Two very useful and time-saving web services I use for this purpose are Only2Clicks, which was profiled on MakeUseOf before, and Hyperigo, both of which allow you to organize your favorite websites on one tab-supported page. They come equipped with a few token sample offerings in place, but both are easily customizable for the main purpose: adding your own stuff!

With either Only2Clicks and Hyperigo, you can add or upload any of your bookmarks and they will be displayed as small screenshots of the actual sites themselves, usually 15 to 18 to a page.

Recently I came across another couple of sites which are similar in principle to Only2Clicks and Hyperigo.

AllMyFaves – calls itself a “visual directory” and contains countless visual links (icons) to most popular sites within dozens of categories. You probably frequent mots of them on a regular basis, thus the slogan, “why search?” This is just a random sampling of the “Entertainment” tab, and there are other tabs as well, for Shopping, Travel, etc.

Each tab lists relevant sub-categories, i.e. of Finance, E-Trade, Magazines, News, Compare, Shopping, Photo, Movies, Music, Web Radio, Astrology, Dating, Games, Chat, Blog, Voip, Instant Message, Insurance, Courier, Health, etc. Pretty extensive.

AllMyFaves continues to be a “work in progress” as it even has a “Weekly Faves” report of all the new sites found each week. Plus even though it is not currently customizable, it is expected to be in the future. The site suggests that AllMyFaves can be used as a Start Page, and it would no doubt be a good one, but for me it is better suited as a shortcut on my desktop for now.

After all, it contains links to many of the shortcuts on my desktop already! If yours is anything like mine, you’ll be able to replace several of them with the one, saving yourself a little time searching.

Symbaloo – Unlike the above, Symbaloo also aggregates essential search tools on one page. Seach for weather, phone numbers, address locations, dictionary search, videos, recipes, eBay auctions and so on. Symbaloo also supports tabbed browsing and drag’n drop interface. Apart from search engines, it allows you to add websites, feeds, email accounts (ex. Gmail), radio channels, etc. [Video demo]

Finally if you’re looking for a startpage-like online feedreader then go straight to Netvibes.

And, as usual, if you know of any similar or better concepts, let us know!

(By) From the non-geek perspective of Linda Martin-Peoples, author of CoolOnlineTools, MyBlognosis and a few other sites scattered across the web. Linda lives with her husband and two cats just outside of beautiful Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

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Web proxies are used for hiding your IP address and by-passing work, school or other web filters. For instance, if Facebook or Myspace is blocked on the computer you are using, you can easily gain access by using a web proxy.

HideMyAss – Free and speedy proxy service. Use it to hide your IP address and get through network filters. HideMyAss is part of a Privax proxy network, so if it’s blocked, there are several others you give a try. There is nothing to configure, just type-in the address of the website you want to visit and press ‘Go’.

Proxy.org – Extensive directory of free proxy servers. There are well over 15,000 Proxy Servers on the Web. As of this writing, Proxy.org claims to have 4,718 working proxies available for you to choose from, so that might be a pretty good place to start.

GlobalPandora – Finally, free and simple way to access a US-only Pandora interactive web radio from outside US. If you haven’t tried it before, give it a try now.

As always, if you have favorites that were mentioned above, please share them with us!

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Chances are, your PC contains entirely too much personal information about you … passwords, banking information, credit card numbers, address books, social security number, personal emails, and maybe even a few things that you wouldn’t want announced on the evening news.

And you may think that just by hitting your “delete” button, all is “lost”. Well, not exactly. “Delete” is actually just another word for “hidden”, when it comes to your PC.

Most of the information you delete can still be recovered by using special “retrieval” programs for that purpose, so it is still available to hackers, identity thieves, enemies and other spies!

If you want to completely wipe out personal information, and keep yourself safe, you need to take certain measures, like installing “data shredding” software. In the conventional sense of the word, data “shredders” don’t actually “shred” your info; instead, they are programs that are capable of rewriting your selected files multiple times with a random series of binary data, thus obliterating them beyond recognition.

Most shredders use overwrite technology that conforms to DoD 5220-22M specifications (Military-Grade) or better. DoD 5220-22M is the standard set by the U.S. Department of Defense for permanent erasure of digital information.

So, even if someone does gain access, what’s to see? Here are 4 FREE file shredders that you might want to check out.

File Shredder

This one is free for both personal and commercial use and works with Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003 Server and Vista. You can choose between 5 different shredding algorithms, each one gradually stronger than the previous one. It also has the capability of wiping unused disk space.

Zilla Nuker

Looks like another good one:

It will securely shred and destroy any sensitive files on your hard drive, including locked files and previously deleted ones. It works with Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, NT 3.x, NT 4.x, and 2000. Highlights include: different shredding modes (ex. Quick Mode), scheduler, option to shred whole drives, etc.

Evidence Nuker

The one I currently use is Evidence Nuker. “Permanently Delete Everything You Want Erased”. You can choose which areas get “nuked”, and leave others alone. Options include:

• Address Bar History
• Browser Cache
• Visited Sites History
• Cookies
• Autocomplete Data
• Documents History
• Recycle Bin
• Run History
• Search / Find Menu history
• Windows Temp folder
• Error Checking Temp
• Click History
• Clipboard
• Media player history
• and more …

And, as you can see below, you have 4 shredding level options to choose from:

While it is recommended that you select at least Level 2, I normally use Level 4. Even at this “slowest” level, it only takes a few seconds. Evidence Nuker is compatible with Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP.

CBL Data Shredder

CBL Data Shredder was profiled in PCMag and looks like a good choice too.

It’s specifically designed to meet government data erasure standards in the US, Canada, Germany and the UK. The CBL Data Shredder uses so called the multiple-pass Gutmann method, which repeatedly overwrites the data with different bit patterns until it’s completely unrecoverable.

That’s about it. And again, if you have favorite info nukers that you use, please add them in comments.

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Test Everything

‘Test Everything’ incorporates over 100 (128 to be exact) of the useful website checkers and validators, throughout 8 different categories, all in one spot!

You will find CSS & HTML validators, SEO Tools, Web Proxies, Network Tools, Image Tools, Text tools, a host of really cool Miscellaneous Tools, and you can easily check your site’s popularity on Social Bookmarking sites as well.

Want to test your design in different browsers? 18 of them are supported. Curious about your site’s loading time? You can check that here, too, along with several other SEO tools.

And while you’re at it, you can also fill in some info about your site or yourself at AboutUs.org, get a Site Report, and see what insight McAfee Site Advisor might have to offer. There are even a few “fun tools”, like FakeNameGenerator and Destroy the Web! (netdisaster.com). This is hilarious, by the way. You can see everything from tomatoes splatting all over your site, to ants crawling on it, helping you edit, to cows and dogs “doing their business” on your fine work!

You can even stage a “demonstration” with people walking across your site holding protest signs made up of copy from your site!

All in all, you can take advantage of 128 dynamite tools and services, but if you know of some more which you think should be there but aren’t, there is a “Suggest a Service” feature, as well.

I tried many of the 128, and everything I tried worked fine. The only “negative” I found was that I could not get the “Bookmarklet” feature to cooperate, so I just installed a shortcut to my desktop instead.

I whole-heartedly recommend you check out Test Everything. It is truly a comprehensive and incredible tool!

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Website Grader – Free seo is a tool that measures the marketing effectiveness and popularity of a website. Find out things like website traffic, its popularity on social bookmarking networks (Digg, del.icio.us, …), incoming link count, and lots of other relevant factors. It also provides some basic tips on how the website can be improved.

Just type in your URL, primary keywords, competing websites (shhhh! you can check up on them too) and the email address where you want them to send the Full Report!. And a FULL REPORT is exactly what they will send, too! It’s very informative, and gives you a ton of ideas on how you can make your site better. So, pour yourself a stiff one, then sit down and check it out!

And while you’re at it, you may also take a look at their report on SEO Capabilities of the Top 20 Bloggers.

SEOMOZ -Page Strength – Similar to WebsiteGrader but takes a slightly different approach. Instead of giving the effectiveness of the website in comparison to other rated websites, it does a thorough SEO check and grades the website (from 1 to 10) based on the actual stats. Extremely useful at tracking website’s performance over time. Take a look at MakeUseOf report here

How Much is Your Blog Worth ? – Exactly does what it says, find out how much $$$ the website is valued at. This tool uses the same the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc. deal. The only problem, it pulls link count from Technorati, which unfortunately doesn’t work well anymore.

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Just a short post today to let you know about a really cool site that we should all probably be watching.

“Giveaway of the Day” literally gives away a real, fully-licensed software download every single day. Some are really cool…some are “not-so” (to me, anyway…but hey…that’s why they’ve got chocolate, strawberry and vanilla, right?)

For you game-players, they also give away one Game every day!

I’m guessing that updates and support might be limited on these free downloads, but…you know the old saying… “you get what you pay for”… and I’m ok with that when it’s really cool and it’s free.

UPDATE: Please note that each listed program / game available for free only during the first 24 hours.

Enjoy!

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Your absolutely FR*EE…no strings attached downloads (full licenses…not “trials”) from ‘TechSmith‘ of: Camtasia3 (Reg. price: $299) and SnagIt7 (Reg. price: $29).

What’s the catch? None, really. You will be offered an opportunity to “upgrade” to the newer versions (Camtasia5 and SnagIt8) but it is absolutely not necessary, nor required!. The newer versions are…well…”newer”… but from what I understand, these previous versions still work perfectly well!

So, if you’ve ever wanted to experiment or have an actual need for either product, here’s your chance! Grab them while you can. I haven’t found anything indicating how long TechSmith will make these versions available for free… it could be “forever” or for the next week…I really don’t know…so you might want to go ahead and download while the downloading’s good!

Ok! Let me see if I can explain what ‘Camtasia’ and ‘SnagIt’ are:

From what I understand, they are dynamite, tremendously coveted and extremely useful software put out by TechSmith. For that reason alone you should get it A.S.A.P., just so you will have it! You never know when one of your techie-friends, or someone who knows even less about all this stuff than you do… might ask…). And you can always figure out what to do with them later!

Camtasia

Take Camtasia, for example. You know when you are on a website and they show you a video? Chances are very good that they made it with…you guessed it…Camtasia!

So, say for instance you always wished you could make a Video, or wish you could explain your ideas in a Tutorial Video, or maybe make some promo videos to showcase some of your “wares” on your Blog or Website…or on eBay…or whatever… but you just couldn’t see coming up with the $299 for the best of the best: Camtasia. Well, now you can play till your heart’s desire… and it won’t cost you a dime! So go ahead…live dangerously…download Camtasia3 and make a video!

SnagIt

Oh yes, and SnagIt … well, that’s a fine thing too! You know when you hear everybody talking about “Screen Shots”? Well, SnagIt, which is also in the “best of the best” category, is a great way to make Screen Shots… which are actually “pictures” of something on a webpage, or on your computer; you can “capture” the image with SnagIt!

Unfortunately (sigh), copy and paste just don’t work for everything! That’s when you need something like SnagIt! So grab this free download from TechSmith while it’s still available, too … and don’t worry, you’ll figure out something you want to “Snag” one of these days!

Now, in order to be fair, I really should present some of the “cons” of these products…(if there are any to be found) but I think I will defer to my more Techie colleagues to expound on those in their Comments below. What that means is this: if you really want to learn something today…which I’m guessing is why you are on MakeUseOf to begin with…check out the Comments!

DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS:

Please Note that these Instructions are two-fold: First, download the product. Second, click on the link for the License Key. Give them your email address so they can email you the KEY…which you will COPY and then PASTE where they ask for it within the Product Download instructions. That’s it! If you want both products, rinse and repeat.

For Camtasia3: (for Windows 2000 & XP; not Vista or Mac…sorry!)

• 1. You will actually be downloading the ‘free trial version’ of Camtasia Studio 3 (but don’t panic…keep reading.)
• 2. Next, click on the License Key link. Fill in your complete name, country and e-mail address so that TechSmith can send you the KEY to unlock the program by email.
• 3. After installing the program you downloaded from step 1 above, and then entering the License Key you receive in the email from TechSmith, you will be the proud new owner of a fully functional version of Camtasia 3!

For SnagIt 7.2.5: (for Windows 2000 or XP – not Vista… sorry!)

• 1. Again, you will actually be downloading the ‘free trial version’ of SnagIt version 7.2.5 here [English / German / French]
• 2. Next, click here to get the License Key. Fill in your name, country and e-mail address and TechSmith will send you the KEY to unlock the program by email.
• 3. Once you have installed the program you downloaded from step 1 above, and then entered the License Key you receive from TechSmith, you will be the proud new owner of a fully functional version of SnagIt 7.2.5

For sure you will be offered exceptional offers to upgrade to the newest versions of both Products. But, as I mentioned before, these are merely incentives, and while you will find that they are excellent offers…(and strictly up to you whether or not you decide to upgrade)… upgrades are not mandatory nor required. Your Free Versions will work just fine!.

If you know anyone who could benefit from this Free software, be sure to refer them to MakeUseOf.com !

(Credits: www.TechSmith.com , and everyone else who gave me a heads up on these great downloads! ). So why are we passing on these ‘fabulous finds’ to you? Why, because Santa says you’ve been extra-good this year, and also… as a loyal MakeUseOf subscriber… you just plain deserve it!

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