Check these out starting at the top because they are great!  For a program or utility to be included on this page, it must be FREE, and it must be good!  Here are just a few.

SEARCH ENGINE PAGE and NEWS SOURCES
BOOKMARK this page because it contains the best search engines and links to news sources in English from around the world.

WordWeb
WordWeb is by far the best free dictionary download available today.  WordWeb is a 5.95 MB free dictionary/thesaurus download by Antony Lewis.  Simply double click the word you do not know, and a "hotkey" will call the dictionary up quickly for definitions offline or online.  I find myself using this handy dictionary/thesaurus at least several times every day.

File Splitter
File Splitter is the smallest, handiest utility you can find to split and splice big files.  If you have a 2 MB Power Point presentation on your computer, with File Splitter you can split the file into two parts, put them on separate floppies, and then splice the parts back together on another computer.  Originally from www.whitsoftdev.com, this file is amazingly small (17kb), and it works great!

Power Archiver 6.11
Power Archiver 6.11 is the last free version of a great ZIP utility.  It's the ZIP utility that I have used for several years.  If the link above is no longer active, do a Google search for "Power Archiver" "last" "free" (all in quotation marks), and you will probably find this utility still available.

Any Software by John and Muriel Higgins
Of the many free software programs available on this page, I have downloaded and used WORDFIND, SEQUITUR, VERBALIST, AND JACKASS.  I wish I'd had Wordfind when I taught phonology about ten years ago.  With Wordfind, it is easy to find words that begin with or end with any phonological sound.  It's great.

With Sequitur, you can write a short story or even sentences, separate them into parts, so the "reader" can choose which part comes next. 

Finally, Jackass is wonderful "game" where students think of an "animal" or "famous person" and the program tries to guess the animal or person after a series of questions.  This program works great for lower level students working on simple questions and answers.  If you "save" your work after each session, this program builds its own database of knowledge, so it becomes "smarter" in guessing the correct answer.

If you would like to do your own searches for programs and utilities, the best places to start are http://www.cnet.com and http://www.zdnet.com.  In each case, go to their "downloads" section, type in the search box the type of program or utility you are looking for, review the options, make a choice (usually based on others' reviews), and then download and try it.  

If you have your own favorite program or utility you would like to recommend for this page, send me an email.

TOP
HOME