Software Recommendations
A few quick off the top of my head (for Windows):
- TextPad: What I'm coding this page in. An excellent Notepad replacement. It features syntax highlighting, search and replace with full regular expression support, macros, spell check, and can open and edit multiple files at once. Want to change the headers on 50 different pages of a website? Mass search and replace to the rescue!
- Trillian: I've tried several cross-system buddy list programs, but they've all sucked; they usually crash often, are ugly, and have very limited support for the standards of the different systems they can connect to. Trillian has full-featured support for ICQ, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, and even IRC, with an easy and consistent interface, extremely skinnable, stability, and high customizeability. My only caveat is that it's a bit slow. Highly recommended for anyone whose friends are spread across instant messenging systems.