Canonical and Valusoft bring Ubuntu plus support to Best Buy. Amazon.com page. The price is $20 and includes 60 days of technical support.
- Faxaway - send faxes through the Internet. $1/month maintenance fee + 11 cents/minute for faxes within the 48 contiguous United States (20 cents/minute to AK and HI). Receive faxes and voicemail for free, but they only have Seattle, WA numbers.
- Free 411 - free (ad supported) directory assistance (dial 1-800-Free-411).
- Gizmo5 (Linux, Mac and Windows) - free PC-to-PC calls to other Gizmo5 users. US calls cost 1.9 cents/minute.
- Inexpensive Cell Phones for Emergency Calls - 911 calls are free; credit card calls are expensive ($3/minute?), but might be worth it for roadside assistance.
- K7 Unified Messaging - free fax and voicemail to e-mail service, but they only have Seattle, WA numbers.
- MagicJack (reviews) (Mac and Windows) - $20/year for unlimited calls to the US and Canada; price includes a 10-digit phone number and voicemail. Initial charge of $20 for device.
- Skype (Linux, Mac and Windows) - $3/month for 10,000 minutes of calls within the US and Canada.
See Matousec's Firewall Challenge Ratings before choosing firewall software.
- AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (Windows) - basic protection against viruses and spyware.
- Bluetooth
- Darik's Boot and Nuke - securely wipe your hard disk.
- Defensive Computing (a CNET blog) - includes The BEST test for vulnerability to the DNS flaw, Why you want a Linux Live CD and Every Windows XP user should drop their rights.
- DNS Randomness Test
- Keyloggers - discussion forum post which includes a strategy to thwart keylogging software and a link to a short article. This post describes an enhancement.
- KeePass Password Safe (Windows) - the portable version can be unzipped to a USB flashdrive. This is also useful for Mac and Linux users if they occasionally need to use Windows systems, since KeePass and KeePassX password files are compatible.
- KeePassX (Linux, Mac and Windows versions)
- OpenDNS (article)
- Outpost Firewall Free (Windows, but not Vista) - Agnitum also sells (30 day free evaluation period, no credit card required) firewall, anti-virus and security suite software that works with XP and Vista. Note the high score in Matousec's Firewall Challenge Ratings for the paid version of the firewall.
- ShieldsUP! - determine the status (open, closed or stealth) of your computer's Internet service ports.
- Spybot Search & Destroy (Windows)
- Windows Vista Security Features - I haven't used Windows Vista, but the User Account Control feature looks like an improved version of the limited user accounts in Windows XP.
- Wireless Network Security
- WiTopia (Windows/Mac/Linux) [article 1, 2, 3] - access public Wi-Fi networks securely and secure your home Wi-Fi network.
- A Small Orange (use coupon code ec5 for $5 off or ec15 for 15% off) - this Web host offers the PHP scripting language, unlimited MySQL databases and dozens of easily installed programs, even on their $25/year plan (75MB storage, 3GB/month bandwidth). See my comments regarding WordPress below. ASO offers a 99.5% uptime guarantee.
- Bluefish Editor (Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS-X, OpenBSD, Solaris and Tru64)
- Cascading Style Sheets
- Chess Diagrams and Games - add
chess diagrams and games to your Web pages.
- Custom Error Pages
- Dreamweaver Tutorials - note that an alternative to creating a Web site with Dreamweaver would be to use WordPress. See my comments below.
- Excel Table
Converter - converts a range of Excel cells to an HTML table.
- FileZilla - open source FTP/SFTP program that can set UNIX file attributes.
- FormMail (and other) Scripts by NMS - NMS has created more secure versions of Matt Wright's popular scripts. The TFMail script has advanced formatting capabilities, e.g., form data can be received as comma-delimited text.
- Fugu - free Mac OS X SFTP program.
- HTML Tutorial
- from Case Western Reserve University. Also has links to sequels on
forms, tables, etc.
- IE NetRenderer - see how a Web page renders in Internet Explorer.
- KompoZer - WYSIWYG Web page editor.
- Link Checker
- MySQL
- Namecheap - domain name registrations include ad-free e-mail forwarding. Privacy protection is available for a very low fee.
- PHP - server side scripting language. It can be used to include uniform code for headers, footers, etc.
- Radio Toolbox - includes staff reviews and user comments of streaming host providers, a forum, etc.
- Robots - exclude search engines and other robots from certain files on your site.
- SiteUptime - monitors the accessibility of your Web site every 30 minutes.
- Submit Express - submit
your Web site URL to 40 search engines.
- Total Validator - has a screenshot feature for various browsers.
- Uptime -
monitors the accessibility of your Web site every 20 minutes.
- Usable Web - Web site user
interface issues.
- WebHostingTalk Forums
- WordPress.org - WordPress can be used to create a blog or an entire Web site using its standalone pages feature. This is a simple way to maintain a uniform look to your pages including a side navigation bar. Many Web hosts (see A Small Orange above) offer easy installation of the WordPress.org software or you could use WordPress.com hosting which is supported by Google text ads.