Zero Cost Ten

Ten Things You Can Have for Free

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

Bolide Free Slideshow Creator is "the smart software which saves a lot of your time and makes it super easy for you to create just amazing slideshow videos! This program helps you avoid uploading hundreds of photos from your summer holiday or birthday party or your friends´ wedding or some other celebration - instead you make only one stunning slideshow video which includes all your photos and even more! As you may guess, using Slideshow Creator you can not only combine photos into a movie with you and your friends in the lead role, but also add your comments and necessary notes. So, for each image you explain what is going on, who is there, where they are, why everybody is laughing and what has just happened before the photo was taken, etc. In other words, give as much information as you find necessary and suitable for the situation. Moreover, you are welcome to choose from a variety of awesome transition effects and the best music you find suitable for the shot. The program has all possible transition effects for every occasion! Be it a children´s party or a get-together for the staff, you are going to find something to your taste and make your photo slideshow video great!" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

GloboNote is a virtual sticky notes program that offers a lot of unusual features: Set Alarms. Remind yourself of important events. Set recurring alarm, play custom sound(*.wav, *.aiff or *.mp3); Build-in Calculator; Organize notes in group. Display/Hide notes according to group; Customize notes. Change color, font, behavior of your note; Create note templates; Search Notes; Attach files on note then double click to launch it; Attach images on notes. Paste image from clipboard to note; Support for URLs handling; Find/Replace the content of the note; Make note to always stay on top of other window; Support for rich text editing with bold, italic, colour etc (OS: Designer notes: "Platform Independent. Run on any OS that has Java 6 or higher installed")

Hanso Recorder is "a feature-rich audio program developed for a wide range of sound tasks such as: converting CDs, tapes, DVDs, live performances, TV sounds, Internet radio, video games and any other sound source into audio files you can easily save on your computer. The software´s capabilities also integrate text-to-speech conversion that uses natural voices allowing you to listen to your documents while not around your computer. Hanso Recorder comes with support for the most popular formats including MP3, WMA, OGG, VOX, AU, AIFF" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

In My Diary is "a smart, free personal organizer. The main display is based on a traditional diary format but, although all entries appear as one line of text, each actual entry can contain as many lines as required. Diary entries can be set to auto-repeat at the required interval. In addition to the daily diary, there is also a daily journal facility, a calendar, Address book with flexible labelling system, Anniversary entries and a notes section with links to diary entries" (OS: Designer notes: "It runs on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, and on Apple Mac [10.4 and above]. There is also now a native version for Linux OS or the Windows version can be used and works well running in the Wine emulator")

InDeep Notes is a "simple application that helps you create and manage your text notes with ease" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7, Designer notes "Requires: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5")

Interactive Calendar is "a free, feature-packed and extremely customizable desktop calendar that is a pleasure to use and look at. Unlike the majority of its direct competitors, this calendar software renders the calendar grid right on the wallpaper, considerably increasing the speed of refreshes/updates.
The calendar has several views and allows you easily create and manage tasks, specifying their duration, order and other parameters" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 32-Bit/64-Bit)

NoteItDown is "a protable application for creating and managing notes of all kinds. The most important features are: Notes can be stored in an user defined folder structure; The font, font size and colors are changeable for each note; With a RTF-editor each note can be designed individually; A search function finds notes with a specified text; Text inside of a note can be found with an incremental search function; An edited note will be saved automatically" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/2008/7. Designer notes "NoteItDown runs in multi user environments as well on USB sticks")

SNV Calendar Lite is "a highly customizable desktop month calendar that allows you to verify the accuracy of your dates. With this calendar application a selected date can be copied to the Clipboard, the difference between a current date and another date can be calculated, the background picture, color scheme, first day of the week and other properties may be set. An important feature of SNV Calendar is that its multiple instances can be opened as separate windows - each with different appearance" (OS: Windows 7/XP/Vista)

Task Coach is "a simple open source todo manager to manage personal tasks and todo lists. It grew out of my frustration that well-known task managers, such as those provided with Outlook or Lotus Notes, do not provide facilities for composite tasks. Often, tasks and other things todo consist of several activities. Task Coach is designed to deal with composite tasks" (OS: Win 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3/Vista/7)

VueMinder Lite USB is a free calendar program that can run from a USB stick - no installation required. It can auto-sync with Google Calendar. A calendar browser allows addition of many events, such as holidays, local weather, sport schedules, religious occasions, and much more. You can also create your own calendars, which are overlaid into day, week, and month views. Events are also visible directly on the Windows desktop, even when offline! (OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7 32-Bit/64-Bit)