Picks for the best free stuff online are divided into 17 categories. If you can't decide where to start, take a look at the greatest hits — some of the classics we've spotlighted over 15 years of picking free apps, services and sites. Or try a few of our favourite social networking and video assistants, programs and services we couldn't have even imagined that long ago. Click through for 112 picks for incredibly useful, incredibly free downloads, sites and services.

Vivek Kundra, the Obama official with $79 billion to spend on technology, said the government can be more efficient by putting programs on the Web, paving the way for companies like Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. to win business. The government wants to put data such as health-care pricing information on Internet-based systems as they grow more secure, the U.S. chief information officer said in an interview this week. The U.S. can cut costs by outsourcing that work, said Kundra, who has overseen the federal technology budget since President Barack Obama appointed him last year.

Microsoft, Google and Amazon.com Inc. are all offering more databases and programs online, allowing customers to curb storage costs. Sharing software and data that way would shrink U.S. storage needs, helping to cut expenses after previous governments spent more than $500 billion on data centers and other technology initiatives in the past decade, Kundra said.

The Conservatives today unveiled a raft of technology-orientated policies which the party claims are aimed at ensuring that the "next generation of Googles or Microsofts will be British".

The Conservative Technology Manifesto lays out plans to create a 100Mbps broadband network for the UK and to reform government IT with a view to savings billions of pounds.  The proposals were unveiled in London by shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and shadow minister for the cabinet office Francis Maude. Speaking at the launch, Maude said: "We want to make the British government the most tech-friendly in the world and to make sure that the next generation of Googles and Microsofts will be British companies."

Trustee believes his group is better suited to take risks.

SOUTH BEND — Can the South Bend Community School Corp. afford to start up a New Tech high school?

On Monday, five school board members encouraged the administration to explore that option. Some trustees believe it's a must because fellow trustee Roger Parent has launched his own effort to start a New Tech charter school. Trustees say the corporation would lose students — and thus, income from the state — to Parent's school. And that's hard to stomach as the corporation decides how to make the needed $8.2 million in budget cuts.