http://www.stumbleupon.com/

StumbleUpon is a popular plugin for your web browser (with toolbars for Firefox and Internet Explorer) that’s helps you discover great new websites, videos, articles and more from around the web. The main feature of StumbleUpon is the Stumble button, when you click this it’s like channel surfing the web, bringing up a new page that other StumbleUpon users have liked and added. You can try out the demo on StumbleUpon.com before you sign up so you can see how it works.

You can give any site you’re on a thumbs up or a thumbs down using the toolbar and StumbleUpon will remember the kind of sites you like and show you more of them in the future, and vice versa with the kind of pages you don’t like. You can even add your own pages to StumbleUpon to share with other users. Even StuffToGet is on StumbleUpon so if you want to discover some great new things to see while surfing the Internet, sign up and start stumbling!

LogMeIn.com

LogMeIn is a great program for remotley accessing a PC. With it you can leave your home PC on and access it from the office, out on the road with your laptop (and an Internet connection) or while you’re on holidays interstate or overseas. There are different versions of the software but the free version is more than enough for simple remote control of a PC (more advanced versions include features like remote sound and drag-and-drop file transfer).

LogMeIn is available for both PCs and Macs and the setup is easy. You just sign up and install the small client file onto the PC (or Mac) you want to control and then from any web browser, you can click onto logmein.com and sign-in, then just select your computer and you’ll have remote access. With the free version, you can have access to up to 5 different computers on one account, so you can have you home PC, office workstation and your laptop all available at once. This also makes it handy for helping out friends & family with their computers (and for complete IT support solutions, LogMeIn offer software such as LogMeIn IT Reach). If you’re looking for a remote access solution that is easy to setup, secure and quick then LogMeIn is for you.

Gmail.com

Gmail is a webmail service offered by Google and is highly recommended. If you’re looking for your first email service or would like to integrate all your existing accounts into one spot, Gmail is ideal.

Why Webmail? There are many good reasons why you should be using webmail and having access to your email anywhere you have an Internet connection is one of the best. Not to mention the fact that a change in Internet provider or domain name doesn’t mean you have to get a brand new email address and let everyone else know about it.

So why Gmail?

6GB of space
Gmail was the first webmail service to offer such a massive amount of storage space, when Gmail first launched you had 1GB (1,000+ megabytes) and it’s constantly growing, now giving users over 6GB of storage. What this means really is that you never have to delete your emails again… ever!

Conversation view
Emails and all relevant replies are grouped together, making tracking the conversation simple. It may sound odd at first but once you use it, you wont go back.

Spam protection
The junk mail filter on Gmail is excellent and unlike a lot of services that claim to block spam, Gmail is genuinly effective.

POP3 Access
So if you do have an existing email account but would rather read them in Gmail, you can. Sending from these accounts right out of Gmail is just as easy, so you can access all your email accounts in one spot.

Notifier & Extensions
While Google offers it’s own notifier application that lets you know when a new email has arrived, there are also tons of others including Firefox extensions so you can be surfing the net and keeping up to date with your email, without lifting a finger! Some other great extensions even allow you to use your Gmail space as an online hard drive.
The list goes on and other features include;

• Great email searching capabilities
• Complete chat system
• Labelling and archive system (so emails aren’t resticted to one folder or catagory, meaning better organisation)
• Gmail on your mobile
• Free IMAP support
• Full HTML Email
• Virus scanning
• Attachement previewing…

There is more but the bottom line is if you’re not using Gmail yet, check it out now.

This areticle is part of a series showing you stuff you can do with your Google Account.

https://www.google.com/accounts/

Not just a search engine anymore, Google now has a whole heap of services on offer (and most of them are free!). This article is the beginning of a series which will show off some of the different things you can now do with your Google account. So if you already have a Google account (maybe for Gmail or Google Docs), see what else you can do with it. If you don’t have one yet, you can sign up right here.

The first Google Account Stuff to check out is Gmail

www.microsoft.com/downloads/

This is a handy one, especially for business, as it allows you to open Microsoft Office 2007 files in earlier Office versions (such as XP, 2000 & more). With the release of Office 2007, Microsoft introduced a new default file format for Office files called Office Open XML which comes with a new file extension (in Word for example, files now have a .docx extension instead of the previous .doc). These new files will not open properly in previous versions of Office so Microsoft have released this converter which allows you to do so. Once installed, 2007 files will open just like your regular files and you can also ‘Save As’ and save the file as a pre-2007 file format, so you can then send the file to other non-Office 2007 users to open (without them needing the converter tool). Installation is simple and once the tool is installed, you wont have to worry about it again.

Tip: For Office 2007 users, remember that you can still save your files to be pre-2007 compatible by selecting it from the drop-down box when you save the file. If you are sending documents to other people and aren’t sure what version of Office they are using, doing this will ensure they can open it in any version.

http://www.donationcoder.com

OK, so this software is a bit of a maybe. The idea behind it is great as it basically allows you to recover any programs you have closed in the last 60 seconds (but you can increase/decrease this timer as well to give you as much recovery time as you want). This is very handy if you have a habit of accidentally closing programs, especially if you haven’t saved your work. The GoneIn60s icon sits in your system tray, to recover a closed program all you need to do is right click on the icon and select it from the pop-up menu.

The program does, however, have a few bugs at the moment. Certain programs that prompt you to save documents before closing (such as Word, Excel, Dreamweaver) are an issue because if you have an unsaved document open and close the program, the application window will close (and be kept in memory by GoneIn60s) only to reopen 60 seconds later (when the timer runs out) with the ’save before closing?’ prompt. Also, if you do decide to close the system tray icon, all recently closed applications will be recovered (without you telling them to). This program is fairly new though, so bugs like these will hopefully be ironed out in future versions. This is definitely worth trying out, even with the minor bugs, if it will help save some important work for you.

Tip: GoneIn60s does not have a standard installer, once you’ve downloaded the program and double click, it will run from that location. So you should save it somewhere out of the way (e.g. create a GoneIn60s folder in Program Files and save it there) as the program also creates a configuration file. It may also be worth adding to your startup folder (or a shortcut of GoneIn60s) so that you are always covered.

www.freerice.com

Freerice.com is a website created by the same person who started The Hunger Site. It is a vocabulary game with a twist. For every word you guess correctly, the site donates 20 grains of rice (through the UN) to those suffering from poverty and hunger world wide. There is no limit to how much you can play or how much rice you can donate and so far over 14,000,000,000 (14 billion) grains of rice have been tallied up by players. The site began in early October 2007, so it has managed to achieve a lot in a short amount of time.

As you play the game, words are ranked by difficulty and your skill level is calculated based on your performance. Getting a higher level is the addicting part and as the site FAQ tells us “There are 50 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 48″, so good luck.

Flash Element TD
Onslaught - tower defense game

There are a lot of Tower Defense games on the Internet these days, most of them use Flash and some are a lot better than others. They are based around a map from Warcraft III and basically involve you using different kinds of defense towers to stop an ever advancing string of enemies. They can get pretty addictive and are a fun way to waste some time, here are a couple worth trying out.

Flash Element TD is a pretty good tower defense game, especially to start out with. It’s fairly straight forward, as you start with 3 basic tower types (which you can upgrade individually) and the new tower types come along at a steady pace, plus the layout gives each tower a couple of chances at hitting the enemies on their way around.

Onslaught is another tower defense game, #1 on some people’s list. Although it may look simple, this is the next step up from games like Flash Element TD. There is a lot more course layouts to choose from and the upgrade system gives you a lot more choice. Not only is there more types of advanced towers to use but placing certain types and amounts of towers next to each other results in big damage bonuses, as you can see on the Combo list. Games of Onslaught can go on for ages, so see how far you can get and compare your score to the High Score list.

http://free.grisoft.com/
AVG Anti-Virus is one of the top Anti-Virus programs out there. Their free version, for home and non-commercial use, is a great alternative to the paid anti-virus programs that are available. It comes with all the standard features of a good anti-virus system;

• Automatic Updates
• Real-time protection for active and downloaded files
• Scheduler for regular scans
• A virus ‘vault’ for handling infected files

It also uses very little system resources, unlike a lot of anti-virus programs that are bloated, running AVG will not slow you down at all. Once installed, AVG runs in the system tray, protecting you from the latest virus threats, without any extra hassle. You are notified when updates are installed for you and any results from completed system scans are displayed.

So if you’re looking for a new anti-virus program or need to replace your current one when the subscription runs out try AVG, the free version is available here.

http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html
This is a cool flash game where you use your mouse to move up 16 levels by clicking up & down stairs. It may sound simple but getting to the 16th level can be a real challenge but is a lot of fun and the gameplay is a bit hard to explain, so you’ll just have to play it to see what I mean. Download.com mentioned this as one of the best flash games to come out so far in 2008, ofcourse that’s only been a week but hopefully that just means there is plenty more good games still to come. Stay tuned.

Note: High score so far, 184.