Looking for an ingenious Web site that can ease holiday shopping pressures? Try Boddit at boddit.com.

It's not a retail store, but an aggregator of the best prices on a wide range of products, including camcorders and coffee makers.

The prices refresh often, so you're always up to date on what the big discount Internet retailers are offering. They are the source of Boddit's information, and there are even options for tracking their coupon deals. Narrow your search by category or keyword and the Christmas gift hunt gets a little easier.

Here are a few more sites and programs I've found of interest as I prowled around the Net recently:

SiteAdvisor

SiteAdvisor (siteadvisor.com) should have been around a long time ago. It can tell you if a Web site is loaded with spyware, and it's also available as a plug-in for Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Beyond spyware, SiteAdvisor can check for viruses and online scams and (the part I like best) it can check to see if a Web site you register on is likely to send you spam e-mail.

Now owned by McAfee, the service uses automated testers and supplements its findings with user feedback, with easy-to-interpret information provided to tighten up your surfing habits. Recommended.

Converting formats

I often need to convert documents from one format to another, and I have discovered an easy way to do this online. Google's Docs & Spreadsheets (docs.google.com) lets you upload files for editing, with "save as" functions that let you convert to HTML, RTF, Word and other formats, including Adobe's PDF. Docs & Spreadsheets is a wonderful collaborative tool, but it's terrific for single users who just need to get access to items from other computers or, in my case, switch from one format to another without the help of third-party software.

Data recovery

If you've ever deleted a file by accident (and who hasn't?), you know that many of the tools for recovering lost data come inside ponderous utility suites. But Ultimate Data Recovery (mispbo.com/datarecovery.htm) is a freeware program that stands alone in power and ease of use. My premise is that digital tools should be tightly focused and do a single thing well, and this program is an example. It lets you choose a drive to scan, finds as many deleted files as it can and lets you recover with a click.

Data storage

Online data storage has many options these days, but I like what Swedish company Diino (diino.com) is providing. Now introduced in the United States, the service offers military-grade encryption to safeguard your data (making it a safe tool for data backups with drag-and-drop simplicity) and lets you manage your files from anywhere you have access to a PC.

A free account covering 2 GB is the way to check out the service. A $10-a-month paid offering gets you 10 GB of storage space, which you can also use to stream your multimedia files to any PC with Net access or share files with business associates or friends. A secure e-mail account comes with the package.

The one significant downside: the Diino software has no Mac or Linux version.

Library index

Looking for Web sites that deliver on information? Using the big search engines can often leave you with unsatisfying results. But Librarians' Internet Index (lii.org) is just terrific; its included sites have been vetted by a team of librarians. The index's 20,000 entries are dwarfed by the Google database, but they're all quality sites available through search and neatly organized by topic. I prowl around in some arcane areas, and when I need to get right to the meat of things, it's Librarians' Internet Index I turn to first.

Parallels

Apple's Mac and Microsoft's Windows have always been either-or propositions, although there were ways to run Windows programs on Macs that were never very satisfactory.

But with Apple software now running on Intel chips, all kinds of things become possible. And while Apple offers Boot Camp, which allows you to choose which operating system to use in a session, a company called Parallels (parallels.com) goes it one better. It lets you run Windows programs on the Mac's OS X operating system without rebooting, and its virtualization technology keeps any Windows virus from jumping to the Mac.

If I'm not mistaken, the next couple of years will see major moves in the area of user options, freeing us from the burden of monopoly operating system restrictions. Some gamers, for example, have to run their favorites under Windows but otherwise prefer the Mac or Linux. And we'd all benefit from being able to experiment with different software to see which operating environment works best for us. I can see why Microsoft would not buy into this (not with its market share), but a new freedom of choice now seems inevitable.