Saturday, April 5, 2008

Get The Wall Street Journal Online For Free

Either on the blog or in class, I refer to articles in the Wall Street Journal a lot. Unfortunately, the person I'm talking to often doesn't have a subscription. Fear no more - it turns out there's a way to get all the content on the WSJ Online for free. Here's how it works: If you click on a link to the WSJ's "protected" content through a non"portal" site, you get sent to a limited version of the full article. To get the whole thing, you have to log in.

But if you click on a link to that same article in Google News or Digg, you can access the full story for free. Here's how to use this approach:

  • Many (not all, but many) of the articles are available through Google News. If you know the title of the article, go there and search for it. If it's available, you'll get the full article. Unfortunately, not all articles are available through this avenue.
  • If you're a FireFox user, there's another way. First, install the add-on refspoof. Then, when going to the WSJ online, use www.digg.com as the spoofed address. This makes it look to the WSJ site like you're coming from Digg. I've downloaded it, and it's easy to use.
  • If you're an Internet Explorer user, QuickSpoof and Spooph provide the same spoofing functionality.
HT: The Aleph Blog.