Incredibly useful online sites can make your life a lot easier, too

If you had to guess, how many different websites do you think exist in the world today? From simple blogs to complex businesses, the Internet spans the gamut, dispensing and gathering information. Keep your answer in your head because, at the very end of this article, I’ll give the closest estimate we have.

Luckily, all kinds of websites exist that offer free ways to perform simple yet essential tasks. Here are some lesser-known sites you’ll use time and again. ❚ A search site just for streaming movies and programs. You want to watch a movie. What’s the easiest way to find out if that movie is available on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, HBO Now, CW, Starz, Showtime, PlayStation or another streaming service? Most importantly, if it’s free on Netflix or HBO Now, then there is no need to pay to rent it on iTunes or Amazon.

The site JustWatch sifts through almost every streaming service out there to find a specific title or show you what’s new on a particular service. In just a few clicks, JustWatch will tell you where to find it, whether it’s available on a subscription service and how much it costs to rent or buy. Since platforms such as Netflix vary around the world, you can also search by country for available content. ❚ A simple way to send large files privately and

securely. It’s bound to happen. You have a large file that you need to email. Your email program chokes on the file’s size, and your service provider politely posts a message that says, “The file size exceeds the limit allowed.” Thanks.

To the rescue is Send. It lets you share files in a fast, safe and temporary way. Upload a file — up to a gigabyte, in almost any format — and Send will create a URL, which you send to the recipient. Once the file is downloaded somewhere else, it’s deleted from the Internet, and it automatically vanishes after 24 hours.

This, as well as Firefox’s respected encryption software, ensures that your file won’t fall into the hands of some hacker. You also can check and see whether the file was downloaded on the other end, so you don’t have to wait for the recipient to send confirmation. ❚ Make sure hackers are not lurking in your router. You’re using Internet security software. You have secured your wireless network. You’ve enabled your network’s firewall. You’ve got complex passwords that contain an uppercase letter, a number, a sign and the name of your fourth-grade teacher. All done,

right? One of the most overlooked vulnerabilities is your router. Hackers can break into this device as easily as any other, a process called “DNS hijacking,” and most victims wouldn’t think to check whether it’s secure. This site (https://www.f-secure.com/en_US/ web/home_us/router-checker) offers a free service that’s specially designed to scan your router for breakins. You may be surprised how easy and fast this diagnostic is; just click the “Check Your Router” icon, and you’ll receive a near-instantaneous report. ❚ Write like your English teacher wants you to. Ernest Hemingway was great at a lot of things: hunting wild animals, out-drinking his friends and writing very concise sentences. Hemingway Editor is designed to mimic his minimalist prose. Copy and paste a few paragraphs into the site’s text box, and the editor will outline problematic parts such as long sentences, obscure words and confusing passages.

For an all-encompassing grammar checker, Grammarly has taken homes and offices by storm. You can paste a document and have it checked at the Grammarly site. The app and browser extension works across programs and platforms, pointing out your split infinitives in email, word processors, websites or on social media.

❚ For the tinkerers among us. Apps, browsers, devices, smart gadgets — they all come in different forms, and they don’t all cooperate with each other. We often struggle to hook up one service to another, especially when they were created by rival developers.

IFTTT is short for “if this then that,” and the site is designed to help different devices and services talk to each other. These so-called “recipes” can make your gadgets do things as in a chain of events. Want your smart lights to blink three times when you are tagged in a photo on Facebook? Or how about getting a notification on your phone when your favorite artist tweets about tickets to a concert? ❚ Print online articles without all the ads. You would think, after all these decades, it would be easier to print pages off the Internet.

Print Friendly takes the headache out of this process: Just paste a URL into the field and hit “Preview.” Print Friendly trims away a lot of the extraneous information and gives you the meat of the page, and you can review your document as a PDF before hitting “Print.” It’s shockingly effective, especially for software that’s free. ❚ And the answer is ... Here’s the number of websites in the world today: At the time of writing, it was 1,331,525,090.

Learn about all the latest technology on the Kim Komando Show, the nation’s largest weekend radio talk show. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com.