Here’s an easy to use, simple to understand, budgeting program that won’t break the bank (as it’s free!). It’s called PearBudget and it can help you manage your finances a little better.

All it takes is three easy steps…

You simply enter an estimate of what you think you’ll spend during your yearly budget, this only takes a few minutes once a year. Next you hold onto your receipts and record your expenses, you only need to do this once or twice a month. Lastly you click “analyse” and it tells you how you’ve done!

While PearBudget isn’t a piece of software as such. (All it is is an Excel spreadsheet, made into a template for entering financial details.) It’s simple and effective to use!

At the moment its an .XLS file (Opens with Excel or OpenOffice) that you have to download but they are working on an online version and you can sign up for the beta of this or download the offline version, all by going here!

This is a free online service that lets you send a text message via the internet to be delivered to your or a friends phone at a later date. This can be very useful to remind yourself or someone you know to do something, attend an event, etc. Anything you may need a reminder of sometime in the future.

At the moment the service they provide is only available in the US and with selected canadian cell providers.
You simply visit the website and input the cellphone number you want the message delivered to, the date and time (it will match your computers timezone) and the message. Here it is!

VirusTotal is a totally free online service that can scan a file for viruses and malware. The difference with this is it scans using several well known virus scanning engines such as the following:

• Aladdin (eSafe)
• ALWIL (Avast! Antivirus)
• Authentium (Command Antivirus)
• Avira (AntiVir)
• Bit9 (FileAdvisor)
• Cat Computer Services (Quick Heal)
• ClamAV (ClamAV)
• CA Inc. (Vet)
• Doctor Web, Ltd. (DrWeb)
• Eset Software (NOD32)
• ewido networks (ewido anti-malware)
• Fortinet (Fortinet)
• FRISK Software (F-Prot)
• F-Secure (F-Secure)
• Grisoft (AVG)
• Hacksoft (The Hacker)
• Ikarus Software (Ikarus)
• Kaspersky Lab (AVP)
• McAfee (VirusScan)
• Microsoft (Malware Protection)
• Norman (Norman Antivirus)
• Panda Software (Panda Platinum)
• Prevx (Prevx1)
• Softwin (BitDefender)
• Sophos (SAV)
• Sunbelt Software (Antivirus)
• Symantec (Norton Antivirus)
• UNA Corp (UNA)
• VirusBlokAda (VBA32)
• VirusBuster (VirusBuster)

You can simply upload your file and they’ll email you back a report. Alternatively you can follow the instructions to email them your file and they’ll also send you a report. This service can only scan one file at a time that is sent to it, but the fact that it use multiple scanners makes it far superior to just using one scanner. Definitely worth bookmarking in case you ever have a suspicious file or are just the ultra paranoid type! Click Here for the homepage.

This is a cool website that shows many statistics about the world. But the interesting thing is the way it does it.

The goal of this project is to use the map projections known as cartograms to depict comparisons and relations between different areas of the world. Effectively showing a graphical representation of various worldwide statistics such as population, production, health, pollution, etc.

As of me writing this, the site has 294 maps in total on various statistics. Its an interesting way of viewing various aspects of our world as it resizes the world map view to reflect the various statistics, this is much easier to understand by looking at the website, so go check it out.

SightSpeed is a free video and voice call program that allows you to make free pc to pc voice and video calls over your broadband Internet connection.

It also allows you to make calls to regular landline phones and cell phones (similar to what you can already do in programs like Skype). Those calls do cost you money, but the costs are still lower than from a regular home phone. You can buy “phone out” credits quickly by credit card. These credits are prepaid, so you need to purchase them in advance if you plan to use SightSpeed to make calls to regular phones.

At this time you can only make video calls to other SightSpeed users, pc to pc (also supports Mac).

Its a useful tool for anyone who needs to videochat with colleagues or friends and the set up is easy, but they even have video tutorials in case you need them. Check it out at the website here, for the download and more details.

This is a cool “graffiti” program for those moments of creative boredom. Ever felt like getting out a can of spraypaint, shaking it up, and creating an urban masterpiece of spraypaint art across your computer screen? Maybe thats just me, but if you answered yes, then you might get some fun outta Desktop Graffitist.

Don’t worry, it washes right off when you’re done or if you make a mistake! ; ) So try it out and unleash your creative side, all without breaking any vandalism laws and without the fumes! Its free and you can download it right over at the homepage here.

McAfee AVERT Stinger is a small virus scanner specialised in hunting the viruses listed by McAfee. This is a very lightweight yet powerful antivirus application that can even be installed on a USB memory stick for quick antivirus scanning when on the go.

Just launch it, select your directory, press the scan now button, and wait for the results to come. The application is very basic but it can scan self-extracting executables and compressed files and will automatically remove viruses it comes across. To find out which viruses it recognizes just click on the list button.

You can’t update the virus list in the program, but instead you need to download the latest version of the program from time to time so that your scanner doesn’t become out of date and can still detect the latest threats. This is a small yet useful program to use as part of your computer security, especially if you have a USB memory stick and use strange computers. Its free and you can get it here!

Although there are many image manipulation and photo editing programs out there. Some of us like finding a cheaper alternative that does the job well. Photofiltre Studio is a superb image and photo editor that will enable you to touch up your digital photos, add effects to images, quickly edit and grab sections of photos and it will handle your scanning and other image importing requirements.Best of all, it’s designed and presented in a well designed interface, along with a nice toolbar. As this program is plugin based, you can program and create your own modules or include some of the available modules, such as the red eye corrector and others, it also includes some cool filters. For a full list of its cool features that are too numerous for me to go into detail about here, go check out it out here.

This is a small application to help you find out what those strangely named processes listed in Task Manager are really up to. The usual Windows Task Manager tells you what applications and processes are running, but some process names aren’t very clear to the average computer user. Process Explorer helps you get to the bottom of things by digging down to see which application started a process and which resources that app is currently using.

This can be a big help when you’re trying to figure out which background processes you can safely shut down, it can also help developers sniff out memory leaks. It can even help sniff out spyware, too. Now comes with Vista and 64 bit processor compatibility.

Check it out.

This is a useful online tool i found that web developers and designers will find worth having in their bookmarks. It allows you to see how your site fits and looks on different web browsers and different screen resolutions. You simply type in the url of the site you want to test out and select the screen resolution you want to see it at.

Then it pops up a separate window which has been resized to the size it would appear if viewed in the chosen resolution and browser type.

Go check it out to see exactly what i mean. Certainly anyone who designs websites will find this a very useful tool.