My doctor just told me I suffer from a bad case of Utilitus Addictus. And judging from e-mail messages you send me, you're afflicted, too. There's no known cure--so why not enjoy the malady by digging into some Internet tools that have become staples of my home office?

Broken Web site links in e-mail messages drive me batty--and pasting the link into the browser address bar gets me nowhere. So I copy the link to the Clipboard and grin while Sells Brothers' UrlRun strips it clean and sends it to my browser's address field. Download the free program to your desktop, and drag and drop it to your Quick Launch bar to give yourself immediate access to this gem. If you use Outlook, get the free plug-in version.

Snipping's a Snap

Great guy that I am, I make an effort to be considerate--at least when sending e-mail--by using SnipURL.com, a free site that trims long URLs to 13 characters. Add the snipped URL to your e-mail, and when the recipient clicks it, the site invisibly sends them to the lengthy link. For easy access, I attached the SnipURL icon to my Internet Explorer toolbar (go to the site and drag and drop the 'Snip This' link to IE, Netscape, or Opera).

I was nearly at my wit's end trying to deal with Internet Explorer's intermittent inability to open as a maximized window. Then reader Bryan Villarin of Temple City, California, informed me about Jonathan Dahl's IE New Window Maximizer, a nifty tool that does just what it claims. But this free utility goes one step farther by doing a pretty decent job of blocking pernicious pop-up ads, too.

Too many Web sites expect me to fill out lengthy forms with information that I don't want to share. Instead, I use a free JavaScript called a bookmarklet (yep, it's a real word) to fill in every field with anonymous. Other bookmarklets do such things as jumping backward three pages, silencing the music on a Web page, and resizing the current window to become full-screen. To get the field-filling one for your PC, point your browser to Bookmarklets and drag the AutoFill Anonymous bookmarklet link into your Favorites list or into the Links portion of your browser's toolbar.

If you consider completing Web forms a waste of time, download Siber Systems' AI RoboForm, which enters canned data into forms automatically. Browse to " Dynamite Downloads" to find out more about it.

I get a kick out of Tenebril's $40 GhostSurf Pro, a one-stop privacy tool for Internet addicts. The program lets me surf anonymously, covering my Internet tracks from my ISP as well as from the sites I visit. It blocks ads, keeps spyware from reporting on me, and tells me what data is entering and leaving my browser. GhostSurf Pro is packed with features, but it's pretty easy to learn (I got a handle on it after only a couple of days of fiddling). Get a trial version from our downloads page and see for yourself.

Total Recorder is my last pearl. It's a $12 program from High Criteria that lets me record audio from Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, or other players, and save the resulting sound as an MP3 file. I can snatch radio interviews (by Terry Gross of National Public Radio's Fresh Air, for instance) for playback on my MP3 player. The $36 Pro version even lets me schedule everything from opening NPR's site to starting and saving the recording.

At " Not-So-Stupid Browser Utilities" you can get the five freebies and trial versions of the two shareware programs. Have a neat utility I missed? Let me know about it. And watch for more tools in my upcoming online newsletter; go to our Free Newsletters page to sign up. Now I have to go download some fresh Terry Gross.

SUMMARY

Tenebril GhostSurf Pro $40

SUMMARY

High Criteria Total Recorder $12 ($36 for the Pro Edition)

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