A bit of chain. Dyagetit? Some cake. Read the articles and I promise it'll make sense. I created this image using Jing - just a screenshot, but very handy software.

Every self-respecting website has a page of useful links. We've got heaps of self-respect, and so here's our page of links. We hope you find them useful!

Idealware

Idealware provides candid Consumer-Reports-style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits. Through product comparisons, recommendations, case studies, and software news, Idealware allows nonprofits to make the software decisions that will help them be more effective.

LASA / ICT Hub Knowledgebase

The knowledgebase is designed to help community and voluntary sector organisations access the benefits of information technology. The knowledgebase is a comprehensive source of independent ICT information and advice.

ICT Hub

NCVO ICT Development Services' website - a source of trusted information and guidance on ICT (information and communication technology) to enable civil sector organisations to operate more effectively.

The West Midlands ICT Champion

Promoting ICT in the voluntary and community sector. With cakes.
[That's my kind of website - Matthew!]

The East Midlands ICT Champion

The ICT Champion supports voluntary sector organisations to understand and use technology to better achieve their goal of delivering high quality services.
[No cake on this one - make your own mind up...]

Open Source and free software

Links to open source software, that you can download and use completely free of charge. We'll try and suggest what Microsoft or other proprietary software these useful software titles would be good in place of.

Open Office (also known as OOo, for OpenOffice.org)

A great replacement for Microsoft Office, with components that behave every bit as well as Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Firefox and Thunderbird

Firefox is an excellent web browser. I use it all the time in preference to Internet Explorer. Thunderbird is no-nonsense email software and if you want calendar software too, you can use the lightning plugin - it's also quite excellent!

Jing

Jing is not open source, but is an excellent free product. We all use it here at illuminate. We can create simple screen shots, we can annotate them in the same software and we can produce short training videos with it. Have a go, you'll be hooked!

PDF Creator

PDF Creator lets you make PDF files from any document on your computer. It's free, open source and exceptionally useful. Utilities like this can be very expensive, so snap it up! Download it right now!