DownloadSquad

PC Magazine sometimes publishes the names of a few relatively unknown Websites with information the editors believe to be useful to some of their readers. In a recent issue one such listing caught my eye. It is DownloadSquad; perhaps you will find it useful, too.
 
This Website is really a blog about current technology from VOIP to audio systems and a whole lot in between. Right away I spotted a useful Website, Wikiseek. This is a search engine devoted entirely to searching topics in Wikipedia. It is not actually affiliated with that database, although the blog says it has been approved. My interest is in the research aspect; I use Wikipedia frequently for subject information. 

Posts may be read by OS, i.e., Windows, Mac, Linux, or by using one of almost 60 categories. Should you follow some of these links in the future, you will need to keep scrolling until you get down to the blog referenced here because they are listed in descending order with the latest posts first. A few blogs from the “categories” areas will give you a sample of what you can find on DownloadSquad. 

There are several thousand entries, but some are filed under more than one category. 

From Business:

$10 free from Google Checkout—which stores are participating? Apparently Google only lists a few stores up front, so this post attempts to fill the void. Here’s the list of 234 stores this blogger found.

A useful program for digital photographers (like I am) or avid music collectors, both of which can consume a lot of computer memory, is CloneSpy, a program that finds and deletes duplicates freeing a lot of memory for many. This is free with a donation politely invited.

With so many people working interminable hours on a computer, there is significant risk of repetitive stress injuries to the wrist and hands. Workrave is a free downloadable program that schedules minibreaks in your work day. Not only does it schedule them, it actually forces you to take a short break by briefly preventing use of your equipment. Though a bit inconvenient it is many times better than doctors and pain and things like that!

If you work with data and like attractive Flash pie and donut charts, you may want to consider these two programs that allow manipulation of CSV or XML data from Excel. They are amCharts and PHP/SWF Charts. They are available for $5 to $60; very pretty charts.

From Finance:

The Risk vs. Reward worksheet is a simple and free way to evaluate any decision you must make. All you have to do is download the worksheet (an Excel worksheet) from this link, enter each aspect of the decision with an appropriate weight assigned to it. When you are finished, a neat little bar graph will indicate if the risks outweigh the rewards of your proposed decision.

A free and easy way to manage your bills is a web-based application called BillQ. It’s easy to add and track your bills, manage bills, receive reminders when payments are due, and create groups of people involved with your bills so all can know what happens with common bills. Your information is safe because nothing critical is required.

Yahoo!Finance has recently begun free Streaming Quotes. On the left sidebar under Market Summary, you will find the “On” button for 25 minutes of streaming; the quotes have a 15 minute delay. This feature used to be part of a fee paid package.

Here’s a way to set up an AIM Budget Bot. The beauty of this system is it is web-based and can be accessed from a properly outfitted cell phone; it’s with you as you spend and doesn’t clutter your desktop.

From Office:

Essential tools for the placeless office includes Campfire (Group chat meetings), MediaWiki (Internal knowledgebase), Gmail (E-mail), Google Calendar (Vacation and other scheduling), and Google Docs (Document collaboration). This is a real office-on-the-go.

From Photo:

Do you need a nice looking newsletter for your business? Your answer may be free LetterPop! Just join and create your newsletter right on the Website.
Customize your photos with Pikipimp. Just upload a photo and drag/drop one of many different images onto it. There are hats, hair, beards and any number of other things you can do. When you have your picture as you want it, e-mail it to friends, post it to a Website, or download to your computer.

If you require more capability than Windows Paint but really don’t understand Photoshop, this is an easy-to-use application in the middle. It’s free and it is called Paint.net. Give it a try; you may like it.

Here is an indexed database of over one quarter million free-to-use photos in the public domain. It is Yotophoto and it’s all free. One very cool feature is the ability to search by color; you can easily match the color scheme of any Website.

From Hardware:

A neat little program to monitor the insides of your computer and maybe alert to problems is SpeedFan. This is a free download and at the very least it may urge you to do your backups if you sense any danger at all. What’s to lose?

From Freeware:

Google recently introduced a free version of SketchUp 6. If you really find it useful there is a Pro version for $495.00. With this application you can create 3D models of anything and save them for future use. A short tutorial comes with it so you can be up and running quickly.

If you’re a newsaholic, as I am, Daylife could be for you. It is a news aggregator (without RSS). What makes it outstanding is its ability to accumulate news and images from everywhere according to your requests. 

Badged.net provides a free way to create your own social networking badge. This is really a personal logo or icon you can place on your posts, e-mails, or Website. You enter information on the Website and the proper code for your badge comes out at the bottom of the page. Just copy and paste it wherever you wish.

Pretty cool, isn’t it?

When searching for a subject for this article, I nearly overlooked DownloadSquad. It did not appear to be a likely subject of interest to small entrepreneurs. After repeatedly coming back, it dawned on me that a very large number of helpful tools and ideas are posted here every single day.

Only those few posts at the top of their categories are discussed here. All of these are recent, most since 2007 began. There are hundreds more just as important in the archives. Just think of the ideas you will get on a daily basis from this blog!

Download Squad has an RSS feed which will keep you up-to-date on all the new technical issues created daily. You really need to add this blog to your aggregator and look at it frequently. Every one of the posts in this article will likely be in my new arsenal of tricks before this day is over. 

What did I do before I found this site?