Lifehack.org has a really nice roundup of mostly productivity related web apps that came out last year. The round includes a Mind map generator bubbl.us, Flash based word processor created by Adobe called Buzzword, Empressr a dynamic slide show creator, Highrise an enterprise-grade contact manager developed by 37Signals, Jott a note to self service which also offers transcribing notes from voice to text and the ability to post to your blog and todo list, A really interesting financial or I should say budget management service called Mint which you can use to setup all your accounts including bank, credit cards, loans and look at the big picture, A web app Nozbe based on David Allan’s “Getting Things Done” approach, you can have a virtual assistant via Email called Sandy whom you can email reminders etc.. just like a real secretary, Another similar to Sandy app is called Scrybe which follows the same theme as Sandy meaning you can email the things you want showing up in your calender and setup a to do list, a simple online to-do list interface called Todoist which does exactly what it implies, Another similar app to Scrybe and Sandy you expect people to still behave somewhat, Vitalist seems to another app focused towards productivity and whatever other needs one has to accomplish during the day.

Web Worker Dialy has a nice article posted by Samuel Dean referring to four websites that contain free software apps of various kinds. These include:

1. tinyapps.org
2. Sourceforge.net
3. PC Magazines Download Center
4. Download.com

Nice hack when you really need to go on to the internet in extreme IT lock down policies. Of course use this at your own risk as posted in Lifehacker by Adam Pash. Basically you can open any app and press F1 to get to the help section and then go to tools and click on jump to url and you should be good to go.

One thing also possible is to use the portable version of firefox. To use this you can load it on a USB Drive and stick in your work computer and in most situation you can browse the web without any issues unless the access blocked at routers end but thats very unlikely.

Web Worker Daily has a really nice resource for free sources regarding maintaining and building websites. Definitely worth checking out.