If you are looking for a package of free software for your starving student or starving entrepreneur, check out SoftwareFor.org.

The good people over there have compiled a fairly large collection of best-in-class free software applications. The package includes multimedia, utilities, internet, academic tools, games and productivity software that would appeal to or be useful to a student. A complete list can be found here.

There are two different packages available, one is for Mac OS X the other is for Windows. The packages are in the form of CD images that you download and burn to disk.

Technorati Tags: free software

Tax season will be kicking off in a few weeks in the US. At least it will be for the proactive among us. Most of the rest won't even consider their taxes until the second week of April.

I like tackling my taxes early and every year at about this time I am faced with the proposition of going with TurboTax (which I have used for over a decade) or switching to the cheaper TaxCut software from H&R Block.

Last year things came to a head when I found out that some of the investment tax wizards I needed were moved from TurboTax Deluxe to TurboTax Premier and I had to buy an upgrade in the middle of doing my taxes. It was pretty annoying, but it was easier to pay to unlock the upgrade than switch to a new software package mid-stream.

This year it looks like the people from H&R Block are really sweetening the deal by offering much more for much less in their assorted TaxCut software versions. The question is whether it is worth trying something new and risking having to start all over with a more expensive product later or simply going with the more expensive product that you know works.

I checked out the TaxCut Software Complete Features List and it appears that this software should do everything that I expect it to. But I will only find out by taking a chance and making the leap.

Does anyone have any advice? What do you use? How complicated are your taxes? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Technorati Tags: taxes, tax software

DotNetNuke 3.2 and 4.0 were released this week. DotNetNuke is an open source framework for creating and maintaining professional web applications on ASP.NET. It is also the power behind Home Office Blues. The new versions of DNN were released on the same day as Micrsoft's ASP.NET 2.0 launch.

What's the difference between the two? DNN 3.2 is an upgrade for DNN 3.1.1 which runs on ASP.NET 1.1. DNN 4.0 natively supports ASP.NET 2.0. Both versions will likely be developed in parallel for some time until there is a sea change migration to ASP.NET 2.0.

I am evaluating both versions to determine to which one I should upgrade. I am not in a big hurry to upgrade and will likely take my time before making the leap to either.

References: DotNetNuke, DNN 3.2/4.0 Press Release, Microsoft's ASP.NET 2.0
Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, DNN, Microsoft, ASP.NET 2.0