Freebie Ten

Ten Things That Won't Cost You a Dime

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

Anki is a "program which makes remembering things easy. Because it's a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn. Anyone who needs to remember things in their daily life can benefit from Anki. Since it is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific markup (via LaTeX), the possibilities are endless" (OS: Win 98/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3/Vista/7)

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 MS-Word." [PBW notes: also comes in portable version you can run from a stick drive] (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

Google Blogger Sitemap Generator is a "small standalone utility that will allow you to enter your Google Blogger URL, select the number of entries that you want adding to your Sitemap and then generate the URL required for your Sitemap" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8)

My Visual Database allows you to "create a fully functional user interface in minutes without writing any code. The result of your design will be full-fledged Windows application, ready to work on any computer. My Visual Database allows several users to work with the same database simultaneously" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7/8 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

Pixia is a "painting tool and retouch software made exclusively for full color graphics. Pixia supports layers, masks and many other graphic editing functions. You can use your own customized brush tips and even use an image file as a brush tip to create unique effects. Pixia's user-friendly interface is suitable for beginners as well as experts. Pixia supports the most common editing techniques and presents a user friendly interface" (OS: Windows 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: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7; requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.)

Speedy Painter is a "simple and lightweight painting software. It is written in C++ and uses the OpenGL graphics library. It supports Wacom digitizers to vary size and opacity of brush strokes according to pen pressure" (OS: Windows Vista/7/8 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

StrokesPlus is a "completely free mouse gesture recognition utility for Windows which allows you to create powerful mouse gestures that save you time. With rocker support, modifiers, and the robust Lua engine built right in, there's virtually no limit to what you can automate. Traditionally, you begin a mouse gesture by holding down the right mouse button and drawing something, like the letter R for example, then release the right mouse button. This triggers the application to process your drawing and perform the specified action. The most common actions are maximizing/minimizing windows, navigating back/forward, or automated logging into a certain website. However, StrokesPlus takes it to the next level, giving you ultimate control over exactly what happens when your action executes" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7)

Task List Guru is a "free task list organizer ideal for personal task management and small project management. You can organize not just tasks, but also task lists, notes and reminders. Task List Guru has a hierarchical task list tree with icons that allows you to organize all your todo lists and notes in a structure with icons. You can choose from 48 different colorful icons for your to-do lists - this makes using this organizer fun" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

WowBase allows you to "create your own database quickly and easily. The main feature of the program — records are not in the form of rows, and in the form of cards. This method of editing the records you have not tried! There is quite a different attitude to the records: now this is not one thin strip of thousands, and a separate independent object that can be manipulated. You can even copy a few records and send them via instant message or e-mail to a colleague that he added them to his table. Very simple interface and minimal facilities needed for editing tables" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8)