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Mom always told you to "play nice" with each other. Cooperation is really the only way to get things done when there are multiple people involved. While it's easy to cooperate with others when you're all in the same room, it gets a little tricker when you are spread out around the enterprise or across the world. We've all played the game where a document is edited and changes are made, and then circulated around the department. The next person tweaks this, then somebody else tweaks that, and before you know it, nobody can figure out what is really going on. It would be much more efficient if everybody could put their two-cents worth in at the same time.

MoonEdit is a tool that lets you do just that. There's a server part as well as a client app that lets everybody load the same document at once. Everybody gets their own cursor—color-coded so you can tell who's doing what—and can edit your shared document simultaneously. No more waiting for everybody to look, approve, and circulate to get the job done.

You can download a copy of MoonEdit. It's free for non-commercial use and comes in flavors for Windows ('98 and later), as well as Linux and FreeBSD.

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Sometimes it seems like the planning that goes on for a project is more work than the actual project itself. Trying to keep track of all the tasks and sub-tasks, allocating necessary resources, and arranging the people to do the work can become its own project. Then I suppose you have to figure out how to manage that project, and on and on….

GanttProject is a free project scheduling and management tool. As its name suggests, it's easy to picture your project when it's displayed as a Gantt chart. Those horizontal bars make it easier to visualize dependencies and critical path as you try to figure out how you're ever going to get this thing done with the amount of time you have available. Once you've got a handle on everything, you can export your projects as PNG images, with reports to back them up.

GanttProject is a Java app, so it should run on just about any platform with an appropriate Java runtime installed on it. To make things super convenient, there are separate packages available for Linux, Mac (OS X), and Windows systems. Or if you just want to check it out, you can even try a Web-based version in your browser.

Download GanttProject

If you've got employees, you need to keep track of how much time they put in. If you are an employee, you want to make sure the boss knows how hard you've been working. Luckily it's easy to take care of both of these with a timeclock. Back in the day, this meant one of those machines that you had to shove a card into and have it print a time on it. Now we've got all those newfangled computer-machines, and things are easier, and dare we say more convenient?

PHP Timeclock is an online time tracking system. Running on your webserver, you use a browser to access its data input and output functions. Clocking in and out at the beginning and end of your shift is easy. Management can pull data with no muss or fuss via its admin functionality: no more having to dig through and copy data from a stack of dirty timecards, and no worry about losing them either. It generates all manner of reports, so you can be on top of your staffing needs. And this app does one thing that even the best physical timeclock can't do: it can be in two (or more) places at once. One system will serve all your locations, since it lives on a server, rather than being a bunch of discrete mechanical clocks.

A free download, PHP Timeclock needs to be installed on a server with PHP, MySQL, and Apache. You should be able to access the front-end with most modern web browsers, including Firefox and IE ver 6 or later.

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No matter how big your business, if you employ somebody, you have to deal with human resources. If you're just a little ma-and-pa organization, it probably isn't too complicated. But once you start adding the folks, the complication grows. Pretty quick you're spending more time dealing with your workers than taking care of your work. That's why they invented HR software. Unfortunately, HR apps tend to be complicated and costly. That's bad.

OrangeHRM is a free human resources management system. It's modular in construction, so you can pick and choose the pieces you're interested in if you aren't ready to take the plunge and dive completely into it. Using its modules, your life will become much easier when you deal with personnel information, attendance, benefits administration, and even recruiting. It has self service features, so employees don't need to hassle HR staff for simple changes like updating contact information. Along with keeping track of raw information, you can generate reports to let you better see how things are going on the HR front. Save your report templates, so you can track things over time.

OrangeHRM is available for free for Linux and Windows systems. If you're too intimidated by the whole thing, or simply lack the IT depth to properly administer the system, they do also have a paid hosted version you can use.

Download OrangeHRM

Setting up a web server probably isn't the most complicated thing you'll do in a day, depending on how you generally spend your time. Now if you decide that you also want to add a database, as well as a couple of scripting languages, the coefficient of complication may skyrocket. Well, as luck would have it, there's a way you can do that without lots of pain.

XAMPP is an all-in-one bundle that includes an Apache web server, MySQL database, as well as the PHP and Perl scripting languages. It's all pre-configured so that literally all you need to do is to install it, and go from there. It's self-contained, so it isn't going to make a mess of your system, and if you decide you need to delete it, all you have to do is kill the directory and it's gone (with Windows, as always, you should use the uninstaller to get rid of any stray bits in the Registry). You can use XAMPP to gain familiarity with the constituent tools, or as a development environment for building your next high-powered web application. What you shouldn't do, however, is put it in a production environment. As it comes straight out of the box, it has all kinds of security issues (weak passwords, that sort of thing), which while they may not be a problem on your desktop or local network, could open you up to a world of hurt if you put it out in public.

You can get XAMPP for Linux, Mac, and Windows systems.

Download XAMPP

If you've been online for more than a minute or two, you have no doubt heard of a "wiki". This set of interlinked pages forms the basis for Wikipedia, as well as oodles of other websites that are built to allow easy access to, as well as collaborative addition of, information. Well it turns out that wikis can make pretty good note-taking tools as well.

Zim is a "desktop wiki" that lets you harness the power of the wiki for local use. You can edit text and execute jumps from here to there, and even create new pages by just linking to nonexistent pages. This lets you add pages on the fly as you need them, rather than requiring that you stop your own creative process to go and create a page or pages to link to. By allowing you to focus on what you're doing, you don't run the risk of heading off on a tangent while forgetting what it was that you were trying to do. And of course, Zim supports standard types of wiki markup, so it's easy to add text formatting like bold and italic, as well as lists, checkboxes, images, and more.

Zim runs on top of Python, so the install may be a little complicated. You can grab the source and compile it yourself for Linux, or check out the unofficial Ubuntu package, or even a Windows installer.

Download Zim

We've seen numbers that show that no matter how many web pages there out there, and no matter how much social networking stuff is available, the most-used facility on the Internet is plain old email. Even if you factor out all the spam and junk flying around, that's a lot of email.

Zimbra Desktop is a free email client with a lot of added goodies. It does all the email stuff you'd expect, allowing you read and write messages, and work with both POP and IMAP servers. It's also smart enough to work with web-based mail services like Gmail, Yahoo, and the lot. But along with email, it's also got contact management, calendaring, and more. Think of it as being like Outlook but without Outlook's hefty price tag. And since there are versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux, you're going to have to work pretty hard to find a machine you can't use it on.

You can download Zimbra Desktop for free. In addition, they've got big deal enterprise-size network email solutions (not free), although you don't need them to run the free app.

Download Zimbra Desktop

When is text not text? When it's got a bunch of extraneous formatting and "stuff" mixed in with it. Sometimes that's great, but if you're writing code, or want to manipulate the text yourself, often you have to "fix" all the stuff that's there in order to then put your own stamp on it.

One way to help take care of this type of problem is with CleanHaven. This tool is designed specifically to help clean up text. Choose to change the case of words (ALL CAPS, all lower case, Title Case), sort lines in ascending or descending order, remove duplicate lines, strip out extra newline characters, and more. Sure, you could do all this stuff yourself, but why not put your computer to work for you? It's easy to paste your source into the window, press the button, and then examine your result. If you like it, you can go from there, but if not, you've still got your original. And you can run the text through multiple times, so that you can alphabetize it, and then remove all the resulting blanks lines.

CleanHaven is a free download. There are versions for Linux, Mac, and Windows systems.

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E-books are everywhere. But if "everywhere" includes your hard drive, and everywhere on it, then it's probably time to do something about it and clean up the mess. A tool like Calibre might be the way to go.

This free ebook management application can help you get a handle on what you've got. It recognizes—and can deal with—several different formats. You can sort your stuff by title, author, and more. It also lets you add tags and comments, so you can organize things in ways that make the most sense to you. It can even go online and help you find info on your materials based on title/author and ISBN, And it's written modularly, so if there's some great organizational breakthrough that comes along, you don't have to scrap that whole system and start over.

In addition to working with your current ebooks, this app can also go out and grab news off the Web and convert it into ebook format. It's got built-in support for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME magazine, and more; or you can go out on a limb and write a conversion for your favorite site yourself and share it with the community.

And finally, it can act as an ebook server, allowing you to access all your titles from anywhere via the Web.

Calibre is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows systems.

Download Calibre

Nobody's got enough money; that's a given. But you can probably get more done with the money you have if you know how much you've got and where it's all coming from and going to. That's where budgeting and keeping an eye on your various accounts comes in.

Now one way to stay on top of that information is to sit at a high desk with a green eyeshade, something like what Bob Cratchit might do in a Dickens story. Or you can get a little more modern in your approach and put your computer to work for you. That's where it's handy to have a tool like HomeBank.

While you can enter transactions directly or by importing data directly from your bank, the analysis functionality of this tool is where it really shines. Slice and dice your data based on payee, purpose, time period, and more. Track your budget and see how well you are keeping on-target (hooray!) or where you may need to do a little cutting-back (boo!). It supports multiple accounts, so you really can get a complete look at what's up in your life, finance-wise.

HomeBank is a free download. Originally developed for Amiga (yes, it's been around that long), it's available for various flavors of Linux, and well as Windows and OS X (via MacPorts).

Download HomeBank