If you're doing online research, it is in some cases essential to download whole websites to store them on the harddisk - for archiving them or only to work with them. One free and useful tool for this task is the Webdownloader, which not only modifies the pages so that you can use the links (the URLs pointing now to the pages on your harddisk), but also keeps the original, unmodified versions of the pages. Remember: The free program is called "Webdownloader". Don't mix it up with the "Offline Browser", a more complex successor which is also offered on that page for money. If you know a more sophisticated program for this task, recommendations or short reviews are welcome.

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Students all over the world: Did you ever have a hard time with MS-Word and its sometimes strange behaviour? Or even sleepless nights, plagued by paranoia 'cause the copy of MS-Office you use is ... well ... not quite "bought"? This era of uneasiness is over now. Now you can use OpenOffice, a free open-source office suite which features everything the MS-suite does. And it has several advantages apart from being free: For example you can export your documents as .pdf files, and OpenOffice saves everything in XML format, which means that the documents thoretically can be converted into any format, e.g. into publishable .html. You can read the book OpenOffice.org XML Essentials on this topic by J. David Eisenberg online. The second thing is that Sun Microsystems maintains an own improved version of OpenOffice, called StarOffice. StarOffice has very good dictionaries implemented for example. And its free for students, university and school employees. via mosaikum

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12 Variables to understand online communities. "This article is an attempt to discuss some of the qualities that define virtual communities."

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