Free Multi-Platform Software

• Aptana Studio – A comprehensive text file editor for programmers.
• FileZilla – Easily the best FTP program on the market, and it’s FREE! It even supports secure FTP and multiple simultaneous transfers.
• Mozilla Firefox – Hands down, the best web browser on the market. Besides being standards compliant and more secure, it supports a whole slew of extensions. *must have*
• TeamViewer – A VNC-based solution for getting around your boss’s work-from-home bigotry.  It even works behind firewalls!  Set up the server on your office PC and load the client from home.
• Mozilla Thunderbird – My favorite e-mail application. Includes support for secure POP, IMAP, and newsgroups. I also recommend the Lightning (requires Mozilla Sunbird) and Google Calendar Provider add-ons for excellent calendar functionality.
• VirtualBox – A free alternative to VMware for running an operating system within an existing one.

Free Macintosh Software

• Adium – A a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.
• Transmission – A free and simple BitTorrent client.  My favorite on the Mac, but available for Windows and Linux as well.

Free Windows Software

• Avast – Free anti-virus program for Windows.
• CutePDF / doPDF – Allows you to create PDF files from any application that has printing capabilities.
• Digsby – A free instant messenger (IM) and social networking app that allows you to connect to multiple networks like AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, e-mail and more.
• Doppler – Doppler is a podcast aggregator, that allows you to download audio content from various online sources.
• DVDFab HD Decrypter + DVD Shrink – DVDShrink, although no longer under development, rips DVD video and compresses it to fit on a standard DVD disc for use as personal backups. DVDFab Decrypter “copies entire DVD movie to hard disk, and removes all the protections (CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS).”
• IZarc – The free and most excellent alternative to WinZip. Allows you to manipulate ZIP, RAR, and many other file formats.
• PSPad – A very good source code editor for Windows that features updating your web site via FTP when you save.
• uTorrent – A lightweight and full-featured BitTorrent client.  My favorite client on Windows, but also available for Macintosh.
• WampServer – A quick and easy package for installing Apache, PHP and MySQL on Windows.  Includes a nifty task tray application for administration.

Commercial Software

• Adobe Audition – A very powerful and easy to use sound editor for Windows.
• Adobe Dreamweaver – A WYSIWYG tool that includes a powerful code development IDE.
• Nero Burning ROM – The best CD/DVD burning software available. *must have*
• TextPad – A powerful, general purpose editor for plain text files. Easy to use, with all the features a power user requires.

Windows Mobile Software

• CorePlayer – A media player for the Windows Mobile platform that can play pretty much any media format.
• OggSync – A free application that allows you to sync your Google Calendar events with your Windows Mobile phone.
• Skyfire – A free, fast, and feature-rich web browser for Windows Mobile.

WordPress Plugins

• All-in-One SEO Pack – Optimizes your WordPress blog for search engines.
• Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog.
• WP Super Cache – Speeds up your WordPress site by automatically caching pages.
• Twig – Allows you to display your Tweets intermingled among your WordPress posts, sorted chronologically.

My Firefox Add-ons

• BugMeNot – Automatically fills in a known username and password for news (and other) sites that require registration. *must have*
• Copy Plain Text – Allows you to copy text from a web page without formatting.
• Dictionary Search – Allows you to look up words on dictionary.com by right clicking the word.
• Firebug – A CSS, HTML, and Javascipt debugger that aids in web development.
• FlashBlock – Blocks Macromedia Flash content (don’t worry, you can still view it by clicking on the movie). Also blocks popup windows generated by Flash. *must have*
• Pearl Crescent Page Saver / ScreenGrab – These add-ons allow you to save a screen capture of an entire web page without scrolling.  The latter allows you to capture selected areas of a page, the former does not require Java.
• SQLite Manager – A nifty addon that allows you do manipulate sqlite databases within Firefox.
• Web Developer Plugin – Adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools.