Here are three websites/services that I have come across lately to be interesting, useful, and free. You may find them of use as well.

Wakoopa (www.wakoopa.com) - Wakoopa is a social networking site unlike any other I have seen. The way it works is when you sign up on their website you get a small tracker program to install on your computer. This program just runs in the background and keeps track of the software and web apps that you use. With that information it updates your online profile for viewing on their website. You can share this information with others including your opinions about each product/app.

It has helped me to discover new software and web apps by looking at my day-to-day usage and recommending similar products used by other users and updated versions. You can easily see what other users on the site are using and see what is popular by browsing through by tags and categories.

Some of you may be thinking that this sounds a little scary, but it only tracks what applications you run and for how long. Not what you do in them. Plus you have full control over what you want to be seen in your profile.

Slydial (www.slydial.com) – Slydial is a messaging service that allows you to directly connect to someone’s mobile voicemail. Basically it is like an alternative to text messaging. This is great if you want to leave someone a voice message but you do not want to call there phone because you either don’t want to bother them or just want to leave a quick message without talking to that person. Or you just don’t feel like typing a text message.

Stackoverflow (www.stackoverflow.com) – This website is not for everyone. But if you do any kind of software or website coding it should be a must to have on your list of sites to reference. Stackoverflow allows you to ask any type of programming question and get a very quick response back from the community of users on the website. All questions are stored on the website for anyone to search through. There are tens of thousands of questions on the site already for any programming language you can think of. So, if you have a specific question about a coding issue you are having it most likely has already been answered on the site in some way or another.

Stackoverflow has only been around for a few months now and I have used it a number of times for coding issues I have come across. They have a very cool reputation and voting system so you know you are getting good quality answers to your questions.