Many companies spend a fortune for a complete niche industry analysis. I should know – I used to conduct the research and write up niche industry reports for a company that sold those reports to big businesses. Today, I’d like to share some inside secrets with MakeUseOf readers and reveal the naked truth – you don’t need memberships to special databases or statistics firms to uncover those industry niches, all you need to know is where to look for the information yourself and you can create your own free industry analysis.

Always Start With Your Government

The truth is, almost every government in every nation devotes a great deal of effort and resources to measuring the just about every aspect of society – from how many pounds of potatoes your country produces to the number of people born with specific diseases. Regardless of the industry you’re looking into, the odds are pretty good that there’s a government agency that produced a report on the topic. For example, when I was digging into Real Estate markets, I discovered a report on Mortgage Loans produced by the special “Office of Thrift Supervision” within the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Seriously, there’s such an office. The mortgage loan data they provided (for free, I might add) was exactly what I needed.

The best place to start when you’re creating your free industry analysis is at an online government office listing directory such as my favorite, USA.gov for the U.S. or Direct.gov for the UK. The individual agencies that you’ll find offer their own library chock-full of statistics, charts and detailed demographics that you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. For an international listing of government agencies around the world, the FDA (of all places) offers a fairly comprehensive list.

Schools and University Studies and Research

It’s almost comical that companies spend so much money for a private corporation to produce a niche analysis on an industry when there’s so much free information available on the Internet. Aside from government agencies, Universities and Colleges from around the world constantly conduct studies and collect data and then publish the results online for free. These are typically published in the form of “white papers.” One of the best way to find these studies is by using Google Scholar, a white paper search engine that will turn up those results for you.

The quality of data that you will find from these results and from the various University research projects are amazing. For example, while researching the real estate market, I uncovered a detailed Harvard study on rental housing.

If you’re looking for data, graphs and charts that uncover industry trends, social demographics and reveal the sort of niche opportunities for your business – you’ve got it all right here. Don’t only search for the larger schools, if you’re interested in your local market, make sure to check on any local studies your local community college or University might have completed – you may be very surprised what you find.

The Pew Research Center

In almost every niche analysis report I’ve ever written, I usually always come back to the Pew Research Center for research. The motto of this organization is, “Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World.” This is no exaggeration, Pew publishes some of the most obscure and eye opening social trends of any research organization I’ve seen.

It’s from Pew that I learned that middle-age women make up the largest demographic of users for online games, or that more teen girls use social networks than boys do. If you want to uncover any niche opportunities for a potential business, this site should be at the top of your bookmarks.

Using Google Trends to Reveal Global Demographics

Now, this article wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention the single tool that I’ve used above all others to uncover unique niche opportunities. It goes without saying that the Internet has become an important gauge of public sentiment, and of course since Google Trends reveals “the big picture” for particular keyword searches, then it makes sense that you should be able to use Google Trends to identify industry trends. In a simple example, if you’re thinking of investing in rental properties and becoming a landlord, it stands to reason that you would want the trend of people searching for “apartments for rent” to be rising.

Well, look at that. Google trends reveals that while interest in apartments held pretty steady (aside from the annual fluctuations) from 2004 through 2008, there’s been a sudden upswing in public interest in apartments in 2009 – interesting! With Google trends, you can dig even deeper than this. By copying each annual graph and overlaying them together (using your favorite image editing software), you can also reveal seasonal patterns. In this case doing so would reveal what part of the year more people usually hunt for apartments.

As you can see here, most people are looking for apartments during midsummer, and then that interest tanks as the school year approaches, recovering only at the end of the year. While this particular trend isn’t very shocking, you would be very surprised to see some of the fascinating seasonal trends that Google Trends sometimes reveals within certain industries.

So, whether you’re just curious about the current market for your small business idea, or you’re thinking about opening an enterprise on a much larger scale, just remember that the tools and resources are available on the web so that you can identify those awesome niche opportunities yourself.

Have you ever started your own business? What online tools and resources did you use to research your market? Share your insight in the comments section below.

• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• Wufoo – Easily build Forms, Surveys or Invitations (4)
• WhoCalled.US Tells You About That Call You Missed (US Only) (10)
• Where To Research Material For Your Homework (8)
• Track Your Short URL Links With tr.im (10)

From my writer’s point of view, crafting science fiction is as exciting as – and so much even more challenging than – reading it . The science behind every great science fiction is always based on the real science that really exists in our real world. That’s why making the story believable requires an extensive amount of research.

But science fiction is not the only genre that requires research. Any kind of writing involves some process of data gathering. That’s why research tools  are  an indispensable part of every writer’s life.

Scrap everything to Scrapbook

One of the best research tools that I’ve come across so far is a Firefox extension called Scrapbook. Basically, this tool acts as a filing cabinet for all of your digital research data. Whenever you find something interesting on the net, you could add it to your scrapbook, either by dragging and dropping, right clicking or using shortcut keys.

We’ve discussed Scrapbook before. If want to get familiar with it, you could read Tina’s “Offline Browsing Anywhere Anytime – Part One” and my “7 Writing Addons for Turning Firefox into the Ultimate Writer’s Suite“.

One reader suggested Scrapbook+, a modification of Scrapbook with some improvements here and there. But with the exception of the highly visible 6 highlighters, I personally couldn’t spot the differences between these two. I use the plus version based on the developer’s claim that it’s faster.

As much as I love Scrapbook+ and Scrapbook to aid my research, they both have one similar major drawback: my data is only available on one computer. If you are a person who works with more than one computer (home, office, mobile, library, and any other possible variation), you’d wish that you could share your data from every one of your working points.

Well, my dear friends, with some modification and a little help from another tool, your wish could come true.

Access your Scrapbook data everywhere

My other indispensable tool is a data backup/synchronization service called Dropbox (which, again, has been mentioned previously here and here).

After installing the client (available for Windows, Mac and Linux), this service will create a Dropbox folder and everything inside this folder will be synchronized to your online account and to other Dropbox folders in other computers which installed under your account. It’s also possible to share folders with other Dropbox users.

As time has gone by, I found other uses of Dropbox aside from being a mere backup tool. One of them is using it to remote trigger file and torrent downloads. While trying to find a solution to have my research data available on other computers, I suddenly realized that I could use Dropbox to achieve that goal.

The first thing to do is to create a folder inside the Dropbox folder to put your Scrapbook data. Mine’s called “Scrapbook” but you could name it anything you want.

If you install the Dropbox client on several computers under one account, you can continue on to the Scrapbook setting up process. However, if this is not the case and you still want to be able to access your Scrapbook data from another computer, right click on the Scrapbook folder and choose “Dropbox –> Share this folder” from the pop up menu.

You will be taken to the Dropbox site under your account. Write down the email addresses of the Dropbox accounts to whom you want to share this folder with. These accounts would be the accounts of computers where you want to access your Scrapbook data.

This arrangement opens up another possibility: you could collaborate with others on data collecting.

Configuring Sharing on Scrapbook

The next step is configuring Scrapbook. Open Scrapbook using the key combination Alt + K and click the little arrow button next to Tools. Choose “Options” from the po up menu.

Choose the “Organize” tab and click the “Save data to” option. Click “Browse” to determine where Scrapbook should put your data. Choose the “Scrapbook” folder inside the Dropbox folder.

Please note that from my experiment, the above method is working with a fresh install of Scrapbook but not with an already built database. Alternatively, you could choose “Enable Multi-ScrapBook” to have several sets of data collections. This way, you could put your private data on one local location and share non-private data through the Dropbox folder.

Click the little arrow next to the “Multi Scrapbook” icon on the left of Tools and choose manage.

On the next Scrapbook management window, you could Add, Edit and Remove a scrapbook. Click Add.

Give a name to the new scrapbook and choose a location to save the data. Since our goal is to make the data available on other computers, choose the Scrapbook folder inside the Dropbox folder that we’ve created earlier.

Do the same thing on the other computers: accept the Dropbox shared folder if it’s installed under a different account, and set Scrapbook (either using “Save data to” or “Multiple Scrapbook“) to store its data in the shared Dropbox folder.

Another solution for sharing partial Scrapbook data is using the “Export – Import” feature from the Tools menu.

The combination of Scrapbook and Dropbox will enable us to work using the same data on multiple computers under different OS’s as both Firefox and Dropbox are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Just remember to pay attention to your Dropbox quota and the size of your Scrapbook library.

• Reviewing Dropbox For iPhone – Is It Up To Expectations? (9)
• Make The Web Your Notepad With WebNotes (+100 Invites) (13)
• iCyte: Capture Web Pages And Highlight Text In A Flash (5)
• File-sharing Fury – Battle of the Desktop Clients (41)
• Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail (8)

There are numerous tools that aid the serious searcher. Yolink belongs to that tribe. Yolink can be compared to a search accelerator, a growing class of web tools which bring the results closer and faster.

Let’s throw Yolink into the deep end of a web search and see how it comes up. With a thumbs up or for gasps of air?

What does Yolink do?

Yolink can be described as searching within results of a normal web search. For any webpage, put in a search query into the Yolink search box. Press enter or click the adjacent Search Links button.

For instance, here I am searching for Charlize Theron, the actress and Oscar winner in Wikipedia. The tool searches through all the links in that particular page for information matching the search query. The Yolink search accelerator results will be displayed in a right-sided split-pane, adjacent to the original web page.

The Yolink results are like little previews which help you decide which one needs to be followed to get to the right information. The search query is presented in the context of the content. Yolink’s utility goes deep into the levels of the webpage and filters information that’s relevant to the search query thus, saving the researcher’s time as he does not have to needlessly follow each and every link in the hunt for Charlize.

Click on any of the Yolink results which you feel is relevant for further lookup and that same link opens up in its original Web page (on the left pane) and is highlighted in the context.

Yolink’s behavior can be changed from the Yolink button next to the address bar. This button is also a toggle switch to hide and unhide the toolbar.

You can fine tune your search results by modifying the Search Options from the toolbar. Five options for the keywords are available which are self explanatory – Best Match, Match All, Exact Match, Match Any, Allow Breakouts. Allow breakouts is a Firefox-only feature and it’s for forcing the split screen on websites which do not allow dual pane view.

Save & Share your Yolink Search Accelerator Search Results

You can also store and share all your Yolink results in an online account. All it takes is a free registration with any email ID. With the email verification done, you are set to use your account space to save any link for further reference or share it with others.

To save a link, use the Save & Share button on the Yolink toolbar or click on the little Save & Share green icon next to any result.

The detailed user guide for Yolink can be read here.

The result

As an add-on it’s quite large, weighing in at 6.9MB and installs as a search toolbar. Users who like their browsers to be lean ‘n mean machines may not like the add-on weight. The casual searcher may also think of it as overkill. But for the guy who takes his searches passionately, it’s quite a serious tool. I found its main dexterity in trawling through lengthy webpages and news sites. It has also become a handy tool for multi-word search as I can view the context instantly for the multiple search queries without wasting any time.

Do you like to install search accelerators to enhance your search? Which ones have made web search faster and easier for you? Do you think that Yolink could become a worthy member of that tribe? Let us in on your opinion.

Youlink (ver 2.0) is a browser add-on compatible with Firefox (PC and Mac) and IE (ver 6, 7 and 8).

• Make The Web Your Notepad With WebNotes (+100 Invites) (13)
• Fire.FM – Brings Last.FM to Your Firefox Toolbar (8)
• Find Exactly What You Want with Zakta Social Search (4)
• Easily Search Web for Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations & Images with Outwit (0)
• Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail (8)

Zakta differs from traditional search engines in these key areas:

• Personalize and edit your search results
• Automatically save your search results
• Share your saved search results as a social network search with others as Guides
• Collaborate on a search with family or colleagues, just like you do on shared documents

If you are searching for quick factoids of information, you are better served by traditional search engines. However, if you’re planning a vacation or trip, researching a health ailment, exploring the best affordable university to get a degree, or similar broad topics, Zakta shines by beating the thousands of irrelevant links you get in Google or Bing.

The How Zakta Can Help page details the different benefits of Zakta for teachers, students, travelers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc. You can use Zakta as a casual surfer, but to get access to all the features, you need to register.

Ready? Let’s take Zakta for a spin and explore its features.

Organized Search Results

A search for “swine flu” quickly led me to choose the “2009 flu pandemic” organized set of results discarding the “1976 swine flu outbreak”. The search results are organized into sections, listed on the left. In this case, we see Reference, Web Sites, Books and Articles, etc. for swine flu. Observe that we also see sections of Symptoms, Prevention, and Treatment, as if Zakta “knows” that this is a medical condition.

Zakta “knows” about 3 million such informational topics already, so you will find sections meaningful to your search for every search term.

Personalized Search: Editing Results

There are many useful things you can do with the search results. Roll over your mouse over any result to get a mini-toolbar of actions you can perform on that result.

Delete results you don’t want to see again, use drag and drop to reorder results, and annotate or recommend a result. The personal ClipPad is your clipboard that remembers clipped results across related searches.

Share your results as a Guide

You can share your personalized results to create and publish a Zakta Guide. You can choose the sections to include, apply predefined templates, and include related searches as you wish. Once you create a guide, you can easily link to it, share it over email or on any social network. Your guide is shown to other Zakta users, who can recommend it. You can also invite your trusted friends or colleagues to collaborate on a Guide. Finally, a widget lets you embed your guide on your website or blog. You can also create a guide from scratch using the Guide Creator.

While Zakta is still in Beta, hundreds of Guides have already been developed by its users. From the Guides page, you can see popular guides, recently updated guides, or browse through them by subject, title, etc. Published Guides are even accessible from within Facebook with the Zakta Guides for Facebook app.

Zakta Tools: Search Packs and Firefox Plugin

The Zakta Firefox plugin allows you to clip anything from any web page directly to your Zakta ClipPad or Guide. Zakta SearchPacks give you access to a plethora of web search engines in tabs for different types of searches. SearchPacks are available for Web, News, Blogs, Discussions, Images, Videos and Health. For example, the Web SearchPack gives you access to Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc.

There are social networking search features built into Zakta as well, if you wish to build a trusted network of friends and keep yourself up-to-date with new search results or guides in your areas of interest.

Will you try out Zakta? Do you find it better for researching topics? We would love to hear your feedback in the comments!

• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• Google Squared! – Google Search to the Next Power (6)
• Easily Search Web for Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations & Images with Outwit (0)
• Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail (8)
• 5 Ways To Do A Site-Specific Search Using Search Engines (13)

Luckily, I have a resource for you that can conduct a domain name search for those which were recently released or deleted. People forget to renew domains or companies go out of business. With JustDropped, we can which domains have become available in the last day, week or even hour.

The site is very easy to use but it does require registration. But as always, you can check out BugMeNot for a user name and password. If you will be using this service constantly, I suggest registering for your own set of credentials.

Once you are logged in, you will see this on your screen:

As you can see, the search engine has lots of available options. I started with filling in the “Domain should contain” field and put in a word I wanted in my domain name. Then, I chose the check box that says “contains only words”. Next, I made the maximum length 15 characters and then I clicked on the Domain Availability drop-down list.

I like to use Deleted so that I can see what I can buy right now. Choose your extensions that you want to search for, I strictly use .com. So my options looked like this:

Finally, hit the Show The Domains! button at the bottom and you will see the results from the domain name search on screen, like so:

It pulled up a list with more than 2000 items, and that is the maximum number of results displayed. But what I like to do is create a search and then have JustDropped email me a text file with all the names. I can then go through them in Excel. To do this, all you have to do is click this button at the bottom of your results page:

That emails me a list that looks something like this:

To me, this is an invaluable domain name search tool. They even offer some more paid services besides domain searching. But we won’t go into that here. Do you have a free tool you use to help you find domain names? If you do we would love to hear about it in the comments!

Haven’t got a clue for your new domain name? Check out 6 Domain Generators To Find That Killer Domain Name. From our directory, take a look at DomainTyper and BustaName.

• How To Setup A Self-hosted Wordpress Blog for Free (60)
• How To Make Short URL’s on Your Domain with Google Apps (14)
• How To Easily Create A Favicon For Your Blog (13)
• Find Other Sites Running on your Hosting Server with YouGetSignal (15)
• Feelin’ a Little Cocky? Grade Your Website! (8)

At first glance, Google Squared looks much like the plain vanilla Google home page. Clicking an example search or typing in your own yields some interesting results. Basically, you give Google Squared a set of people, places, or things, and Google Squared will return a small chart of related information.

Take this example search for “2009 movies.”

Besides the titles of the films, Google Squared is smart enough to find release and director information for each movie. You may add or remove rows and columns to fill out your query. Now, the guesswork that Google Squared performs doesn’t always return perfect results. Observe the search results for albums by one of my favorite “bands”.

While ICP and Twiztid are label-mates, that last line in the list doesn’t belong in that set. Google Squared is not flawless, and clearly needs a little work (that’s why it’s still in the lab). Now, if you come across some info which is incorrect, it will often have alternate results for you to select. Please observe:

That price of $0.99 for an album can’t be right, so you may click on the box to select from alternate values, to which Google assigns confidence values. Clearly, this needs a little more work as well, as the price for a Limp Bizkit album shows up among the possible values. It’s reasonable, however, that those two albums would share an approximate price point. It’s worth noting that you can edit many values to go along with your research, and that Google Account holders can save their “squares” for later editing and printing.

How does Google Squared compare with the recently-launched Wolfram Alpha? Google Squared seems to rely more on Web sources outside of Google itself, while WolframAlpha tends to lean on its own internal cache of facts and figures. I believe that using both together could speed up research significantly.

Feel free to play with Google Squared for a bit and see what types of data you can come up with. How will this new tool help you out? Let us know (or just ridicule my musical taste) in the comments.

• Yahoo Searchmonkey Expands with Playable Music Tracks (3)
• Where To Research Material For Your Homework (8)
• Put MakeUseOf on your Google toolbar (7)
• Master the Google Operands – Search Like a God & Save Time (41)
• How To Submit Your Website To Bing & Google For More Traffic (20)

Available as a Firefox addon and thus available for Windows, Linux and Mac Outwit is a web collection engine that lets you search for documents, images and other kinds of information online and displays the results in a very Windows Explorer like interface.

Head over to the Outwit webpage and install the Firefox addon. There are separate addons for Outwit Hub, Outwit Docs and Images. You can then access the Outwit interface via the toolbar button or the tools menu.

Consider Outwit Docs for example. Once you open it up its pretty intuitive, type what you want to search in the search box and you will see results from Internet and your local files. You can check/uncheck the type of files you want to search for. Found the file you were looking for? Great, just right click and choose to open it up or save it or whatever you would want to do with it.

You can have multiple searches going on simultaneously (reminiscent of something like Limewire) and the results would continue to increase when more such files are discovered that meet your search criteria.

Then there is a basket (strangely called the “catch”) which is like a temporary holding place for the documents (your catch) that you find interesting and would like to download later in bulk.

So much for documents, there is a lot more you can do. Outwit Images that lets you search for images in a similar fashion. Even more powerful tool however is the Outwit Hub. Where as Outwit docs and Outwit images search for documents and images respectively, Outwit Hub can be used to search for a variety of information types.

Outwit Hub is used for information extraction from webpages. Fire it up and then enter the search query or URL of a webpage. Outwit Hub will then show you different kinds of data that can be extracted from the webpage. Click on the view type on the left hand side pane and you can view the page, all the images on the page, links, email addresses, text, rss feeds found and so on. Then there are the data extraction tools which allow you to extract data from tables, lists and other data structures on the webpage.

These tools have a great potential if you are looking for data or documents of any kind. Granted, you can always copy and paste and search for them on Google but you can do so much more with tools like these. A lot more flexibility, more control and ease of use. You can for example extract the data from a table and export it as excel spreadsheet or as SQL statements in just a few clicks from within Outwit Hub.

Do you know of any such tools or extensions you use for similar purposes? Mention them in comments, we would love to hear and check them out!

• 5 Great Alternatives To Google Docs You Should Consider (28)
• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• Make Your Speeches Shine with Acrobat Presentations (6)
• Make Your Own FireFox Search Plugins & Other Tips (8)
• How to Expand Google’s Universal Search (20)

If you’re sitting on top of some major CPU horsepower, you might consider putting some of its idle time to good use towards various distributed computing research projects that are important to you.

The following list of websites offer 10 ways that you can donate your CPU time to science.

How Distributed Computing Models Work

The idea of distributed computing is a very simple concept. Various research projects work with huge volumes of data and computations that need to be processed and analyzed using particular algorithms determined by the research goals.

In order to reduce the time it takes to process raw data, scientists have turned to the distributed computing model in which those computations are broken into components and distributed to distributed computer systems where the CPU of each system works on a computational task and then sends it back to the central server.

Choose a Distributed Computing Project That’s Important to You

After losing a family member to cancer not long ago, I’ve developed an affinity to supporting causes that seek to cure cancer. However, many readers out there may have their own important issues that they personally want to support.

The following list are some of the distributed computing projects that I personally find potentially significant and important in terms of human progress and technological advancement.

#1 – Climate Prediction

ClimatePrediction is one of a network of research projects that uses the BOINC software to process its distributed computing work. ClimatePrediction is one of the largest climate research projects online that’s attempting to accurately forecast the Earth’s climate in the future, using distributed computing. While there are many theories regarding the Earth’s climate, ClimatePrediction seeks to provide solid evidence using mathematical predictions.

If you’re interested in taking part in this project, the first step is to install BOINC, and configure it to connect to ClimatePrediction’s servers.

As you can see, there are a long list of projects you can support (a few of which we’ll get to later), but in this case you’ll select ClimatePrediction. Once the software connects and downloads a set of files to work on, you can view progress in the BOINC manager as shown here.

Any software that offers a fascinating graphical interface like this scores highly in my book. Another bonus is the fact that you can set up the graphical climate modeling as an intriguing screensaver.

#2 – Defending Against Biological Terrorism

Another worthwhile project comes from the Drug Design and Optimization Lab, also known as D2OL.  The goal of this project is to find antidotes or “drug candidates” that can counter biological agents such as Anthrax, Ebola, Smallpox or SARS.

By donating your CPU cycles to this cause, you’ll be helping to fight against such worldwide infectious diseases that can have disastrous effects in countries all across the world.  This effort uses software called D2OL which runs in the background on your PC much like the BOINC software does.  This software is available to download for Windows, Mac, Solaris or Linux.

Unfortunately the graphics look like something out of a Windows 95 or DOS game from the 1990’s, but the software does what it’s supposed to do, and in the end you could be a part of finding a cure for any one of the world’s most infectious diseases.

#3 – Fighting Cancer

Another network of distributing computing projects is called the World Community Grid. This network allows you to support various causes with one selection in the BOINC software, including discovering new drugs, AIDS, fighting Cancer, Human Proteome Folding, nutritious rice for the world, and clean energy.

In my case, I’ve selected “Help Conquer Cancer.”  The graphics that display the status for this particular project aren’t breathtaking, but the cause is important.

#4 – Support the Advancement of Nanotechnology

One of the most promising branches of science is nanotechnology, another word for microscopic technologies that can be used for a multitude of important scientific achievements.  The Spinhenge project seeks to discover magnetic molecular molecules that could be used in a multitude of technologies, with the potential to advance humanity into the future with integrated memory, magnetic switches, or biotechnology applications that are far in advance of where the state of the art is today.

This project utilizes BOINC, so adding this project is as simple as selecting it from the project list in your BOINC install.

The graphics display for this project is fun.  While the cartoonish image on the left could probably stand some improvement, the rotating image in the center and status update bars actually make it feel like you really are part of important scientific research.

#5 – Advance Artificial Intelligence

Another area of computer technology that fascinates me personally is the field of artificial intelligence.
The distributed computing project called AIS, or Artificial Intelligence System, seeks to reverse engineer the brain.  As outrageous as this sounds, with the distributed computing model, nothing is impossible.  This project has already simulated over 565 billion neurons out of the estimated 100 billion neurons of the human brain.  If you’re willing to donate some of your CPU time to the efforts of this small company, it could lead to a significant advancement in the field of artificial intelligence.

#6 – Clean Energy Technology

The Clean Energy distributed project is hosted by Harvard University and is using computational chemistry to isolate “the best molecules possible” that could lead to some of the most advance clean energy solutions in history.  The project involves searching through thousands of potential systems and using complex algorithms related to chemical properties of various molecules.

If you are interested in reducing world dependency on fossil fuels, this is a great project to support. This one is part of the World Community Grid, so you can add the project to your BOINC app by selecting the project on the WCG web page.

Other Great Distributed Computing Research Projects

There are so many excellent scientific research projects to support, that it’s difficult to choose.  It’s almost tempting to set up multiple computers simply to help these projects with their processing needs!  Some additional noteworthy scientific projects include the following.

Einstein@home – Searches through data from the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave collectors in order to identify pulsars.  What would this accomplish?  You could help humanity take the next step toward understanding the force of gravity.

LHC@home – This project, originally designed as a form of grid computing by CERN’s IT Department, is now a volunteer effort where you can donate your CPU’s idle time to help particle accelerator physicists develop and analyze concepts for future accelerator technologies.

FightAIDS@home – This important project, also part of the World Community Grid, allows you to support important AIDS research that seeks to uncover the drug-resistant nature of this disease, and in doing so, hopefully allow for more powerful, effective drugs in the future.

Proteins@home – Based in France, this important biological research into protein structure prediction could help significantly advance our understanding of a number of diseases including various cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.

Do you know of any more?  Let us know in the comments.   Which ones do you support and participate in?

• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• Where To Research Material For Your Homework (8)
• Try Fun Science Experiments At Home With These 6 Websites (11)
• Technology Explained: What Are Computer Chips Made Out Of? (10)
• Sync Your Bookmarks with Google Search Results Using Qitera (4)

A contingent requirement lead me to the ‘discovery’ of Research feature in Microsoft Word 2007. Since Office 2003, this feature has been a quite presence.  Perhaps, not used as frequently because for most of us a browser is more second nature. But a Research feature within the Office suite has its own value too.

Simply put, the research options button provides one click access to particular reference books and research sites that the Microsoft Office 2007 suite provides as information resources. For example, the Research  services to choose from include dictionaries, thesauruses, and various Internet research Web sites in several languages. The Research pane also includes a very useful translation service.

3 ways to access the research feature

Stuck at a word for a meaning or its nuance? Get the dope on the word by either…

1. Right clicking on the word and selecting Look Up… from the context menu.



2. Select the word and Alt-Click on it.



3. Open the Research pane by going to – Review – Proofing – Research.

Set up your Research Resources

The research functionality includes quite a few known resources as can be seen from the dropdown. Third party reference mines like Dow Jones’ Factiva iWorks, the premiere online library HighBeam, Gale Company Profiles and Microsoft’s own Live Search coupled with its rich Encarta dictionary and encyclopedia.

To fine tune our results we can include a few more options and exclude those we don’t want. Configure the research sources by following these steps -

1. Click on Research options at the bottom of the Research pane.
2. The Research Options box gives us checkboxes to select or deselect for Reference books, Research sites and Business /Financial sites we choose.



3. The Add Services button puts in the choices in the Research Options dialog dropdown.

Similarly, the Update/Remove button updates or removes the services of our choice. The Parental Control is a filter which sieves the results and screens out the offensive and the vile in the results.

The quite so useful translate service for a word or a phrase

Word 2007 can translate a single word or a phrase into 15 languages. Translating a single word is simple through the right click menu or through the search box in the Research pane. The word is looked up in the dictionary and the meaning returned. Translating a phrase involves sending the selected text to WorldLingo.com, a language translation service. The results open up in a browser window.

Note: The selected text is unencrypted so user discretion is advised when sending sensitive text.

The sum and the substance

The research feature is not only a Word 2007 tool but it is inbuilt into every Office 2007 application. It also combines several third party sources like Gale’s company profiles, WorldLingo or HighBeam along with standard issue Microsoft resources like Encarta or Live Search.

Yes, for a more comprehensive lookup I might have to head over to my favorite search engine, but having a research option with the plus of a translation tool is also help enough.

So, have you also ignored the research functionality of Office 2007? Or are you a frequent user? Let us know about your satisfaction score on this one.

• Writely – Online Word Processor (2)
• Using MS Word 2007 for Fast and Easy Blogging (Windows) (9)
• Use OfficeTab To Give Microsoft Office Firefox-Like Tabs (45)
• Use Microsoft Office As An Offline Google Docs Editor with Offisync [Windows] (14)
• Top 3 FREE web-based Office Suites (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) (12)

In fact, as long as you sign into your Qitera account, this tool will function behind the scenes whenever you perform a search on Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. As quickly as you can receive your search results, you’ll also receive a listing from Qitera of relevant bookmarks that you or your friends have added to Qitera’s database.

There’s no longer any need to go on a scavenger hunt to find a webpage you saved 6 months ago. Just think of a keyword contained in the page, and you can draw it up with a Google search.

Are Your Bookmarks Getting Buried in Bookmarks?

Bookmarks are meant to be simple. They are entrusted with the chore of reflecting a user’s personality. However, as humans, we are complicated creatures. Soon, our personalities rub off on our bookmarks, and they can swiftly become complicated as well.

As they breed and multiply, bookmarks become difficult to search through.  However, Qitera offers a remedy for this.  Rather than lock bookmarks into cages, Qitera sets them free and links them directly to Google search results.

You Can Be the Ghost in the Machine!

By synching your bookmarks with Google, you can inject your own personality into Google’s search results. To do so, you will first need to log into Qitera. Once you’ve done so, Qitera will respond to any Google search you submit by simultaneously searching your bookmarks. It will serve up its results a few fractions of a second later, just above Google’s results.

That’s right. Your own homemade search results will trump Google’s findings. This is helpful if, for example, you’re performing a search on “colleges”, and you’d rather browse through your own bookmarks on the subject than to wade through Google’s voluminous (often irrelevant) discoveries.

Listen to Your Friends & Family

In a roundabout way, Google’s search results are organized on the basis of their popularity. However, popularity has its pitfalls. Popular results are of no use if what you’re searching for is not important to anyone outside of your inner circle.

With a Qitera-powered Google search, you can let friends and family chime in with their search results.

Top results will be shown inside of your search page, yet you can still access other related bookmarks by clicking a nearby link stating “Show Results on Qitera”. Doing so will let you browse through screenshots of your bookmarks.

Surveying Your Bookmarks

Personally, I’m a fan of both Firefox & Stumbleupon. Firefox is efficient, giving me the ability to save windows & tabs, so that I can draw up 40 or 50 essential webpages in seconds. Stumbleupon, on the other hand, provides hours of sheer entertainment while at the same time reducing clutter. Plus, it is searchable by subject, such as “Interior Design”.

Do you have a favorite bookmarking application? Do you tend to use multiple apps, as I do? Take a moment to survey your bookmarks, and share with our readers which tools are your favorites.

Photo Credits: James Withers, ycc2106, striatic, and deryckh.

• Zigtag – A Web App For Extreme Tagging (BETA Invites Included!) (4)
• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• Where To Research Material For Your Homework (8)
• Use Stacks To Save Websites For Later Reading [Mac] (17)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)

Usually, those who frown upon the quality of Internet research are “old school” journalists who long for the days when you had to walk down to the local library in order to conduct “proper” research on the background of a particular topic.

However, times have changed drastically, and today the overwhelming reach and power of the Internet is giving both journalistic researchers and scientific researchers a run for their money.  Today, almost anyone can become an armchair researcher – quickly becoming a so-called “expert” on any topic.  However, writers with a true journalistic flair can write and publish stories more quickly and with far more detail than their newspaper journalist counterparts of even just ten years ago.

Finding Powerful Internet Research Tools

There are countless research tools for online writers who are interested in digging for information about any topic.  But three very useful tools in particular come from Cogitum LC, a company that offers three useful free tools that can help you collect and organize information as you’re scouring the Internet for data.  These three tools are:

• Co-Citer – Records quoted text, its title and URL, and the date you collected it.
• Co-Tracker 2.0 – Captures an image, its URL and the URL it links to, and the date you captured it.
• FotoTagger – A image editing tool that lets you point out and note details about photographs.

Each of these three tools have unique features that are very useful to researchers, especially those who are working on research for market, educational or scientific papers that require proper citations of all sources.

Cogitum Co-Citer

In order to provide an example of the power of this software, I’m going to use niche industry research on the real estate market that I’m currently working on for a client.  In this example, I’ve found information about real estate demographics.  At Realestatejournal.com, I found a great Wall Street Journal news blurb entitled “Foreclosure Rate Outpaces Bank Sales.”  The data in this article is very useful.  To cite a section of such an online article, you just highlight the text you want to cite (in Internet Explorer) and then right-click and select “Grab Selected Text.”  Co-Citer will open and allow you to add a comment for the citation as well.

The nice thing about the Co-Citer is that you don’t have to keep multiple windows or documents open, trying to keep track of the URL or the quote.  Every time you find useful data, you can simply right click, add a comment to describe why you find the quote useful, and then move on.  Using this application alone has cut down my own research time by at least 25%, and I don’t lose citations anymore.

Cogitum Image Co-Tracker

Another valuable research tool from Cogitum is the image “Co-Tracker,” which essentially does the same thing as the Co-Citer, but it does it for images.  Whenever you’re utilizing images from the internet where the image creator provides images for free, as long as the source is cited – this tool makes it simple to do so by keeping track of the source of all of those photos for you.

Once you’ve installed the application, it’s installed as an IE add-on.  So when you find a photo you want to use, simply right click and select “Grab Image.”

As shown above, Co-Tracker automatically saves the file on your hard drive, and it includes three editable lines which you can use to attach any information you want to the stored image.  Once you’re finished collecting images from around the internet, the Image Co-Tracker provides you with an entire catalog of images stored under whatever categories you create for them.

This makes it easy to create a large database of images that you can reuse again and again, without worrying about losing track of the source of those images.

Cogitum FotoTagger

FotoTagger is another IE add-on that you can use to automatically capture online images and then add tags to them.  On IE, just right click and select “Grab to Fototagger.”  You can also open up the Fototagger application and just open any image you like.

The cool thing about this application is that within less than a minute, you can completely fill a photo with detailed tags.  This is useful when you need to point out specific details about an object, or provide someone with detailed directions.

Fototagger also has features that allow you to automatically post the tagged image to your blog, or export it to Flickr.  You can also export to HTML or send it in an email.

I use Fototagger mainly as a quick method to mock-up detailed images as part of a research report, but with the “balloon” tag feature, you could create funny images from family photos or create a detailed “how-to” update on your blog, complete with tagged images outlining each step.

Conclusion

Conducting research on the Internet often involves hundreds of educational websites, online news archives, and countless other valuable resources.  When you find a valuable bit of information within those volumes, it can be a very tedious chore to try to keep track of those citations.  With these Cogitum tools, you can track and manage both text and images as you’re surfing quickly through resources, drastically cutting down on the time it takes you to get your work finished.

Do you conduct a lot of online research for school or for work?  What free tools do you use to keep track of sources?  Share your own online research experiences in the comments section below.

• Websites For Students: 10 Online Learning Tools (82)
• You have no idea what you can do with Images (16)
• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• Wordle – Become Addicted To RSS Feeds The Fun Way (13)
• Word Bubbles for Dummies. Make your images speak with Kyolo! (10)

Marketed as a research tool, it is actually a tiny miracle.  Not only can it be used to bookmark information, but it also permits its user to highlight or add sticky notes to pages.  Furthermore, it sports an impressive search capability, just as Google Notebook has done.

Fortunately, Zotero also allows users to drag and drop highlighted information directly into a note, eliminating the need to press a “clip” or “paste” button.  For this reason, Zotero is an excellent program to use if you desire to put together a mailing list.

Download Zotero

Zotero is a free & handy piece of software that is easy to install. Equipped with a portable bookmarking tool, the Zotero application provides space for you to deposit information you discover on the internet. Doing so is easy.  Once downloaded, Zotero’s extension can be opened from the bottom corner of your screen (just like Google’s soon defunct Notebook extension). Once opened, it will expand to fill a third of the screen.

To get started with a new notebook, you will only need to press an icon titled “New Standalone Note” and begin to type into a blank page in the 3rd column of the Zotero pane. Next, highlight any information from the internet that is of particular interest to you, just as you would do if you were preparing to copy & paste it into a document . However, instead of needing to worry about opening up a Word document, you can simply drag the info directly into the notebook. Here, it can be modified, and can later be exported by being dragged outside of the notebook to a desired spot.

In addition to this convenient drag & drop feature, Zotero also permits users to simply record a page’s URL, as well as record a screenshot of the page.

Research Your Prospects

Plenty of information exists online to suit the needs of a wide range of aspiring entrepreneurs. When useful email addresses are collected in one place, they can be worth a pretty penny. Instead of worrying about needing to purchase this information from data gathering experts, why not just gather it yourself?

Since Zotero’s extension does not require repeated users to enter user IDs and passwords, it is an easy place to store useful information about potential business prospects. In fact, getting in and out of Zotero is even easier than logging onto the internet.

Open & Title a New Standalone Note

While Zotero permits you to tag items with the URL code from which they originate, the easiest way to save email addresses is to simply drop them one by one into a standalone note. Should you later have questions about the email address you’ve saved, you can always Google the email address in question and you’ll most likely get a list of results that includes the site from which you extracted the address.

Conveniently, Zotero automatically saves your work, just as Google’s Notebook & Google Docs does. This can be a lifesaver if you’re called away by an instant message, by a co-worker, or by a family member.

Send Your Mail Via Gmail

I recommend Gmail over Hotmail because, of the two, Zotero proved to be more compatible with Gmail when I performed a side-by-side comparison.  A chunk of email addresses can be pulled out of your Zotero notebook and dropped directly into the BCC line of an email.  Although Standard Edition Google accounts permit users to send 500 emails per day to external recipients, Google itself recommends to users to bypass this restriction by creating multiple email accounts.

And this is the least of what Zotero can do.  Although using Zotero takes a little work & ingenuity, it is a real lifesaver in the end. It frees up your energy to tackle complex projects without having to worry about getting overwhelmed.

Better Than Google Notebook?

Now it’s time for the big question:  Do you feel like Zotero is a worthy replacement to Google Notebook?  Let us know if you’ve tried Zotero yet.  If you have, how do you like it?  Do you have any tips for others about how to make the most of Zotero?

Photo Credit : Smil
Photo Credit : Crumj

• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• Make The Web Your Notepad With WebNotes (+100 Invites) (13)
• How To Share & Synchronize Research Data To Other Computers (7)
• How to Change GMail Appearance & Background Look (6)
• Find Exactly What You Want with Zakta Social Search (4)

By using Flock you get stacks of features built right into the browser while retaining speed, performance and security which could potentially be compromised when installing so many extensions in Firefox. So jump in for my Flock review.

Cross-Platform

Like Firefox, Flock is compatible across all three major platforms, Mac, Windows and Linux, which is great considering the number of students who use other platforms instead of Windows.

Social Networking

I’m going to assume just about every student is on either Facebook, MySpace or both, so the inclusion of them into the browser certainly makes life easier.

As well as these two, there are 20 other supported services which you can see these in the image below:

One glaring omission is Windows Live which has around 300 million users worldwide compared to Gmail’s 20 – 30 million. Considering the huge Windows Live update happening right now I would assume the Flock team is working on including all of this new functionality.

Blogging

Plenty of students have blogs and Flock is perhaps the best browser for making blogging easier – it includes a decent blogging editor and support for several blogging services such as Blogger, Wordpress.com, Blogsome, Xanga and LiveJournal as well as self-hosted Wordpress blogs.

Research

Now most students are required to do a fair amount of research and study and Flock is the perfect browser to do this.

Flock has a built in feature called the Web Clipboard which really is Flock’s most understated tool. This clipboard takes the form of a sidebar onto which you can drag just about anything, links, text and images for later.

What’s so great about it is that unlike favourites which require sorting and organizing, using the Clipboard just requires the dumping of a whole stack of information while you research a topic.

There is one additional extension which I would recommend most of all and that is Zotero, the research extension for Firefox. All Firefox extensions usually work fine in Flock so you’ll have no problems there.

Zotero is fantastic for collecting a huge stack of online resources together for more careful reading and analysis later. I barely scrape the surface of its functionality in my own usage, but basically you can save webpages quickly for later (offline if you need it) reading. You can tag keywords, take notes and use various other ways of organization.

Also coming soon is Zotero sync for transferring notes between computers, a great addition to the tool.

Search Easier

Tell me, just how often do you Google something just to go straight to the Wikipedia entry? This extension modifies the Google search page so the most relevant Wikipedia result is shown along with search results.

WorldCat is a web service which can be used to locate books and journals in the nearest library to you. Add it to your browser from here.

Flock also includes instant results searching for many search engines like Yahoo, Google and Technorati. As you type in your search query the results are brought up instantly below the search box. I find it one of Flock’s handiest features.

This is what I use as my student browser, do any of you know of any other great research extensions?

• Where To Research Material For Your Homework (8)
• What the Flock – the Social Browser Revolution (12)
• Websites For Students: 10 Online Learning Tools (82)
• Time To Get More Social By Downloading Flock 2.0 (7)
• The Best Reference Sites For Medical Students (33)

Even as research went online, taking notes on that research really didn’t. It still involved either cutting and pasting into Word, or writing furiously in a notebook. Research became easier, but recording it fell behind. That is, it did until WebNotes happened.

WebNotes‘ motto is “Annotate. Organize. Share.” That’s exactly what they do, nothing more and nothing less. For bookmarking and other features, as we all know, I turn to Diigo. For pure research, though, WebNotes is my new favorite, and may be my last.

WebNotes is not the only Web annotater I’ve ever used (I even loved the annotation features of Diigo), but it’s the simplest- which, for research, makes it the best. It’s simply a tool for taking, organizing, and sharing (if you want) your research findings.

Set-up is a breeze: once you’ve got an account with WebNotes, you either install the toolbar (a Firefox extension, Firefox-only) or a bookmarklet with many of the same features (which worked in any browser I tried). Then navigate to a site you’re using for research, and let the fun begin!

With WebNotes fired up, you’re able to highlight any text on a page, as well as create sticky notes that float on the page. There’s no limit to how many you can do, and WebNotes works surprisingly well in every page I tried to use- highlighting and note-taking were always responsive. The way I liked to do it was to highlight relevant things on the page, and then write a couple of notes about the key points of the article.

WebNotes’ usefulness doesn’t end there, though.  Once you’re done taking notes, the organizer gets the spotlight. Right from the organizer page, you can see all the highlights and notes you grabbed from a particular page- it becomes your notebook, with all the information you need right there in one place. You can look through your highlights, read your notes, and see where it’s all coming from.

One small feature that I loved is that WebNotes automatically updates your organizer as you send it more information, meaning you don’t have to constantly hit “Refresh.” It’s a small feature, but a sanity-saver.

You can organize notes into folders, with endless numbers of folders and sub-folders possible. From the organizer, you can launch any page on which you’ve taken notes- with or without the notes on it.

Though sharing features aren’t the point of WebNotes, they’re extremely useful and easy to use. You can share a page, and its highlights and notes, to another person whether they have a WebNotes account or not. Each page gets a marked-up permalink, which you can send to your friends and study buddies. Pages can also be shared via email, or even turned into a PDF. This makes WebNotes useful for group projects and studying, which is a great feature.

WebNotes is still in private beta, but I’ve managed to snag 100 invites from them. The first 100 people to register for WebNotes by clicking THIS LINK will be able to try the private beta – for everyone else, it shouldn’t be long before it’s public.

If you manage to snag an account, please come back here and let us know what you think about the site.   Is this something you see yourself using often?   In your opinion, how does it compare to other note taking sites?

• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• Web Annotation For Students or Professionals From WebNotes (+100 Invites) (3)
• Super Simple Sticky Notes From Jjot (3)
• Make Use Of Podcast #9: Selling your home online, new Twitter clone and Syncplicity (4)
• iCyte: Capture Web Pages And Highlight Text In A Flash (5)

Wikipedia for example may be a great start to get a general overview or an idea about a topic. But in most cases it does not provide in depth information which is required for any serious work.  Plus all arguments about Wikipedia’s accuracy aside, in the end it is not accepted as a reliable source in academia. Neither is Google. Instead of quoting something that is already the quote of a quote, you must be more accurate and go straight to the original source or a first hand review of original sources.

So where do you find credible material? Here is where…

Google Scholar

This is the straight path to non-trivial information. In general, searching Google Scholar is no different than searching the regular Google. However, as the name suggests, Google Scholar relies solely on scholarly work, which includes peer-reviewed papers, abstracts, theses, books and further research literature.

As with the regular Google, the best results are yielded with exact search terms. For this you can use operators. For example if you’re looking for a specific author, type author:”first name surname”.  For more details about how to properly use Google Scholar and about how to understand the search results, are found in the Help section.

Google Book Search

You would think that Google Book Search is Google Scholar limited to books. But you would soon realize that the search results are quite different. The Google Book Search includes more trivial information, in other words both mundane literature, such as science fiction, fairy tales or romance, but also non-fiction, including philosophy, mathematics, biology, and some random subjects, for example computer history, love or the history of medicine. Thus, although limiting searches to books, Google Book Search encompasses many more fields and requires a much more refined search specification than Google Scholar.

The results returned by the Book Search can include all listed books, a limited preview or a full view of books. If you need full text material, you should determine your preference by using the “Books Showing:” pull-down menu on top of the search results.

NCBI Bookshelf

If you happen to be looking for material to support your life sciences homework or thesis, I highly recommend the NCBI Bookshelf.

This is an example of a very specified book search engine. Its focus clearly lies on biomedical subjects, but the material is by far not limited to disease. You will find dozens of books on biology, biochemistry, bioinformatics, and more.

From the results page you can select whether you would like to view all results or only the figures. This is helpful if you’re looking for a good cartoon of a biological process.

The NCBI Booksearch may appear a little dry. There are lots of tabs and links and pull-down menus. You don’t need to use them. However, if you’re going to use the site regularly, I recommend looking into its features because they will help you organize your searches, collect details for references or even access even more detailed information.

If the life sciences are not your field, Google may pave the way to a resource in your field.

Finally, if you are going to use any of the material you found online, make sure that you quote your sources. (And while we are talking about bibliography you should check out EasyBib and BibMe.)

Obviously, it is illegal to just copy and paste text and images. However, with some rewording and diligent quoting of your sources, you may use almost any material found on the above mentioned sites. That’s for personal, educational purposes, not for re-publishing!

How do you go about researching material on the internet? What are your favorite resources?

• How To Download Books From Google Books (30)
• Websites For Students: 10 Online Learning Tools (82)
• Flock – The Ultimate Student Browser (19)
• The Top 5 Sites To Find Your College Textbooks (32)
• The Best Free Algebra Homework Help Websites (10)

(1) HealthVault
Service that many US families should find really useful. In simple terms, HealthVault is an online safebox for all your medical records. It’s not just a storage place to keep medical history but also to share records with doctors, place to where medical documents can be faxed and auto-archived, and lots more.

(2) Windows Live (Office Suite)
Long-awaited online office offering from Microsoft. I know, there are plenty of other online office suites, but many of us are still hesitant when it comes to compatibility issues. What if the document won’t open? What if text styling gets messy? … Well, who if not Microsoft can guarantee 100% compatibility with Microsoft Office. Although the service is yet to go public, you can opt-in now and get notified as soon as it’s launched. (Update: Some people have suggested that it’s going to more like a document storage and sharing service rather than online office suite)

(3) TellMe
Tellme is a free alternative to costly 411 directory service. Lets you quickly obtain contact details and directions to local businesses (repair shops, pizzerias, restaurants, etc.). You can access it via toll free number, text messaging, or TellMe mobile client. Check out TellMe video demo here.

(4) Windows Live (Safety Scanner)
Online Windows health check-up and maintenance center. Includes virus scan and removal, hard drive space recovery and performance tools. The only drawback, it doesn’t work with Firefox and thus you need IE to access it.

(5) Tafiti
Looking for a comprehensive research tool? Check out Tafiti. It’s a single application that integrates multiple search engines, visual search, webpage sharing, and a handful of other features for online research. Tafiti will work on any browser but you do need to have Microsoft Silverlight (free).

Software

(6) Win XP Powertoys – PowerToys is a set of tiny all-purpose apps that add to your Windows experience. Currently, the package counts 15 different programs, including ‘Alt+Tab’ replacement, all-in-one unit converter, right click image resizer, and virtual desktop manager.

(7) FolderShare – Simple and memory-friendly program with a bunch of cool features. FolderShare lets you access your PC remotely, share files with others, and synchronize files across multiple computers and mobile devices. It’s a pretty useful app to have on your arsenal.

(8) Sysinternals Suite – Over 60 troubleshooting utilities bundled in one suite. Most of the bundled apps are rather techy and may require technical skills. Although some of the apps are 100% automated. For instance, PageDefrag (excellent paging-file defragmenter) is one of such apps.

(9) ConferenceXP – Live screen sharing and collaboration application for groups. Highlights include local screen streaming, browser screen sharing, and live collaboration sketchboard.

(10) Windows Live Pack – Brings Windows Live services to your desktop. Cool part about it, you have an option to choose which services to get. Package includes, Family Safety suite, web photo gallery, online storage service, Windows Live Writer blogging tool, and some more.

Got another Microsoft goodie ? Let us know in comments!

• Quick Tip: How To Add Password to Word Documents (9)
• 7 easy Screen-Sharing and Remote-Access Tools (All Free) (45)
• 20 Apps That Should Be On Your Mobile (11)
• 15 FREE Useful Services To Access from your Phone (9)
• 10 Sync Tools every Office Worker Should Know About (39)