Computer Related Resources

Email: Fastmail.fm is simply one of the best email providers out there. They have a free service (with ads), a one-fee-for-a-lifetime service (which Lisa and Laura have), and two different levels of annual-pay service (we have the higher level of those two, called “Enhanced” service). Reliability is wonderful, support (which you don’t typically need) is great. We use IMAP, but POP is available (with any of their paid services). Their web-based access is also superb.
Webhosting: We’ve been through several. Cheap=unreliable, mostly. We finally discovered asmallorange. Good support, great reliability, reasonably priced.
Domain name registration: There are lots. We’ve had luck with Namecheap. The name is accurate. It works.
Online Backup: There are quite a few of these; after trying two, Safecopy and SpiderOak, we settled on SpiderOak; Safecopy just didn't work for us. More information is here.
Photo Editing Software: Adobe Photoshop Elements; it’s almost as good as Photoshop for photo touchup, and it’s much cheaper. Reading The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements is a good idea. The author knows a great deal, and it comes with a great CD of additional material. It’s not an easy book, but it’s very good.
Web Photo Album Software: jalbum, by David Ekholm, is a Java-based, multiplatform, incredibly flexible and powerful piece of software, and it’s free! Robert is particularly fond of the BluPlusPlus skin, written by Armond Avanes. Robert helped to write the documentation for this.
Web Photo Album Site: Phanfare, After much investigation, Robert found this wonderful album site. Although not as well known as SmugMug, Phanfare has more flexibility, a very responsive customer service and coding staff, and a neater look (the slideshow with the “Ken Burns” effect is particularly nice).
How-Tos: A variety of (possibly) helpful tutorials on various aspects of setting up various things with a computer can be found here.