Jack's Top 10 Tools as at 12 July 2008

1. Google Search  - How did I manage without this premier search engine in the past. It's simple, quick and always comes up with something helpful.

2. Wordpress - If you want to get into blogging this the way to go. It's a free, unlimited open source blogging platform. Very easy to navigate, easy to use interface which is being upgraded continuously.

3. Windows Live Writer - Integrates seamlessly with Wordpress for creating & editing a blog post. Can blog from anywhere with this free, WYSIWYG editor/creator.

4. Wikipedia - Simply brilliant one stop, free, reference source for nearly everything on the planet. The quality & accuracy of the content is maturing everyday.

5. Adobe Acrobat Professional - Adobe pdf documents have become the format of choice where both document security & collaboration is required. Great for large complex documents and easily accommodates embedded hypertext, video & audio. Commercial software from Adobe, not cheap but worth it!

6. Furl - The best tool I've come across for book marking web based research sources and web sites. Free.

7. Abby pdf Transformer - If you work with pdf documents and Office documents this is an essential tool. Enables conversion of pdf documents to Office formats (& retains original formatting) & vice versa. Commercial software.

8. Google Scholar  - Great tool for research of scholarly literature & reference materials. Doesn't yet provide universal access but still a first choice research tool. Free

9. Mind Manager - If like me you need to capture and organise project related items or, you just need to capture and organise thoughts, projects or, scribbled plans this intuitive tool is for you. Commercial software.

10. Survey Monkey - Wonderful tool for designing professional looking questionnaires, polls etc. Nothing like it for social science surveys or democracy enhancing polls of citizens views. Web based commercial product. Highly intuitive.