The Hoc 100 - Buyers Guide

GOT A GREAT PRODUCT FOR THE CORPORATE INFORMATION technology (IT) director? Keep it to yourselves. Just launched a fabulous Web site for family scrapbooks and birthday cards? We don't care. We're HOME OFFICE COMPUTING, and our third annual HOC 100 Awards salute the best products, sites, and services for home-based business operators and teleworkers we've seen this year--if it's not right for the home office, it's not here.

Scorekeepers will notice a few changes from last year--instead of honoring one Gold and a varying number of Silver winners in each category, we got specific with Gold (shown in the photos that follow), Silver, and Bronze medalists in each of 33 contests, plus the year's most impressive newcomer to make 100. Reflecting the boom in Web applications, many of last year's "software" categories now honor "solutions" with browser-based services competing alongside CD-ROM programs. Sidebars to the main list let us salute a few runners-up and tweak a few noses. But the HOC 100's mission is unchanged: to spotlight the best available tools for competing with and beating big businesses. Use them wisely.