Freely Ten

[Note: I've set up some posts to automatically publish while I'm off dealing with the storm; please excuse any errors I didn't catch. Any comments you choose to leave will likely take a while to be approved, as my stand-in comment moderator works days.]

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.)

Softology's Anagram Generator "creates anagrams and lexigrams, generates reverse dictionaries, word search function allows wildcard search on dictionary, allows you to see if your phone number spells anything interesting, searches for palindromes, search for words that rhyme with other words. Ideal for song writers, musicians and poets, includes English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Dutch and Spanish dictionaries, solves Jumble puzzles, saves all results as txt files for future viewing/editing/printing, non-encrypted dictionaries allow full customisation of words if required, manually edited English dictionary trimmed to generate interesting anagrams at a much faster speed" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

The free trial version of ArtText is a Mac OS X application for "creating high quality textual graphics, headings, logos, icons, web site elements and buttons. Thanks to multi layer support creating complex graphics is no sweat. Use the result with Apple iWork, iWeb, Microsoft Office, BeLight applications, and various other text edit and web design programs. Available in: English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese" (OS: Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later, Intel only. Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion compatible)

Efficient Sticky Notes allows you to "throw away the traditional paper sticky notes and start using the completely free Efficient Sticky Notes! "Stick" your notes on the desktop and you can read important information at any time on the screen. It saves your money and saves your time! The software allows various background colors, with optional gradient effect, to be set for the sticky notes. You can also customize the font of each note and set it to be semi-transparent so it will not fully cover up your desktop background or icons. To fully protect your privacy, the software encrypts the login password with the irreversible SHA algorithm and also encrypts data files. Besides, it offers various special features such as managing sticky notes by group, setting note importance, tracking the creation time and last modification time of notes, adding attachments to notes, Recycle Bin, etc. (OS: Win 98/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3/Vista/7)

Growly Notes is a freewware that "lets you capture everything you’re interested in, all in one place. Organize research projects, trips, to-do lists, or journals. Scrapbook your images, web links, and video clips. Your imagination is the only limitation. Pages can contain almost anything: formatted text, images, movies, audio clips, PDF files, tables, lists, web and file links, and drawings you create in Notes. There are no rules for where things have to go: put an image beside text or under it. Draw shapes on top of other notes. Put two snippets of text right next to each other. Click anywhere and start typing. It’s really that simple. Notebooks are organized into sections (the larger tabs on the left in the image above), each of which contains as many pages as you like. All the open notebooks are shown in one window, for easy navigation and quick jumps" (OS: Mac)

The Lite version of InstantPhotoSketch converts your digital photos into artful sketches. This one has very limited features, so you may want to check out the pay-for Pro version, which has a free trial period, if you're looking for a more sophisticated program. (OS: Mac, Windows)

LazPaint is an "image editor, like PaintBrush or Paint.Net, written in Lazarus (Free Pascal). Includes BGRABitmap, a set of drawing routines. Features: antialiasing; multiple undo; alpha blending; BGRABitmap; selection of any shape; rotation; filters; update checker. What´s New in version 4.8: better 'Shift colors' (menu Colors); a checkbox enables the correction of the usual HSL model; selection edition in grayscale (menu Selection); new 'Texture mapping' tool; import 3D objects (format *.obj); png black transparent fix" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

MemPad is "a plain text outliner and note taking program with a structured index. All pages are stored in a single file. User interface in English, German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese. The program offers standard editing functions including cut, copy, paste, undo, date/time insert, drag&drop, and supports Web links as well as network and local file or folder links (full path not required) and internal page links. Environmental variables can be used in file links to run programs, for example" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

Piggydb 6.0 is a "Web notebook application that provides you with a platform to build your knowledge personally or collaboratively. With Piggydb, you can create highly structural knowledge by connecting knowledge fragments to each other to build a network structure, which is more flexible and expressive than a tree structure. Fragments can also be classified with hierarchical tags. Piggydb does not aim to be an input-and-search database application. It aims to be a platform that encourages you to organize your knowledge continuously to discover new ideas or concepts, and moreover enrich your creativity." (OS: Multi-Platform Java; Requires Java Runtime Environment.)

TextOnTrays is "a small utility which allows you to store on its "trays" lots of texts that you often write. Afterwards, in a click, you paste any of these texts wherever you want. It is possible to store up to 150 texts" (OS: Mac OS X)

Here's something for those of you who make custom crossword puzzles for your newsletters, conference handouts or on your web sites: XWord is a "crossword puzzle program designed to be highly configurable. It supports a variety of formats: puz, xpf, jpz, and ipuz. Includes support for rebus puzzles, "trick" puzzles, diagramless puzzles, scrambled/locked puzzles, and a timer. Features:
Diagramless puzzles; Rebus puzzles; Circled and shaded squares; Unconventional numbering schemes; Clues in directions (and shapes) other than straight Across and Down; Formatted clue text; Background images; Puzzles with scrambled solutions; Notes" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)