Paint.NET

Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software for computers that run Windows.  It features an intuitive and innovative user inter-
face with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.  An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

Google Earth

Google Earth combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar - a free online shareable calendar service.  With Google Calendar, it's easy to keep track of all your life's important events - birthdays, reunions, little league games, doctor's appointments - all in one place.  It's organizing made easy.

iGoogle

Google offers the ability to create a personalized iGoogle page that gives you at-a-glance access to key information from Google and across the web.  On this self-designed page, you can choose and organize content such as your latest Gmail messages, headlines from Google News and other top news sources, weather forecasts, stock quotes, and movie showtimes, bookmarks for quick access to your favorite sites from any computer, your own section with content you find from across the web.

Google Custom Search Engine

Harness the power of Google search to create a free Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and interests.  Specify the websites that you want searched - and integrate the search box an results into your own website.

HandBrake

HandBrake is an open-source DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

CutePDF

Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Save PDF Forms, Edit PDF easily.

FireFox Extensions

Open FireFox.  Go to Tools > Exteions > Get More Extensions > Browse All Extension.  Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox, from a simple toolbar button to a completely new feature.  They allow you to customize Firefox to fit your own needs and preferences, while letting us keep Firefox itself light and lean.

Kathy Schrock Shedding Light on Web 2.0

What is Web 2.0?  To shed some light, Kathy provides Research and Information, Web 2.0 Applications, and Online Presentations.

Apple iTunes

iTunes is a digital media player application  for playing and organizing digital music and video files.

GrandCentral-Google Voice

What is GrandCentral?  Get all the same calls, but in a whole new way.  GrandCentral doesn't replace your phones; they just link them together and help them do more. You get One Number...for Life^TM - a number that's not tied to a phone or a location - but tied to you.  With GrandCentral, you can be reached with a single number, answer a call at any phone you want, seamlessly switch phones in the middle of a call, and even know whether a call is important before you take it, plus many more features.

Turoid

Turoid is an arcade ball-paddle game. Turoid is full of features including bonus shoot' em up levels, up to 64 balls, two lazers, high score table, full-width display, on-line help, an intuitive Level Editor, and much more.

UrthWurm

This game is a pretty unique concept that's hard to explain. The object is to guide your worm ("UrthWurm") through the level, trying to avoid obstacles. The game is played using only one key: Your worm falls toward the ground unless you press the Spacebar to make it go up. (Like I said, it's hard to explain.) The graphics are pretty average, but it can be fun in short bursts, but it sometimes can very difficult.

WordWeb

WordWeb is a powerful free English thesaurus and dictionary. Find definitions and synonyms, as well as various sets of related words. The database has over 140,000 root words. The program can be used on its own or with almost any Windows program.

IrfanView

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox is an open-source program that is streamlined and customizable. Features of Firefox include: live bookmarks, extensions, themes, FastFind, Improved Security and New Tab Controls. Firefox received PC World's Product of the Year Award in '05.

Opera

Opera is another free web browser. It is advertised that Opera lets you surf the Web faster, safer and easier; has the best security track record of any browser; received PC World's World Class Award in '04 and '05.

DVD Shrink

DVD Shrink is software to backup DVD discs. You can use this software in conjunction with DVD burning software of your choice, to make a backup copy of any DVD video disc.

Audacity

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use open source audio software for recording and editing sounds. You can use Audacity to: record live audio; convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs; edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files; cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together; change the speed or pitch of a recording, etc. 

Nvu

Nvu is a complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a "new view") makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

CDex

Use CDex to convert tracks on a CD to various standard computer sound files, such as WAV, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis.

TinyURL

Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then you've come to the right place. By entering a URL in the text field, they will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.

With TinyURL, you can also make a smaller URL that will work for any page on your site.

FontFace.com

Your home for free fonts. FontFace.com now has more than 1000 free fonts and the archive grows literally everyday. Check out the Font of the Day for the latest free font. Browse through the archives for some of the greatest free fonts on the net or check out the Top 25 for the cream of the crop.

Photo Story 3

Photo Story creates slideshows using your digital photos.  With a single click, you can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures.  It's that easy!

PhotoFiltre

PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use and has an easy learning curve.

Jigs@w Puzzle Promo Creator

Jigs@w Puzzle Promo Creator is a wizard which will help you simply and quickly create your own custom jigsaw games. These small jigsaw games can contain your logo, banner, picture, corporate colors and a link to your web site. Freeware!

SmartMorph

Fast, advanced morphing program. The program can morph one picture to another or make funny effects with one picture. It allows the user to resize and crop the pictures to achieve the best results when morphing. The resulting animation can be computed and displayed real-time or it can be saved to disk.

Blender

Blender is an advanced 3D modeling program capable of producing high quality animations, performing rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback.

GIMP

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a very flexible application that can be used for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It supports a variety of file formats, languages and operating systems.

UnFREEz

UnFREEz is a high-speed Windows application that will take any number of images, saved as separate GIF files, and create a single animated GIF from those images. What makes this program unique from its competitors? First and foremost, UnFREEz is freeware. Secondly, UnFREEz is incredibly tiny, meaning you don't have to spend forever downloading an extremely bloated piece of software. Finally, it is so easy to use. Just drag and drop some GIF files from Explorer, set the frame delay time, and hit Make Animated GIF. UnFREEz will take care of the rest, including automatic interlacing and transparency detection. This program is written in non-MFC Win32 C++ and should not need any additional files to run.

WinZip

Organize your life! Never forget a birthday or anniversary ever again! This simple, easy to use calendar sits right on your Windows Desktop for quick and direct access to your daily events. 

FreeCard

FreeCard lets you create electronic greeting cards with graphics or video, text, music and sound to send with e-mail or on diskettes. Greeting cards are made into Windows executable files and they expand, play, and clean up automatically on target PCs. A Watermarking utility is included for embedding identifying and linking information to your graphics and video materials.

Picasa

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drap and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures area always organized. Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips.

TuDogs

TuDogs is hailed as the ultimate directory of gratis software.  Here you will find hundreds of the finest, top quality free software applications on the Web, and some useful free online services.

Tucows

The original software download site, Tucows.com, earned its name early on for being the first to provide software on a "freeware" or "shareware" basis.  They currently host more than 40,000 software titles (all tested, rated and reviewed by our own editorial staff of software experts) through our international network of more than 1,000 partner sites.

JohnHaller.com

This site contains portable applications.

SurveyMonkey.com

SurveyMonkey has a single purpose: to enable anyone to create professional online surveys quickly and easily.

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project.  Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program that enables you to explore the world in 3D. With just a few simple tools, you can create 3D models of houses, sheds decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships.

Celestia

Celestia is the free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions.

Inkscape

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.  

Dia for Windows

Dia is a program to draw diagrams.

Moodle

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities.

NetLogo

NetLogo is a programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena.  It is particularly well suited for modeling complex systems developing over time.

Scribus

Scribus is an Open Source Desktop Publishing program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.

VLC media player

VLC is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

Ray’s Letters and Numbers http://www.rayslearning.com/lettersa.htm

Free, fun to use educational software for children aged 3-6. A great way to teach the alphabet, numbers, counting, simple spelling, keyboard skills and more. Simple, entertaining, educational games which your child will want to play again and again!

Teachers Report Assistant http://www.rayslearning.com/report.htm

Free time saving utility for teachers who word process student reports. Produces professional sounding, individualized report cards in the shortest possible time.                                            

The program uses a set of statements written by the teacher or downloaded from the net, which can then be tailored to suit individual student needs.

Select and combine comments with a single click – you won’t believe how quickly complete reports can be written!

Designed to work in conjunction with your usual word processor. A guaranteed time saver!

Rasmol Molecular Viewer http://www.rayslearning.com/rasmol.htm

Maps that Teach (Also interactive Internet maps and games on this site)

U.S. Map Puzzle

Learn Letters

Letter Sounds

Letter Sounds 2 - Blends

Build Your Own Medieval Castle

Shields, Knights and Heraldry

MegaMaps - Walk Through the Continents

Print U.S. and World maps from a single page to 8 pages (nearly 7 feet across). Large maps to learn geography, to color for fun, or to put together as a puzzle. This is a fun way to learn the states, their capitals and foreign countries. Great for classrooms and home school. Free Software.

Make a Town ~ Make a Village

Two free software programs with activities for students to create their own model towns or villages. Make a Town has 10 different houses and 7 stores; Make a Village has 5 houses, an apartment house and a church with a steeple. Kids set out streets, decide where different buildings should be and put in parks and shopping districts. This project teaches kids about how towns are arranged and how they grow. It can be used to teach everything from math to architecture, or just for fun.  

Make a Farm

Software and activities for students to create their own model farm, with silo, barn, chicken coop, etc. Kids set out fields, choose crops, decide what animals to have on their farm, and what to grow to feed themselves and their animals. This project teaches kids about farm animals, crops and where food comes from. Free Software.

Heraldry Game

Free on-line heraldry game - learn about Shields, Knights and Heraldry.  Role-play as a young aristocrat, recognizing friends and enemies.                                                                              

DOSGAMES.COM (Educational/Kids Games)

Check out the children's games: BabyType, Donald Duck's Playground, Logo, Number Munchers, TypingMaster Games, and United States Quiz.

Brainy Screen Savers

Jazz up your computer screen with a BRAINY SCREEN SAVER! It's easy to change your screen saver and we have eight "BRAINY" ones for you to use.

ClassRoom Windows

Mixed Up Math

Free Elimination

Adobe Acrobat Reader

Get the latest versiou of  Adobe® Reader®, which is free software for viewing and printing Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files on major hardware & operating system platforms.

Sheppard Software

Hot Potatoes

ESBCalc

ESB Unit Conversion Utility

Here is the list of educational freeware

Here is just the beginning of the list of free educational software (Just keep looking for “free”)

ZipGenius

Linear Algebra Software

Trillian

Trillian is a fully featured, stand-alone, skinnable chat client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC. It provides capabilities not possible with original network clients, while supporting standard features such as audio chat, file transfers, group chats, chat rooms, buddy icons, multiple simultaneous connections to the same network, server-side contact importing, typing notification, direct connection (AIM) proxy support, encrypted messaging (AIM/ICQ), SMS support, and privacy settings.

Without stealing your home page and with no other included software, pop-ups, or spyware, Trillian provides unique functionality such as contact message history, a powerful skinning language, tabbed messaging, global status changes (set all networks away at once), Instant Lookup (automatic Wikipedia integration), contact alerts, an advanced automation system to trigger events based on anything happening in the client, docking, hundred of emoticons, emotisounds, shell extensions for file transfers, and systray notifications.

The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities

There are a lot of great freeware products out there.  Many are as good or ever better than their commercial alternatives.   This list features the author's pick of the "best of the best."