Recommended Links

This portion of the Helpdesk site will be devoted to all  links that various Helpdesk staff have found useful over the years.  Please note that all links on this portion of the site do not reflect the views of the entire Helpdesk unit of ITS.  Links will often be hand picked by individual Helpdesk consultants and posted to assist users.  Keep in mind that not all links on this site will lead to software/services that are supported by the ITS department.

Information about Passwords

• Microsoft Password Information - http://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/create.aspx

Useful Unsupported Software Links

• Audacity – audacity.sourceforge.net – Free audio editing utility
• GIMP – www.gimp.org – Free robust image editor.
• Malware Bytes – www.malwarebytes.org – Free anti-spyware utility.
• Open Office – www.openoffice.org – Free alternative to Microsoft Office.
• Paint .NET – www.getpaint.net/ – Free image editor
• Spybot Search & Destroy – www.spybot.com – Free anti-spyware utility.
• VLC Media Player – www.videolan.org/vlc/ – Universal media player that is not supported by the HelpDesk, but is on most campus computers in the computer labs.

Computer Programming Links

• Codeproject: www.codeproject.com – Free programming assistance with a database of over 24,000 articles related to Microsoft .NET, Java, SQL, C++ programming languages.
• DreamSpark: www.dreamspark.com – Microsoft run site that provides professional programming utilities free to college & high students.  The free software includes:
  • Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
  • Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
  • Expression Studio 3
    • Expression Web – Web development application which replaced Microsoft FrontPage.
    • Expression Blend – User Interface Development for the .NET framework
    • Expression Encoder – Allows for recording/encoding of media; optimized to produce silverlight video content
    • Expression Design – Vector Graphic creation
    • Sketchflow – Prototyping software that makes it easier to convey the developer’s vision to the client before any coding takes place.
  • SQL Server 2008 DeveloperEdition
  • Windows Server 2003/2008 Standard Edition
  • Robotics Developer Studio 2008
  • XNA Studio 3.0 (XBOX 360 development framework extension for Visual Studio)
• Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN): www.msdn.com – Microsoft’s developer website which is home to Visual Studio and the .NET framework

General Links

• Mozilla FireFox: www.firefox.com – Free alternative to Internet Explorer.  This is an ITS supported utility.
• FileZilla: www.filezilla-project.org/ – Free FTP web publishing utility.  This is an ITS supported utility.
• Secunia PSI: Secunia PSI 2.0 BETA http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal or Secunia OSI http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/online/?task=load.
  The Secunia PSI is aFREE security tool designed to detectvulnerable and out-dated programs and plug-ins which expose your PC to attacks. Attacks exploiting vulnerable programs and plug-ins are rarely blocked by traditional anti-virus and are therefore increasingly “popular” among criminals.