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Useful Information
The following are links to useful sites and information.
- PayPal is a great online payment service for small eCommerce sites and small businesses.
- W3Schools is a fabulous resource for information on web development topics. The site includes tutorials and references on HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and a variety of other web-related subjects.
- NanoCMS is a lite-weight content management system that does not require a database. We use NanoCMS to power our website.
- Simple PHP Blog is a flat file (it does not require database setup) blog system that is super easy to install and use.
- BugMeNot is a website to bypass compulsory registration at websites (the places that say 'free registration required'). You can look up a site, or submit a login for a site.
- Mailinator is a free, web-based, receive-only email service for those times when you need a throw-away email address to use for some silly registration.
- Bruce Schneier is a security expert. Read his blog for great insight into both technical and physical security. I also highly recommend his books, especially "Beyond Fear" and "Secrets and Lies".
- MythTV is an open source DVR (digital video recorder) that you can build at home. It has some great features that put it way ahead of any commercial DVR out there (e.g. Tivo, Replay, etc.)
- PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.
- Smarty Template Engine One of Smartys primary design goals is to facilitate the separation of application code from presentation. Typically, the application code contains the business logic of your application, written and maintained in PHP code. This code is maintained by programmers. The presentation is the way your content is presented to the end user, which is written and maintained in template files.
- Win32Pad - notepad replacement Win32Pad is a feature filled text editor that is written with a programmer in mind. Its main purpose is to provide enough functionality that is missing from notepad without sacrificing file size and performance. It's very fast and powerful. This editor is written so that you can install it and start using it. The features are added to make your experience better, easier and more efficient. It also works really well from a thumbdrive
- Kerio Personal Firewall The Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall helps you control how your computer exchanges data with other computers on the Internet or local network. Even if you have a router that has a built-in firewall, you will still benefit from using Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall on your PC(s). It's the principle of "belt-and-suspenders" (being double-safe) which is a strongly recommended strategy to deal with the 'Internet Bad Guys'. The Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall also protects your PC from attacks initiated by other PC's on your network that might have been compromised. And if you have a notebook PC, you definitely should use the Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall on that notebook as well. Notebooks are especially easy to compromise because of built-in wireless access.
- RealVNC VNC (Virtual Network Computing) software makes it possible to view and fully-interact with one computer from any other computer or mobile device anywhere on the Internet. VNC software is cross-platform, allowing remote control between different types of computer. For ultimate simplicity, there is even a Java viewer, so that any desktop can be controlled remotely from within a browser without having to install software.
- VirtuaWin - The Virtual Desktop Manager Using a virtual desktop manager is a way to organize applications over several "virtual" desktops. For example if you use two virtual desktops you can put a webbrowser on desk 1 and by using a desktop manager "switch away" the webbrowser and it will seem like you have a new empty workspace (desk 2) to put another application/applications on. Virtual desktops are very common in the Unix community and once getting used to this, it is very hard to manage without it.
- Firefox - Rediscover the Web Mozilla Firefox is one of the best browsers out there on the market, and it's free. Through the unique development methods of Open Source, they are able to make a product with impressive speed and less bugs than programs developed by traditional methods. Mozilla Firefox has a number of unique features, and it is overall a good product. You can customize your browser by selecting from thousands of extensions that alter and enhance your browsing experience.
- Sysinternals Process Explorer Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. Process Explorer is a feature-rich replacement for Windows Task Manager.
- Spybot - Search & Destroy Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don't see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies.
- Password Safe Password Safe is a tool that allows you to have a different password for all the different programs and websites that you deal with, without actually having to remember all those usernames and passwords. Password Safe also allows you to encrypt or decrypt individual files using the same high-quality encryption engine. Originally created by Bruce Schneier's Counterpane Labs, Password Safe has opened it's source.
- AutoHotkey - Free Mouse and Keyboard Macro Program With it, you can:
- Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks.
- You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder.
- Create hotkeys for keyboard, joystick, and mouse. Virtually any key, button, or combination can become a hotkey.
- Expand abbreviations as you type them. For example, typing "btw" can automatically produce "by the way".
- Create custom data entry forms, user interfaces, and menu bars.
- Remap keys and buttons on your keyboard, joystick, and mouse.
- Respond to signals from hand-held remote controls via the WinLIRC client script.
- Convert any script into an EXE file that can be run on computers that don't have AutoHotkey installed.
- Grisoft AVG Free Edition AVG Free for Windows is a free anti-virus protection tool developed by Grisoft for home use. AVG Free Edition is for private, non-commercial, single-home computer use only. Use of AVG Free Edition within any organization or for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited.
- OpenOffice OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites (including Microsoft Office), the product is free to download, use, and distribute.
- AbiWord is a MS Word compatible word processor. If all you need is a word processor, AbiWord is a better choice than OpenOffice. Even if you decide to install OpenOffice, I still recommend AbiWord as the word processor because it loads faster.
- PortableApps.com A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB thumbdrive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug, none of your personal data is left behind.
- Pegtop PStart is a simple tray tool to start user defined applications. Designed to run portable applications (like portable Firefox & Thunderbird), you can start anything runnable from USB key devices or removable disks. PStart is freeware.
- Open Workbench - Project Management and Project Scheduling for Windows Open Workbench is an open source desktop application that provides robust project scheduling and management functionality. Already the scheduling standard for more than 100,000 project managers worldwide, Open Workbench is a free and powerful alternative to Microsoft Project.
- ActiveState - ActivePerl free Perl open source binary language distribution Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) is a stable, cross platform programming language. It is used for mission critical projects in the public and private sectors and is widely used to program web applications of all needs. ActivePerl is ActiveState's quality-assured, ready-to-install distribution of Perl, available for AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows. The standard ActivePerl distribution is available for free download. See also perl.org for more information about the Perl language.
- WAMP Web-Developer Server Suite for Windows including Apache, PHP, MySQL, ASP, JSP, Perl, SSL The Web-Developer Server Suite is an open-source/non-proprietary, WAMP-based [Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP] web-server distribution for Windows that is fully configured and ready to run.
- GreaseMonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts" written in JavaScript) to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's design or interaction. UserScripts.org hosts thousands of userscripts for use with Greasemonkey.