I've been messing around with two software packages lately that are both pretty cool. One is called Pluck and the other called GIMP. Both are free, both are pretty cool.

Pluck is an RSS news reader that lets you easily read all of the blogs you keep up with on a regular basis in one easy place. That's fairly standard though. The nice thing is, it integrates right into Internet Explorer and gives you a nice interface that lets you move between computers without having to reset up your feeds. It also has a concept called Perches, that let you have reoccuring searches across news services, ebay, etc on a given product, company or topic. It pre-fetches all of these things and gives you one place to go. I like it so far. Downside is that it doesn't work with Firefox yet, which is my browser of choice.

The second product is called GIMP and is basically an open-source photo-shop type image editor. I haven't used it to it's fullest extent, but so far it's got a good interface, good functionality and is fairly easy to use.

I also got a cool ASUS pocket wireless router that's about the size of a pack of cigarettes that I can plug into any hotel room or conference room and have an instant wireless network without those painful cables.