WEBTOP
WebTop.com LTD
3 Agents & tickers
4 stars
http://www.webtop.com/search/vanilla/accessregister.htm
Cute AND effective research tool
Actually a very interesting little tool both in presentation and content. Webtop can be a free floating little ball on your desktop. It opens like an audio/mp3 player an opens a search window. What it does then is really interesting in that it just does not search the Web, it searches for news content via Moreover.com
Very handy for answering reference questions. Depth of data is quite surprising

YAPS
PDA Street.com -Palm Boulevard
3 Agents & tickers
1 star
http://www.palmblvd.com/software/pc/Yaps-2000-11-7-palm-pc.html
Password security
Yaps (Yet Another Password Safe) stores your passwords and other confidential information on your Palm, using 256-bit encryption. Access to the safe is password protected with automatic lock-out when the device switches off, or you go to another application. Other features include ease of use, import and export to Memo, masked or hidden records.
Overall a better than nothing way of carrying your passwords and accounts around with you on the Palm. Importing from better encryption programs is comma delimited with # for record separators. No real encryption other than a password protected file.

YOGI
Wall Street Journal
3 Agents & tickers
2 stars
http://wsj.com
Business news from your WSJ Yogi
Installs it's way into your startup file so you get to watch it load up on business news from the Wall Street Journal. It does however allow you track huge amounts of company information without having to go look for it.
Find something you like? You probably can't open it unless you are a subscriber to DJ Interactive. Welcome to the future

AREA CALCULATOR
Corey Kessler Columbus Dispatch
4 Calculators
5 stars
http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2001/internettoolsjh/ToolsCalculators/area.html
Go Figure -Area Math for Journalists
Fill in the blank math for our reporting staff Isn't technology wonderful?

CALENDAR SOFTWARE
Matt Kruse
4 Calculators
5 stars
http://mkruse.netexpress.net/scripts/calendar/
A calendar for the Intranet
Nothing but the very best for your library staff-their own group calendar! Very similar to the Netscape based calendar but it resides on your Intranet for greater privacy and no login problems. A wonderful tool for planning and keeping everyone on the same page.
It works in our department-could it work across the newsroom? -space is tight on each day but you could track the major stuff. Maybe decentralize and let each department run their own version. Oh by the way you need Perl 5.0 (but that's free too!

COMPOUND CALCULATOR
Corey Kessler Columbus Dispatch
4 Calculators
5 stars
http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2001/internettoolsjh/ToolsCalculators/compound.html
Go Figure -Compounding Math for Journalists
Fill in the blank math for our reporting staff Isn't technology wonderful?

DISTANCE CALCULATOR
Corey Kessler Columbus Dispatch
4 Calculators
5 stars
http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2001/internettoolsjh/ToolsCalculators/distance.html
Go Figure -Distance Math for Journalists
Fill in the blank math for our reporting staff Isn't technology wonderful?

LENGTH CALCULATOR
Corey Kessler Columbus Dispatch
4 Calculators
5 stars
http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2001/internettoolsjh/ToolsCalculators/length.html
Go Figure -Length Math for Journalists
Fill in the blank math for our reporting staff Isn't technology wonderful?

MAPQUEST
MapQuest
4 Calculators
4 stars
http://www.mapquest.com/
Are we there yet? You can always use a map
Absolutely indispensable tool for any news researcher. Where is it? How far and how do I get there

MASS CALCULATOR
Corey Kessler Columbus Dispatch
4 Calculators
5 stars
http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2001/internettoolsjh/ToolsCalculators/mass.html
Go Figure -Mass Math for Journalists
Fill in the blank math for our reporting staff Isn't technology wonderful?

PERCENT CALCULATOR
Corey Kessler Columbus Dispatch
4 Calculators
5 stars
http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2001/internettoolsjh/ToolsCalculators/percent.html
Go Figure -Percent Math for Journalists
Fill in the blank math for our reporting staff Isn't technology wonderful? 82.3% of all journalist can't do this on their own

PERPETUAL CALENDAR
Herb Weiner
4 calculators
4 stars
http://www.wiskit.com/calendar.html
This day in history
A very simple application, but it solves that basic research problem that usually sends us scrambling off the World Almanac or some such place to find out if July 12, 1590 was a Tuesday. Simply type in the year, change the month and presto you have that year's calendar. Good for the years 0001 through 9999. After that who cares?
Here's the best part-it's a little Java script you can download to your networks and install on your library Intranet. Be a hero to the reporting staff!
SPEED CALCULATOR
Corey Kessler Columbus Dispatch
4 Calculators
5 stars
http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2001/internettoolsjh/ToolsCalculators/speed.html
Go Figure -Speed Math for Journalists
Fill in the blank math for our reporting staff Isn't technology wonderful?

VOLUME CALCULATOR
Corey Kessler Columbus Dispatch
4 Calculators
5 stars
http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2001/internettoolsjh/ToolsCalculators/volume.html
Go Figure -Volume Math for Journalists
Fill in the blank math for our reporting staff Isn't technology wonderful?

WORLDTIME
HAB Software GmbH & Co
4 Calculators
2 stars
http://www.worldtime.com
What time is it in…?
Worldtime® is a service featuring an interactive world atlas, information on local time as well as sunrise and sunset times in several hundred cities, and a database of public holidays worldwide.

WORLDTIME was developed and is made available to the WWW community by HAB Software, Hamburg, Germany.

Beats looking it up in the almanac

AD-AWARE
ZDNET
5 Security & Encryption
4 stars
http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/search.html
Reduce ads from the Internet
Nifty little program that scans your hard drive for "spyware"-those sneaky little files you pick up on the Internet (especially if you download freeware)
Unobtrusive, takes very little time to run and you have the happy feeling that you are frustrating someone. After all isn't privacy vital in news research?
CHRIS UNINSTALL MANAGER
Chris Deep Mind
5 Security & encryption
3 stars
http://chrisdeepmind.windowpictures.com/cfsc.htm
Uninstalls programs
A well organized uninstall manager that more thoroughly and effectively removes programs from your PC manages the software programs you have installed. If you are downloading free stuff from the Internet this could be pretty handy.
You can sort your programs by name, installation date, directory size, etc. You can uninstall programs or just remove the description from the register base.
KRPFILE
John Rossi (email john52612000@yahoo.com) or ZDNET
5 Security & Encryption
4 stars
http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/hotfiles/freeutilities.html
Heavy duty file encryption
Security and especially file security has grown in importance amongst Internet users. News researchers especially have reason to be concerned with security given the often sensitive matters they deal with. Researchers OUGHT to have access to file encryption and library managers need to be aware of potential problems as well as solutions. KPKfile is a very popular freeware program found also on ZDNET that provides security for your files by both encrypting them AND hiding them. Encrypted files may be further secured by burying them in other binary files
KPK file has pardon the pun a cryptic interface. The encryption utility asks for a password then lets you add one or more files to a single encrypted file. A second option allows you to create a Private folder on your disk drive that is impossible to access without the password. After password access the contents become visible like any other folder.
PASSWORD CORRAL
Cygnus Productions
5 Security & Encryption
5 stars
http://www.cygnusproductions.com/default.asp
Protect your usernames and passwords
One of the best of many password keepers you may find on the Internet. This particular one uses "blowfish" encryption techniques to encode your passwords and usernames into gibberish. I liked this one because it is simple to use and allows you to post hotlinked URL's of the subject site in the notes field.
Password keeper allows (and encourages you to export your username and passwords in an encrypted blowfish file. You really want to do that because any clumsy tampering with the program simply wipes out the password file. When they say secure they really mean secure!

QUICKY PASSWORD GENERATOR 1.2
Quicky Software
5 Security & Encryption
5 stars
http://www.quickysoftware.com/
Your cat's name is NOT a password!
Nifty little program that generates 4 -20 character passwords with options to mix letters numbers and case. Speedy little program will generate 100,000 passwords at the drop of a hat.
We really need to be more careful than we are about passwords! You may not want 100,000 passwords but prudence should tell you to protect your information systems.