Recommended Internet and Web Resources

Here are some great hand-picked resources, many of them free, that are useful in using the internet (including email) or helpful in developing your own web design and management skills.

PayPal

Simply put, PayPal is a very useful and safe online payment & collection service. During the years that I've used this service, I've hardly ever had a problem, and when I did (a bad customer), it was professionally & satisfactorily resolved. I've used PayPal to make payments online, collect payments from customers, and to build affordable shopping cart solutions for small businesses. To find out more about how to get your own free PayPal account.

Internet Tools

 
 
Once I switched from Internet explorer to Firefox, I never went back. Firefox has fewer problems, is easier to use, and has tons of extensions allowing you to customize it to work the way you want it to work. It's free. If you don't like it, you can easily uninstall it. Give Firefox a try!

If you manage multiple email accounts, ePrompter will be invaluable. And, unbelievably, it's absolutely FREE! (They'll accept a donation, which I was happy to give.) I use it to manage 9 different email accounts, including my business, AOL and Hotmail accounts. It works behind the scenes to check your email, tells you how many unread messages you have in each account and even lets you read and reply (or delete) them without having to open your mail management programs. You've got to try it!

How good is your Internet connection speed? Speedtest.net is a free broadband speed test with servers located all over the world. Compare your results with others and easily share them.

Every device connected to the public Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. IP addresses consist of four numbers separated by periods (also called a 'dotted-quad') and look something like 127.0.0.1. Need to know your IP address? It's easy and free.

Okay, this one is just for fun. It's Google... it really works... but everything is BACKWARDS. You've got to see it to believe it.

You want to eliminate pop-up ads? Or how about using Google search from any web site? Those features, along with many more (auto form filling, news link, etc.) are available on the free Google Toolbar. Easy to install & use with Firefox or Internet Explorer browsers.

If you're using Outlook or Outlook Express, this may be the best email spam blocker you can use. Easy to install & use, you'll find that managing your email is so much easier. You can try SpamNet free for 30 days, and then it only costs a few dollars a month to use after that. It's been worth it for me!

Spybot-Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. It's the best program I've found for doing the job. It's completely free, but donations are accepted.

Two great web tools for you to use if you need to collect text or images from the web. Cogitum Co-Citer is a tool for creating the collections of texts from the Internet. It captures the selected text, its Internet address, its title and date of adding to the collection. Image Co-Tracker is a tool for creating the database of images from the Internet. It captures the image itself, its Internet address, the Internet address where it refers to, its name and date of adding to the database.

Web Site Management Tools

Easy Thumbnails is a popular FREE utility for creating accurate thumbnail images and scaled-down/up copies from a wide range of popular picture formats. You can use slider controls to rotate images and adjust their contrast, brightness, sharpness and quality, and check out the results with the built-in viewer. Ideal for resizing larger photo images for your web pages.

Copyscape is dedicated to defending your rights online, helping you fight against online plagiarism and content theft. Copyscape finds sites that have copied your content without permission, as well as those that have quoted you.

Learn HTML code including form, frames, and tables with help from this free reference: HTML Code Tutorial. It's the basic language on which most sites are built. You can also find helpful explanations at HTMLgoodies and the Marcicopa Center for Learning & Instruction.

Do you want to learn more about how to increase your web site's ranking in search engine results? Highrankings Advisor lists articles full of some of the best SEO (search engine optimization) information available.

Having your web forms spammed can be a real pain. There are paid services that can help protect you, but I've found the free FormMail available from www.tectite.com eliminates most of the problems. (Note: You need to know a bit about coding to use this.)

SiteProNews.com is a free, daily newsletter and resource site for Webmasters that is updated daily. It carries a lot of ads, but even these are sometimes helpful. SiteProNews is a good web site resource.

WantDBest.com is a multi-category no-spyware directory, listing over 7,000 free resources. Looking for free, quality web resources? This is a great place to start.

A huge listing of Web development resources for the Do-It-Yourselfer can be found at 1000 Web Site Tools.

A great Webmaster resource! Plenty of articles and lots of helpful information can be found with a search at WebMonkey.