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Software Links

Really Important Links

Snopes.com -- Please read before sending me a chain e-mail, PLEASE
Credit Agency Initial Fraud Report Equifax fraud division 800-525-6285 (no online reporting available) Experian TransUnion Fraud Victim Assistance Department 1-800-680-7289 (no online reporting available)
Do Not Call Registry -- Official Do Not Call Registry site from the FTC
Opt-Out Prescreen -- Official Consumer Credit Reporting Industry Opt-Out Prescreen website (ie MUCH junk mail)

Software Links

Crucial Software

Antivirus Software
Avast! 4 -- FREE
AVG Antivirus -- FREE
Firewall Software
Comodo Firewall -- FREE and really good firewall
Zone Alarm -- FREE and really good firewall, I've been having problems with Zone Alarm in combination with Mozilla & Vista, so you may want to use Comodo's Firewall if you have been having some strange lockup problems...
Spyware/Adware Detection and Removal
Spybot Search and Destroy -- FREE
Ad-Aware -- FREE
Other Basic Software
Mozilla.org -- OPEN SOURCE -- FREE browser, e-mail, editor, address book, and calendar (& no popups)!
OpenOffice.org -- OPEN SOURCE -- FREE Office Software (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing)!

Highly Recommended

FileZilla -- a very nice OPEN SOURCE FTP client
Sunrisesunset.com -- FREE, a cool little toolbar utility
Skype -- FREE video calls
2BrightSparks Software -- Home of SyncBackSE -- a really nice backup and file synchronization program
Wallpaper Changer -- FREE wallpaper utility, very nice

Graphics Software

ACDsee Photo Management Software -- After a lot of consideration, I am now using this software to manage my photos
CamStudio -- Capture Skype video (or any other video from your screen) OPEN SOURCE
Capture One by Phase One -- A nice RAW editor for high numbers of photos
The GIMP -- OPEN SOURCE -- FREE photo and picture editor (think Photoshop)!
     The GIMP at SourceForge.net - A (sometimes) better source for windows installers
     Grokking The GIMP - A great GIMP resource
     UFRaw - UFRaw Plugin for RAW camera files
Inkscape -- OPEN SOURCE -- FREE vector graphics editor (think Illustrator or Freehand)
Lightscribe Software -- Go to the download section for the LSS system utility and the fantastic free label software and templates SureThing -- a great commercial utility for creating LightScribe lables
Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 -- A really nice EXIF editor for RAW and jpg files FREE
Picasa -- FREE image viewer/manager (for those who don't have ThumbsPlus!)
ThumbsPlus! -- HIGHLY recommended graphics software

Other Software

Colossal Cave Adventure Page
Font Creator
Foto-Mosaik
BOINC! -- Distributed Software Screensaver for donating computer time to worthy scientific endeavors Einstein@home SETI@home
PolderbitS -- Sound recorder and editor (transfer recordings from LPs or cassettes)
Printer's Apprentice
RKS Fax -- one of the only Fax utilities for Vista
Scribus -- OPEN SOURCE -- FREE desktop publishing software (page layout: think Pagemaker)
SourceForge.net -- OPEN SOURCE -- THE open source software source
     Audacity -- sound editor
     Bid-o-Matic -- an eBay sniper tool
     JBidwatcher --Another eBay auction tracker and sniper, in beta but looks promising
     Opcion Font Viewer
Video Editing Software (Open Source)
Jahshaka
VirtualDub
ZDNet Shareware Downloads
Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

Computer Security

Active@ Kill Disk -- erase a harddrive - completely
Autoruns - a nice utility if you've been hacked
Microsoft Sysinternals -- some really handy utilities from Microsoft
RootkitRevealer
Shields Up Homepage -- OK, this is a really tricky site, and very hard to navigate. Just keep looking for Shields Up, or call me to walk you through it.
Silent Runners - another nice place to check if you've been hijacked
Trojan TCP/IP Ports -- a great security site
What's Running -- a really nice utility for examining and customizing your system

My Open Office Templates

James' Perpetual Calendar 1.0 - a highly-customizable, printable twelve month calendar; updated with 2008 holidays (and corrected moon phases...) No further updates to this template will be made Updated 12/2/07
James' Perpetual Calendar 2.2 - even more highly-customizable, printable twelve month calendar; with some minor updates over 2.0 and updated with 2009 holidays and moon phasesUpdated 11/21/08
Simple Amortization Spreadsheet 1.1b2 - Works for standard 80/20, 80/15/5, and other 1st/2nd mortgages that have fixed rates, very powerful tool Updated 4/28/09
How Much House Can I Afford Calculator 1.0b2 - Also calculates your monthly payments Updated 4/27/09

Web Page Resources

1&1.com -- Good and inexpensive web hosting, multiple (unlimited) domains
Clipart ETC from Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse
ColorCombos.com -- test out various web color combinations
CSS Play -- a great CSS resource, lots of example coding
CSS2 Reference Guide -- wonderful list and explanation of CCS2 elements
Designed to a T-Clipart -- Free Graphics, Backgrounds, Dividers and Bullets
HTML Elements Cross-reference
HTML & CSS Editors: Amaya -- Open Source CSS editor from W3C; NVU -- Open Source CSS & HTML editor (my favorite so far); tsWebEditor -- Open Source HTML editor
Java Technology Home Page
LeechFTP -- Though no longer updated, a really good FTP software client
OpenClipArt.org -- OPEN SOURCE -- FREE Clip Art

W3C - The World Wide Web Consortium
W3C HTML Validation Service
Whois.org
Wikipedia: Public Domain Image Resources

Website Server-side Applications & Style Sheet Design Add-ons

Lightbox JS -- free simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page
phpBB -- high powered, fully scalable, and highly customizable free bulletin board package
WordPress -- OPEN SOURCE Blog (and more) software