They support their service with third party banner ads at top of every page you display.

A great way to get started, but any serious entrepreneur will eventually want to get their own low-cost hosting account costing as little as $5 a month.

DotEasy.com presents an excellent alternative to Tripod.com if you want your own domain name and a year's hosting for only $25 a year.

Other free hosting services include: GeoCities.com, gurlpages.com, and myfamily.com.

** Free Software **

Freeware and shareware, two ways software developers distribute their creations, either in a "try before you buy" mode, or as truly free software.

Many developers around world create software for their own personal use but, lacking a huge buying market or skills to sell software, some of them just give it away or sell it for a nominal fee after you try it.

If you know where to look, you can get everything from graphics programs and website builders, to FTP programs and recipe books.

Log on to Download.com and Zdnet.com for two of most popular places online to find software before paying full retail.

NOTE: make sure your anti-virus program is up-to-date and backup all your important files before installing any software.

Free stuff online will never disappear because, when appropriate, it represents perfect way to start and develop a relationship with customers. Unfortunately, "boom" days of truly free online "lunch" seem gone forever. Sigh.

If you thought Napster caused a stir over trading music and illegal CD-ROMs people made on their computers, wait until everybody gets a DVD burner!

The average price for an excellent DVD burner has dropped well below $400 and medium to low priced computers now include DVD burners as standard equipment.

The only thing holding back avalanche of DVD copying seems to be rather hefty cost of buying blank DVDs.

With an average price of $1.50-2.00 each, blank DVDs cost far more than blank CDs, which run around 20 cents each.

But, if you look back about 6 years, blank CDs used to cost a dollar apiece, so it won't take long for price of blank DVDs to drop.

When that price drop does come and every home with a computer can also duplicate full-length movies on DVD, watch for one of biggest upheavals in history of Hollywood.

It will make music industry's crackdown on illegal music sharing look as mild as a 5 minute "time out" in local pre-school class.

~ Yahoo! - Still King! ~

In a bid to capture even more of world's search engine traffic, search giant Yahoo! recently purchased web's largest pay-per-click search engine, Overture.com.

In process (and more importantly), since commissions from pay-per-click advertising with Overture represent a major source of revenue for most of other major search engines, Yahoo! definitely holds upper hand.