I decided to learn German a while back, after all, languages are wonderful and useful things. After spending multiple hours/days/weeks, scourging the internet to find the most comprehensive and free way to learn German, I finally developed a system that seems to be working flawlessly. Here it is:

Internet TV: Possibly the best way to take it all in and let your vocabulary flourish. It provides you with both audio and visual stimuli.

My personal favorite is N-TV, a German news channel. Telecasters by definition speak perfect, textbook German, and you get caught up on current events too! Their stream can be found at here.

Interactive Websites:

Deutsche-Welle, another German news channel, provides a great interactive and best of all free German Course. It can be found here. This course was developed in accordance with the Common European Framework and is a wonderful tool for learning German.

Deutsche Welle also offers some other interesting German-learning related materials, they can be found here.

Ubuntu: If you run Ubuntu, a wonderful way to immerse yourself into German is to change your default language to German. This is done by installing German language support through System=>Preferences=>Language Support, and then selecting German on the Language section of the Welcome Screen when logging in.

Note: To keep terminal in English, don’t set German as the Default System Language when you install German language support, only enable German through the Log-in Screen.

Your Library: I have found that my local library has a vast amount of language learning resources, including the expensive (~ $239 per level) Rosetta Stone package. It’s well worth getting a library card for!

Newsletters/Internet Courses:

About.com: This site offers a wonderful self-paced German course, as well as a free newsletter and email courses that help you along the way. Sign up here!

BBC also offers a similar email course/newsletter that can be found here.

Good Luck!
Part 2 is on the way.