(FORTUNE Small Business) – NetComplaints.com There are many ways to seek justice. Protesters during this year's World Economic Forum sought theirs by shivering outside in the rain. My way? Use NetComplaints.com, a site where you can file complaints (or compliments) about world policy or against a specific company or service. It's much more effective than making a phone call and holding the line for hours (or standing around with soggy signs). That's because if enough people moan and groan about the same company, NetComplaints will notify it via e-mail. Plus, it's a great place to bone up on your competition--or worst-case scenario, to see what your customers are saying about you.

NewsBuzz.com When a techie friend built a company around a new technology he had developed, he struggled to get face time in the press (he didn't spend his first round of financing on good PR). So instead of having his office manager float rough press releases to random newspaper and niche-magazine editors, he went right to NewsBuzz.com, a site that provides various professionals--civil rights lawyers, chefs, or entrepreneurs--with basic public relations services. In the case of my techie friend, for $249 per year he posts his profile and quotable samples of his wireless-tech know-how; then the media that peruse the site for quotes and background information (most of them radio-show producers) can call him up.

SmartDraw.com I needed inspiration (and mild instruction) to jazz up a Website. So I took an hour to watch one of our graphic designers work. During that time, she jumped from program to program: PhotoShop to brighten up photos, DeltaGraph to design basic charts, and Illustrator to add pizzazz. Dismayed that I don't have all those programs at home, I suddenly remembered SmartDraw--a $70 downloadable illustration and design program that lets me do practically everything I want. Once it's downloaded, it takes one keystroke to remove scratches from photos or change their hue. It also lets me create maps from the site's templates (use it to illustrate your sales territories) and design the floor plan for my dream office.

vFinance.com My mother believes that angels watch over us when she's not around. My brothers believe that the Angels--those in baseball's American League--will nab the pennant this season. But the only angels my entrepreneur-turned-CPA father acknowledges are the ones that vFinance.com promotes--the money kind. He passed the site along because it's a place to go if you want to find funding for your company but don't have insider access to an investor network. Search for investors or lenders based on industry, their net worth, or state; then, for about $1 per VC firm, you get the contact info for when you're ready with a pitch.

Gigalaw.com I want to know more about copyright ownership vs. an "all-rights" contract, so I searched Gigalaw.com and got a textbook answer. Great, but I wanted to relate it better to real life, so I signed up for a discussion list to get a lawyer's feedback. Not only did I get her opinion, but I got everyone else's (nonlawyers). I also got messages--up to a dozen a day!--discussing topics I couldn't have cared less about (from domain-name mishaps to a law student's plea for a paper topic). Next time remind me to use a fake e-mail address.