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Ever have that horrible feeling when you go to your site and it’s down? HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN LIKE THIS? HOW BAD IS IT?

I just had a problem with one of my client’s sites, at the exact second I was showing it to him. Ugh! I ran to the hosting site and opened a trouble ticket.

Turns out, it was just a problem from my connection. We checked it on Downforeveryoneorjustme.com. The site lets you enter a URL to check and gives you instant feedback about whether it’s officially down. Awesome free tool.

Down for everyone or just me?.

Sigh. I guess it was bound to happen. I found a low-cost screen capture tool that competes with Jing, which is one of my all-time favorites.

FastStone Screen Capture comes in as an unobtrusive toolbar. You can capture windows, the full screen, a scrolling screen and a video with audio (see my sample below — I don’t think the audio recording is as good as Jing). In addition, when you capture something, you get a whole host of editing options to add a little more flair and details — Jing simply lets you annotate and draw arrows. And FastStone has a couple of extra handy tools like a screen magnifier plus a color picker (similar to another Beth Favorite, Pixie).

FastStone has a number of ways to export your capture, but I still prefer Jing’s integration with Screencast.com, which allows you to simply toss your capture online into your library without having to actually upload it.

Overall, I give FastStone an A- and still give Jing an A. But they’re both pretty darn cool and are infinitely better than your “Print Screen” Button.

FastStone Screen Capture – The Best Screen Capture Software.

Now this is handy! Download iSpring Free, a little PowerPoint add-in to convert your PowerPoint presentation into Flash with a push of a button. Here’s a sample with my last presentation…. Warning… as a stand-alone without audio, it’s insanely boring. But the cool thing is it became a Flash movie in about a minute.

iSpring Free | Free PowerPoint to Flash Converter.

This tool is a little strange, but I can see how it may be handy if you need to track your home library or if you sell things on Half.com or the like. Of course, I know people who keep detailed catalogs of their personal libraries, so maybe this tool would be perfect for them.

BeepMyStuff.com lets you use a webcam to capture the barcodes from your DVDs, Blu-Ray Movies, CDs, Video Games and Books.

Homepage | BeepMyStuff.com.