Internet Security/Privacy Essentials

• Unsolicited e-mail reporting and filtering - spamcop.net - [Free/Paid] Reporting is free. Filtering requires a nomial fee.

• ZoneAlarm - www.ZoneAlarm.com - [Freeware/Shareware] Personal firewall software that runs on any PC. No external hardware required. Even if you have a hardware firewall, this software will complement it with trojan-horse backchannel detection and more.

• Gibson research Corp. - www.grc.com - [Free] Lots of free security/privacy tools. Use the "Shields-Up!" feature of this site to try to probe your computer to see how secure it is. Do it right now.

Computing Essentials

• Text editor - www.textpad.com - [Shareware] Textpad is a great replacement program for the Windows Notepad. We have a site license where I work and almost everyone uses it.

• FTP file transfer - www.ipswitch.com/downloads/index.html - [Freeware] WS_FTP is a user-friendly way to transfer files using FTP. The Pro version is $40. The LE (limited edition) is free.

• Search & replace utility, etc. - www.funduc.com - [Shareware] Funduc provides a popular search and replace tool, among other utilities. I personally find the S&R feature in TextPad to be suitable for my needs, but some of my associates swear by the Funduc S&R tool.

• File compression - www.winzip.com - [Shareware] WinZIP is the most popular compression utility for the Windows platform.

• Remote control - www.uk.research.att.com/vnc - [Freeware] VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a odd name for a cool utility that allows one computer to take over control of another computer across the Internet (or local area network). This is a great way to provide remote support or to work from home on occasion.

• Remote control - www.danware.com - [Licensed Software] NetOp is a high performance utility that allows one computer to take over control of another computer across the Internet (or local area network). We have a site license for it where I work and use it for hours at a time to collaborate with coworkers another state.

Weblog Essentials

• Blogger - www.blogger.com - A fast, easy, and free way to get started writing and publishing your own blog. They'll even host it for you if you don't have a web site of your own.

• BottomFeeder - www.cincomsmalltalk.com/BottomFeeder - A news aggregator is a tool that allows you to to automatically stay informed of new blog entries as they appear. Use it to check 100's of blogs if you want. This one is free and open-source. It can monitor any blog that provides either an RSS feed or an ATOM.XML feed.