There's a lot of cool software out there, but half the time you probably didn't even know it exists! So, I'm going to introduce you to some of my favourite free / open source ones... Some of these are very popular already, so you might know some of them, others might be a bit off the beaten track.
Audacity
Platform: Win/Lin/Mac
License: GNU
URL: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Audacity is a groovy little audio editing app, with support for MP3 exporting (if you download the additonal LAME package). It's pretty much a fully featured suite, with support multiple tracks, effects etc. When it comes to audio editing, it's the one to check out!
Blender
Platform: Win/Lin/Mac
License: GNU
URL: http://blender.org
A full-on 3D animation package, also great for plain old 3D modeling. Pretty much on par with whatever 3D suites are out there, like 3DS or Maya, although maybe not quite so cool. Still pretty kicking though... and hey, it's free. It's got a massive learning curve, but then again... all 3D software does, so it's to be expected. Definitely the way to go if you don't have $7,000 to fork out on Maya.
e-Sword
Platform: Win
License: Freeware
URL: http://e-sword.net/
e-Sword is an excellent bible study package, with huge amounts of (mostly free) optional extra content, including more bible translations, both english and otherwise, bible dictionaries, concordances, maps, commentaries, and so on. The only downside is there is no official NIV add-on available. Otherwise, a great all-round package. Speaking of NIV, you can download the full TNIV (Today's NIV - the updated version) from the official website in PDF format at http://www.tniv.info/pdf/TNIV_Bible.pdf.
EverNote
Platform: Win
License: Freeware
URL: http://www.evernote.com/en/
This is definetly one of my favourites. EverNote is a note taking application, which allows you to grab chunks of a web page, and save them into a notebook, which is great for taking research notes, or just keeping interesting or useful articles. You can also create to-dos, shopping lists, your standard everday notes, even drawings! It really is the bomb... haha.
Inkscape
Platform: Win/Lin/Mac
License: GNU
URL: http://inkscape.org
Inkscape is a fully featured illustration tool aimed at producing SVGs... which unfortunatly are pretty much useless do to the lack of support by current web browsers (bar FireFox), however you can still use it to knock out PDFs, PNGs, and so on. This is definetly my illustration tool of choice at the moment, and has some mind numbingly cool tools and features in it. You just gotta try it out!
Jtuner
Platform: Java (Win/Lin/Mac)
URL: http://www.corlett.plus.com/tuner/tuner.html
The coolest guitar tuner you'll ever get your hands on. Probably say nerds only for this one. It'll let you tune any note for any signal you can send it through your mic-in, line-in, or whatever audio inputs you've got available. I tune my guitar with this all the time, it really rocks.
Miro
Platform: Win/Lin/Mac
License: GPL
URL: http://gitmiro.com
Miro's your all-in-one internet TV solution! Haha... It's like a super duper VODCast downloader, which sucks down any RSS feed you give it. You can even set it up to download from Google Video, YouTube, Veoh and others. One of the most interesting features is... you can setup a search on YouTube or whatever, and tell it to subscribe to the search! So, as new videos become available on YouTube over time which match that search, it will automatically download them for you! I totally love Miro, but be warned: It is a bandwidth killing machine! Well... only because you can't stop downloading all the cool things you can find...
PDFCreator
Platform: Win
License: GPL
URL: http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator
PDFCreator allows you to create PDFs from any software which can print. One thing I really love about PDFCreator is it's ability to combine multiple documents into one, which means you could for example design a cover page with Inkscape, then combine that with your document which you wrote in MSWord. Very the nice.
PortableApps
Platform: Win
License: N/A
URL: http://portableapps.com
PortableApps is a collection of open-source software which has been re-written to run from a USB drive. Packages available include FireFox, OpenOffice, ClamWin (Anti-virus), VLC, GIMP, and a whole bunch of others. You can pick and choose exactly what apps you want to download and include on your USB drive.
PowerCalc
Platform: Win
License: Freeware
URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/power... [Cut]
One of Microsoft's PowerToys for XP, this is probably the most powerful free calculator you're going to find (Maybe? Never really looked to be honest...). It allows you to define re-usable functions, and even supports graphing of functions.
SyncToy
Platform: Win
License: Freeware
URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalph... [Cut]
Another of Microsoft's PowerToys for XP, SyncToy is a simple yet powerful tool for syncing two folders, which is great for creating backups, and so on.
VLC
Platform: Win/Lin/Mac
License: GPL
URL: http://videolan.org/vlc
A media player which pretty much supports everything (except maybe Real format). Enough said.
Windows Live Writer
Platform: Win
License: Freeware
URL: http://writer.live.com
So I mentioned this before on my blog... so what? Writer is a blog publishing tool from Microsoft which supports all the popular blog sites, not just Windows Live Spaces. I love it. Check it out, all you bloggers.
Windows Live Mail
Platform: Win
License: Freeware
URL: http://get.live.com/en-us/betas/maildesktop_betas
Like Outlook Express on steroids, WLM is an eye-catching e-Mail client, which uses the standard Outlook-style layout. My only disappointment is the lack of calendar, and, what I personally find very annoying, as well as its inability to edit the message HTML.... however, I don't think normal people do that... so you'll probably not care! Hehe. Overall it's pretty good. Oh, it also works pretty good as an RSS-reader too, which integrates itself with IE7's list of RSS feeds.
Platform: Win
License: Freeware
URL: http://www.zipgenius.it/eng/index.php
Your standard swiss-army knife for file compression, supports all the usual formats (e.g. ZIP, ACE, RAR, and so on). This is my favourite zipper, however there is one limitation - it doesn't support files with chinese characters in the file names. If that causes a problem for you, then you can always try the less-pretty but equally useful (and inact much more popular) 7-Zip from http://www.7-zip.org/. Personally, I use Zip Genius normally, and fall back on 7-zip when I run into a troublesome file, like er... Taiwanese drama OST? Haha.
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