every day with Digg screensavers. The screensavers are available for Mac and Windows users and include Adobe Flash 9 if you don’t have it installed. On the Mac you’ll need at least OSX 10.4 and on Windows you need either Windows XP or Vista.

    

13. MappedUp

    MappedUp is an application that tracks a large number of RSS news sources and displays their latest items on a world map. By rolling your mouse over the dots, you can read the titles of all new articles. By clicking a title, you jump to the author’s website to read the entire article.

    

14. RSSSaver

    RSSsaver will preview RSS feeds from the net and visualize them during your computer’s “inactive” time.

    

15. AJ Screensaver

    AJ Screensaver is a freeware clock screensaver. This screensaver is based on work of others.
    Several very interesting clock Macromedia shockwave flash files are packed in this screensaver. AJ Screensaver lets you select 14 ways to display the actual time.

    

16. Polar Clock v3

    Polar Clock is a simple clock design screensaver application based on depicting the length of circle arcs. It displays your date and time based on polar coordinates.

    

17. Star Alliance Screensaver

    The Star Alliance Screensaver has many features which can be accessed through the StarSaver Options dialogue box. In all modes, the Star Alliance Screensaver displays your computer time and the number of Star Alliance member airline scheduled flights in the air.

    

18. Emerald Clock Screensaver

    The Emerald Clock’s face is weaving from delicate emerald guiding threads, each symbolizing our connection to other people. The Emerald Clock will help us to keep visible and invisible contacts with all our friends.

    

19. Dropclock

    Dropclock is an aesthetically intriguing motion clock screensaver. Every minute of real time is numerically expressed with heavy helvetica dropping into water in super slow-motion.

    

20. Crazyscreen Screensaver

    A round clock screensaver which you will see the seconds, minutes and hours will rotate gradually as the time is passing.

    

21. Uniqlock

    The screensaver alternates between a minimalist display of the current time and five second videos of four young Asian women in polo shirts and jeans performing synchronized dance moves.

    

22. Fliqlo

    Spruce up the functionality and aesthetics of your screeensaver with Fliqlo. Fliqlo mimics an old school clock with flipping digits. The time can be customized to display in 12-hour or 24-hour formats. Fliqlo is a free screensaver that has been around for ages.

    

23. Aquarium Clock screensaver

    Aquarium fishes want to know the current time. They need special clock with flexible hands crawling around the clock face second after the second to amuse the small fishes and cheer your moods.

    

24. Word Clock

    Word Clock is a typographic screensaver for Mac OS X and Windows. It displays a fixed list of all numbers and words sufficient to express any possible date and time as a sentence. Word Clock displays time by highlighting appropriate words as each second passes.

    

25. World Clock Screensaver

    World Clock ScreenSaver is a Flash based free screensaver created with Flash ScreenSaver Builder that shows your local and five major time zones.

    

Tooltip, together with a user mouse-pointing (or clicking) action provides more information about a particular section, keyword, paragraph or any web element. Tooltips are fundamentally build-in into HTML. You can achieve basic tooltip just by using TITLE="", ALT="" or even the <ACRONYM> HTML tag. However displaying tooltips for our readers can be more fun, interesting and interactive by taking advantage of Javascripts, CSS, Ajax with HTML.

Here’s more than 50 Tooltips Scripts you can implement for websites, organized in categories of CSS, Javascripts, Javascript Frameworks, couple of tutorials to build tooltips from scratch as well as plugins for blogs.  

DHTML, CSS/Javascripts

• Bubble Tooltips | Demo

  

• Walterzorn’s JavaScript, DHTML Tooltips | Demo

  An easy to use cross-browser Tooltip JavaScript Library that creates tooltips, information popup boxes.

  

• BoxOver | Demo

  BoxOver uses
  javascript / DHTML to show tooltips on a website. Implementation of the tooltips, however, requires no knowledge of DHTML or
  javascript.

  

• Popup Balloon

  Demonstration of balloon.js, written by Sheldon McKay.

  

• SuperNote | Demo

  SuperNotes are like regular footnotes turbocharged with
  JavaScript, so they display as tooltips in modern browsers, and remain accessible elsewhere.

  

• qTip | Demo

  

• dhtmlgoodies Ajax tooltips

  dhtmlgoodies has
  couple of nice tooltips like Tooltip for forms, Ajax tooltip, Tooltip with transparent shadow, etc.

  

• Tipster v3.1 | Demo

  Highly customisable
  Javascript tooltip.

  

• Nice Title (revised) | Demo

  Modified version. Check out original Nice Title tooltip here.

  

• Mobile Tooltip Widget for GWT(Google Web Toolkit) | Demo

  

• JavaScript Fading Tooltips

  Improved tooltip effect, lighter codes with titles get cut of at maximum of 25 characters.

  

• Slider DataPager with Dynamic Tooltips | Demo

  Not only users are shown the typical paging statistics, but now they can get an idea of what data can be found on the page before actually navigating to it.

  

• apycom Popup Tooltip | Demo

  Multi-layer tooltip.

  

• DHTML Tooltips

  The code offers a variety of options for source and type of tooltip content and flexible control of positioning, formatting and display.

  

• Good-Looking Tooltips (GLT)

  GLT is short for Good-Looking Tooltips and it is a small
  JavaScript
  library that you can include to spice up the look of your tooltips in your web page.

  

• Cool DHTML Tooltip II | Demo

  Also check out Cool DHTML Tooltip I.

  

• Form field hints with CSS/Javascript | Demo

  As you tab through each input field, some helper text appears in box out to the right.

  

CSS

• Lixlpixel CSS tooltips

  

• CSS Tooltips

  

• Unobtrusive and Slightly Accessible CSS Tool Tips

  

• Pure CSS Tooltips

  

• CSS Tooltips – Floating HTML Elements

  This article shows how to create these tooltips with only CSS.

  

• CSS Bubble Tooltips

  

• CSS Rollovers for tooltip

  

jQuery

• jQuery Tooltip | Demo

  

• clueTip | Demo

  The clueTip plug-in allows you to easily set a link to show a “tooltip” of sorts when the user’s mouse hovers over the link. If the link includes a title attribute, its text becomes the heading of the clueTip. Here’s another cover up on clueTip.

  

• Coda Popup Bubbles | Demo

  One of the slickest tooltip we’ve seen so far.

  

• jTip | Demo

  

• Better Tip

  BetterTip is a plugin for the JQuery
  library that allows you to create custom tool tips. It is based on Cody Lindley’s jTip, but it is much more flexible.

  

• jHelperTip 1.0 | Demo

  jHelperTip is intended to be useful in many situations such as hovering tip and clickable tips. It can get data from a container, through Ajax or even the attributes of the current object.

  

• jQuery InputHintBox

  

MooTools

• Moo Tools Tips | Demo

  

• e-magine Tooltips | Demo

  Works like the original Moo Tool tooltip, with the possibility to grab contents from a DOM node.

  

Prototype

• HelpBalloon.js | Demo

  Simple help balloon tooltip with a close button.

  

• Protip 2

  Prototip allows you to easily create both simple and complex tooltips using the Prototype
  javascript framework. Also check out Protip.

  

Script.aculo.us

• Tooltip.js

  Tooltip.js is a simple
  library that builds on top of Prototype and Script.aculo.us.

  

• CoolTip | Demo

  Lightweight unobtrusive
  JavaScript web-browser tooltips replacement technique.

  

Yahoo! User Interface (YUI)

• Sweet Titles | Demo

  This is a YUI style of Sweet Titles which has more flexibility in customization and allows for {n} number of initialized sets.

  

Web Services

• Websnapr Preview Bubble | demo

  The websnapr Preview Bubble is a simple, unobtrusive script used to display an overlay bubble showing a hyperlink target thumbnail using websnapr. It’s a snap to setup and works on (almost) all modern browsers.

  

• Snap shot

  Put Snap Shots on your site to upgrade your user experience

  

• Taggify

  Taggify is a web widget which allows bloggers and publishers enhance their sites by adding visual tags to any site’s images.

  

Tutorials and Other Resources

If embedding a ready-made tooltip is not your cup of tea, here’s some tutorials that teach you
to build tooltip
from scratch.

• Create a Nice, Lightweight JavaScript Tooltip [
  Javascript] | Demo

  Create a lightweight script that fades a tooltip with rounded corners in relation to the cursor position.

  

• Customize Your Tips [Moo Tools]

  

• Create a Simple, Powerful Product Highlighter with MooTools [Moo Tools] | Demo

  

• Create Multiline Tooltip [CSS/Javascript]

  This document explains how to make nice multiline tooltip for
  HTML documents, using simple and standard CSS,
  HTML and
  JavaScript.

  

• Bubble Tooltips [Wordpress Plugin]

  This plugin makes
  easy to use nice tooltips for your blog. You can change for two toolips.

  

• Tippy WordPress Plugin [Wordpress Plugin]

  Tippy is a friendly little WordPress plugin that gives you a way to include highly configurable tooltips in your WordPress site.

  

As bloggers, designers and consistent Internet surfers, we constantly visit a lot of websites and blogs on daily basis. Aside from reading the content, we get all curious too. These ponders are often figures and data the website/blog generates, for example – the pageviews, feedreader counts, rankings, web host, how much money a site makes, etc.

If you are constanly checking out these figures of any websites you go to, don’t worry because that’s a good sign. These information allows you to understand websites you visits better, it also keeps you closer to your competitions. If you often checkout Google PageRank, Alexa of your website and others, we want to show you more. Here’s 9 Interesting Facts To Know About a Site.

Disclaimer: We believe the following statistics, figures are not absolutely accurate (perhaps, nothing are) and they might varies from one
web service to another.

 

1.  

   1. Pingdom Tools

   Pingdom offers cost-effective and reliable server, network and website monitoring. You can view the list of objects either in load order or as a hierarchy. The hierarchy view allows you to see which objects are linked to in for example a CSS file.Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects.

   

   2. Webslug

   Webslug was conceived as an all encompassing way of testing site performance. It measures load time as the user sees it. The time it takes for a page to load fully from when the request was made.

   

   3. WebWait

   WebWait is a website timer that benchmarks your website or test the speed of your web connection. Timing is accurate because WebWait pulls down the entire website into your browser, so it takes into account Ajax/Javascript processing and image loading which other tools ignore.

   

   4. Internet Supervision

   Internet Supervision monitors the availability, performance, and content of a website, web server and internet services from our UL approved offices with 24/7 personnel in Washington DC, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Santiago, Chile.

   

   5. Link Vendor

   Link Vendor shows the duration of a given website. This value can be used for showing how long a website take to load and if it is better to optimize the website or change a (slow) ISP.

   

   1. Who.Is

   Who.is is a website for performing whois lookups on domain names for many popular gTLDs and ccTLDs.

   

   2. Who Is Hosting This

   Who Is Hosting This is a tool that lets you discover who is hosting any web site instantly. Enter the domain, and we’ll tell you which web hosting company the site uses. It’s that simple!

   

   1. FeedCompare

   Feedcompare is another web service that does the same; but instead of comparing web traffics, it compares Feedburner feed subscriber counts. Feedcompares supports comparison up to 4 websites/blogs and you can generate a chart as far as 24 months view. Feedcompare reveals feed subscriber counts as long as you type in the FeedBurner feed name.

   

   2. How to Find Out Feedburner Subscribers Figures

   We did show you how to find out feedburner subscribers figures when they don’t tell. Click the above link to check the tricks out.

   1. WayBackMachine

   Browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available.

   

   1. Browsershots

   Browsershots makes screen shots of a web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service.

   

   2. Cross Browser Testing

   CrossBrowserTesting.com allows website designers see what their website looks like in different browsers and in different operating systems.

   

   1. Xinu Returns

   Find out how well
   a site is doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking and other site statistics

   

   2. Websitegrader

   Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors.

   

   3. SEO Meter

   SEOmeter.com offers a convenient online SEO tool that allows webmasters to monitor their website’ crawling activities, and to collate crawling trend against their ongoing marketing campaign and other SEO strategies.

   

   4. Popuri.US

   A tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (
   Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more!

   

   1. dnScoop

   dnScoop.com attempts to estimate a value for an established website or a domain name by using factors such as links pointing to the domain, popularity of the domain, age of the domain, pagerank of the domain and traffic to the domain.

   

   2. Cutestat

   Cubestat is a free and perfect tool for website value calculation, estimations and information. Cubestat has an unique algorithm will calculate and estimate the website worth, daily pageviews and daily ads revenue of the present domain. Among the estimation it will show precise information available for the domain.

   

   3. WebsiteOutlook

   Websiteoutlook is the perfect place to evaluate any website. When choosing to buy or sell a website having the proper information about your investment can be crucial to your success. Websiteoutlook is dedicated to finding all pertinent information that may pertain to your personal interest. And it’s FREE!

   

   4. YourWebsiteValue

   
   Your Website Value is basically a calculator that evaluate the yearly potential value of a website based on many factors such as: Number of pages indexed in search engines; Number of sites linking to the website; Quality of website; Popularity of the website.

   

   5. Site Value Calculator

   Site Value Calculator is the easy way to check the value of
   your website. It finds the value of
   your website with seeing your site’s traffic trends, backlinks, alexa ranking and DMOZ links.

   

   1. Quarkbase

   Quarkbase is a free tool to find complete information about a website. It is a mashup of over 30 data sources and many algorithms gathering information from Internet on various topics like social popularity, traffic, associated people, etc.

   

   2. Domain Tools

   Domain name search tool; allows wildcard search of current and deleted/expired whois domains.

   

   • Alexa

   Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources. The information is sorted, sifted, anonymized, counted, and computed, until, finally, Alexa gets the traffic rankings shown in the Alexa service.

   

   • Compete

   Compete is a new breed of web analytics company. Powered by the largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry, Compete.com is the only online competitive intelligence service that combines site and search analytics in one site to help you quickly master online marketing.

   

   • Statbrain

   With Statbrain.com you can find out how many visits any site has. Statbrain uses different resources on the web combined with mathematical and statistical methods to estimate how many visits a website has. Statbrain estimates the number of visits that a website has based on offsite factors like backlinks, Alexa Rank etc.

   

   • Quantcast

   Quantcast is a new media measurement service that enables advertisers to view audience reports for millions of sites and services to build their brands with confidence. The free service empowers publishers to demonstrate the unique value of their audiences by tagging their websites, videos, widgets and games for direct measurement.

   

   • Google Trends For Websites

   With Google Trends for Websites, you can get insights into the traffic and geographic visitation patterns of your favorite websites. You can compare data for up to five websites and view related sites and top searches for each one.

   

Traffics | Visits, Pageview, Rankings

Most of us know Alexa is flawed and the rankings might not be too accurate. The fact is, nothing is really accurate. Any figures generated by these public web services are as good as cross-referencing and perhaps nothing more. The most accurate traffic figures and demographics information will only make known to the webmaster inside their Google Analytics, Sitemeter, etc account.

Loading Time

Find out what slows your site or
a site you visit down. Good tools for site optimization.

Web Hosting

Some websites took traffic spikes smoothly. Wonder who’s hosting for them? Check them out.

Feed Subscribers

Website In- History

Interface Design

SEO | PageRank, Backlinks, Indexed Pages and more

Website Value

Everything About A Website (All in One)

Sound effects are used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. These trick of sound are mostly achieved by combining technology, ingenuity and creativity. Sound effects are important for digital media because an appropriate sound effect can easily resemble a real occurrence for a situation.

We understand it’s kind of fussy to record and process sound effects on one’s own. Thus, we’ve crawled into Internet and search for free sound effects which are available for download. Here’s 55 websites for free sound effects download. Full list after jump!

Note: Some of these sound effects have limited rights. That means they are not allowed for commercial usage. We urge that you check the rights before using them for business purposes.

 

1. Flash Kit

   Flash Kit has an ever growing list of shareware and freeware SoundFX for download. It provides a powerful searching, excellent organisation and easy real time previews make this the most advanced Sound FX download site on the net! mp3 and flashtrak versions of all effects as well!

   

2. Audio Micro

   AudioMicro is a revolutionary collection of user-generated micro stock music, sound effects, production music, production elements and music cues. Finally, high quality audio content is available at unbelievable prices with no hidden costs or fees.

   

3. Sound-Effect

   Search for, preview and download royalty free sound effects for immediate use in your multimedia project. These high quality royalty free sound effects are hand-picked from only the best sound designers.

   

4. SoundSnap

   Soundsnap is the best platform to find and share free sound effects and loops- legally. It is a collection of original sounds made or recorded by its users, and not songs or sound FX found on commercial libraries or sample CD’s.
   

   

5. FindSounds

   FindSounds.com is a free site for finding sound effects and musical instrument samples on the Web. It is a Web search engine, like Google and AltaVista, but with a focus on sounds. It provides powerful features, yet is simple and easy to use, and suitable for all ages.

   

6. Soungle

   Soungle is a free site, developed by Southern Codes, for finding all kind of sound FX and musical instruments samples on our mega online library. As different from most of similar sites, Soungle is NOT a Web search engine. It only searches in our growing monster database. Our goals are to keep it simple to use (search, preview and download) and to keep it free.

   

7. SFX Source

   In SFX Source you’ll find cutting-edge and imaginative sound samples crafted with passionate expertise for use in all levels of production, from professional to amateur, for use in Film, TV, Games, and New Media.

   

8. A1 Free Sound Effects

   A1 Free Sound Effects wants to provide the internet with our Free Sound Effects that you can download to your computer and use for church, school, home or for any non-profit project. Commercial Sounds Available.

   

9. Soundrangers

   Soundrangers specializes in generating state-of-the-art royalty free sound effects and music for interactive media, such as virtual user-interfaces, games, online entertainment, web sites and communication devices.

   

10. Partners In Rhyme

    Partners In Rhyme provide free resources, help and advice to amateur and professional multimedia producers, film makers, musicians and students in their search for music, sound effects and audio tools to complete their projects inexpensively and quickly.

    

11. Soundboard

    Soundboard.com puts all your audio clips, as well as millions from other users in one, easy to manage location. Its mission is to invite everyone to help us create a central site for audio clips in a format that anyone with a connection and a browser can enjoy.

    

12. FreeSound.org

    The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, … released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a “sounds-like” type of browsing and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license.

    

13. Acoustica

    Acoustica has a great database and will help you find that ever so elusive sound effect!

    

14. Ljudo

    Ljudo gives free access to more than 1200 sound effects. The sounds are available in two formats: RealAudio and Mp3. Audition with RealAudioplayer or download as an MP3. Ljudo includes multilingual access, which translates the word you are searching for from your language into English.

    

15. Nature Sounds

    Nature Sounds.ca includes free online samples and as well as full-length (usually CD-length or longer!) downloads of quality nature sound mp3s. Some are mixed and edited field recordings, others are free of intervention.

    

16. Pac DV

    PacDV allows you to use the sound effects on their web site free of charge in your video, film, audio and multimedia productions.

    

17. Alc Ljudprod

    Alc Ljudprod have assembled their sound effects in MP3 format and they are free to download and use.

    

18. Hollywood Edge

    The Hollywood Edge is the leading Hollywood Sound Effects Library. These are the Sound Efx used in the big award winning Hollywood movies. From explosions to a pin drop.

    

19. Download Sound Effects

    Free Sound Effects to download will send your great specials for Sound-Effects products after you sign up their free newsletter. Also they will keep you updated with the best new SoundFX products from all over the world.

    

20. SNDBRD

    A very simple page which displays all the downloadable sound effects on its main page with a well-arranged list.

    

21. Brandens

    Many people make a living as Foley Artists adding sound f/x to movies and the like. Brandens has a large collection of sound f/x here in a few categories.

    

22. Animal Sounds

    Over 280 animal sounds available for free download. You can even read the provided description to know better about the particular animal sound.

    

23. I Love Waves

    ILovesWaves is your ultimate categorized .wav source. You can download sound effects from categories like animals, beeps and clicks, birds, cartoons, halloween, around the home, around the work place, insects, music, nature, people, vehicles and war.

    

24. Simply The Best Sound

    The sound files featured in SimplytheBest Sounds were gathered from various collections on the Internet, were created by our editors or submitted by their visitors.

    

25. Zero 1 Media

    Free wav sound samples from zero 1media. All sounds are in wav format. You can download sound inkickdrums, snaredrums, toms, highhats, loops, beat phrases, noises, voices, synth phrases, keyboards and synth sounds and effects.

    

26. Boogie Jack

    Funny, weird, annoying…you’ll find all kinds of sound effects at Boogie Jack.

    

27. AutoSpeak

    AutoSpeak Library of Sounds features the sounds of race cars, dragsters, motorcycles and other auto-related sounds.

    

28. Special Operations

    Special Operations offers free military sound effects for explosion sounds, battle sounds, machine gun sounds, rifle sounds, shortgun sounds, artillery sounds and others.

    

29. Little Music Club

    Littlemusicclub.com where you will find SERIOUS BIG sfx wavs that “rocks”and some other useful music links. For copyright purposes you should contact their respective owners by checking the properties section of each file where applicable.

    

30. Guide to Animal Sounds on the Net

    There are many samples of animal sounds on the World Wide Web and FTP sites, but finding them takes some patience and a bit of luck. This website provides a guide that much more convenient to have an index specifically for animal sounds.

    

31. Stoutman’s Sounds

    Sounds of all kinds for your listening and downloading pleasure! Stoutman’s Sounds is going to be putting up more sounds as time permits.

    

32. Cool Wavs

    Cool wavs is the place where you can look for some cool, funny, sexy wavs.

    

33. Free Audio Clips

    FreeAudioClips.com is loaded with tons of wav, midi and au files for your listening and downloading pleasure!
    Select a category on the right and easily find what you’re looking for. Or, use the quick “audio clip keyword search” to search through the database for that special sound clip!

    

34. Event Sounds

    Event sounds lets you download wavs so you can change the sounds your computer makes such as startup sounds, mail sounds, shut down sounds, error sounds, movie sounds and tv sounds.

    

35. WavCentral

    All of WavCentral’s audio files have been databased and categorized — to make searching and accessing EASY. Over 504 sound effects are available for free download.

    

36. WavPlanet

    Wavplanet, the only audio page that lets users upload to its collection and has become one of the largest on the Internet with thousands of movie and TV files, hundreds of sound effects and MIDI files.

    

37. Movie Sound Clips

    More sound effects categories are currently being worked on Movie Sound Clips. That includes more updates for the current categories, especially weapon sound effects, as well as new object sound effects, answering machine messages and lots more.

    

38. Wav-Sounds

    Wav-Sounds.com is the family friendly wav site. The place to find some of the best free wav sound files around like Answering Machine Wav Sounds, Cartoon Wav Sounds, E-mail Wav Sounds, Funny Wav Sounds, Movie Wav Sounds, Parody Wav Sounds, Various Wav Sounds and Vehicle Wav Sounds.

    

39. TalkingWav

    Talkingwav.com offers thousands of free wav sound files to download, including answering machine messages, cartoon, comedy, music, movie and tv wav sounds, all fully categorized with descriptions. Plus loads of free mobile cell phone ringtones and videos.

    

40. Tintagel’s Free Sound File Archive

    Sound files at Tintagel are provided free of charge, without any representation or warranty whatsoever. To the best of our knowledge, all wave, midi, and audio files presented here are in the public domain and are available for use without restriction.

    

41. Pachd

    Over 80 free sound effects are available for download at Pachd.

    

42. Amazing Sounds

    Amazing sounds is where you will find all kinds of WAV files. Their database has more than 1.000 WAV Sounds for you to download, FREE!! Their content is made basically for multimedia developers or creators that want to use these files; so you won’t find a lot of movie, serial, or other sounds here.

    

43. Wav Sound Files

    A complete archive for wav sound files download.

    

44. The Recordist

    The Recordist presents a collection of free sound effects in MP3 format. These effects are from The Recordist SFX Library and the “Special Edition”. The MP3 stereo versions are high quality 44.1 192k compressed.

    

45. Sound Jay

    Sound Jay allows you to use the sounds on our website free of charge and royalty free in your projects but you are NOT allowed to post the sounds on any web site for others to download, link directly to individual sound files, or sell the sounds to anyone else.

    

46. FreeSFX

    The free sound effects found within the categories on the site are royalty-free and free to download and use within your audio/visual productions. You do not have to declare the useage of these sounds to any performing rights organizations.

    

47. Sounds FX Page

    Sounds FX Page has a small collection of Sounds FX files saved in WAV format. Instead of creating a rather humongous plethora of sound directories, they thought you would get more use out of a fairly small selection of really good sound files.

    

48. Free Sound Effects

    Free Sound Effects has converted our Stage Sounds Series so you can pick and choose your effects to create your own customized CD. The sound effects are available in a smaller MP3 format and a larger WAV file-self-extracting zip file.

    

49. Water Sounds

    A mini collection of water sounds for ocean surf, rain sounds, stream, water sounds and waterfall.

    

50. 3dmm Studio

    The best movies always have great sound effects, and realistic background noises. So, to help you in your quest for better sounds, 3dmm Studio has compiled and categorised several sound packs. Rubin’s ‘3dmm Sound’ packs require you to import the .3mm file into your movie, where-as the packs complied by Will Cheyney are standard zips with categorised .wav files.

    

51. Media College

    MediaCollege.com is a free educational and resource website for all forms of electronic media. Topics include video & television production, audio work, photography, graphics, web design and more.They have hundreds of exclusive tutorials with supporting illustrations, videos, sound bytes and interactive features.

    

52. Free Sound Effects Collections

    Music for video provides different categories of sound effects and music clips. You can download and use these sounds for free on your video/multimedia productions. The sounds in this part of the website are mainly dedicated to people involved in video production , video montage ,multimedia projects and etc.

    

53. Wav Surfer

    Wav surfer provides free sound effects in wav files for movies, animals, musical, television and misc.

    

54. A1 Prank Calls

    A1 Prank Calls – The best free sounds, April Fools’ prank items and the funniest prank call humor.

    

55. Sounds & Noise

    Sounds & Noise provides free sound effects for animal sounds, human sounds, trains, planes and automobiles, weapons, horns, bells and whistles, sound of nature and household sounds.

    

This article is a sequel of last week’s 100 Useful Free Mac Applications. As a part II of the article, we continue to showcase you some of the free and useful applications you can install for your Mac, concentrating on:

• Audio and Video,,
• Security Tools,
• Graphics and Image,
• Internet and Utilities

 

More from Part I..

Before we take a look into what Part II has in store, we’d like to first featured some useful Mac application and tools recommended by readers.

System tool: iFreeMem

Recovers memory for your applications to use and helps avoid the performance hit you get when running low on Free memory.

System tool: Silver Keeper

Mac’s free backup application with scheduling ability.

Productivity: The Unarchiver

Think of it as WinZIP for Mac. Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more or less obscure formats.

Productivity: Name Mangler

If you need to rename several files at once every now and then, this is the application you have always been looking for.

Reader: Skim

PDF reader for Mac.

Editor: Nvu

‘WYSIWYG’ HTML editor based on Gecko, Mozilla’s rendering engine.

Editor: Smultron

Yet another free text editor for Mac OS X.

Security

ClamXav main screen ClamXav

Free open source virus checker for Mac OS X.

Flame

Application that shows you what’s going on behind the scenes on your network.

IP Securitas

IPsec based VPN allowing you to transfer secure data remotely.

Rookit Hunter

Searches for popular UNIX and Mac rootkits and removes them.

Server Admin Tools

Provides information about the Mac OS X Server administration software applications.

Tiger Envelopes

Tiger Envelopes is a little program that lets you read and write email privately.

WireShark

Network protocol analyzer

Audio and Video

Audacity

Free Mac sound editing and recording tool.

Centerstage Project

Play audio, video and photo on your Mac or connect it to a TV.

Handbrake

Open-source DVD to MPEG-4 converter.

iPodDisk

Copy your music from iPod to your Mac, via Finder.

Miro

HD video player, podcast player, torrent downloader, Youtube viewer that can play almost any video file and offers over 6,000 free internet TV shows and video podcasts.

MPlayer

It might not have that appealing interface, but you should know that it actually play more file formats than VNC player.

VLC Player

A favourite Mac video player that supports almost all video formats!

Graphics and Image Publishing

GIMP

You probably won’t need Photoshop if you have this.

Inkscape

Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

iStrip

An application to view and archive comic strips available onlin

Paparazzi!

Makes screenshots of webpages.

PhotoBook

A Facebook photo browser for Mac. It makes it easy and fun to manage, share, and view your friends’ Facebook photos in one intuitive interface.

Xee

Lightweight, fast and convenient image viewer and browser.

Internet and Network Utilities

Cyberduck

Open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Mosso Cloud Files and Amazon S3 browser for the Mac.

Classic FTP

Mac program to upload, download, delete and manage files on a remote server or website using the file transfer protocol.

Camino Browser

Powerful brower that combines the awesome visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine.

Chicken of the VNC

Yet another VNC client for Mac OS X.

FileZilla

Perhaps one of the most famouse FTP/SFTP around.

Firefox Browser

A no brainer must-have for those who enjoys surfing web with open standards.

Flock

A Social Web Browser

iStumbler

Wireless discovery tool for Mac OS X, providing plugins for finding AirPort networks, Bluetooth devices and Bonjour services with your Mac.

JollysFastVNC

Secure ARD and VNC client.

Juice

Podcast receiver that lets you create your own custom online audio anytime, anywhere.

KissMac

Open-source and free stumbler/scanner application for Mac OS X

MAMP

MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL and PHP. It’s a one-click-install application to setup a PHP webserver.

Remote Desktop Connection

Mac application to quickly, simply and securely connect to Windows-based PCs to access Windows-based files, applications, devices, and networks from your Mac.

Serverskine

Have instant access to all of your web server, domain name, and hosting accounts. Serverskine allows you to keep everything straight in a way that’s intuitive, easy and useful.

SvnX

Allows you to browse your working copies, spot changes and operate on them but also to browse logs and revisions of your repositories !

Transmission

Transmission is a fast, easy, and free multi-platform BitTorrent client.

Vuze (Azureus)

Powerful torrent meta-search with login support for private trackers.

If you’ve just got yourself a new Mac and totally clueless what to install, this article is for you. If you are looking for alternatives for some applications you are currently using in your Mac, the following list might come in handy too. This week, we’d like to showcase you a list of useful yet free applications you can install for your Mac. Full list after jump.

Productivity

Anxiety

Provides a streamlined, easily accessible interface to add and check off your tasks, while remaining poised to melt into the background at a moments notice.

Appointments

Keep record of customers, contact persons and important events related to them.

BackBoard

A Mac app to collect notes and tasks.

 

Camouflage

Hides all the icons and leaves nothing but the pure wallpaper

Evernote

Easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

EventSync

Allows you to sync your Facebook events with iCal.

HimmelBar

HimmelBar provides an icon in the menu bar to quickly access your installed applications by scanning standard locations such as local, user, network and developer applications.

iClockr

Simple way to track your time.

MindNode

Simple-to-use mindmapping applications for the Macintosh that help to visually collect, classify and structure ideas as well as organize, study and solve problems.

NameChanger

Designed for the sole purpose of renaming a list of files.

Namely

Fast way to open applications.

Punakea

Allows you to tag your files and bookmarks, freeing you of the strict hierarchy of the Finder’s folder structure.

Quicksilver

A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.

SketchBox

Sticky Notes Manager for your Mac Desktop.

Slife

Time and activity analytics application that automatically keeps track of where you spend your time on your computer.

SyncMate

Help you keep all your documents, text messages, contacts, calendar entries and events and other stuff well organized.

TaskMate

Simple Mac to-do list application.

Think

Helps you to concentrate on your current task and activity.

Todos

Todos shows you all your applications in a complete dock.

Tools and Utilities

AppFresh

Helps you to keep all applications, widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up to date.

Burn

Mac’s application to burn discs, with a lot of advanced options.

Font Explorer X

Font management tool.

Garagebuy

Help you find and purchase items on eBay.

Set Icon

Small application that lets you quickly and easily set a custom icon for one your drives either from an ICNS file or any old image file that Mac OS supports.

TextWrangler

Powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool.

NeoOffice

Full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X.

Emacs

An Editor for Text, HTML, LaTeX, C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, and more…

Readers

Adobe Reader

Read PDF files with this Adobe Acrobat reader.

NetNewsWire

RSS reader for Mac by NewsGator

NewsFire

A great RSS reader for Mac whom recently made free.

ThunderBird

Powerful email application from Mozilla.

System

AppCleaner

AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.

Caffeine

Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it.

Deeper

Allows you to enable and disable the hidden functions of Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window and many Apple’s applications.

EverSave

Allows you to save all of your documents in a specific time interval or by changing the frontmost application.

Growl

Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen.

iStat pro

Highly configurable widget that lets you monitor every aspect of your Mac, including CPU, memory, disks, network, battery, temperatures, fans, load & uptime and processes.

Loginox

Easily customize your Mac’s login screen.

MacLoc

After clicking on MacLoc, it will appear that you’ve logged out, however upon entering your username and password, all open documents and applications will be right where you left them.

Mactracker

Provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions, and expansion options.

OnyX

Allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance, configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window.

Monolingual

A program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space.

PresentYourApps

Lets you hide the Dock and menu bar for every Cocoa application you choose.

SMARTReporter

Application that can warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen.

SuperDocker

Tweak your Mac’s dock.

Chat Clients

Adium

Free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.

Colloquy

Advanced IRC, SILC & ICB client.

Gabtastik

Gabtastik lets you keep chat sessions open on your OS X desktop outside of your regular web browser, using minimal screen real estate and system memory.

Messenger

Think of it as Mac’s MSN Messenger.

Skype

Skype for Mac.