You can now fit a full collection of open source productivity software onto a regular thumbdrive for easily transferring your work environment from comptuer to computer. Download a full suite or each portable-ready app individually at johnhaller.com.

Even though Microsoft is finally getting around to releasing a version seven of their Internet Explorer browser, most of the recent innovation has been taking place with the freely downloadable Firefox browser. The main feature Firefox brought to the mainstream and that IE7 will be offering is tabbed browsing. With a tabbed browser, you can open new browser "windows" in the same window but with the page title appearing in a tab instead of the window title bar. This makes it really practical to switch between multiple web pages simultaneously without spending all your time finding the right window on your task bar.

Beyond tabbed browsing, Firefox has captured a significant share of the browser market by offering programmers the ability to extend its functionality through add-ins they call Extensions.

Here are some of my favorite Firefox Extensions and why:

Jakob Nielsen, the father of the science of web usability, has just released his second review of intranet portals and found that products and usage are still lagging behind what we know about them. Learn, then do, would be a good guiding principle, it appears.

Ruby on Rails sounds like a promising web development framework, though I know nothing more than the

Windows XP works quite well with tons of hardware and software. But even the programmers at Microsoft have thought of a bunch of ways to make it better. Enter the PowerToys for Windows XP, a group of freely available extensions to the Windows XP operating system that you can install and use to make your life easier. I especially like the Image Resizer, Command Prompt Here, and Tweak UI which lets you adjust things like menu speed, desktop icon size and spacing.

I also like the "Send to X" powertoy from Windows 95 which lets you copy groups of filenames to the clipboard, send a filename to a command line, or send files to any folder, all with a right-click.

I've been watching the Open Office project for quite a while, even back when it was known as the free version of StarOffice from Sun. Over the past few years, several clunky and annoying issues have been obliterated, allowing this free program to emerge as a viable replacement for the spendy Microsoft Office in nearly every way. Some folks are saying that only Powerpoint and a few types of highly complex documents may still require the features of MS Office. Other folks are pointing out that OpenOffice is a memory hog and loads slowly.

For people who aren't ready for serious web design work but need a flexible and useful place to edit web pages without knowing HTML, the NVU (prnounced n-view) web editor is the ticket. You can't go wrong with this free tool, and you can run it on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Read what some others say, then start to use it yourself!

A lot of talk these days about emerging web-based programs using new methods of stitching together information and services from many sources into an arrangement desired by the user. That's my definition of "Web 2.0", anyway. It seems a couple sites, Ning and Jotspot are making some of the visions a reality. I'll enjoy seeing where all this goes!