MANAGE YOUR MONEY

Mint.com:  Manage all of your checking and credit card accounts accounts at one time on this comprehensive secure financial site.

STORE FILES ON LINE

Drop Box: Store up to 2 GB in this free tool. You can access your files on-line, from an I-Phone, Color Nook, I-Pad or what ever device you have.  When you update one site, it synchronizes with all devices.

ORGANIZER – TO DO LIST

Wunderlist: A to do list that is very user friendly.  It’s “in the cloud” so you can access it from many devices.  I used it on my laptop, I-phone, and Color Nook.  When you delete an item, it saves it at the bottom of the page. Any changes made synchronize with all of your devices.

UPLOAD PICTURES/MAKE PHOTO BOOKS

Blurb: An easy to use photo book creator! You design your book with your pictures using their software, upload it, choose and size and style of your book, anywhere from a large coffee table book to a small “brag” book, submit, and in a few days you have a wonderful remembrance of that trip or event!

PICTURE/CLIPART SEARCH

Bing.com/images: This is my favorite site for finding pictures for the website or other projects.  You can specify what you are looking for (try: golf cake) and search. You’ll be amazed at how many golf cakes come up! You can specify size (I usually choose large), Layout, color (or black and white), style (photographs/clipart), and people (I usually don’t change this).  Once you click on the picture, click on “see full size image” and right click to save to your desktop.

WEBSITE DESIGN

WordPress offers free blogging software (WordPress.com is best for beginners, WordPress.org is designed more for experienced computer users).  I use Godaddy.com to host my site.  For approximately $80/per year, I can have as many websites as I want under my primary one at no extra cost.  The technical staff (I understand they have 500 on the phone at any one time) are professional and helpful, and are all from this country!

SEARCH TOOLS:

  • Google: The most popular search tool, with Google Maps, Google Earth, and many other features.
  • Bing: Microsoft’s new search tool. It will be hard to match Google, but it is supposed to be really good for booking travel, and I also like their image search.

TOP 100 WEBSITES

The best websites: Updated hourly, organized by category.

FREE VIRUS AND MALWARE PROTECTION

  • Microsoft Security Essentials:  A free program from Microsoft that includes virus and spyware/malware protection.
  • Malwarebytes: An excellent free tool to remove malware from your computer – the free version is very effective.

CHECK VIRUS HOAXES (don’t pass them on to others!)

  • Symantec: Look under A-Z Threats and Risks or click on the search tab and type in part of the message.
  • Snopes: Again, use search tool to easily identify hoaxes received by email. Some emails mention Snopes having verified this is real, when in fact it is a hoax.

REFERENCE SITES

  • Zillow: Put in an address and this site will give you the estimated value of the property based on comparables. It also shows price trends of the home as well as surrounding communities
  • Reference Desk: Lot of interesting facts, including current news, dictionary, weather, games…you really have to open this site to see all of the things it offers!
  • Newspapers on Line: A part of Reference Desk above. On this site, you can read newspapers from the USA and worldwide.
  •  Look up zip codes: Easy to use site to find zip codes.

MOVIES AND TV

  • Internet Movie Database: Very popular place to review movies from 1900 to present – even reviews movies about to be released.
  • TV Guide On-Line: Search by type of program, i.e., movies. Specify your local cable company listings as your default.
  • Netflix:  The newest technology is to “stream” movies to your high definition TV.  I brought a “Roku” at Amazon ($100) and now pay just $7.99 to Netflix per month and can watch hundreds of  instant watch movies, as well as entire series of popular TV shows.  They are downloaded through my wireless internet connection, and very quickly.

OTHER INTERESTING SITES

  • Google Earth: This is really fun…download the program and “fly” by satellite to anywhere in the world. You can even see the roof of your own home.
  • Google Maps: This site has clear, easy to rad maps, including a satellite view. You can also find places of local interest, pizza, gas stations, etc.

FIND PEOPLE

  • Switchboard:  A good place to find information found in white and yellow pages of your phone book. You can also do a reverse directory find if you have only the phone number and want to find the caller’s name.

TRAVEL

  • Trip Advisor: This is an excellent site to research the quality of hotels, restaurants, etc. It includes user reviews and ranking according to popularity for each site you choose.
  • Hipmunk.com - Flight search.  Searches from lowest to highest price, shows nonstop flights, etc.
  • Bing: Microsoft search tool. The strongest feature is travel, comparing prices from various airlines, hotels, etc. The results are concise and easy to read.
  • Fodors: An excellent tool for looking up restaurants. You can just type the name of the restaurant in the Search box. You can also make reservations using OpenTable.com.
  • City Search: This automatically takes you to your own city, but you can click on “change city or neighborhood” to change this! It rates popular restaurants, shopping, etc. in your city.

SHOPPING

  • Bookfinder: Buy used books on line (also new books), find the best price, and buy directly from individual bookstores. You can find that book you are looking for here!

COMPARISON PRICING

  • Pricegrabber: My favorite site to comparison shop, including product reviews, lowest prices, ratings of sellers.
  • Epinons: Have an opinion? Then share it! That’s the concept behind this site, where consumers share information and experiences about everything from DVD players to travel destinations.

FOOD AND RECIPES

  • Epicurious: Click on “recipes” to select recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines and others. In advanced search you can specify ingredients, type of food. etc. Recipes are rated with “forks” and recipes often have user reviews, including how they would change the recipe for their own use.
  • Food Network: A good site to find recipes from TV cooking shows.

OTHER UTILITIES

Belarc: Download a free program to analyze your computer. It will give you a detailed description of hardware, software, and security configurations of your computer. A great tool also for saving product ID numbers for your software.