The Five Best Sources of Free Entertainment on the Web
In this kind of economy, people are reigning back spending left and right. Disposable income just isn't what it used to be, and lots of people aren't spending as much of their hard-earned cash on movies, CDs, books, video games, and so on.
But that doesn't mean you need to spend your Saturday nights staring at the walls, doing nothing because you're afraid of cutting into that Ramen budget. If you know where to go, you can enjoy a lot of free and completely legal content on the Web. Here are the five best places to spend time if you're broke and easily bored.
1) TV and Movies: Hulu.com
A string of amusing commercials is starting to make Hulu.com a household name, but if you're not familiar with it yet, Hulu is a site sponsored by NBC Universal that shows clips and full-length episodes of popular network and cable shows. There's also a selection of movies. They tend to archive the last few episodes of the most popular titles, so you can catch up if you've missed the latest House MD or The Simpsons.
Being sponsored by the content providers themselves means it's totally legal, though it also means that there'll be commercials involved. But if you have a home theater PC attached to your TV and a broadband Internet connection, it's like getting basic cable and video-on-demand for free. And if you're on the road with your laptop, you won't have to miss your favorite shows.
2) Flash Games: UGOPlayer.com
New console and PC games are pretty expensive; besides, sometimes you just want something you can play for 20 minutes and call it a day. UGOPlayer.com collects hundreds of the best Flash games from various sites into one portal that's simple to navigate and doesn't explode your browser with annoying ads and popups.
3) Music (tie): Archive.org's Live Music Archive and Mixtape.me
If you want to download some free and legal live music, the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive is a really underrated source of recorded shows from bands in every genre. There's tons and tons of music from great bands here recorded in various high-quality compression formats that you can stream or download. You can easily fill up a hard drive with what's on offer here.
Alternatively, if you just want to stream some tunes, Mixtape.me is like a sweet and easy-to-use mashup of Imeem.com, Songbeat, and Songbird. It acts like a dedicated application in your browser for music on the Web, and you can create playlists by searching for songs or by listening to other users' compiled "mixtapes". It works by scraping its own database as well as Seeqpod for songs and presents results in a way that's easy to manage. You can also get detailed artist and song info directly from the playlist by clicking on the "i" on a song entry, or buy DRM-free MP3s from Amazon.com by clicking on the "$" symbol. There are a lot of sites out there that stream free music, from Pandora to last.fm, but Mixtape.me is the most elegant balance yet of discovering music and still having some control over your on-the-fly playlists via an attractive and unified interface.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and for the past several years their lectures from well-known figures in those three fields have been freely available for download. From ideas about how to live green to how to get around writer's block, the talks are educational, personal, often funny, and worth listening to. You can watch the lectures directly on the TED website, or subscribe to their podcast feed in iTunes.
5) Free Downloadable Games: Freewaregames.net
Sometimes another Bejeweled clone isn't going to cut it--you want some actual games to play. Freewaregames.net is a portal for browsing some of the best games available from indie developers and even some big-name studios. The only drawback to this site--if you consider it one--is that you may find yourself wading through a metric ton of generic Korean MMORPGs to find the true gems. That said, almost every freeware game worth playing can be found here, including F.E.A.R. Multiplayer, Crayon Physics, Battle for Wesnoth, TrackMania Nations Forever, Combat Arms, Frets on Fire, and much much more.
Got some better suggestions? Let us know in the comments.
--Aric A.
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Tim on March 27, 2009 at 01:43 PM
Music alternative number 1: www.newmusicmonday.com Agree on everything else though!
That German Guy on March 27, 2009 at 01:48 PM
I don't care for four of these and can't use Hulu, because they block users from outside of the U.S.
Unfortunately I don't have any better suggestions, but I still appreaciate what you tried to do. :)
kimba on March 27, 2009 at 01:49 PM
TEDtalks are some of THE best watchable videos on the web. Always interesting, always enlightening.
hulu, well, there's a lot of stuff I would have never watched if it wouldn't have been for hulu. I <3 hulu!
Ender on March 27, 2009 at 01:57 PM
Of course if you're on the road with your laptop outside of the USA you'll be told to fuck off and die by Hulu. I wonder how the rest of the world is going to take to their brand after being told to fuck off every time they click a link?
Char on March 27, 2009 at 02:02 PM
I have another suggestion for TV and Movies and that is Veoh.com and Joost.com. They do not have the backing like Hulu but the variety is good and in some areas better.
TheEmperfect on March 27, 2009 at 02:12 PM
How can Hulu be #1 in The Five Best Sources of Free Entertainment on the Web? You can only view their videos if you live in the United States.
Mama Gaea on March 27, 2009 at 02:13 PM
Are any of the games on that gaming site for Macs? Because I'm not finding any.
Aric A. on March 27, 2009 at 02:28 PM
@Mama Gaea: Whoops! More than a few of those games are available for Mac and Linux as well as PC, but it wasn't until your comment that I noticed that the download links only seem to take you to the Windows versions. Stay tuned and I'll see if I can find a more ecumenical solution.
Anonymous on March 27, 2009 at 02:51 PM
If you're not in the US, but happen to have shell access to a host in the US (for example, if you have a website hosted there and can shell into the server) you can access US-only content:
http://kimmo.suominen.com/docs/proxy-through-ssh/
I've done it with both Hulu and Pandora in the past and it works great. I have one browser configured for this and the other as normal.
Brian on March 27, 2009 at 03:00 PM
What about audio books? http://www.podiobooks.com
jinx on March 27, 2009 at 03:31 PM
http://www.quickflicksnow.com/
divx links for tv shows (+ movies) for all us poor outside-of-the-us-living people who have to wait years until badly dubbed versions of otherwise great stuff are shown on tv over here.
Ethan on March 27, 2009 at 10:25 PM
For fans of TED, I also recommend academicearth.org -- putting together lectures from a number of universities with some good innovations.
TheEmperfect on March 28, 2009 at 02:56 AM
@ Anonymous
Or have a website hosted in the US.
Andrew White on March 28, 2009 at 07:37 AM
Jamendo is a fantastic source of new artists. The music is from around the world, but the big find are some real talents from central and eastern Europe you might otherwise never hear from. The music is somewhat skewed towards pop and electronic. Lots of ambient and dark ambient!
http://jamendo.com
Catching The Waves on March 28, 2009 at 04:49 PM
The Creative Commons and netlabel scene is music's best-kept secret: no subscription fees, no adverts, no low-quality "preview". Netlabels and CC artists give you the mp3, the whole mp3 and nothing but the mp3. If you drop in at Catching The Waves, the net's most amateurish and sporadically updated free music blog, you might find some great free albums; at the very least, I'll direct you to other, better music sites. :)
Utiptiomict on April 08, 2009 at 07:38 AM
Very nice articles at your site Alloha do where i can find RSS entries?
Pete on April 09, 2009 at 07:10 AM
Here is a site I put together of things to do online for free when you are bored.
http://www.coragh.com/bored
esha on April 21, 2009 at 05:16 AM
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So i strongly recommend to check both the sites and leave your feedback.
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Anon and FREE on April 26, 2009 at 10:04 AM
TheEmperfect on March 27, 2009 at 02:12 PM
How can Hulu be #1 in The Five Best Sources of Free Entertainment on the Web? You can only view their videos if you live in the United States.
Come on, seriously?? Ever heard of TOR? There are ways of "routing" through and coming up as being in the US, UK, Aus, etc. You're not looking/trying hard enough!! Corporations want to control the internet's use. There are no boarders if you try hard enough. It's a shame the free will of the people allow them to try at all.
"...without VISION, people will perish"
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