WEB BROWSING

Mozilla Firefox The world's fastest and best overall web browser. Tabs, pop-up blocking, awesome bar, and hundreds of free extensions. Download Page   

TELEPHONE

Skype Talk with anybody in the world for free using Skype. Buy some credits and you can call any phone number in the world, cheap. Download page

VIDEO CONVERTER- MP4, IPHONE, IPOD

Miro Video Converter Convert any type of video to mp4 or theora. Convert any video for use with iPhone, iPod, Android, etc. Very clean, easy to use interface.Download page,Mac apps store (free)

EMAIL

Mozilla Thunderbird Powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need. Download page

APPLICATION LAUNCHING

Quicksilver (Mac only) Incredible app with cult-like following. Quicksilver lets you start applications (and do just about everything) with a few quick taps of your fingers.Download Page

Colibri (Windows only)The closest you can get to Quicksilver on Windows. Download Page

WINDOWS VIRUSES AND SPYWARE

Microsoft Security Essentials MSE is Microsoft's own anti-virus tool. It's free, and it works. Download page

SpyBot (Windows only) Clean out spyware and adware. If your computer has lots of pop-ups and weird applications, run this immediately. Download Page

INVOICING

Freshbooks Web-based invoicing system. Sends out invoices, tracks what you make, tracks what you're owed. The free version allows up to 3 clients. Download page

SpyBot (Windows only)Clean out spyware and adware. If your computer has lots of pop-ups and weird applications, run this immediately.Signup page

UTILITIES

The Unarchiver (Mac only) Uncompress RAR, 7zip, tar, and bz2 files on your Mac. Many new Mac users will be puzzled the first time they download a RAR file. Do them a favor and download UnRarX for them! Download page 

RSSOwl Solid cross-platform RSS client. Open-source.Download page 

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  FeedDemon (Windows only) Simple, solid rss client. Easy to use.Download page 

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NetNewsWire (Mac only) The slick integration of tabbedbrowsing makes this RSS reader our top pick for Mac users. Download page 

Vienna (Mac only)Very nice, native mac RSS client. Open source.download page

PEER-TO-PEER FILESHARING

uTorrent (Windows only) A simple, fast Bittorrent client that will download your files without slowing down your computer Download page.

Soulseek (Windows only) The community-based filesharing client. Still one of the best ways to find rare music online.Download page

Cabos A simple, easy to use filesharing program. Gnutella network Download page.

Miro In addition to being a video player, it's currently the fastest torrent client on Mac. On Windows, comparable speeds to uTorrent.Download page

VIDEO PLAYBACK

MPlayer The interface and buttons are not as nice, but it may play even more video files than VLC.Downoad page

Perian (Mac only) A plugin that allows quicktime to play additionalvideo formats. (Included in Democracy Player.)Downoad page

Real Alternative Lite (Windows only) A lightweight, ad-free version of RealPlayer.Downoad page

CD / DVD BURNING

CDBurnerXP (Windows only) Burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs, and burn and create ISOs. Despite the name, it does work on Vista. Downoad page

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  Burn (Mac only)CD and DVD Burner. Burn any video to a disc that plays in your DVD player! Downoad page

VIDEO PLAYER / VIDEO PODCASTING

Miro Plays virtually any video file in a beautiful interface. Subscribe to video RSS, download, and watch all in one. Torrent support. Search and download from Tube sites.Downoad page

PODCASTING

JuiceSolid podcasting client.Downoad page

JAILBREAK YOUR IPHONE / IPOD TOUCH

Ziphone Liberate your iPhone or iPod touch to do things apple won't allow.Downoad page

IPOD RIPPING

Yami Get music off of your iPod onto anycomputer.Downoad page

Senuti (Mac only) Very nice interface. Get music off of your iPod onto any computer. Downoad page

DVD RIPPING

Handbrake DVD ripper and MPEG-4 / H.264 encoding. Very simple to use.Downoad page

PRIVACY

Vidalia This TOR frontend keeps you anonymous on the web using military-grade techniques. For use with Firefox see: TorButton. Downoad page

WORD PROCESSING / OFFICE SUITES

LibreOffice Big, full featured suite of tools for word processing and spreadsheets. Compatible with and a free replacement for Microsoft Word documents. Also supports OpenDocument Format.Downoad page

Bean (Mac only) Very fast and easy to use word processor. Live word count, autosaving, more.Downoad page

AbiWord A word processor. Leaner and quicker than OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft Word documents and OpenDocument Format.Downoad page

PDF EXPORTING

PDF Creator (Windows only) 'Print' to PDFs from any Windows program, just like God intended. Great for saving receipts, rebates, plane tickets, etc. 100% free and open source. Downoad page

PHOTO AND GRAPHICS

Picasa Test The best photo album for Windows. Lets you share photos too.Downoad page

GIMP Open source photo editing application that rivals Photoshop in features. Downoad page

Seashore (Mac only) More native Mac version of GIMP. Downoad page

MUSIC

iTunes Obvious choice, very corporate, but ultimately hard to beat as the best music player. Rip and burn CDs and download podcasts too. Downoad page

WIFI SCANNING

KisMac (Mac only) The best wireless scanner for Mac. Find wireless access when you're on the go. Downoad page

MAPS

Google EarthThe 3D map of the world that just gets better and better...and creepier. Total must-have.Downoad page

SOUND RECORDING

Audacity Simple sound recording and editing tool.Downoad page

RUNNING WINDOWS ON A MAC

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  Q Emulator (Mac only)Run Windows on your Intel Mac at near native speed. Works on G4 / G5 Macs too, but much slower.Downoad page

FTP / SFTP

SmartFTP (Windows only) A popular FTP program. Downoad page

Filezilla (Windows only) Excellent FTP program. 100% free and open source.Downoad page

Cyberduck (Mac only) Very good all-around ftp program.Downoad page

HTML / TEXT EDITING

NoteTab Light (Windows only) Text / html editor. Downoad page

Smultron (Mac only) Text / html editor. Integrates with Cyberduck for editing websites. Downoad page

Bitcoin A "peer-to-peer" digital currency so you can buy things without paying transaction fees.Downoad page

IRC

mIRC (Windows only) The most popular Windows IRC clppage.Downoad page

Colloquy (Mac only) Great IRC clpage.Downoad page

KVIrc A cross-platform IRC client that's free and open source. Downoad page