Tools

GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program; GIMP is like PhotoShop (Not as much feature rich!) but open source. I use it to work with graphics, creating banners, transparent images and easy to use.

PhotoScape PhotoScape helps me to crop, edit pictures; add cool effects and text for blog posts. You can do most of the popular photoshop effects to your photo easily with PhotoScape.

Ades Color Pickr This is a very simple color picker that helps you to pick colors form the web. I like it because sometimes for a simple color picking you need to open a full editing software. It supports all the color codes.

Trillian Trillian is a great PC IM that helps me to use yahoo, gtalk, MSN and other chat applications all together to chat with different people online. It has email notification including POP3 email; facebook and twitter functionality.

Skype Skype helps you to make voice calle/ video calls to PC for free. It’s a great tool and has great sound and video quality. Trillian and other multi IM platforms don’t support skype directly, so have to use the latest version of Skype.

Wordpress I have listed wordpress as a tool because I believe it’s the best website publishing tool of now days. It’s open source with all great plugins; it will help you to setup a blog or a professional website super fast and easily.

FileZilla FileZilla is an FTP client which will help you to synchronize with your server/ web host. With this great tool, you can upload/ download files from and to your web hosting folder; change file permissions and other admin tasks.

Website Grader Website grader is a great online SEO tool that helps you understand how your website/ blog stands in SEO terms. It gives your site a grade and helps you to improve it. It calculates with on-site seo, linkbacks, social media and other factors.

Domain Age This tool will help you to get the information about your domain name, when it was registered and how old it is. This is a great online tool for a domain lookup and it’s historical status, as it gives the exact age of the domain.

Favicon Generator This online tool will create a cool favicon icon for your blog with any given image. The favicon will come up with a .ico extension which you have to put it on your root folder -best to brand your site on the web.