Useful Websites
Miscellanious
Google Sketchup - Google Sketchup is an easy-to-use 3D modeling software that enables you to create 3D models of houses, buildings and many other objects, using an array of drag and drop tools and materials in a WYSIWYG editing environment. You can design your objects with rectangles, circles, ovals, arcs, lines and freehand drawings, and use a unique push/pull tool to add dimension to 2D objects. The program offers a library of building material patterns (brick, concrete, wood, glass, carpet etc.) and colors that you can use to add a realistic look to your creation.

MWSnap - MWSnap is a small yet powerful program for taking screen captures of a desktop, an active window,menu, or a specified part of the screen. The program supports BMP, JPG, TIFF,PNG and GIF formats, with user selected color depth and quality settings. It also includes a zooming tool, a screen ruler and a color picker as well as system wide hotkeys and preset selection sizes.

A Ruler for Windows - A Ruler for Windows is an on-screen pixel ruler, that allows you to perform measurements on your screen. It comes with to skins that resemble a wood ruler and a transparent plastic ruler. You can customize the length of the ruler, use it vertical or horizontal, and even magnify the screen up to 4x for more accurate measurements. A Ruler for Windows only supports pixel units

Colorscheme Designer 3 - A web page where you can create color schemes for graphics or web pages. You really need to see this page. EXCELENT





KompoZer - KompoZer is a complete web development system, that offers visual (WYSIWYG) editing of web pages without the need for HTML coding. It integrates a variety of features, including real-time preview, visual tag display, FTP uploading, site projects, spell checking, CSS editor and more. You can create web pages by simply dragging elements into place. It offers a tabbed interface with quick access to frequently used tags

Google Earth - Google Earth allows you to view global imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. Just type in the address or location, and watch the interactive 3D navigate to that location, zooming in to street level (you can actually see cars on the street). Along with the detailed satellite images, you can pan and zoom, mark locations, and activate layers that show points of interests like banks, schools, restaurants shopping areas and much more. In addition to the standard satellite view, Google Earth also includes a tilt feature that allows you to render the map in a realistic 3D perspective that shows elevations levels. Additional features include on-screen measuring, emailing and printing of map views, personal places and more. The latest version also allows you to explore stars, constellations, galaxies and more.





infoplease - great place to look things up

Library Spot - another great place to look things up

USA.gov - everything US government

Project Gutenberg - free public domain books

Librivox - free public domain audio books
Graphics and Paint
Multimedia
Office
Our Pick of Great Free Software



OpenOffice - Alternative to MS Office with a Word compatible word processor, a complete Excel compatible spread sheet program and a Power Point like presentation software.

Scribus - Scribus is powerful desktop publishing software that helps you create great looking documents of all kinds. It also comes with a lot of support options to help you achieve the best result.

FontXplorer - Font Xplorer allows you to find, manage, and print your fonts. It has the ability to browse both installed and noninstalled fonts from disk.

Adobe Digital Editions - Adobe® Digital Editions software offers an engaging way to view and manage eBooks and other digital publications. Use it to download and purchase digital content, which can be read both online and offline.

Calibre - calibre is an e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features such as Library Management, E-book conversion, Syncing to e-book reader devices, Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form, Comprehensive e-book viewer, Content server for online access to your book collection.

Sigil - Sigil is a handy utility that was designed in order to help you easily create and edit (wysiwyg) your own personalized e-books in no time. It is designed to edit books in ePub format.




Audacity - You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, and MP3 files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings. Built-in effects include Bass Boost, Wahwah, and Noise Removal, and it also supports VST plug-in effects.

Windows Movie Maker - With Windows Live Movie Maker, you can quickly turn your photos and videos into polished movies. Add special effects, transitions, sound, and captions to help tell your story. And sharing with friends and family is easy—whether on the web, a computer, TV, mobile device, or a DVD.

Quick Media Converter - Quick Media Converter enables you to convert between most audio and video formats, including AVI, DVD, Quicktime, Flash, Xvid, DivX, MPEG, MP3, WMA, MP4, 3GP and many others. You can convert multiple files (of different formats) in a single process and optionally customize the output settings in Expert Mode

Deep Burner - DeepBurner is a CD/DVD burning software that lets you create Data Cds, Bootable CDs, and Audio CDs as well as data DVDs. In addition, it lets you burn ISO files, create ISO images and includes a tool to create and print CD/DVD labels, and also lets you design an auto start menu to launch documents or programs from the CD.




Picasa - Picasa is a powerful, yet easy to use and attractive tools suite to manage and organize your digital images and photos. It offers one simple place to organize, edit, and share your pictures. After installing, the software can automatically scan your drive(s) for images and intelligently sorts them into virtual photo albums, ready for you to customize and organize (your original images are not moved).

Pixia - Pixia is the English version of a popular Japanese painting and retouching software for full color graphics. It supports mask, layer and many other editing functions. You can use your own customized brush tips and even use an image file as a brush tip to create unique effects. Its user-friendly interface is suitable for beginners as well as experts. Pixia supports the most common editing techniques and presents a user friendly interface.