Now and then in True, I'll recommend a web site or a product that I really like. They are not paid placements -- I'm a consumer too, and I tend to research things so I get the "best" product for the money. Or maybe I'll run across a particularly useful web site that I like and talk about it. In any case, if I truly like a product, I'll often talk about it. (A listing of many past advertisers is on its own page if you're looking for those.)

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Invariably when that happens, for weeks (and sometimes months), I'll get notes from readers saying "What was that site you talked about? I need it now." So I thought I'd list the most popular, most useful ones here. This page won't have my full write-ups about why I thought the product or site was great; it's not meant as a review page, but more as a reminder to help readers find what I talked about earlier. As always, offsite links open in a new window. Some links are to my Amazon affiliate site, but they're never for random products -- unless specifically noted, I have bought all of these products or services myself. --RC

• Audio. For portable music/books I use the iPod Touch -- enough said! For ripping my 300 CDs to MP3 files I used CDex. Some say Exact Audio Copy does better at getting high-quality audio, but I found it much harder to use than CDex.

• Video. I'm just now starting to really get into video, so I'll have more to say on this later. Meanwhile, I've been using the Pinnacle Video Transfer to digitize from my video recorder and other TV sources. My videos are edited with Sony Vegas software, which comes in "play" ($75ish) and Pro ($500ish) versions. I use Pro, after realizing the play version isn't powerful enough for what I do.

• Scanner. I asked a few people, including a guy I know who owns a business employing 75 people but has no filing cabinets, what is a good scanner to computerize receipts and such? The response was unanimous: the Fujitsu ScanSnap. It's amazing: a contract and a check? Scans the differing page sizes without a hitch, scans fronts and backs at the same time, discards any blank pages, creates a PDF file, and then does an OCR (optical character recognition) pass on the file so that you can search within it. And it comes with all the software you need, too. The thing is so amazing that if you put a page in upside down, it will usually detect that and flip it around for you! And it detects the rare occasions when it misfeeds (e.g., pulls more than one page through at a time.) I'm completely blown away by it, and my bookkeeper just loves it, too, since I now know where everything is, and can e-mail stuff to her easily. It's a tad pricey ($470), but cheaper at Amazon ($420 as of this writing). This thing gets my highest recommendation.

• Books. Anyone who wants to understand the challenges of the future (and if you haven't read this one yet, you're way behind already) should read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. I found Outliers to be quite interesting, and the best so far of the books from Malcolm Gladwell (see my blog entry for more on this book.) I have very high standards for True, including the best grammar and punctuation I can do without hiring an editor. Lynn Truss agrees, and has "zero tolerance" for improper punctuation: her book Eats, Shoots and Leaves is essentially how I would have written a grammar book: with so much attitude that it became a New York Times best-seller. I used to covet Gary Larson's The Complete Far Side -- all the Far Side comics in two hard-cover volumes in a slip case -- until a friend told me about the three-volume slip-covered set of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes for about the same price! I bought it instead: it's all of the 3,160 C&H strips printed on 1,440 pages of high-quality paper, making the prints better than they've ever been in any newspaper. Last, there's my own book The True Stella Awards -- my take on weird-but-true lawsuits and what we as a society can do about the abuse of our civil court system. (More Info)

  I rejected the first-generation Kindle, Amazon's portable book reader, but the second one fixed most of my complaints about it, and I really like it. Premium True and my books will be available on it at some point.

• Computers. I no longer buy Dell due to my Dell Hell situation. (If you buy from Dell, be sure to read the lessons learned from my trials.) I'm trying a new company now, and will report here later what I think.

• Cameras. Video: We use Panasonic HD cameras for the True videos, which have the features I demand: a great HD picture, a remote microphone input (why do so many not have this?!), and it records on SD chips, not tape. The SD-100 is the latest one we use. Still: I wanted a tiny digital camera, but as a former commercial photographer I wanted one that took really good photos. The latest is one that I'm not only willing to carry (it really is tiny, but has a huge display screen!), but also takes terrific photos. It's the Panasonic Lumix TZ5, which has an amazing 10X optical zoom.

• Gifts. I like giving flowers; we usually have an arrangement of fresh flowers in the house. When I want to send some, I use Flowers Fast, which is run by a friend of mine. Use the promo code TRUE to get a 10 percent discount extended to This is True's readers.

• Network. What do I use for my home network? For stuff like this, I like to go with industry-standard, robust, field-proven hardware. That would be the Linksys router with built-in WiFi. When I previously used satellite Internet access, the router conflicted with the satellite modem so I had to use a simpler "switch"; I chose this one from D-Link, which has a generous eight ports, and I still use it now to give me more ports on the router. (As far as satellite Internet, I definitely consider it a last resort if there's no other broadband option. I chose Starband, but I don't recommend anyone use satellite if they don't have to. I was able to get rid of mine after a year, since a local ISP put in terrestrial wireless, which is much faster than satellite. And it let me switch back to my Linksys router, too....)

• Software. I absolutely despise MS Word, so I write using Corel WordPerfect (though lately they seem to take as long as Microsoft to fix the bugs they introduce in new versions). Text editing and web pages are created with an excellent shareware editor called TextPad, which puts NotePad and WordPad to absolute shame. I use a customized version of Eudora for e-mail. I'm currently looking for a new data base since Filemaker Pro is now way behind the times. Due to security issues I gave up on MS Internet Explorer; I now favor Firefox -- which is much better now than it was when it first came out. (When I refer to my software with friends, I use different names for them all -- except TextPad: MessedWord, WordImperfect, Ewwdora, Filebreaker, Internet Exploder, etc. Like many, I have a love-hate relationship with my software....)

  Security: You absolutely must use good passwords online: a simple word just won't do, especially for anything financial -- there's just too much to lose. I use RoboForm to secure my passwords. I don't even know what any of my online passwords are, but RoboForm does. I only have to remember one password: RoboForm's. It does the rest.

Miscellaneous....

• If you've ever had any thought of following in my footsteps and publishing an e-mail newsletter, the place to go is AWeber. They have the best "deliverability" in the business for one simple reason: they don't put up with anyone doing any sort of spamming. Seriously: they simply drop such customers. Prices are reasonable, and the quality of service is unbeatable.

• My weather station is a Davis Vantage Pro2 -- wireless version. (The wireless is a few bucks more, but save yourself the trouble of trying to run wires from your roof into your house!) More info on my setup.

• Where to? It's amazing what GPS-based navigation devices can do. I looked at them all and settled on the Garmin Nuvi for my car.

• My musician brother told me to not ask questions, just buy this. I did and was blown away. Animusic was created by a musician who has training in computer animation. He wondered what it would look like to create fantasy instruments that played his music by themselves. The result is awesome. Animusic Volume 2 is finally out, and its take on "Pictures at an Exhibition" is worth the cost of the disk by itself. But if you can only afford one, get Volume 1.

• Support. My friend Leo runs a site called "Ask Leo", which provides answers from a real computer geek for the tough questions you have about your computer. Windows is a particular specialty. Leo is the guy who I go to when I get stuck with a perplexing problem. He has an extensive archive of articles that answer the most-common questions. It's well worth going there and searching if you have a perplexing problem.

• I mention my wife from time to time, and people ask what she does. For her Day Job, she does environmental ("greening") consulting for hotels, which she writes about on her site about the "green hospitality" business:ECOnomically Sound -- being ecological can also be economical. She also has a data base for consumers who wish to find "green" lodging, Environmentally Friendly Hotels.

If I forgot to include something here that you remember from True, please do let me know.

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Disclaimer

As noted above, unless I clearly say otherwise, I don't recommend products on this page unless I use them myself. In no case of recommendations on this page have I been paid to say something nice about the service or product -- I doubt any company would want to pay as much as I would charge if I didn't actually like the product! And in no case was the product even provided to me for free for review, and I'll say so if that ever happens. However, when I link to a place to buy the product, I will sometimes receive a commission if you click on the link (not including Amazon) and buy it from them after you click. In the rare instance I get a commission, I don't consider that "paying for" my recommendation (or "review") in any way, but I want it to be clear what my involvement is. -rc