New England Data Services Blog

10 Useful (and mostly Free) Programs/Websites

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Tis’ the season to give, right? Well with that sentiment in mind, I have put together a list of useful programs/web sites for your PC/Laptop that can help your productivity, increase speed, provide entertainment, enhance protection, and bring about world peace; well the last one I can’t really guarantee, but it was worth a shot, right? Please enjoy these programs/sites below and feel free to comment with suggestions of your own!

1. Spybot Search & Destory (Protect yourself from Spyware, Malware, Trojans for free!)

I’ve personally used Spybot for over 5 years on virtually every computer I’ve ever used. The reason for this is because it is effective, it’s constantly updated, and best of all it’s free! Spybot has a bunch of features that make it a great tool for any PC user.

First off, it can be set up to perform daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or whenever you want scans for malicious software such as spyware (go figure!), malware, trojan’s, and more. Best of all, it is extremely effective at detecting and eliminating threats.

The immunization feature is just plain awesome. It effectively scans through Internet Explorer, Firefox, or whatever browser you use and plugs holes that have been known to be exploited by malicious software, so you can surf the web in confidence (Disclaimer: If your surfing the web and click on a link that says: Click here to get a virus then, I am sorry, but you will need far more help than Spybot or any program can provide!) All jokes aside though I highly recommend using this feature.

Spybot also includes some more advanced options as well that will allow you to do a lot of things you would otherwise have to use a multitude of programs to perform. These features include: creating reports of many system activities performed on the machine, securely delete data so it is unrecoverable, seeing a report of Spybot’s pop-up and system settings protection, Tweaks to Internet Explorer, Search and repair registry issues, Change whether certain programs startup with Windows in order to speed it up, uninstall programs, and lastly a list of all installed network drivers.

<2.2. Cute PDF (Create PDF’s for Free)

Cute PDF is a very simple and easy to use PDF creation tool. It is a completely free utility that installs on your machine as a virtual printer so when you want to create a PDF of that word document, spreadsheet, presentation, etc. all you have to do is select the print feature and choose the Cute PDF Writer selection. When you press “print” it will open up a dialog box that will allow you to save the PDF wherever you would like. It’s as simple as that!

LogMeIn is a company based out of Woburn, MA that offers a suite of solutions however the one that I use the most and am most impressed with is their remote access application. They have a free version that you can install on any PC or MAC that allows you to remotely access that PC or MAC from any web browser safely and securely. The free version comes with some limitations such as the inability to perform a file transfer (or drag and drop files from one machine to another) within the application, no remote sound, remote printing, and other functions. The important thing to consider here though is if you want to be able to access your home machine easily and securely in order to view emails, use a specific program that you do not have at work, find a file, or anything else you can do on your home PC and not in the office, this is the way to go!

I found this site shortly after I purchased my Blackberry and went on the hunt for ways to make it better. It has a comprehensive listing of applications and utilities organized by categories to make your Blackberry THAT much more addictive.

Xobni is an interesting and helpful plug-in for Microsoft Outlook that helps you stay more organized and effective. It gives you the ability to cycle through previous conversations with each individual contact, track statistics about each contact such as when they tend to reply to emails and how frequently they email you, and automatically pulls information from each email you receive such as phone numbers and alternative contact information.

I’m sure everyone knows of Firefox and thunderbird these days, but it’s still worth mentioning for those select few that are still slaves to Internet Explorer (OK, that may be a bit harsh…) We can all thank Mozilla for the creation of tabbed browsing, which allowed us all to stop filing our desktop with browser windows on top of browser windows. In addition, at least in my experience, Firefox allows for much faster browsing and a huge selection of add-on’s to make your browsing experience better.

Thunderbird does for email clients what Firefox did for browsers, although it is not as large of a difference as you see with the browsers. All of us that use Outlook are very familiar with the snail like speed of the program, especially when you pack it full of information. Thunderbird simplifies the email client by focusing on exactly what you need it to, EMAIL! It is very simple to use and runs much faster and far smoother than its Microsoft counterpart. If you’re still skeptical, give it a shot and see what you think.

Sunbird is a calendar function that can be integrated with Thunderbird to gives you many of the features that Outlook provides. Again this program is free and has everything you need to keep a schedule.

If you are in the need of high quality images for your marketing materials, web sites, or any other media, this is the place to go. There is a large selection of images available and they range in cost depending on the size of the image, but for a web graphic you can expect to spend just under a $1 per image.

In addition to all these great paid images, there is a collection of free images as well if you sign on as a member. The way it works at 123rf.com is a photographer submits their images and a low resolution version (blog/web version) of the images they submit remain free for a certain period of time. If you are vigilant and have the time to look through the free images collection, you can often find some great images for nothing more than the time you spend looking for them.

Did you miss that TV show last night because of another engagement? Have you always wanted to watch a certain show or movie and never had the time to get to it? Hulu is a great web site that has tons of popular TV shows and movies that you can stream to your PC in high quality wherever there is an Internet connection. So next time you’re sitting in the airport waiting on your flight to arrive, an Internet café with time to spare, or just simply want to watch a TV show or movie, check out Hulu!

If you are like me, having some music playing while you working (especially on the more mundane tasks) is a great way to help pass the time and stay focused. I recently was made aware of Pandora from a co-worker and I must say, I am very impressed!

Pandora is Internet radio at its best. In fact, it is so good, I am listening to it as I am writing this article! The really cool feature that makes Pandora great is its unique ability to select music for you, based on a single band or genre you input. For example, if you put in a band like Nickelback, Pandora creates a “station” for you based around the kind of music Nickelback is known for. You can then rate each song as it plays and if you have an account with Pandora, it will remember your likes and dislikes and will instinctively select songs based on those likes and dislikes. Best of all, it is commercial free and free to use!

Hubspot is an Internet marketing company out of Cambridge, MA. They specialize in helping companies form a better online marketing strategy through the use of SEO, blogging, and website optimization.

Website Grader is a free tool they provide to the general public with no limit to how many sites you can grade that does a real time analysis of your site to let you know the areas that need to be changed or worked on in order to best optimize your site for the various search engines. If you like what that tool does, Hubspot has a paid solution that will assist you in keyword generation for your website, analytics and tracking, and lead generation tools.