I admit it; I am a fan of Google. I may not understand their business model, but they have some of the brightest programmers anywhere and they really understand how people work. The Google Toolbar is now in its second release as an add on for your Internet Explorer browser. When I first got it, I was only interested in it as a free popup stopper, this was prior to Microsoft including that in XP Service Pack 2, but I quickly found a lot more value in it.
First off, the Google toolbar allows you to search for anything you want just by typing it in the bar where the web address normally goes. In fact, search for something obvious enough like Amazon, and it will often just take you directly where you wanted to go. In addition a button will be added to the toolbar for each term for which you searched. When you click this button it jumps down the web page and highlights the next occurrence of your search term. This is great for finding what you are looking for on long web pages. This is the kind of thing you expect out of something from a search engine company though, so lets keep moving.
Tired of typing your name, address and phone number into web forms? The Auto-Fill feature in the toolbar will recognize these types of fields and with a single click fill them in for you. Want to know where something is? Hit the Auto-Link button and it will automatically find any street addresses on the page and turn them into links, that when you click them will bring up a map of the location in Google Maps ready to provide you directions if you need them. If you prefer Mapquest or Yahoo Maps it will use them instead, although if you have used Google Maps I can't imagine why you would want to use anything else. I do have to award points to Google though for not forcing their map solution on us.
Once you have that form filled out, a click of the button will spell check it for you---no more cutting and pasting into Word to make sure you didn't type something before hitting "Submit."
Best of all, this little toolbox is completely free and has no adware or spyware. At 550K it is a tiny, quick download. If you want to give it a spin, go to http://toolbar.google.com for more information or to download it.