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It's a great idea to try to stay on top of things. Unfortunately, there's only so many hours in the day / week / month. Keeping an eye on web pages, blogs, RSS feeds and more can be a daunting—and frankly impossible—task. Having an extra set of eyes could come in very helpful. Enter Web Monitor.

Web Monitor is a tool that will help you keep an eye on all these types of resources and more. Need to know when this web page changes, or when that news feed has new content? Web Monitor can keep an eye on it for you , and let you know when things have changed out there. Sitting unobtrusively in your System Tray, this tool will watch what you tell it to, and get back to you when it sees changes. You can set the re-check frequency, so you can check current news every five minutes, while checking more static resources less often. It'll highlight changes for you, so that you'll be able to easily pick out what's new in the world.

Web Monitor is a free download for your Windows system.

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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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When you send an email, you are employing the services of an SMTP server. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is the standard for sending mail across the Internet. Typically you use a server provided by your Internet service provider for this important function, although if you run your own network, you may have your own SMTP server already.

Free SMTP Server lets you put a mail-sending server on your computer. This could be especially helpful on a laptop if you travel around a lot and may plug-in to a lot of different networks which may- or may not be interested in passing your messages along to the big wide world out there. Running a server on your own machine means that, as long as you have Internet connectivity, you will be able to send mail. It also gives you at least a bit more privacy in your electronic communications, since your messages are now passing through one fewer servers out there in the world.

An important thing to remember, though, whenever you host your own mail server, is that you do increase the possibility that your machine may be co-opted into sending bad things out across the 'Net. You'll want to be extra careful that you have a good antivirus app and that your firewall is up and running, to help make sure that you and your machine don't become unwitting participants in various spamming exploits.

Free SMTP Server is a Windows app.

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How many different IM tools do you use? You've got friends on AIM, co-workers on MSN, mom uses ICQ, and on and on. You haven't got enough real estate on your desktop to have all these apps open at once, but you want to stay on top of things. Maybe you need to check out Digsby.

At its heart, Digsby is a multi-network IM client. You can interact with users on most popular messaging services. But it's also got functionality that goes beyond just instant messaging.

It can also help you stay on top of your email. It notifies you when you receive new mail, whether that's through your desktop POP account, your network's IMAP mail, or even several of the popular webmail tools, like GMail, Hotmail, and more. It even hooks into many social networking sites, to let you know what your friends are all up to.

Digsby is available to Windows users. They've got versions lined-up for Linux and Mac users as well, although those aren't available yet.

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If you're a big fan of desktop integration, then you appreciate the fact that, for instance, you can take a Word DOC and send is as part of an email from inside Microsoft Word. Unless you use an online email tool like Gmail or Yahoo's mail app, that is. Then you're out of luck. Until now.

Affixa takes integration one step further by letting you use online mail services to do just this. Now when you need to send your new report or spreadsheet from an Office app, you can attach it to a message on Gmail.

In addition to this core functionality, Affixa also uses a kind of "shopping cart" model in collecting attachments for your email. Just wander around your desktop grabbing the files you need to send, and Affixa drops them into a basket that, once it's time to send your message and attachments, lets you select the files you're interested in. It even supports multiple baskets, so you can build some pretty complicated lists of documents, making sure they all get to the right place.

Affixa is a Windows download, and it's free when used for your own personal use. If you decide to use it for work or any other organization, you can buy a license for about three bucks (2 GBP) per year.

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Email is certainly a simple way to communicate. Type a few characters—or a whole bunch if you prefer—and send your message on its way. One of its great benefits is that you can communicate asynchronously—you can send your message when there's nobody there to receive it. When you make a phone call, you need to be able to talk to your recipient, as well as remember what time it is on their end—nobody likes to get a phone call at 3:00 in the morning, unless it's very, very good news. Unfortunately, sometimes email can feel rather impersonal, and sometimes a message just doesn't lend itself to being expressed in writing.

Speak-A-Message adds the ability to communicate by voice to your email messages. Record a message in your own voice and send it along. Or if you prefer, you can just hit the high points in audio, while you still send your typed message. For sensitive messages, you can flag them so that you recipient will know that they ought to use headphones to listen to what you have to say.

Along with the Speak-A-Message software, all you need is a sound card with speaker or headphones, a microphone, and version 9 or later of Windows Media Player.

Speak-A-Message is a Windows app, and is compatible with systems running XP or Vista.

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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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Did you ever have one of those long, involved telephone calls, where no matter how many notes you took along the way, you just know you didn't capture everything that was said? Kind of frustrating, to be sure.

CallGraph is a free tool that you can use to record your Skype calls automatically. Whether you make free Skype-to-Skype calls, or make or receive paid SkypeIn and SkypeOut calls, you can record them all. You can use your recordings to make sure you grabbed all the important information you covered during your conversation, or use them for recorded interviews to post to your blog or include in your podcast.

Remember that various jurisdictions have different rules about recording phone calls, and what you can do with those recordings, so be sure to check on how these may apply to you. And of course, common decency dictates that all parties being recorded be aware of the fact that a recording is being made, and that they give their consent to participate.

CallGraph is a free download for your Windows system. although they do have Linux and Mac versions on the drawing board. And of course, since it works with Skype, it's probably a good idea to have Skype installed on your system as well.

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So much news, so little time. If you're really plugged-in, you probably spend a fair amount of time trying to keep up with the latest, whether it's the latest news and politics, the latest tech updates, or just the latest on your favorite blog. You can spend a lot of time checking back to these sites multiple times a day, or you can let their updates come to you via RSS feeds.

Blerts is a cute little feed reader that sits in your System Tray and waits for interesting things to happen. Pop it up to read the latest and greatest from the sites you're monitoring. View just the headlines, or drill down to look at the full text. It's easy to add new channels to keep track of even more of what's going on out there.

Blerts is a free download. It's a Windows app and will run under Windows 2000 and later. It requires a web browser, and supports IE 6+ or Firefox 1.5+.

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When you send an email, you can be pretty sure that somebody unintended may be looking at it. Whether it's your IT guys, some hacker out there, or even the guys in the black helicopters, email is an inherently insecure way to communicate. It may not make much difference when your message is a note to your spouse to remember to pick up a loaf of bread on the way home from work, but when you're sending trade secrets or other confidential information, it may not be your best bet.

Flexcrypt Free is a tool that may help you to feel a little better about sending your sensitive information to others in email. When you send a message, it encrypts it and keeps it that way until it arrives at its final destination. Using passwords you create, Flexcrypt employs 256-bit encryption, meaning that it's not likely that your message will be misappropriated in this, or several more, lifetimes.

With this free version, up to three people can communicate this way. Flexcrypt only works with desktop email applications, since it runs on your local machine.

Flexcrypt Free is a Windows application. It runs under WinXP and Vista. If you need to communicate securely with more than three other people, they have paid versions as well.

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