Reply to comment

Here are some handy (and mostly free) tools if you're planning on building your own vehicle someday, or publishing your own website:

Drupal - Free Open Source CMS

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including this one!

GoDaddy - Domain Registration and Website Hosting

Despite having terrible/tasteless TV Ads, Go Daddy is a pretty great web hosting company. They have all the bells & whistles you could want (O/S selection, Databases, CMS Apps, Webmaster tools) all available via a pretty easy to use web-interface. Their 24/7 help line is useful too when you're trying to fix something on the site, which innevitably died at 3am.

Link Market - Free LinkExchange, Link Swap and Link Trade Directory

Have you ever tried to exchange links, swap links, or trade links? Was it hard? Use link market instead; - it is easy to use, free and very smart. It will save you hours of work.

Dupal Theme Garden

A great place to find and try loads of different Drupal Themes for your website. Sort of a try before you buy sort of deal... only they're free!?

Web Huddle - Web conferencing tool

I was a WebEx customer for years, and don't get me wrong it's a great platform... but Expensive! When you are working on a project remotely (say, designing a truck?) and you need to communicate clearly what you are seeing/thinking with other people, then the open-source, free Web Huddle platform is a great way to make sure everyone is on the same page... literally.

ZoHo collaborative Web Office Platform

Don't even get me started on Microsoft Office, especially once 2007 came out and ruined my life. (or at least my week!) Zoho on the other hand, is easy to use, completely web based and allows you to collaborate on the same documents with everyone in your team. Unlike Google Docs, it's not just a watered down spreadsheet and word processor, there is a Project Management Tool, a PowerPoint tool, CRM platform, Calendaring, etc. etc. You can export any doc back to MS if someone in your organization is still back in the stoned ages... (get it? you see what I did there?)

Google Analytics

Hands down, Google Analytics is the best Web Analytics package for the money... did I mention it's free? Yes, there are more robust packages out there. But for some bizarre reason, Google keeps developing and improving the old Urchin platform (which they bought and rebranded as Google Analytics) in order to keep up with Omniture and the rest of them. It's fantastic. There is segmentation, Geo Mapping, multi-variate analysis, time of day graphing, etc.) Did I mention it's free? Be sure to also download the Drupal Module for integrating your Google Analytics Tags into every page. SIMPLE!

Google Sketchup 7

I love Sketchup - If you have no experience working in 3D, it is a friendly way to learn. If you have any clue of what you are doing in CAD drafting, then you can learn Sketchup in a day. Once you've got it, it is fast, good luck, quick to render, and completely free. Yes, you have to pay $495 if you want to export files to .dwg (I don't) but even that is cheap compared to Solid Works or AutoCAD. Sure, it can't do 1/2 of what they can, but it CAN do everything you or I are going to need it to, and I think that makes it a great product. Did I mention it's free?

eDrawings Viewer

OK, so it's not open source... but if you are working with someone (as we were) who is using SolidWorks or AutoCAD and you want to view their files, this free download allows you to open, rotate, change layers, etc. in any file you want. It basically gives you all the power of AutoCAD except actually being able to modify the file. Combine this with a free conferencing tool like WebHuddle or Zoho meetings and you've got a pretty powerful way to review and comment on designs in real time from a thousand miles away.