A medley of bookmarkworthy miscellaneous links

Note that dead links have been removed as services kick the bucket over the years.

Agnitum is home to Tauscan, one of the best Trojan detection and removal tools available. Its lightweight engine runs in the background to protect your system from all manner of dangerous backdoor nasties. Definitely a must-install if you're a Windows user.

Ditto.com - Excellent, minimalist, image search engine much like Google Images. It never hurts to have a backup.

Dropload - Need to send someone a bulky, too-big-to-attach-to-an-email file and don't have an FTP server you can upload it to? Dropload will be happy to host it for seven days giving the recipient plenty of time to transfer it to their own computer.

Email Addresses - You can't so much as amble down to your local corner shop these days without being offered free, web-based e-mail. OK so I'm exaggerating a smidgeon, but you get the idea - it's extremely easy to come by.

Much more difficult to track down are the more convenient, free, pop-3 e-mail providers. Emailaddresses.com has managed to round up - and arrange neatly in alphabetical order - the best ones. The site also includes reviews to help you weigh up the pros and cons of each of them, making it an essential visit for anyone who hates clumsy web mail interfaces, yet needs to stay in touch with friends and family.

HighJackFree - Another first-class Trojan/rogue dialer etc. detection and elimination tool. This one is aimed at more technically adept users.

ICQ Personal Communication Centre - It's a little known fact that it's not mandatory to have the ICQ chat client installed on your computer to be able to send someone an ICQ message. If you know their UIN you can send them a message via this web page, and also find out their email address if you don't already have this information. Even better, if they are online you can chat to them in real time using ICQ's cut down web client.

IX Quick Metasearch | Metacrawler - Two of my favourite meta search engines (those which aggregate the results from a multitude of different search engines and present them in an easy to navigate fashion on a single page).

Losers.org | Worst of The Web | Top Fugly - Since the discovery of the infamous Jimmy T, it seems that people have become obsessed with delving into the deepest, darkest recesses of the net to unearth strange people and their web sites. If you've ever wondered where people hear about these oddballs, you can now put your mind to rest - they're all here, categorised and indexed for your viewing 'pleasure'. Scary stuff!

Net 4 Nowt - Compares and contrasts all the various dial-up and broadband UK ISPs. You don't get 'owt for nowt, but unmetered access is close enough.

Netcraft Web Site Finder - This is a great place to start if you're searching for a web site and only know part of the address.

nLite - Indispensable Windows installation customisation utility, which allows you purge Microsoft applications no sane computer user would allow to infect their system - Internet Explorer, Media Player, Outlook Express and so on. Much like XPLite, but free.

O2 | Lycos (both UK only) - Free online SMS services. SMS allows you to send a brief text message to almost any mobile phone, anywhere in the world. You're normally charged for this service, but not if you use one of these web-based interfaces rather than your trusty mobley.
Non-UK people (and UK people) may like to try The SMS Zone instead seeing as they provide worldwide SMS coverage.

Open Directory Project - Automated data-gathering search engines tend to serve up a hell of a lot of misleading junk, links to more links and especially shopping sites (when what you're looking for is independent information). Not so with ODP - the largest human-edited web site directory in the world. As it's far less susceptible to abuse, the 'hit quality' tends to be superior to unfiltered search engine results in many cases.

Shields Up - Is your PC safe from hackers? Do an on-line test here and find out for sure.

'Suggest' is one of Google's latest experiments in advanced search engine drilling. Begin typing some keywords relating to whatever it is you seek and Google Suggest will attempt to read your mind and auto-complete the rest.

Supersite For Windows - All your Windows questions answered.

Surftp - Web-based FTP access on the go. Many public and commercial computers won't allow you to install a dedicated FTP client - use Surftp and this is no longer an issue.

The Universal Currency Converter - No prizes for guessing what this one does!

Wikipedia - Free encyclopedia - infinite knowledge at your finger tips!

Yahoo TV Guide - If you're anything like me you either lose your TV listing magazine five minutes after it comes through the door with the weekend newspaper or the dog eats it before you have chance to see it. This online version is always only a click away so you'll never have to accidentally stumble across another cookery, DIY or gardening program ever again. Hooray!!