• The Small Business Administration offers a startup kit that you can request:
• Register with the official Better Internet Bureau (The same people who run the Better Business Bureau). For $35 they will inspect your site, and give you an official image to put on your site.
• Or register directly with the Better Business Bureau.
• Small business info (also has business forms & agreements)
• Business Owners Tool Kit
• Save money with Dollar Stretcher. Also a great source of info for your customers if you're looking for material for a newsletter, since it has so many useful topics.

Best business books	Best business software
The Six Figure Consultant by Bob Bly. One of the most lively and thorough books I've read on marketing, getting new customers (includes sample letters & other materials), publicity ideas, and customer service. One of the few books that's interesting enough to read from start to finish.	Contact management software that is the SIA 2000 award winner - Contact Plus

The Business Side of Creativity - the best book I've seen yet on the business aspects of graphic and/or web design.

• The University of Maryland has a Small Business Development Center which offers free one-to-one counseling and workshops. For the Baltimore area, call 888-898-2073 or e-mail ibrown@mdsbdc.umd.edu. There's also a satellite office in Lanham on Forbes Blvd: 301-306-5682.
• SCORE - Service Corps of Retired Executives. Offers workshops, e-mail counseling and a free business magazine published 2x a year called 'Emerging Business'. The Annapolis, MD number is 410-266-9553.
• Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore (part of the Women's Business Center) offers terrific resources and info for women business owners. The Maryland phone number is 410-727-4921 (located in Baltimore).

Classes & Training (including for the Maryland / DC metro area):

• Learn sign language
• Translate text or web pages
• An enormous list of accredited online courses & degrees
• Classes in the DC area - neat selection!
• Women in computers in the DC area

Note: make sure the school's accreditation is worthy - look for schools endorsed by the U.S. Dept. of Education or by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

• Hard drive crash? Data can sometimes still be recovered. Many services offer a free analysis to see whether or not the problem is fixable. Fees can be expensive - running $800-$1200. CBL Data Recovery Technologies will sometimes recover data for students & nonprofit groups in exchange for a T-shirt w/their logo on it. 800-551-3917. (no affiliation - I read this in a magazine).
• Another data recovery service - for Compact Flash cards, SmartMedia, and hard drives.
• IntelliRecovery Data Recovery is another company that provides Global data recovery services for hard disk & hard drive recovery for any operating system. Authorized by all major hard drive manufacturers, has a Class 100 Clean room.
• Data Recovery Group - someone unaffiliated wrote me to say they used them & were very happy.
• Online help. If it's happened to your computer, chances are it happened to someone else. Check out CNET's help page
• Miss Information (like how to remove annoying << characters from emails):
• Today's Windows updates
• Bart's Boot Disks - boot disks for every occassion
• Surf stealthily while at work or download sound effects so it sounds like you're madly typing
• Looking for older versions of software?

Keep your computer in top shape. You should scan your disk once a week, and defrag once a month. Browser cache should only be 10% of your hard drive.

How to: Delete old files (including browser cache), empty trash and then restart your computer. Then click on 'start,' select 'Programs,' 'Accessories,' 'System Tools.' Then pick either 'scandisk' (to check your hard drive) or 'disk defragmenter' (to make your hard drive more efficient).

It's a good idea to do scandisk first. Both utilities may take several hours depending on when you last ran it and how large your hard drive is. Make sure no programs are running. I usually restart my computer at the end of the day, then run defrag and leave it on overnight. (Make sure you're not hooked up to the internet for such a long time unless you have a firewall.)

What to look for in an ISP: tech support available by phone (not just e-mail). See if they have a wide range of hours where someone is available. Ask them if web hosting is included (if you want to put up a web site), and if you'll have shell access or just FTP access. Do they offer a trial time for free? Do they have a satisfaction guaranteed policy?

Here's a list of regular ISPs. Search by state. Who knows? You might find a good deal with someone local to you.

• The List

• Find DSL providers in your area

• Freeservers
• Geocities
• Tripod
• Free Web Space
• Web space for non-commercial sites
• Doteasy.com
• 79centhosting.com

• Virtual Ave

Web hosting (not free, but rated well and priced fairly):

• Homestead (charges $30 a year)
• Crosswinds. The basic package is free, but the premium with no ads is $5/month, with a $10 setup fee. It includes FTP access though.
• Pair. Accounts are 50 MB for $6/month, and it includes domain registration and FTP access.
• Ready Hosting. $99 a year for 500 MB, including domain registration.

• Free Merchant (has a feature where companies with a catalog database who want to export data to QuickBooks)
• Big Step (Yahoo gave them an 'A' rating in the Nov. 2000 issue of Yahoo! Internet Life magazine)
• Homestead - limited to 16 MB but is very easy to use! (Yahoo rated B+ in the same issue)

• DNS and IP address lookup
• Find a list of accredited registrars
• Register a domain for under $15

• Free fax (they are e-mailed to you) and voicemail
• Free fax (also e-mailed)

• Yahoo (my favorite. Has a neat spam filter.)
• Hotmail

• Free poll & survey for your website
• Surveymonkey.com

Do you have excess books you need to get rid of? Here's how you can donate them and put them to good use for others:

• Your public library can always use books. Often they sell them to raise money for the library.
• Thrift shops like Goodwill and the Salvation Army often need used books. Many thrift shops can use them, and often you can get a tax break when you donate. But consider asking the thrift shop what they do with books they don't need. If they are a good thrift shop, they will often donate unneeded books to good causes.
• Friends of Libraries
• Books for Soldiers
• Prison Book Program
• Surplus for Charity
• Book Crossing: a unique way to spread books around.

• Many utilities to track, uncover and trace spam
• Spam Cop - can identify spammers
• The Make Money Fast Hall of Humiliation (Funny!)
• For info on creating a killfile to block news messages from specific e-mail addresses. They also have an Internet advertiser's blacklist.
• Spam abuse info
• Battle abusive messages
• Traceroute, Whois & other tools to pinpoint spammers
• Antispam Tactical Operations Headquarters
• Junkbusters (helps you also rid of junk mail, not just email)
• Spam FAQ
• University of Maryland students: filter your e-mail on WAM or GLUE

Note: if you need to use a nonexistent e-mail address, use 'anyword'@example.com, .net or .org (substitute anything for 'anyword' - ie: heron@example.net). It's not a real address, so you don't have to worry that you are setting anyone else up for spam.

• Scambusters
• FTC consumer protection guides
• National Fraud Information Center's Internet Fraud Watch
• The U.S. Consumer Gateway

• Antionline
• Security Focus (takes a while to load, but has good info.)
• Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute
• The Hacker Quarterly
• Archive of hacked web sites

Best security books		Software	Firewalls
Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World by Bruce Schneier.	Hacking Exposed by Joel Scambray	Norton Antivirus	Black Ice Defender and Tiny Personal Firewall - I found out about this particular one on Usenet - it had great reviews and it's only around $40 because it's shareware.

General (back to top)