The best list of free Software in the world :

Web Browsing :

Mozilla Firefox

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

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Video Player / Video Podcasting :

Miro

Beautiful interface. Plays virtually any type of video file. Subscribe to video RSS, download, and watch all in one. Torrent support. Search and download from YouTube and others.

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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.

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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.

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IM - Instant Messaging :

Trillian (Windows only)

A powerhouse of an IM client. Supports AOL IM, MSN, ICQ, and Yahoo as well as voice chats, file transfers and more.

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Pidgin (Windows / Linux only)

Connect to multiple IM accounts simultaneously in a single app, including: AOL IM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk. 100% open source.

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Adium (Mac only)

Connect to multiple IM accounts simultaneously, including: AOL IM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk. Beautiful, themable interface.

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Email :

Mozilla Thunderbird

Powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need.

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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.

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Colibri (Windows only)

The closest you can get to Quicksilver on Windows.

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Windows Viruses and Spyware :

AVG (Windows only)

The best free anti-virus program.

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SpyBot (Windows only)

Clean out spyware and adware. If your computer has lots of pop-ups and weird applications, run this immediately.

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Utilities :

WinRAR (Windows only)

Compress and expand RAR files, ZIP files, and more.

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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!

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RSS :

RSSOwl

Solid cross-platform RSS client. Open-source.

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FeedDemon (Windows only)

Simple, solid rss client. Easy to use.

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NetNewsWire (Mac only)

The slick integration of tabbed browsing makes this RSS reader our top pick for Mac users.

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Vienna (Mac only)

Very nice, native mac RSS client. Open source.

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Peer-to-Peer Filesharing :

uTorrent (Windows only)

A simple, fast Bittorrent client that will download your files without slowing down your computer.

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Limewire

The world's most popular search and download filesharing program. Can be ad-filled and annoying, but works well for music and video.

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Soulseek (Windows only)

The community-based filesharing client. Still one of the best ways to find rare music online.

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Cabos

A simple, easy to use filesharing program. Gnutella network.

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Miro

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

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Podcasting :

Juice

Solid podcasting client.

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Video Playback

VLC

Plays more video files than most players: Quicktime, AVI, DIVX, OGG, and more. Pretty good interface.

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MPlayer

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

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Perian (Mac only)

A plugin that allows quicktime to play additional video formats. (Included in Democracy Player.)

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Real Alternative Lite (Windows only)

A lightweight, ad-free version of RealPlayer.

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Jailbreak Your iPhone / iPod Touch :

Ziphone

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

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iPod Ripping :

Yami

Get music off of your iPod onto any computer.

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Senuti (Mac only)

Very nice interface. Get music off of your iPod onto any computer.

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DVD Ripping :

Handbrake

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

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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.

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Burn (Mac only)

CD and DVD Burner. Burn any video to a disc that plays in your DVD player!

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Privacy :

Vidalia

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

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Word Processing / Office Suites :

OpenOffice.org

Big, full featured suite of tools for word processing and spreadsheets. Compatible with--and a free replacement for--Microsoft Office.

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Bean (Mac only)

Very fast and easy to use word processor. Live word count, autosaving, more.

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AbiWord

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

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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.

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Photo and Graphics :

Picasa

The best photo album for Windows. Lets you share photos too.

GIMP

Open source photo editing application that rivals Photoshop in features.

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Seashore (Mac only)

More native Mac version of GIMP.

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Music :

iTunes

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

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Wifi Scanning :

KisMac (Mac only)

The best wireless scanner for Mac. Find wireless access when you're on the go.

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Maps :

Google Earth

The 3D map of the world that just gets better and better...and creepier. Total must-have.

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Sound Recording :

Audacity

Simple sound recording and editing tool.

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Privacy :

Vidalia

Military-grade anonymous web browsing. Vidalia (a front-end for TOR) keeps you anonymous on the web using open source software and military-grade techniques. To use with Firefox see: TorButton.

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Running Windows on a Mac :

Q Emulator (Mac only)

Run Windows on your Intel Mac at near native speed. Works on G4 / G5 Macs too, but much slower.

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FTP / SFTP :

SmartFTP (Windows only)

A popular FTP program.

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Filezilla (Windows only)

Excellent FTP program. 100% free and open source.

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Cyberduck (Mac only)

Very good all-around ftp program.

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HTML / Text Editing :

NoteTab Light (Windows only)

Text / html editor.

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Smultron (Mac only)

Text / html editor. Integrates with Cyberduck for editing websites.

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IRC :

MIRC (Windows only)

The most popular Windows IRC client.

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Colloquy (Mac only)

Great IRC client.

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