Simkl is a web service that saves your instant message history to its servers so that you can access that searchable history from any computer with Internet access. You'll need a Simkl account and some money (1 month of archiving is $2.99 and one year is $24.99). You'll also have to change a setting in your IM client to use Simkl as a proxy (so that it can save your messages).

If the thought of a third party (besides the actual service provider) archiving your instant messages doesn't bother you, you can try out the service for a week for free. The history viewer is web-based, and you can do full-text searches on your IM history.

Simkl supports most of the popular IM clients including Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Pidgin, iChat, ICQ, Trillian, and Adium. Keep in mind that many of these IM clients like Pidgin and Trillian can log your chats individually, but if you use multiple computers with different IM clients, Simkl can unify your IM logging.

Is your email inbox overflowing with thousands of messages, or is it virtually empty, with only the few messages that have come in since the last time you checked it? It seems like a simple personal preference, but the answer to the question of whether you are an email "filer" or "piler" says a lot more about you than you might think it does.

While nobody can see into your inbox, the fact is that if you simply leave everything there and let it get pushed down by new messages that are coming in, you're almost certainly not giving enough thought to the things that hit your inbox. For pilers, the only clue as to whether an email has been dealt with is whether it is marked as read or unread. But all too often we read emails when we are not currently in a position to do anything about them. Even if we're careful about going back and marking messages as unread, they still get pushed down, out of sight, out of mind.

Right now, many of you with overflowing inboxes are probably screaming at your screen. How can we be so bold as to assume that we know if you're on top of your email or not based on this simple criteria? And plus, just last week we were writing about the virtues of Gmail. Gmail! You know, the email client made by that internet search juggernaut, Google! Surely if you need to find an email, it's only a search away. So why bother filing things at all?

Okay, we hear you, and understand your position. But there's really no gentle way to say this, so we're just going to come out and say it.

You're wrong.

Okay, there, we've said it. Everyone take a deep breath! Now let's look at how we can take such a controversial position in complete and utter knowledge that we are right, with not even the remotest possibility that we could be wrong. Alright then.

Need to pump out the PDF's but don't have the considerable change required to pick up a copy of Adobe Acrobat? Linux could be your answer. If you already have a Linux machine around the house serving some other duty, you can easily turn that machine into a PDF printing and archiving factory, and simply click "print" on any computer (and from any operating system) in the house to create a paperless document.

Joe Brockmeier of Linux.com explains, "What sort of things might you want to save as PDFs? When you buy stuff online, virtually every site provides a receipt, which you may want later if the order email is lost or if you need to send in a receipt for expense reports. However, you may not want to print all of them out just to keep them around, and Firefox only supports writing to PostScript, rather than PDF."