Web News

When it comes to the Internet, we're creatures of habit – Google for search, Hotmail for email, Twitter to stay in touch and maybe the BBC's website for news.

This means that we use only a handful of favourite sites, leaving the rest of the Internet unvisited. Let's put that right. By the time you've finished reading, we promise that your list of bookmarked sites will have ballooned and you'll be getting more from your surfing.

Software and tools

1. ThinkFree Office is a powerful suite of productivity apps that includes a robust word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tool. The suite has subtle touches such as an inline spell-checker, and you can work offline if the Internet goes down. There's also support for 11 languages and helpful PDF export capability. Most importantly, you can share documents with other users and work on files collaboratively. The suite is free if you can live with 1GB of storage, or upgrade for a nominal fee to a premium account.

2. Zoho is a highly useful web portal for being productive on the go. More than just a word processor and task manager, Zoho has a multitude of small web apps for taking notes, storing contact information and project management. There's even a web conferencing tool. APIs are available for the web services in Zoho's word processor and spreadsheet, too. There's also a slideshow creator so that you can make calls from another website – for example, an accounting site could read tables from a Zoho spreadsheet. The site is one of the first to support VB macros and the document mark-up language LaTeX.

3. It's time to ditch Microsoft Excel. EditGrid is powerful enough for basic number crunching without the extensive pivot table and worksheet functions. Its main strength, unsurprisingly, comes in how you can format cells, with image includes, JavaScript calls and a data exchange between spreadsheets and even between the spreadsheets hosted by other users. There's a plugin that reads Excel data, templates, mash-up features for integrating data from websites like Yahoo! Finance and plenty of text formatting options. Registration is quick and there are three pricing plans: one free account, a premium account for just a few dollars per month and a multi-user company plan. Unfortunately, it does not work in Internet Explorer 6.

4. Web project management has taken a beating these last few years, especially since tools like www.basecamphq.com stress simplicity over actual features. Clarizen is easy to use and runs fast on a 3Mbps connection on a 64-bit 3GHz Vista PC, but it also has deeper features. For example, you can update your task list by sending an email to the project inbox. (You can also request a daily task list by sending an email.)

5. The original idea for SlideShare came when co-founder Jonathan Boutelle was at a conference and saw how attendees were easily sharing large videos and photo collections online, but had to physically pass around USB keys to distribute sales presentations. He created SlideShare as a way to host and store PowerPoint files. It has became incredibly popular.

6. It may not have the flare and design of Microsoft Visio, but the online flow-charting program known as Gliffy certainly has an expansive set of features. There are icons for networking, office design and organisation charts to help you put some order around any idea. Line connectors automatically snap into place, or avoid certain shapes when you move them around the screen – a powerful programming trick, especially since the site does not use any plug-ins or require you to download any software.