Links

News and Politics

• AlterNet
• Daily Kos
• Electoral-vote.com
• FiveThirtyEight.com
• Huffington Post
• News Hounds
• Political Wire

Local - Southwest Michigan

• Kalamazoo Gazette - has local event info for the Kalamazoo area
• Niles Daily Star - from my home town

Local - Chicago

• Chicago "L".org - huge collection of information about the "L"

Entertainment

• Hulu - watch back episodes of TV shows for free
• NTN Buzztime - an extremely addictive bar trivia game (check out PEDRO's stats)
• Rate Your Music - full of trivia and reviews
• Top 500 Rock and Roll Songs - when you need some download ideas
• Twin Galaxies - "official" scorekeeper for all video games

Food and Drink

• AllRecipes Ingredients Search - figure out what you can cook with all those random ingredients in your kitchen
• Michael Jackson's Beer Hunter - archive of work by the late author of the The World Guide To Beer

Restaurants

Literature

• Carrie McGath - author of the poetry collections Small Murders, Ward Eighty-One & The Chase
• Margaret Atwood - author of Oryx and Crake
• Dan Brown - author of Deception Point, Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code
• John Grisham - popular author of legal suspense thrillers
• Philip K. Dick - legendary science fiction and alternate history author

Travel and World

• Airtreks - Cheap multi-city international flights
• CIA World Factbook - An impressive collection of data about every nation on Earth
• Lonely Planet - Lots of good travel info here
• MichaelBluejay.com - How to find the cheapest airfares
• MyWorld66 - Neat tools for making maps of places you've visited
• Working Nomad - One man traveling while earning money from the Internet

Mobile Phones

• BitPim - a program that allows you to view and manipulate data on many phones
• Midlet.org - tons of free J2ME games and apps for your phone
• SprintUsers.com - plenty of information about Sprint PCS phones

App Development

• BlackBerry JDE Plug-in for Eclipse - the official way to develop BlackBerry apps
• Mobile Tools for Java - general purpose Java ME tools for Eclipse

Computers

Web Browsing and E-Mail

• Mozilla Firefox - a feature rich, standards-compliant browser that is much safer from spyware than IE
• Mozilla Thunderbird - this e-mail client is the best free alternative to pricey MS Outlook
• Mozilla Lightning and Sunbird - a calendar client that can run stand-alone or as a plug-in to Thunderbird
• Mozilla Thunderbird Help: How To Manage Profiles - includes instructions to backup your e-mail in Thunderbird
• Google toolbar - a worthy browser plug-in, includes a pop-up blocker and useful search and navigation tools
• Yahoo! toolbar - similar to the Google plug-in, but with anti-spy as well

Web Development

• Favicon Editor - convert your image into a valid favicon.ico file
• free-ed.net - has lots of tutorials on various programming and IT topics
• WDVL - lots of good web technology information here

Video Game Development

• Tile Studio - free map and sprite editor

Flash and Flex

• Flash Debugger Versions - Flash plug-ins with debugging features for developers
• Flash Player Settings Manager - change your security settings to allow access to local files during development
• Flash Tracer Firefox Add-On - use with Flash Debugger Versions to display logs within Firefox
• Embedding Whole SWFs in AS3 - Useful trick for those of us without a copy of Flash
• FLVTool2 - add cue points and metadata to FLV files
• gotoAndLearn() - ActionScript tutorials

Multimedia

• mpeg.org - video and audio coding format
• Open Font Library - free fonts for your projects
• Partners In Rhyme - royalty-free music and sound effects at reasonable prices
• STG Thumb - free thumbnail generator with HTML wizard

Instant Messaging

• MSN Messenger - IM application from Microsoft
• Yahoo! Messenger - IM application from Yahoo
• Y! Tunnel Pro - useful add-on for Yahoo! Messenger that removes ads and blocks spam bots

System Tools

• BootDisk.com - need a boot disk?
• Kill-Win - utility for scheduling Windows shutdowns and restarts
• Memtest86 - stand alone memory test for x86 architecture computers
• Partition Manager - free non-destructive partitioning tool
• Startup Control Panel - allows you to configure which programs run when your computer starts

Security

• Active Ports - tells you what applications are using which ports
• AVG Anti-Virus - good, free anti-virus software
• Clam AntiVirus - a popular open-source anti-virus package
• The Cloak - provides anonymous web surfing
• LavaSoft Ad-Aware - adware and spyware removal tool
• Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer - tool to test computers for compliance with Microsoft security recommendations
• Sam Spade - useful network query tool
• Spybot - Search & Destroy - another good adware and spyware removal tool
• Zone Alarm - firewall, blocks unwanted internet traffic; incoming and outgoing by application

Communications

• Net2Phone - make cheap phone calls on your computer
• Skype - another popular service for making phone calls from the internet

Utilities

• ExamDiff - free file comparison tool
• Process Explorer - an enhanced task manager tool

PHP

• TraceWatch - free PHP based web stats script

Data

• Kevin's Word List Page - useful resource if you need a word list for a project