Freebie Friday

by posted in Freebies
Sep 17
2010

Purchasing software is an investment – and often an expensive one. But it’s amazing how many excellent free tools and utilities there are that make a big difference to our day.

What free software do you use on a daily basis, and how does it help?

  1. Josh on the 17th September

    Notepad++ & Aptana Studio 3

    I love how easy Notepad++ works as a simple code editor as well as a replacement for Notepad. I switch between using it for simple HTML/CSS & Aptana for more complex sites with jQuery and PHP. It’s my personal preference when it comes to IDEs.

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  2. $_POST['FreeDOM'] on the 17th September

    Mozilla firefox+firebug+fontfinder, WordPress, Joomla!, eclipse ,aptana , apache , wamp , quintessential mediaplayer+nettuts :D

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    • Dhruv Kumar S on the 21st September

      All these +

      Linux OS + Google Chrome + Google Apps (FREE!!!!) + many many more. :)

  3. Raúl on the 17th September

    I use Gimp, Blender, InkScape and Netbeans. Without this softwaqre I just can´t make anything

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  4. Miguel Antekera on the 17th September

    I use very often mamp to run a local server on mac and snippely to save parts of codes that i use frecuently

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  5. tom Bangham on the 17th September

    There are many program i use daily that are free:
    -Open Office is amazing not as pretty as Microsoft but has all the bells and whistles
    -Spotify i can not spend the days sitting at my desk with out some motivating music..annoying adverts but better than £10 a month..
    -Thunderbird / Firefox Mozilla products are getting better with every release Thunderbird has all my mail accounts connected to one folder different signatures per account and synced with my google calender very useful. Firefox is one of the better browsers on the market along with Chrome the add on’s expand the use of the browser to a ftp client as well as help me sort out website design issues.

    These are the main ones i use daily, any one know of a good free CRM system i can upload to my website or just use…

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    • Josh on the 17th September

      Funny you should ask: I haven’t gotten to upload it but I just found this yesterday!

      SugerCRM Community Edition. I’ve heard good things. You can upload to your server.

  6. Wiehann Radyn on the 17th September

    Dropcopy for Mac. Makes sharing files between two macs super easy.

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  7. Syuxx on the 17th September

    I use Notepad++ daily to do stuff realting with codes.
    It is an amazing free software :)

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  8. vamapaull on the 17th September

    Notepad++ every day! :D

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  9. Thim on the 17th September

    I use Dropbox all the time to back up my work and to have access to it wherever I am.

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  10. Kevin on the 17th September

    For me one of the best free software is dropbox it has helped me out many times.

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  11. Nick Plekhanov on the 17th September

    On a daily basis I prefer to use nice HeidiSQL for Database relation tasks, Snippely for storing my awesome snippets, and, of course, NetBeans for coding stuff.

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    • Michal on the 28th September

      I’d like to second this suite. It’s been awesome for me. Add DropBox for syncing work and home workspaces, Notepad++ for those super quick edits and you’ve got yourself a dream team.

  12. David Ferguson on the 17th September

    Amen for Dropbox.

    I also use Droplr a lot to share files.

    And wow, until I went looking for the free stuff, I didn’t realize just how much software I had purchased.

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  13. Jonathan on the 17th September

    Netbeans!

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  14. NormanW on the 17th September

    I use a free software called All2MP3. It converts f.ex. itunes MP4 to MP3.

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  15. Brandon Beasley on the 17th September

    Codeigniter, Netbeans, Notepad++, MySQL, MySQL Workbench, Fedora, Gimp, Kdiff

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  16. Bloggerschmidt on the 17th September

    Every day I use Jumpcut a lot. „Jumpcut make your clipboard dance.“, hehe. Get it!

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  17. Jim on the 17th September

    PhraseExpress
    jsFiddle

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  18. Bill on the 17th September

    We use the following free software in our office:

    NotePad++ | Great text editor with syntax color highlighting. We use this for quick edits to HTML & CSS. Or when we want to compare a file with something we’re working with in Dreamweaver.

    OpenOffice.org | Great full-featured alternative to Microsoft Office. We use this exclusively in our office.

    TweetDeck | We use this to manage all of our social networking accounts. An alternative we are considering to switch to is HootSuite

    Multiple Image Resizer.Net | Great little tool for when you need edit multiple images in the same way. It allows you to edit photos in a lot of ways. Very useful for editing photos for ecommerce sites or blogs.

    Producteev | This tool is amazing. It’s a productivity web app. What makes it unique is that you can forward emails to a specific address and it will automatically create a task out of it. You can alse IM to it, tweet to it, google app and calendar to it, etc. And it has a sweet iPhone app for keeping on top of your tasks.

    Mozilla Thunderbird & Sunbird | Thunderbird is an Outlook alternative and Sunbird is a calendar that you can link to just about anything. And because they are Mozilla apps there are hundreds of add-ons for both.

    Those are all the ones I can think of right now. If I were at my computer and not writing this from my iPhone I would probably have more for ya.

    Cheers

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    • John Bocook on the 18th September

      Don’t switch to hootsuite! When used in facebook, if other friends of that person also use hootsuite it will link all the posts together and they will have to click “2 other post’s from hootsuite” to see your content.

      That kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me.

  19. Bill on the 17th September

    Oh yeah, and DropBox :)

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  20. boee on the 17th September

    Notepad++ for almost every text editing.
    Skype for communication.
    Dropbox for file sharing.

    And of course web applications, like GMail.

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  21. Ashish Bogawat on the 17th September

    Okay, where do I start…?

    Firefox (best browser ever, chrome notwithstanding),
    VLC (for playing any media at all, including FLVs),
    Freemind (nothing beats it for structured note-taking and ideation),
    Aptana & Notepad++ (HTML, CSS, that stuff; Aptana for projects, N++ for quick edits),
    Evernote (note-taking for long-term memory)
    Stickies (note-taking for short-term memory)
    …

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  22. Rick Hambrook on the 17th September

    Free and open source software I can’t believe nobody has put Linux on here… Free and open source software provide so much to the world, not just in product but in lesson the lesson that openness and collaboration allows for brilliance.

    I use…

    Operating systems:
    Ubuntu, Debian, Android

    Server software:
    Apache, MySQL, PHP

    CMSs:
    Jojo

    Desktop Software:
    NetBeans, Meld Diff Viewer, GIMP, Chrome, Firefox, Open Office, Skype, XBMC, Pidgin

    Web Apps:
    Google Analytics, GAFYD

    Other:
    Frameworks such as jQuery

    And that’s not even counting all the additional software that the Linux distros have included. NetBeans is ok, but it bogs down with large projects. I’m yet to find a Linux program on par with PHPDesigner.

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    • Banago on the 18th September

      I’m not that astonished that not many use Linux, but I make two of us. Good new is, Linux is catching up deservingly.

      I use:

      Operating systems:
      Ubuntu, Android

      Server software:
      Apache, MySQL, PHP

      CMS:
      WordPress

      Design Software:
      Inkscape, GIMP

      Coding Software:
      Bluefish, Gedit

      Office Software
      Open Office

      For a replacement of PHPdesigner, try Bluefish. And keep in mind Skype is not free (as in freedom) software.

    • Banago on the 18th September

      And how in the world can you use such an ugly CMS as Jojo?

  23. Mauricio on the 17th September

    Notepad++, Blender, Dropbox and WordPress.

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  24. Jaymin Patel on the 17th September

    Gruml for Google Reader

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  25. jbaires on the 17th September

    pspad and aptana! yeah! also xampp, joomla and components, wordpress and plugins

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  26. DanielKeller on the 17th September

    vlc media player.. plays any kind of video format, best player ever

    http://www.videolan.org/

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  27. matt on the 17th September

    I use hootsuite, wordpress, evernote, and MAMP. WordPress by far gets the moust use but MAMP is super useful for developing locally

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  28. Marcy on the 17th September

    I have started using Aptana for website design/dev, in addition to many of the others that have been mentioned already, including GIMP, OpenOffice, Dropbox, Firefox, Thunderbird, Web Developer Toolbar.

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  29. ibib on the 17th September

    Dropbox & FileZilla. Free and awesome!

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  30. VF on the 17th September

    FileZilla, notepad++

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  31. Mocarg on the 17th September

    InType. Best editor ever!
    Has all sort of bundles. If you are in HTML mode type img than press “Tab” and it will code everything for you! You must check it out!

    http://intype.info/home/index.php

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  32. Simur on the 17th September

    PhraseExpress!

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  33. dr on the 18th September

    I really enjoy using Sidenote by Pierre Chatel for mac. I just mouse over the side and quickly create notes, drop snippets, jot ideas down and create notes on the fly for presentations.

    Shovebox is great too, for storing links to articles and online media.

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  34. Greg on the 18th September

    Comical, ComicRack for reading comics.
    Notepad++
    LogMeIn- for remote dektop(free version)
    FileZilla – file transfer
    VLC, GomPlayer, SPplayer – video watching

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  35. jlapitan on the 18th September

    notepad++, xampp, wordpress, firebug, firefox,Web Developer Toolbar

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  36. jiewmeng on the 18th September

    Notepad++ with ZenCoding & Explorer plugins

    Netbeans for PHP (like the debugging capabilities and how you can use Ctrl+Click on a function to goto the defination)

    probably moving to Aptana Studio 3 when it have more PHP features

    Firefox + FireBug/FirePHP

    jQuery, 960gs

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  37. Didos27 on the 18th September

    I personally tend to use SSuite Office’s free office software. Their software also doesn’t need to run on Java or .NET, like MS Office and so many open source office software, so it makes their applications very small and efficient. :)

    No trials, no registering your personal information, no strings attached at all. Just free office software. :D

    http://www.ssuitesoft.com

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  38. Fawad Hassan on the 18th September

    KomodoEdit
    Wamp (Apache, PHP, MySql)
    jQuery
    Wordpress
    Firefox (Firebug)
    Maxthon 3 (Free but not Open Source)
    Filezilla
    Orbit Downloader (Free but not Open Source)

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  39. der on the 18th September

    Internet:
    Mozilla Firefox / Thunderbird / SeaMonkey, Chromium, Filezilla, Adium, Skype

    Development:
    Netbeans, GEdit (mac), XAMPP, VirtualBox, DiffMerge

    Graphics:
    Inkscape, Gimp, Blender

    Multimedia:
    VLC, MPlayer

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  40. teer on the 19th September

    i like camstudio screen capture and open office.org

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  41. watermelonbunny on the 19th September

    I use notepad++ all the time (even for my text notes),
    FlashDevelop for actionscript projects,
    Zumodrive to back up my development files,
    Apache Xampp for local host,
    Filezilla for FTP, Navicat Lite for database design and management,
    Firefox and Firebug+addons for QA,
    Digsby for IM, email notice and social applications,
    Skype for overseas conversations,
    Winamp for my long, long ears,
    Avast! antivirus,
    If it wasn’t for windows and Adobe products (big if), I’d be all freeware.
    (\_/)
    (●ו)
    (¨)。(¨)

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  42. Derrick on the 19th September

    I just love Dropbox and Highrise.

    Just awesome…

    MD

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  43. DESIGNfromWITHIN on the 20th September

    - Dropbox
    - Notepad++
    - Firefox
    - MODx
    - WordPress
    - MediaPortal

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  44. CraigSnedeker on the 21st September

    Notepad++ for FPT editing. Wonderful.
    Editpad for code editing
    Blender (Yay!) for 3d
    Firefox

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  45. Syscl on the 23rd September

    I’m using Fedora Linux as my primary OS, which came with many free software which also very useful for my daily basis:
    - Chromium, the blue Google Chrome, as my default web browser with developer tools
    - Hey, Mozilla Firefox too! it has firebug..
    - Kwrite for coding XHTML, CSS, JS, etc. man, I love its syntax highlighting feature..
    - GIMP for graphic related
    - FileZilla for working with FTP
    - And many-many more.. very happy having & using them.. :D

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  46. Goran Halusa on the 17th June

    TextWrangler, Sequel Pro, Aptana Studio, Dropbox

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