Free Website Tools
Free Website Tools

Most of us don’t mind giving up a small part of our privacy for our personal protection (airport scanners), or a good deal (loyalty shopping programs). We even voluntarily sign up for social networking sites that track every move we make and then sell aggregate information to marketers. But what about all the times we’re on the web and are not really sure about what search and browsing activities our ISP, or other company or agency is tracking?

(Let’s be realistic: the only way to not be tracked in any way online is to not go on online at all. Actually, you’d better leave your computer turned off, because many applications and programs on your computer automatically check for software updates and also track and record meta data. )

Tor is free software and an open network that claims to help you defend against a form of network surveillance that “threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships. It prevents your traffic from being analyzed by distributing your transactions over several places on the internet, so no single point can link you to your destination.” Maybe not every ISP uses traffic monitoring services – do you know if yours does? Even if you think it doesn’t, it’s a good idea to never search for your social security number and name, or passwords with any personal info. And if you’re a Tor user, please let us know how the service is working for you and what you had to give up to use it. In other words, what are the pros and cons of using Tor?

More free security resources…

SimpleMachines’ SMF is a “free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes. Its powerful custom made template engine puts you in full control of the lay-out of your message board and with our unique SSI – or Server Side Includes – function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other.”

If you’d like to give a visual XML editor a try, you may like the free Vex editor. Vex provides a wordprocessor-like interface and is best suited for “document-style” XML documents such as XHTML and DocBook rather than “data-style” XML documents.

OK, the products on this site aren’t free, but many are available at a substantial discount, or for only a small administration fee. Choose from over 600 tech products that might be useful for your non-profit.

Techsoup.org offers all kinds of hardware, software, security products, hosted applications, credit card processing etc. Products on Techsoup are donated, or refurbished and are ‘provided by corporate and nonprofit technology partners.’ For example, we’ve recently spotted Norton Internet Security 2009 (CD) for $15, or Office Professional Plus 2007 (Includes Software Assurance) for $20. Not free, but a great deal!

NVU is an open source WYSIWYG HTML editor. This web authoring system is not as powerful as Dreamweaver, but it does a pretty good job. NVU also keeps your code neatly organized, unlike some other free web authoring programs.

Nobody denies that Adobe Photoshop is a great program but it’s pretty expensive. There are other graphics editing programs and one of them, the open source GIMP is sometimes called “Photoshop killer” because it is a real alternative to Photoshop.

Are you tired of your current software program, are there no more upgrades available, or is it too expensive to upgrade again? Use AlternativeTo to find good software to replace your old one. AlternativeTo will give you suggestions on alternatives. The site is well organized, with sections for Windows, Mac and Linux applications, and with each application having its own category.

“Think of it like forever evolving blog posts about good alternatives to the software that you’re not satisfied with.” The “blog posts” are generated by visitors through suggestions, comments and votes.

Image and digital photo editing software that supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and more. For Windows only.