10 5 / 2007

Fantastic Five: 5 Freeware Apps You Don’t Know About

top 5 five freeware applications apps balloon to a blimp

Alright, I know this is a tech blog; furthermore, I’m aware that this is a very small tech blog in the grand scheme of the internet (hence the name balloon to a blimp). However, I have noticed something about all the big tech blogs — their top freeware lists are all essentially the same: Firefox, GAIM, iTunes etc. I’m not saying that those programs aren’t great — they are; what I am saying is that there have to be great programs out there that aren’t being mentioned in top 5 lists because they’re being bumped by other, better known, software. So, in light of my amazing revelation, here is my list of the top 5 freeware programs you’ve never heard about (along with some you probably have).

  1. DVD Flick - With this you can put anything on a playable DVD. When I say anything, mister, you best believe me. I once ripped a great copy of horror hotel from google video (using keepvid.com), saved it as an FLV, and burned it to DVD with DVD flick and it looked pretty fantas-great (Guide to DVD FLick).
  2. MySlax Creator - This program is by far the easiest way to make a flash drive bootable with any linux distro. Also, if your linux distro is a variation of Slax (i.e. slax, backtrack, etc.) MySlax makes it easy to add different modules (irongeek video tutorial) to your live cd or bootable usb drive, and as god as my witness I will never have a live cd without GalagaX again!
  3. Democracy Player - This program rocks, it’s an RSS video downloader. You can automatically download any podcast you want. Podcast are cool, I guess, but more importantly you can use this program in conjunction with TVRSS.net and use it like Tivo (tutorial via Lifehacker), Monday night = The Riches night.
  4. Winamp - I really don’t use Winamp for the everday media player stuff; why would I when VLC Player is much lighter and much simpler? No friends, the beauty of Winamp lies, not in its ease of use or simplicity, but in its complexities. You can mod winamp almost any way you like: you can add new skins, you can embed youtube and pandora, you can even tweak the audio settings and levels until even the pickiest audiophile is satisfied. However, the coolest thing about winamp has to be its SHOUTcast TV and AOL In2TV functions (Winamp is the old school Joost, Homie). So what if I’m the only one who still uses Winamp? I like it, it’s my blog, it’s #4
  5. AusLogics Disk Defragmenter - I know I’ve mentioned it on this site before, but I just can’t say enough good things about this handy little app. This app is a little bit of an obsession for me, it’s like I get off on seeing the performance boost I can get out of each PC I try it on. I carry it on my flash drive because that’s how sick I am.

So that pretty much concludes my list. There were many many programs I left out for the sake of achieving a list that is of the ultimate number (5 - duh). Some honorable mentions include Notepad ++, Cygwin, CCleaner, and LogMeIn. So I hope you take the time to check out the programs in this list, but if you don’t, I don’t really care; That’s right we’re the tech blog that’s too cool for you.


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