Netflix is an American company that brought their popular film and TV online streaming services to the UK in 2011. Founded in 1997 in California, Netflix has over 25 million members in the US, Canada, Caribbean, UK and Ireland; all of whom enjoy streaming films and TV programmes instantly over the internet.

How does it work?

As a member of Netflix you can watch unlimited films & TV episodes via your laptop, Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox, Internet TV, iPad and a whole host of other internet enabled devices. Netflix has thousands of films and TV episodes to choose from, so you will always have something to watch.

How much does it cost?

For just £5.99 a month you can stream unlimited films and TV episodes over the internet. There are no annoying ads that seem to go on forever, and you can pause, rewind, fast forward or watch again as many times as you like, at no addition cost.

Top Tips

Make sure you take the 1 month free trial to gauge whether your broadband connection is up to the task of streaming films online. If your broadband speed is slow it may affect your viewing experience, and the risk free trial will bring this to your attention.

Remember that although the amount of films you can stream is unlimited, your broadband monthly download allowance may not be! If your broadband package is not unlimited you may want to keep a close tab on how much you stream to avoid addition charges by your broadband provider. After your free 1 month trial you should get a good understanding what chunk of your monthly allowance streaming a 2 hour film uses. As a rough guide, 4 hours of streaming video uses about 1GB of data, however this can vary considerably depending on a number of factors including the quality of the encoding.

1 month free trial

Follow the link below and log in using your Facebook account to get a free 1 month trial to the Netflix streaming package. If you don’t have a Facebook account you can easily set one up and then close again at the end of the trial if required.

LOVEFiLM is the leading film subscription service in Europe, with over 2 million members in the UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Founded in 2003, LOVEFiLM is now an Amazon Company, offering members the opportunity to enjoy the latest films delivered direct to their door, or streamed online via LOVEFiLM Instant.

LOVEFiLM by Post

The way LOVEFiLM by post works is nice and simple. As a member you can browse over 70,000 film titles, DVD box sets and games; adding titles to your rental list as you go. Once you’re happy with your list, you get to rank each title in terms of priority (low, medium or high). Then, depending on your package, LOVEFiLM will send you a DVD from that list by free first class post, keeping to your priority ranks wherever possible.

You are able to keep that DVD for as long as you want, and watch it as many times as like, with no late fees or penalties for doing so. Once finished you just pop the DVD back in the pre-paid envelope, post it back to LOVEFiLM and wait for your next DVD to arrive. The basic LOVEFiLM by post package is £5.99 a month, and it allows you to rent 1 disc at a time, with a maximum of 3 discs every month.

Top Tips

Don’t build out a massive rental list just because you can. Take some time to carefully select up to 10 titles that you really want to watch, to avoid using up one of your monthly rentals on a film you are not that fussed about.

Once you’ve watched a DVD don’t leave it in the DVD player and forget about it. Post it back as soon as you can, especially if you’ve signed up for the unlimited rental package; that way you can really get your moneys worth.

LOVEFiLM Instant

LOVEFiLM Instant is an online streaming service, with thousands of TV series and films available to watch instantly via your laptop, iPad, internet TV, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or other internet enabled device. The basic LOVEFiLM Instant package is available for £4.99 a month and allows you unlimited online streamings every month.

Top Tips

Make use of the free 30 day trial to test whether your broadband is up to the job, as currently you cannot download titles to watch offline. Your broadband speed and bandwidth will determine whether streaming online through LOVEFiLM Instant is an enjoyable experience.

Check your monthly download allowance. LOVEFiLM Instant allows you to watch unlimited titles every month, so if your broadband package doesn’t include unlimited monthly downloads, you could face additional charges.

LOVEFiLM Packages

Free 30 Day Trial

All the LOVEFiLM packages are available with a 30 day free trial, which means you can really try before you buy. With LOVEFiLM you pay on a monthly basis and there is no long term contract, which means you can cancel at any time.

Rosetta Stone are a leading provider language-learning software, with millions of happy customers all over the world, who now have a second language to add to their C.V. Rosetta Stone live to make learning a new language fun, easy and, most importantly, effective.

Their software attempts to replicate the method we all used when first learning our native tongue. It harnesses a natural method that doesn’t use boring repetitive translations, but rather tries to get you to learn the language directly.

A child doesn’t learn their first language repeating phrases over and over. They learn intuitively by adsorbing information from the world around them, and the Rosetta Stone techniques tries to replicate this by surrounding users with sounds, words, and images, with the help of their computer.

Learning a new language with Rosetta Stone should be a new experience for most users, and a far cry from the old French lessons taught at school. There are no vocabulary tests to revise for, and no dull grammar explanations to sit through.

With Rosetta Stone users can engage interactively with the software, with a wide variety of activities and scenarios to help keep them motivated. Users can develop their conversational skills with the help of the Rosetta Stone proprietary speech recognition technology.

Rosetta Stone turns language learning into a fun and satisfying experience, and there are now over 30 languages to start learning, including French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, and Chinese.

To register for the Rosetta Stone free demo simply click the button below and follow the instructions. You will not need to enter any payment details to try this free demo, however you might want to opt-out of receiving updates and special offers via email.

SmugMug offers a great place for you to showcase, backup, share, and even sell, all your digital photos. Your digital photos no longer need to be left cluttering up your memory cards, or slowing down your computer, with SmugMug.

Once you’ve signed up for a SmugMug account you can upload all of your digital photos, start sharing them with your friends, create great gifts, order professional prints, or just store and save for later. Don’t worry, however, no photo sharing site offers as many different security settings and options as SmugMug, so no one will see your photos unless you want them to.

No photo upload limited means that you can create endless photo albums, and unlimited backup storage means you never have to choose which photos you like the best. SmugMug is also spam and ad free, so you can browse all your photos without interruption.

Another great feature about SmugMug is that if you or your camera know where a particular photo is taken, then it can be displayed on Google Maps. This is great for holiday snaps, or for that round-the-world trip.

MyFax is an internet fax service that lets you send and receive faxes through your email inbox, wherever you are in the world. With two new smart phone apps available for the iPhone and Blackberry, you can be anywhere in the world and still send and receive your faxes, as long as you have mobile service.

With MyFax you get a real fax number, which is linked to your email address. When someone sends a fax to that number, MyFax will convert it into a PDF or TIFF file, and send you an email with the document file attached.

To send a fax you will need to enter the fax number, with@myfax.com added on the end,  into the “To…” field of the email. So if the fax number is 0044800 213 213 then you would type 0044800213213@myfax.com into the “To…” field within the email. Then add in the other parts of the email (subject line, body of text), attach the document you wish to fax, and press send. MyFax supports 192 different document types, and you can attached up to 9 documents to any email fax.

With this MyFax free trial you can send 100 faxes, and receive 200 faxes, free for 30 days. After the trial has end you can then subscribe to the service for as little as £5 a month, or £55 a year. Never miss another fax with this MyFax free 30 day trial.

With this Ancestry.co.uk free trial you will get unlimited access to all the Essentials Plan records, free for 14 days. This includes access to the largest set of UK family records available on the Internet, on the only site to have the complete set of data for the 1841-1901 Censuses.

Once you’ve signed up to this free trial you can start building your family tree straight away, and you can kick things off by entering details (like names, date of births and places), of as many family members as you can. The ancestry software will then search through all their records and report back with any potential matches and details.

You can also bring your family tree to life by uploading photos, letters, stories, birth certificates, or any other documents you may have relating to your family history.

The Ancestry.co.uk community is 3 million strong, and growing. This community may be able to help you fill in the missing gaps, and give you an idea about what life was really like for your ancestors.

To start this Ancestory.co.uk free trial you will need to register a valid credit or debit card, which will be charged with £83.40 for an annual membership if you fail to cancel the free trial before the 14 days are complete. You can cancel your subscription by login in to your account on Ancestry.co.uk, and going the the “My Account” page. There you will see a “Cancel Subscription” option, and this will end the trial.

EmailChimp is a great piece of email marketing software that lets you design, send and track emails sent to thousands of email addresses every month. You can easily manage your email list with MailChimp, and even create a sign up page that adds subscriber details straight into your MailChimp list database, making it really easy to build and manage your email lists.

You can choose from a number of free MailChimp email templates, and/or customise MailChimp so your email template and sign up page complement your existing brand colours and style. Once signed up to the MailChimp Forever Free package, you will find loads of tools and resources to help you optimise your email campaigns for best response. You will also lean how to keep you campaigns safe and compliant with local data protection laws, which is extremely important for anyone new to email marketing.

The Forever Free package is exactly that, free. It will allow you to send up to 12,000 emails per month to 2,000 subscribers, with no need to sign a contact, or submit payment details. As your campaigns and email lists grow, however, you may need to think about upgrading your account to the MailChimp Monthly plan or Pay As You Go option.

There is a free version of the SmileBox application, meaning that you can start creating your memories for free, and really play around with the different tools. Only when you’re ready to take the next step with your creations do you need to think about upgrading to Club SmileBox.

Club SmileBox gives you lots of addition features not available in the free version, with full screen, ad free playback, the option to print at home or in a store, burn to DVD, save to photo frame and much more. You can also add music to your creations using the 2000+ songs in the SmileBox library, and importantly, you get unlimited storage with Club SmileBox.

Over 14 million people have downloaded and now enjoy the SmileBox app, and the nice thing about Club SmileBox is that it’s available on a 14 day free trial. This means you can really test drive the upgraded application before you commit to the $39.99 a year, or $5.99 a month.

Currently you can get the Talk Talk Essentials package half price, at just £3.49 a month, for the first 12 months. This deal includes free connection and a free wireless router, however it does require you to rent your phone line from Talk Talk, which costs an extra £12.30 a month.

With the Talk Talk Essentials package you get superfast broadband with a 40GB monthly download allowance. You also get free weekend and evening calls to UK landlines (even 0870 and 0845 numbers), and if your friends or family are also with Talk Talk, then you get free unlimited calls to them thrown in.

If this wasn’t enough, if you sign up with Talk Talk and are not completely happy with the services within the first 30 days, then you can leave free of charge and with no other hidden penalties. The speed of the broadband Talk Talk supply to your home will depend on where you live, and you can run a speed check on their website to see how fast your home broadband will be.

Get the full Spotify experience with this free 7 day trial to their premium music service, offering unlimited access to over 10 millions tracks with no ads, enhanced sound quality compared to the Spotify free service, Spotify mobile, and offline mode for all your playlists.

The award-winning Spotify Mobile app is included in this free trial, meaning you can take over 10 millions songs with your, wherever you go, even if that’s abroad. This free mobile app is compatible with iPhone, Android, Symbian and Windows mobile phones.

If you haven’t heard about the Spotify Premium service then it’s well worth a go, as the ads on the free service can get a little tiresome. Remember, however, you will need to enter your payment details to take up this free trial. If you don’t cancel your subscription by logging in to your premium account, before the end of the 7 days, then you will be charged £9.99 for one month’s access.