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There are two types of people in the world: those who break the world down into two types of people and those who don't. Okay, old joke, right? But seriously, there are a lots of ways in which people can be broken down into two different groups based on their attitudes or behaviors. Take news feeds, for example. For some folks, it's all fun and games: keeping track of the comings and goings of friends, new music and video releases, and other general recreational stuff. For others, it's strictly business: vendors to watch, competitors to track, that soft of thing. This latter group usually has a whole bunch of stuff to try to keep track of; they need a tool that's as serious about it all as they are.

BlogBridge is an industrial-strength blog and newsfeeds aggregator. It supports all popular feed formats, and lets you keep track of what you've read and what's still waiting for you. With installs on multiple machines, you can keep your life synchronized between work, home, and even on the road. It's got heavy-duty search tools that let you find what you need fast, too.

BlogBridge is a free download. It's a Java app, so it'll run on systems that have the appropriate runtime installed, including many flavors of Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

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Everybody's got an email client they swear by. Of course, there are other times where they've got a client they swear at. If you fall into that latter category, maybe you're in the market for a new mail program. This might be the time to check out Sylpheed.

Sylpheed uses a standard three-pane design, with a folder hierarchy on the left, and messages and individual message preview on the right. A small footprint means that system resources aren't taxed by this app. With powerful search and filter capabilities, you'll always be able to find just the message you're looking for. You can even save your results into a search folder, so you won't have to execute your query a second time. Smart junk mail control means that the more junk you receive, the less you'll actually see, as its filters improve with use.

Sylpheed is a free application. It runs on Windows (Win2k and later), Linux and other *NIX platforms, and Mac OS X (sorry, Intel processors only).

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Where would we be without email? While we could probably go for quite a while without a telephone, we probably wouldn't last more than a couple of hours without email. While email itself is pretty simple stuff, getting it to work right can be more of a challenge.

There are lots of email clients out there that do lots of things, but as you know, when you add layers of functionality to any application, you're adding layers of complexity to it as well. By the time you format your message with all the pretty fonts and pictures, you can end up with a big message to send. This also means that the tool itself is pretty big and complicated. Claws is not such a tool.

What it is is a no-nonsense email client. You can't send HTML-formatted messages; you can't use it as a full-featured PIM. What you can do is use it for your POP or IMAP mail accounts—as many as you want to throw at it—as well as accessing your local mbox file. You can even create send-only accounts that let you access an SMTP server to push mail out into the world without receiving anything back. Plugins are also available to add more functionality to Claws Mail.

Claws Mail is a free app. It's available for a bunch of different Linux flavors, as well as Windows and Macintosh users.

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Email is probably the biggest use of the Internet. Just think about the number of messages you send—or the amount of SPAM you receive—in a given day, and you'll realize what a big deal it is. And it's used for more than just communicating with Nigerian princes. We've all sent ourselves an email to remind us of a "to do" item that we need to take care of. And then there's file transfer. It's easy to email Mom a photo from your last vacation, or to send a copy of the Johnson Project report to a co-worker.

While it's easy to use email for file transfer purposes, maybe it isn't the most efficient way to handle this task. After all, you've got to create the email, make a little introductory small talk, tell your recipient that you're sending them something, attach the file, etc., etc. When you send it, your email client often will save a local copy of the message, plus a copy of that attachment. Now not only is it taking extra time, but it's eating up storage space as well.

Filemailer is a dedicated use-email-to-transfer-files tool. All you have to do is enter the info for your recipient and then just drag the file you want to send over their name and click the Send button. No muss, no fuss—your file is just sent, with no copy generated in your Sent box or any of that foolishness. It's a pretty simple, no-nonesense way to deal with this issue.

Filemailer is a Mac application. You'll need to be running OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later to use it.

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Have you ever used your email system as a database? When you want to remember to do something, you send yourself an email. When you want to capture a little piece of data, your send it off in an email to yourself. Since you've already got your head in that game, here's a way to make it work even better.

Postbox is a tool that helps you to organize the contents of your email messages. Not only that, it also looks at your attachments—images, documents, that whole deal—to help your keep track of it all. Now when you're trying to see everything about that new project, you'll really find everything. It's compatible with POP3 and IMAP mail protocols, so you're probably good to go with it right now. Search through everything, or filter your info so that you're only digging through a subset of your mail. You can even archive older stuff, so that you don't have to dig through it every day, while still allowing you to search through it when the need arises.

Postbox is available for Windows (XP and later) and Macintosh (OS X 10.4 and newer). It's currently beta-level software, so you might expect a bug or two. Their website says that this app is free, but suggests that they may change their pricing model somewhere down the road.

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No matter how much the purveyors of shrink-wrapped software would have you believe it, there really is no reason to have to spend a small—or not so small—fortune on applications to run on your computer. That's not to say that the fine folks at Microsoft and all the other big name development shops don't put out some pretty cool tools, but an awful lot of what you want to do can be done with apps that don't cost you a dime.

Not so much an application, MacLibre is sort of a "greatest hits" collection of free software for your Macintosh. Now instead of running all over the place grabbing individual apps, you can download the whole pile all at once.

MacLibre includes productivity tools like NeoOffice (a Mac-ized version of OpenOffice), Internet tools and browsers, sound and graphics editors (Audacity and GIMP), and a bunch of utility apps as well. You could find yourself with a pretty well equipped system for the cost of only a few minutes worth of downloading.

MacLibre is distributed as a Universal Binary. That means that it'll run on both PowerPC and Intel Macs; you should be able to use it on systems that are running Panther (OS X 10.3) or later.

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How connected are you? With email, voicemail, IM, video conferencing, fax, and more, it's pretty much impossible to be "off the grid". It's not easy, though, to keep track of all the ways that you are connected, especially if you're not really the local propeller-head.

VoxOx is a tool that can help you tame the world of communication and connectedness. Rather than having to keep track of which network your IM contacts belong to, for example, you can use VoxOx's integrated instant messaging client—one size fits all. Send and receive SMS text messages directly from your computer. Use the built-in email client. It boasts a contact manager that will let you import contacts from all your networks, so you'll never be far from your people.

VoxOx is a free application. You can grab the Windows version—it runs on any Win32 platform, from Windows 95 up through Vista—or the Mac version, which requires OS X 10.5+. There's also a Linux version on the horizon.

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Email is forever. Once you write an email and send it, you can safely assume that it will exist in some form forever. Even if you delete it from the sending machine, and the recipient deletes it on the receiving end, there are enough servers that have passed it along that you're going to find it living out there somewhere. And we all know how easy it is forward an email—just check out all the spam messages that have been forwarded to you lately.

Privnote is a free service that makes it a little easier to control who reads your messages. Rather than sending an email directly to your intended recipient, you enter your message into a form on the Privnote site, and they in turn give you back a URL to send to your recipient. The fun thing here is that this link allows them to access your message one time only—once they've seen it, it goes away. It's almost like a Mission: Impossible message that self-destructs in five seconds. And since it's not an email, it's impossible to be forwarded.

Now of course, for the message to be seen—even once—it has had to sit on Privnote's server, so you'll want to be careful what you say, because they don't claim that your words aren't going to end up in one of their log files somewhere down in the guts of their network, but you are certainly limiting your words' exposure by not including them in the regular email stream out there.

Privnote is a free online service.

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Did you ever want to text yourself? You're headed out the door to some place you've never been before, so you dutifully looked-up the address and driving directions on Google Maps. It would be handy to send yourself a text message with that info in it, so that you don't have to drag along that printout of the directions.

Google Send To Phone is a Firefox extension that allows you to send SMS messages (text messages) to your mobile phone from within your web browser. Copy and paste whatever content you want from your page into the "text to send" field. If you're going long, the tool will automatically split your text into multiple messages.

Not only is this useful for texting yourself, but if you need to dash off a quick note to somebody else, you can do so as well. All you need is the phone number and carrier for your recipient.

Google Send To Phone is compatible with any system running Firefox version 1 or later. Sending messages through this extension is free, but charges may apply to receiving them; check with your carrier for details. Most major carriers are included in the list for sending.

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Where would we be without RSS readers? As we all get more plugged-in, we've all got more and more places we want to keep track of, and more information to digest. News sites, blogs, the list goes on.

NewsFire is a newsreader that lets you set things up the way that makes the most sense to you. While you can use it for plain vanilla subscriptions to your favorite feeds, you'll want to use its "Smart Groups" to filter and organize the constant flow of information coming across your desk. It has a minimal interface, so it's not all up in your face, demanding your constant attention.

NewsFire is a true Mac application, so it looks like and behaves like you'd expect it to. We've all been disappointed with Mac apps that really just look like Mac, but don't behave that way.

NewsFire is a free application for your Macintosh. It requires OS X version 10.4 or later.

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