Swoopo.com is the next generation in online auctions. Unlike eBay where your average Joe posts items for sale, Swoopo acts as the middleman between manufacturers and suppliers. As such, the products they auction are new, have warranties, and can even be returned for a refund of the purchase price.

Although the product selection is limited when compared to a site like eBay, there are quite a few options in the consumer electronics category -- laptops, monitors, GPS units, MP3 players, iPhones, etc.

This plugin allows you to dynamically (i.e. at the time when a page is generated) replace code and text from themes and other plugins with code and text of your choosing before a page is delivered to a user's browser.

There's been a lot of media coverage about spam. And despite the government getting involved and the various filtering tools, I think the spammers are winning.

Last November, I recommended a free FTP server software package called FileZilla Server. A companion program to this is the FileZilla FTP client which is also free.

I remember Microsoft Windows first becoming popular around version 3.1. Back then it was possible to move an application from one installation of Windows to another simply by finding all the application files and copying them. On occasion it was necessary to also find some configuration settings that were in shared files, but this was still relatively easy to do. Then, Microsoft introduced the Registry. What a colossal blunder that was.

ZoomInfo is the latest people finder search engine that I've come across. As with other such people finders, this one requires a fee to access advanced features, but the basic features are free for everyone to use. I don't find the advanced features of value, but I'm also not in the people-finding business.

If you've already decided that you want to build a web site for your business, then you should also start thinking about how you're going to manage changes and updates to keep the site relevant which will keep customers coming back.

I recently migrated all of the non-blog content on this site to WordPress. That's right. I'm now using WordPress as a content management system (CMS). WordPress by no means competes with the big guns in the industry, but for relatively simple sites and even those with multiple authors, WordPress is incredible. However, for me it was missing one feature both in the core feature set and in any of the many plugins available.

If you're in the business of creating web sites, one of the more tedious tasks is testing your web site with different combinations of web browsers and operating systems. In many cases, the testing cycle needs to be repeated over and over again until you're blue in the face. Fortunately, there's a really useful online tool, BrowserShots, that makes things easier. While BrowserShots doesn't go so far as to test functionality, it does simplify the the process of ensuring a design looks consistent regardless of browser and that a long is a huge timesaver.

Much has been written about the perils of browsing the Internet. This includes great concern about privacy, but most people don't know what to do about such concerns. Or possibly, these people are unwilling to pay for software to protect their privacy. I fall in the middle somewhere.

I remember a long time ago that I looked in to how one would make a Visual Basic application run as a Windows service. I didn't actually need to do it at the time, but I was curious. Well, today, I needed to do it. Apparently it's a bit of a big deal because of the threading model used by Visual Basic.

The philosophy behind portable applications appeals to so much that I spend a lot of time evaluating replacements for the non-portable software that I use. Most recently I decided to give Mozilla's Thunderbird a try to see if it was good enough to replace Outlook. Sadly this turned out to not be the case.

I maintain several web sites all of which make use of WordPress for managing and publishing content. WordPress is quite feature-rich out of the box, but it becomes even more powerful when you install some of the hundreds of add-ons that have been created for it. And when add-ons don't solve a particular need, there's always the possibility of changing the code of the WordPress core. The problem, however, with something that can be customized is that I sometimes lose track of my changes and forget to apply them to all of my sites. Fortunately, for me, there are file comparison tools that make tracking down differences easy.

So I'm getting ready to deploy an application to a client's QA team and I've decided that I'm not happy with the Packaging and Deployment Wizard included with Visual Studio 6.0. I guess technically it does the job, but it doesn't do it very well and making changes is a hassle.

There's not much you can do about your computer becoming "cluttered". This clutter eventually leads to sluggish performance and possibly even errors when trying to perform everyday tasks. My favorite PC cleaner to date has been the free registry cleaner CCleaner. And while it remains my favorite, it now has some competition.

WordPress is the best blogging software. In addition to having a solid core with many features, it also includes functionality that allows anyone to improve it through the use of add-ons or plugins. From what I've seen there are hundreds of such plugins and possibly even thousands. The following is a list of the ones that I find the most useful. Do you have a favorite?

This post goes hand-in-hand with a previous post where I list some of my favorite Internet related tools. In the following paragraphs I briefly describe some of the spam fighting tools I use.

The Internet isn't perfect and if you're a heavy user, some of its oddities become annoying over time. Fortunately, some smart people out there have written some really useful software to help with day-to-day activities. Here's my list of favorites.

I spend far too much time looking for software that works exactly the way I want it too. I'd probably have a lot more time on my hands if I just settled every now and again, but that doesn't seem to work for me. One of my more recent Quests for Perfect Software (tm) was for an RSS feed reader.

In recent posts I've been blathering on and on about portable apps and even went so far as to put together a description of how to make WordPress portable. I continue to discover useful programs related to taking applications on the road with me via a USB drive.

In a recent post I wrote about the benefits of switching to portable applications that don't require installation in order to run -- a feature particularly useful when traveling or using a locked down computer. But the readily available suite of such applications wasn't enough for me. I also wanted to be able to make my WordPress blogs portable. And I wanted to be able to update my blogs while not being connected to the Internet. It turned out that this wasn't as easy to do as I expected.

Back in 2003 I started to use an Outlook plug-in called SpamBayes to filter spam. For over two years this plug-in worked beautifully behind the scenes filtering most spam with next to no false positives. But recently, its performance has become less impressive.

Back in October, I wrote about how people were dealing with the many passwords they had to remember. Although several programs exist to help with password issues, it wasn't until today that I learned about a free, open source password manager program.

It is a harsh truth that there are people out there who are trying to cause damage to our computers or simply use them for their own purposes without our knowledge. Because of such people, it has become necessary to arm ourselves with a variety of programs to protect our computers from viruses, spyware, and whatever else may be created. While there are certainly many good commercial programs to choose from, it can get rather expensive once you get roped in to the yearly license fees and product upgrades that software companies use to remain profitable.

In previous posts I've extolled the virtues of WordPress for running blogs and FeedBurner for managing RSS feeds. The problem, as I recently discovered, is that getting FeedBurner to work with WordPress when your web server is Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) isn't as straightforward as one would like.

I try to stick to writing about software that I use a lot myself. I figure that's the best way to make sure that my recommendations are meaningful. But sometimes I come across a program that I know some people will like, something that I genuinely feel is worth using, but that I have no interest in myself. Such is the case with the free Fresh UI v7.5 program from Fresh Devices.

I just started using a free browser plugin from McAfee that I believe holds great promise. It's called SiteAdvisor and its purpose is to warn users of potentially unsafe web sites by marking search results with a green checkmark for safe, yellow exclamation point for dubious, and red x for unsafe. It even provides these indicators for the ads that appear on Google, MSN, and Yahoo. And while those two things alone would be impressive, the plug-in doesn't stop there. It will also give you real-time indicators of the site you're currently on should you happen to get there from a link rather than a search engine.

Recently, during a lunch with co-workers, the LinkedIn site came up as a topic of conversation. And once we got past the usual jokes that people often make about those of us who use such services, I began to think about just what the benefits are of maintaining a professional profile and network online. Here's what I've come up with.

There are two free project management software packages that are worth looking in to.

It seems to me that Adobe's Acrobat product is falling victim to the Bloated Software Syndrome. The reader used to be a quick-loading application that made viewing PDF documents effortless.

A while back I discovered a very useful free registry cleaner. This program was fairly easy to use and never seemed to remove registry entries that it shouldn't. A recent blog post from Email Battles describes a more thorough registry cleaner that I've just tried out.

There's a good chance that when you buy a CD burner, you'll get free CD burning software with it. However, this bundled software may not be as intuitive to use or as feature-rich as you would like. At least, that's what motivated me to try out some of the freeware available for download on the Internet.

The constant writing, deleting, and creating of files that occurs on a hard drive results in bits and pieces of files being scattered in different locations. This means that the CPU in a computer must wait until the hard drive finds and re-assembles all the pieces before it can continue working which can impact overall computer performance. That is why using a defragmentation (or defrag) program is important. And continuing in the spirit of this blog and previous recommendations for freeware, I'm going to cover two free defrag software options that most Windows users have available to them.

It seems the longer you have a particular e-mail address the more spam you will get. At the same time, the longer you have an e-mail address the more likely you'll want to keep it since you would otherwise have to get all your contacts to update their address books. Having attempted to get people to update their address books, I can confirm that this requires a lot of patience and time. The alternative is to find a way to deal with the onslaught of spam.

Document management for any project of significant size can quickly become a nightmare. While things may start off fine, it doesn't take long for e-mails to follow divergent paths; spreadsheets and Word documents to get passed around with no one quite sure who has the most recent version; and meeting notes to be stored on someone's machine who then goes on vacation. That's where a wiki comes in. A wiki is a form of collaboration software that solves all of the previously mentioned problems yet remains simple enough for non-technical employees to use.

I was recently asked to build a simple web site. From what I was able to determine, the site was going to be content-based and it wouldn't require a complicated navigation system. I didn't want to get in to building a custom solution that would be flexible, but would require more time than I was willing to invest in the project. So I turned to WordPress.

The engine that powers this blog is custom built. I wrote the code a couple of years ago because I couldn't find any thing out on the web that was flexible enough for my needs. And then along came WordPress, a PHP-based blogging tool that is flexible, customizable, and free of charge. I highly recommend this software for anyone that wants to set up a blog. Here are some highlights.

I once read some survey results that indicated Windows Notepad was the most popular text editor used by web developers and coders. I found the results difficult to believe since Notepad isn't particularly good at doing the sorts of things that developers want. It lacks even the basic feature of multiple undos. However, there's no question that in a pinch, Notepad is quicker and easier than launching many of the alternatives.

The music industry's efforts to stamp out music piracy are well-documented so I'm not going to go over them here. However, Sony's recent efforts to push their digital rights management (DRM) software on users seems to have crossed the line of what consumers should accept as good business practices. Sony has decided that it's OK to automatically install copy-protection software on your PC when you insert one of their music CDs. There are written, but vague, disclaimers about the copy-protection software, but it is otherwise installed without your knowledge. What's more, it is installed in such a way that you are very unlikely to detect its existence and then you'll have to jump through many hoops to uninstall it.

Data security shouldn't just be a concern for corporations. I think everyone should take steps to guard their data especially since more and more of the really important stuff exists in digital form. Even if you feel confident that your data is secure behind a firewall or maybe not accessible from the Internet, there is still the mundane, but ever present risk that your home will be burglarized. And aside from the jewelry you keep in the cookie jar, thieves are going to take your computer. If you're lucky, they'll go after the quick bucks by selling your machine. However, some may decide to see what you've got stashed on your hard drive. Social security number? Bank information? Stored logins and passwords for your favorite e-commerce sites?

It's typical for computer users to install more and more programs the longer they use their computers. There's just so much interesting software out there that it is inevitable that you'll find some of them. The problem is that many software makers think that their software is so great that you'll want it to start each and every time you start Windows. This is a silly assumption. And it also means that you're probably wasting valuable system resources to programs you don't use all the time.

I recently wanted to backup a large number of files while traveling. These files also happened to be rather large (hi-resolution photos) so simply e-mailing them to myself wasn't going to work. This wasn't the first time I've wanted to send files to my home PC while on the road, but it was the first time I decided to find a good solution to the problem.

If you've been diligent, you've installed a firewall and anti-virus programs on your computer. You should also be running a spyware and adware removal tool regularly. If you don't have any of these, be sure to check out my recommended list of free firewall, free spyware removal, and free anti-virus tools.

It seems to me that the performance of Windows-based machines decreases over time. Kind of like a car's engine except you'd think an operating, without any moving parts, wouldn't degrade. This slow-down, as far as I can tell, is due to junk that makes its way on to your machine as part of the many software installs/uninstalls/upgrades/patches that are part of what it means to run Windows. This junk seems to build up to the point where it takes more and more time for applications to load.

It is a harsh truth that there are people out there who are trying to cause damage to our computers or simply use them for their own purposes without our knowledge. Because of such people, it has become necessary to arm ourselves with a variety of programs to protect our computers from viruses, spyware, and whatever else may be created. While there are certainly many good commercial programs to choose from, it can get rather expensive once you get roped in to the yearly license fees and product upgrades that software companies use to remain profitable.

It is a harsh truth that there are people out there who are trying to cause damage to our computers or simply use them for their own purposes without our knowledge. Because of such people, it has become necessary to arm ourselves with a variety of programs to protect our computers from viruses, spyware, and whatever else may be created. While there are certainly many good commercial programs to choose from, it can get rather expensive once you get roped in to the yearly license fees and product upgrades that software companies use to remain profitable.

I'm now advocating a switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. I made the switch a month or so ago primarily because I was getting tired of the numerous security holes being found in Internet Explorer.