Unfortunately, Adobe is very proud of their Adobe Acrobat PDF creation software. And when I say “proud”, I mean “expensive”. I’m sure their software is very good, but for those of us who just have an occasional desire to create a pdf file, it’s hard to justify.

I found a FREE software utility called CutePDF that let’s you create pdf files as easily as you can print. When installed, it acts just like a printer. You can go into Microsoft Office or any other program that allows you to choose a printer, and “print” directly to a pdf file. It’s that easy.

The software is for Windows only.

But have you heard about GMail for Domains? Now you can use GMail with your own domain name (like support@TheCompanyWeb.com) ! And you can have up to FIFTY (50) email accounts. Each Email account can have over 6 GIGabytes of storage. You can have distribution lists, forwarding, catchall address, spam filter, vacation responders…the whole shabang! And the price? FREE!

Why would you host your own mail server when you can have over 300 GIGabyes (50 x 6) of storage for FREE? Some Hosting companies want to charge you $16 or more per year per mailbox! And their max size is only 500 MegaBytes! ( I’m Not Saying who…  )

GMail has one of the best SPAM filters I’ve seen. Almost none of the SPAM gets through, but it very rarely calls my good email SPAM. Also included is virus and phishing protection. 

And, of course, you can search through your email with the Google search engine.

Unlike, MSN, Yahoo, or AOL, Gmail does not add advertising to the end of your emails, either. That looks very unprofessional for a business.

And, even with all of this, Gmail is only part of what you get FREE. Google Apps for Domains also includes integrated contact lists, calendars, documents, web pages if you want to take advantage of those also.

Is it reliable? Google only promises 99.99% uptime for it’s enterprise (over 50 users) version, but I’ve used Gmail for Domains for about 2 years, and it’s never been down when I needed it.

It’s hard to go wrong with this one. Check it out.

How many passwords and user ids do you have? How do you keep track of them all? You’re not using the same passwords everywhere are you?

Doing so much of my business on the web, I have accumulated hundreds of passwords. There is no way I could remember all of them. I certainly don’t want to keep written lists around for someone to find. I used to keep a spreadsheet encrypted with PGP, but that was very cumbersome.

Enter Password Safe, a FREE software utility for Windows. This program allows you to enter and organize all of your userids and passwords into a “database”. You can also enter urls and notes. Password Safe keeps all of this information safely encrypted using the Blowfish algorithm. All you have to remember is a single password which is the combination to the safe.

What happens if something goes wrong with the “database”? Of course, that could always happen. Password Safe minimizes this possiblity by creating encrypted backups before each change and keeps a configurable number of backups. I have used Password Safe for over a year, upgraded twice, and never had a single problem.

Password Safe shows catagorized groups of your passwords. It allows you to right-click and copy a userid or password to the clipboard, then right-click and browse to the url. It makes it very easy to access multiple passworded systems.

Give it a shot. I think you’ll like it.

I highly recommend WordPress software for setting up almost any kind of web site. Orginally released five years ago (today) as version 0.7, it is now at version 2.5.1. This FREE software allows you to easily create a website with minimal effort. For the purist, WordPress is blogging software, but it has gone way beyond that.

The software is very easy to install and configure. In fact, a lot of shared hosting companies have a one-click installation! WordPress is written in PHP and runs very well in inexpensive shared Linux web hosting accounts (more about that later).

After installing WordPress, you can then upload and configure a “theme”, which customizes the look and feel of the website. There are thousands of themes available, most of them are FREE.

You say you don’t want a blog. You want a “real” website? Not a problem. WordPress can be used as a CMS (Content Management System), providing the structure and administrative functions. This allows you to focus on the ever-important content of your website.

WordPress is even coded with software “hooks” which allow third-parties to create “plugins”  that can provide all kinds of functionality. Like themes, there are thousands of plugins available, most of them free. Some examples of the functions that plugins can provide are: showing the most recent comments, displaying a list of eBay items, creating a sitemap…the list goes on and on. Plugins are as easy to install as themes. Simply upload the plugin to your website, enable it on the Admin screen, and set any needed parameters.

Whatever kind of website you want to create, WordPress puts you way ahead of the development curve. Ok, you ask “what about support?”. There are some very active WordPress support forums. The last time I had a question, I got an answer on the forum within about an hour.