Despite improvement in both the fiscal year 2006 reported net operating cost and the cash-based budget deficit, the US government's total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the Nation's total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000. As this long-term fiscal imbalance continues to grow, the retirement of the "baby boom" generation is closer to becoming a reality with the first wave of boomers eligible for early retirement under Social Security in 2008. Given these and other factors, it seems clear that the nation's current fiscal path is unsustainable and that tough choices by the President and the Congress are necessary in order to address the nation's large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance.

Avast! antivirus program. The Home Edition, which is what I use, is free for noncommercial users. It works fantastic, it's unobtrusive and fast, and it updates itself automatically whenever you connect to the Internet. If that's not cool enough, when you install the software, you also get a screensaver that will scan your system for viruses during screensaver periods (you configure this separately). Don't forget, too, that the title of this great antivirus program means "Stop!" in pirate lingo.

ColorCop is an amazing multi-purpose color picker for web designers and programmers. If you do any web designing, you will want this free tool.

iVol is a small program for quickly adjusting your computer's sound volume by simply pressing your mouse wheel and scrolling up and down. I use the optional Shift+Wheel to do this. The program displays an on-screen volume level while you are adjusting the volume, and you can also switch between audio devices using Alt+Wheel. The latest feature of v3.4c enables you to double click the mouse wheel to toggle "Mute" status. The program's author, Livecn, responds promptly to emails. I searched high and low for a program like this—iVol is fantastic and it's free.

News at Seven is an autonomous web system that generates a virtual news show presented by an artificial news anchor. It automatically generates a virtual newscast pulled from stories, images, videos, and blogs all linked by a common news topic. How cool is that? It's a project of Northwestern University's InfoLab.

NoteTab Light is a free Notepad replacement and text editor, and a slimmer version of NoteTab Pro, the award-winning commercial product. You'll be amazed at the features of this small text editor. I use this all the time. It's part of a suite of free software by Fookes Software.

Pandora™ is an Internet radio project that lets you create different albums featuring your favorite music styles. It works somewhat like this: You start off by picking a specific song, artist, or album and then let Pandora create your own group of songs based on the musical "genes" inherent in your original selection. You can further personalize your experience by saying yes or no to songs that Pandora picks for you. You can get more information about how this astonishing program works at the Music Genome Project and through the site's FAQs.

Pdf995. The Pdf995 suite of products (Pdf995, PdfEdit995, and Signature995) is a free solution to making and editing PDF documents. After installation, making a PDF file is as easy as printing a word-processing document. To create a PDF document, you simply select the Print command from any application and generate a complete PDF file of your document. You can do other things with these documents (such as combining files into a single PDF document) with the other programs in the free software suite.

PureText sits in the system tray and allows you to convert any text you place in the clipboard to pure, clean text. I used to do this by copying to clipboard, pasting to Notepad, and then copying/pasting again. Whew! Now Steve Miller's PureText does all of this in one quick step.