What does this have to do with free? Well, when someone visits a site, especially for first time, you've got seconds to convince then to stay and look around. You have to give all of your visitors a lot of options and things to read and learn about. You must impress them, and you must do so quickly.

One way to get them to stay for a short while is to give them some free things. Of course, you can write articles (that's what I do on my site) which give valuable information. You can give them graphics, games, plug-ins for their site, free programs, coupons, or anything else that you can think of (it's probably a good idea to make sure all of this fits in with theme of your site - other than that, sky is limit).

Another reason to give out free things is to get people to come back. That's one of primary ways that Yahoo and sites like it sell advertising ... they give away free things (email, calendars, classifieds and so on) so you will continue to come back to their sites. They can predict how often people will view those ads (based upon statistical analysis), and they've got a good idea of what kind of things you are interested in based upon your actions at their site. Thus, they can sell advertisers a commodity ... you. Or rather, your eyes.

That's why free stuff will continue on internet ... it gets you there and it makes you come back again and again.

Babelfish http://babelfish.altavista.com/ In a strange and wonderful book called "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", a small creature known as a Babelfish allows you to understand (telepathically) speech of any other race in entire galaxy. All you need to do is put this small fish into your ear. The fish "eats" speech (more or less) and excretes a telepathic translation into your brain.

If only it were that simple. Needless to say, Babelfish service (which was purchased by Altavista) is not that good, but nonetheless, it serves purpose. Simply paste some text into box (or choose a webpage), select "To" and "From" languages and click a button. Within a short time text will be translated for you. It's not perfect but it works.

T-Mail http://www.t-mail.com/index2.shtml You can use this service two ways: by registering, you get a mail address of your_name@t-mail.com. Messages send to that mail address are automatically converted from one language to your preferred language. T-Mail forwards translation to your current e-mail address.

If you don't want to register, you can use your current e-mail account and send a message to a buddy (or yourself perhaps). By typing appropriate T-Mail address on Cc: line of same message before sending it, you instruct T-Mail to translate email message from one language to another. The original message is delivered as usual to person on To: line. The copy is sent to translator, translated and sent to person on To: line.

T-Sail http://www.t-mail.com/cgi-bin sail Similar to Babelfish, this service allows you to translate a web page (or search engine results) from one language to another.

T-Text http://www.t-mail.com -text.shtml With T-Text, you simply paste some text in a box, select translation, click a button and viola, you have translation.