Free Stuff Ten

Ten Things You Can Have for Nothing

Freeware caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

Q10 is a "simple but powerful text editor designed and built with writers in mind" that offers full screen editing, a target wordcount feature, a timer alarm, custom autosaving, autocorrection option and even custom typewriter sound effects (OS: Windows)

Calibre is an "e-book library management application. It is free, open source and cross-platform in design . . . Calibre is meant to be a complete e-library solution and thus includes, library management, format conversion, news feeds to ebook conversion as well as e-book reader sync features" (OS: Linux, OS X, Win 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3/Vista)

Efficient Diary is a "completely free while still beautiful, easy-to-use and powerful electronic diary software package. With its unique and powerful flash full-text search technique, you can simply enter a word in the diary to quickly find the corresponding entries! The product has a strong edit function similar to that of Microsoft Word. You can insert various items such as tables, pictures, emotions, URLs or even attachments. You can set the background color, background picture of each diary entry separately so your diary can be rich and colorful" (OS: Win 98/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3/Vista)

esyPlanner installs on a pen drive and "allows you to manage your notes and calendar, register expenses, save your passwords and write your daily diary" (OS: Windows XP)

When he isn't writing Halo books or changing nappies, author Tobias Buckell is working an ongoing open/free online autobio project of blog posts and writing advice over at It's All Just a Draft.

Moo0 Magnifier "lets you easily and quickly magnify your screen on immediate demand.
Don´t you have times like you suddenly wanted to see some texts / pictures a little bit larger? Using this software, you can do it instantaneously by pressing only one key. We believe everyone should have got one of these" (OS: Win XP/2003/Vista)

NolaPro is a "free, web-based Business Management and Accounting Suite. It includes all standard accounting modules as well as order entry, inventory tracking, full payroll services, and plug-ins such as point-of-sale, a business-to-business web portal, and an ecommerce shopping cart" (OS: Win 2000/XP/2003/Vista)

Piggydb is an "easy-to-use Web application for building a personal knowledge repository. The knowledge in the repository is composed of knowledge fragments which you input in a manner similar to blogging. You can also input any file as a knowledge fragment. Piggydb enables you to create highly structural knowledge by providing features such as flexible relationships between knowledge fragments and hierarchical tagging. It encourages you to organize your knowledge continuously to discover new ideas or concepts, and moreover enrich your creativity" (OS: Multi-Platform; to run it you need to have Java 5.0(1.5) or later)

SimplePlainNote is a "very small application. (Less than 100kb setup) If .net framework 2.0/Mono is installed" that features "Change color of notes; Make note stick on top; Make notes transparent; Create e-mail of note; Send note to twitter; Resize notes how big or small you want it; Some syntax highlight for notes that have code; Fully xml based2 (does not need windows registry3)" (OS: Win 2000/XP/Vista/7)

SmoothDraw is an "easy natural painting and digital free-hand drawing software that can produce high quality pictures. Support many kinds of brushes (pen, pencil, dry media, airbrush, bristle brush, image hose, etc.), retouch tools, layers, image adjustment, and many effects... Works great with tablets and Tablet PC" (OS: Win 2000, XP, Vista;
.NET Framework 2.0, and the designer recommends a tablet/stylus for drawing)