Most of the tools that show up in this column are small, smart, fast, and easily explained. This month is no exception; we feature a dynamic duo of tools.

The Sugar customer relationship management tool lets you import unstructured data from the cloud. We’ll show you how to use this feature to integrate instant messaging services.

Vendors continue to develop new defenses against spam, one of the Internet’s most notorious pests. In this article, we integrate Postgrey with the Postfix mail server for a greylisting and whitelisting solution.

Embedded Linux doesn’t have to be rocket science, which the Gnublin board clearly shows. If you want to learn how to read sensors, flip switches, and switch LEDs on ARM Linux, this tiny machine is perfect for your research.

As your book collection grows, you might lose track of your volumes. Alexandria lets you catalog your tomes quickly and easily without a pesky database server.

Is the conference before or after your publication date? What tasks do you need to complete in what order? Was Jean born before Derek? Was the Atari ST released after the Amiga? Timeline is a program that can give you fast answers to these kinds of question, typically at a glance.

LinkChecker helps you keep your site free of broken links.

The Apache OpenOffice Project announces Apache OpenOffice 3.4, the first release of OpenOffice under the governance of the Apache Software Foundation.