As part of the redesign of this site, I’ve been updating some of the static pages. Today I took a few minutes and gave my Recommended Software page a makeover. It’s not complete, but everything on there is a program that I currently use (or have used in recent months) and recommend.
The previous version of this list had detailed version numbers. I’ve removed most of those and instead stuck only with major version numbers where it seemed appropriate. I also broke the list into categories for easier reading.
If you want to suggest products I should try, leave a comment here. Include the full name of the product, a description of why you think it’s useful, and a link. No affiliate links, please. I’ll edit or delete anything that looks like an ad. (That’s what the column to the right is for. If you want to advertise a product, contact me. You might be surprised at how reasonable the rates are.)
Ed Bott 
WebSite-Watcher is a program I’ve used every day for years. It monitors dozens of Web sites for updates, and highlights the changed portions.
With the advent of RSS (which it also supports, by the way), some of its functionality has been replaced by FeedDemon and the like; but it is still useful for sites that don’t have RSS feeds or that don’t have full feeds.
Let me also recommend Becky! Internet Mail. For many years I had a Web site where I provided extensive reviews of email client software (http://dehoog.org). I turned off the Web site last year, one reason being that Becky! is the only program that comes close to my idea of what an email client should be like. For a while, I had high hopes for Thunderbird; but that program still lacks many of the features in Becky! that I take for granted (folder-specific preferences, extensive template variables, citing only selected text, remote server operations, etc.). This program has a long history, and just keeps getting better. The only thing that keeps it from being really big is the lack of a marketing effort. The author seems content to be a niche player and lead a laid-back life style, rather than taking on the hassles of a big-time operation. But the program itself is first class. I’ve used every program out there, and none can match it.
AppRocket by Candylabs (www.candylabs.com). Similar functionality to activewords, but perhaps even better. It’s very slick.
Ed:
I might add to the list Adobe Photoshop Elements, although it fills a similar space as Picasa. Elements has an excellent image tagging system and phot editor, and importantly beyond what Picasa does it can embed the keyword tags right within the file. I like everything about Picasa except the horrible way it stores the metadata in .ini files alongside the images.
Another infinitely useful tool that I’d recommend for the list is “DVDShrink”. In a market full of garbage, ripoffs, and difficult messages DVDShrink is a well-done free tool for archiving or copying DVDs. I personally use it all the time to creat DVD backups for my kids’ movies that they are very hard on.
Pete
In the category of: “Digital Photography and Image Editing” I would definitely add “The Gimp” – Advanced image editing and manipulation. A lot like Photoshop(though not as user friendly), but free.
NOTE: Install this first, and then this.
John
[Edited to make links clickable and prevent bad wraps. – Ed]
I would recommend some useful tools that are free. Answers.com is an extraordinary site that I use daily. It just keeps getting better and better.
Also Clipomatic, which has been around for some time now – developed by Mike Linn- use it constantly.
Also MW Snap, a wonderful free screen capture program that I’ve been using for years.
Mark
I might also add that if you are using Firefox, you should check out the Scrapbook extension – great tool for saving web pages completely intact and searchable. Outstanding tool for anyone doing research.
I recommend NEO, Nelson Email Organizer, this is one of the coolest Email enhancements I’ve seen for increasing productivity when you receive hundreds of emails a day. The search feature can find an email in seconds (I have over 800,000 emails archived); it automatically files things internally using an indexing mechanism so it uses outlook as the message store, but just provides a new ‘view’. http://www.emailorganizer.com/