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Contact.com
Contact.com, a product/service that’s still in prerelease, offers a fascinating blend of online and offline contact manager and address book capabilities. Since all users will keep their personal data up to date on the Web, a quick click of the synchronization button ensures that the offline version of your address book, which lives on your PC, contains the most recent info available. You can control which contacts see which pieces of your personal data, and the online part of the program makes it easy, for instance, to buy gifts for your contacts on their birthdays or get driving directions to their offices. Of course, a system like this works only if everyone you know uses it as well, so Contact.com is hoping that lots of viral marketing will bring the service to critical mass.

http://www.contact.com/

efax.com
It might be time to say so long to your clunky fax machine. A free service, eFax has already given unique, private fax numbers to more than 1.6 million people. When someone sends you a fax, you receive it via e-mail, which means you’ll never miss a fax or suffer with a malfunctioning machine again. Fee-based premium services let you send faxes via e-mail, forward faxes, and perform character recognition, and new wireless services let you send your Web-based documents to any nearby fax machine for printing. eFax is yet another great example of how the Web can make your life easier.

http://www.efax.com/

myTalk
This service lets you call a toll-free number, hear and respond to your forwarded e-mail using voice commands, and make local and long-distance calls of up to 2 minutes within the United States. Recently, voice mail features have been added. That means someone can call your myTalk number, enter your PIN, leave you a message, and give you his phone number. After listening to the message, you can simply say, “Call him back,” and away you go on a free 2-minute call. myTalk is free; you have to endure short commercials as you use the service.

http://www.mytalk.com/

Stamps.com
A software-only solution, Stamps.com delivers on-demand purchasing and printing of First Class, Priority, and Express Mail postage for U.S. addresses. Most laser and ink jet printers are able to print postage and addresses directly on envelopes and labels. Stamps.com users receive free software and pay a monthly charge for postage purchases, plus a monthly usage fee. Visit the site to see whether the pricing policies make sense for you. By saving time and hassle, Stamps.com provides tangible productivity gains for consumers and small businesses, and the company’s recent purchase of iShip.com for coordinating all your shipping means this is a true one-stop postal solution.

http://www.stamps.com/

Zkey.com
This Editors’ Choice–winning service has a number of features that can help small businesses. Most useful is the Zkey, an online identity containing as much public or private information as you choose to list. When you update it, it’s autmatically updated for anyone who knows you by your Zkey ID. Zkey also includes lots of well-integrated PIM applications, 50MB of storage space for files, and private conferencing for virtual workgroups. All services are free.

http://www.zkey.com/

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