I lost my credit card a few days ago, and had to call to have it cancelled. When they asked me when I’d last used it, I had to say, “Well, I used the physical card a week and a half ago at a Harvey’s, but I made an online software purchase last week, and my monthly donation to Wikipedia went through a few days ago.”

In the two years that I’ve had my MasterCard—and thus, PayPal—I’ve tried to make an effort to support those folks who are willing to give away the fruits of their labour. This post isn’t about trumpeting my generosity; most of these donations were only $5 or $10. The post is about highlighting quality, and thanking those that let me try their creations for free, and pay for them in my own time.

• EditPlus is a terrific FTP-enabled text editor for Windows. Officially, it’s a 30-day trial, but it doesn’t cut you off, and the only limitation is a nag screen. I’m fairly sure I was around day 200 of my “trial” before I finally slapped down the cash to purchase it. (And the price tag of 30 Washingtons was extremely reasonable, given that I’m facing having to buy Textmate for my MacBook at a staggering €39)
• Wikipedia needs very little said about it. It’s a resource so complete that on many queries, it’s my first destination, well before Google. Considering what a disaster the textbook industry is, the work of Wikipedians will be doubly important in the education of my one-day children.
• Mint is a webstats program from Shaun Inman. Although he charges for it, I used (and continue to use) its free predecessor. Tracking webstats is a pretty narcissistic pursuit, but at least Mint lets you do it with class.
• Daring Fireball is the wit and wisdom of John Gruber. I feel immense respect for a guy who can write well enough to try to make a living from it. I bought a shirt from Mr. Gruber.
• Mozilla Firefox, again, requires very little explanation. A fast, accurate, standards-compliant browser. I also bought a shirt from them, something which has been discussed previously.
• The Web Dev Toolbar has completely changed how I develop website interfaces, especially the live CSS editing and element outlines. There are a number of other helpful extensions I use, such as Colorzilla, Firebug, and Aardvark, but none approach the productivity gains of Pederick’s tool.
• Azureus has exposed me to hours of great entertainment, including Firefly, Veronica Mars, Wonderfalls, Arrested Development, Family Guy, and Grey’s Anatomy, plus a number of classic and contemporary films. From “stealing” the above series, I’ve purchased five seasons of TV on DVD. (Seven, once Veronica Mars S2 and Arrested Development S3 are released…)
• Lipsum.com is a simple tool that I use all the time, for generating filler text. I know it probably sucks up oodles of bandwidth, but more importantly, it’s quick, free, and works.
• The Flame Warriors is a hilarious resource put online by the illustrious Mike Reed. It may just look like a bunch of pictures and words, but try to imagine the satisfaction of successfully identifying and pointing out Troller, Ferrous Cranus, or Blowhard.
• Harvey Danger released the album Little by Little, through their website. I discovered it after Slashdot covered the story, and I’ve since enjoyed the album’s upbeat tracks many times over. (Happiness Writes White particularly, is a great comment on hard it is to write good lyrics when you’re not passionately upset about something…)
• Cartoonfridge.com briefly existed online, and I felt compelled to support them, even if they disappeared shortly thereafter. They hosted complete episodes of many animated shows, including Futurama and classic Looney Toons. (plus a couple of extremely racist episodes that have since been censored.)
• Artdungeon.net is some truly spectacular Harry Potter fan work, which I felt was deserving of my support. Marta’s lovingly crafted images are not only factually accurate to HP book-canon, but they very much evoke the emotions of the scenes and characters depicted.
• Books by website authors. I picked up Paul Graham’s Big Ideas, Dave Shea’s Zen of CSS Design, Jeremy Keith’s DOM Scripting, and the collection of Best Software Writing.

Also, here are those items that I realised I have not ever contributed to, but absolutely should, and recognized it while compiling the above list. Once my new card has arrived, these will receive donations.

• Irfanview, because it’s the definitive view/crop tool for Windows. Seriously, not having Irfanview has been my only big frustration with Mac OS X, thus far.
• Wasted Talent, because it’s hilarious and authored by another student. (Geez, Angela, put up a donation button, already…)
• CyberDuck, which, in spite of some frustrating bugs, is the most intuitive and all-around sane FTP client I’ve ever encountered.
• Adium, which was plugged by Mike Davidson, and really is the classiest IM tool for OS X. (once you replace the ridiculous duck icon, of course…)
• VLC, for playing almost any media files with no muss and no fuss. Go DVD Jon!
• Reddit, in recognition of many wasted hours, and many more interesting factoids.

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Blake Schwendiman giving away his book, The Agency Delta. I’ve barely begun reading it, so I can’t vouch for anything other than his gumption in trying this. But I wish him all the best in trying to get it published.

Any other suggestions, folks?

← Earlier Later → Posted at 12:17 pm to Business, Musings, Soapbox.