Cloudmark Spamblocker (or other anti-spam software) - If you're manually processing and deleting spam you're just wasting your time. The investment in a good spam blocker is well worth it. I've been using Cloudmark's product for several years and I really like it. Almost all my spam gets blocked and rarely does a legitimate message end up in my spam folder.
Another solution is to use GMail (or another web-based app) for your e-mail. These systems end up doing a pretty good job of filtering spam as well. And now a lot of these services have advanced functionality so you can use them and have the e-mails still appear to be coming from your domain (e.g.,
[email protected] rather than
[email protected]).
Bloglines (or other RSS aggregation software) - I follow 50+ blogs on a number of subjects including technology, new media, audio books, podcasting, U2 and of course Dilbert. There's no way I'd be able to stay on top of all of this stuff without the help
of a piece of software that puts all these blogs in one place and shows me what new updates have been made to each of them. I use Bloglines and I love it. Not only can I read blogs when I'm at the computer but there's even a mobile version of Bloglines so I can read blogs from my Blackberry.
Blogs are increasingly becoming the best way to consume information online and so if you haven't set up an aggregator yet I'd definitely recommend it. There are dozens of aggregators out there and while Bloglines does the trick for me you may want to look at the other apps to find one that works well for you.
Time Savings from Using Software To Your Advantage = Approximately 0.5 Hours