Rob & The Blogosphere

3D Graphics (Alternative for Maya 3D)

• Blender 3D - My personal favorite. Blender 3D is unbelievably professional looking for a free software. If you are a frustrated 3D artist/developer or just a noob in the 3D scene, Blender 3D is just right for you. Tutorials can be found at their official website and at Tutorialized.com
• Google Sketchup - Dream, Design and communicate in 3D. Google Sketchup comes in two different versions, the free version and the paid one. Google sketchup is more exciting to use if you have Google Earth installed in your PC. You can create models of real-world buildings and other structures, upload them to the Sketchup servers and let the world see your creation!

Anti-Spyware / Anti-virus / Anti-rootkit (Alternative for Norton and McAffee)

• Ad-Aware SE Personal - This is the most popular anti-spyware ever, with nearly a million of downloads every week! It has a sleek design... but forget the design, when talking about anti-spywares we talk about performance -- which Ad-aware has.
• AVG Anti-Virus Free - Probably the most popular free AV, I've been using AVG, January last year till now. Unlike Norton, it doesn't run heavy load on your background so it won't affect the performance of your PC.
• RootkitRevealer - one of my fave. It is an advanced root kit detection utility. It output lists Registry and file system API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit. (nosebleed).

Media Player / Streaming / Podcast (Alternative for Microsoft Media Player and Real Player)

• Songbird - Ubercool player! I love the streaming radio stations embedded on the player. Now, I can listen to my music or radio stations with just one player that does not eats up my memory!
• Pandora - Lets you discover music by means of analyzing the patterns of the type of music you like. (not available outside US)
• Musicovery - also lets you discover music only that you chooses the genre and the timeline instead of the artist or the song. (Available everywhere)

Browsers / Plugins (Alternative for Internet Explorer)

• Mozilla FireFox - who doesn't know Firefox? Winner of numerous awards, Firefox is famous with its Tab Browsing and fast loading of pages.
• Hyperwords - This plugin makes the internet more interactive by making any word or phrase into an immediate search term. Watch the video here.
• Comodo Verification Engine - an anti-phishing or identity theft tool. Place your mouse cursor over a site logo. If it is authentic, a green border will appear around your browser. So if you really wish to be sure you are looking at the real Paypal site rather than a clever imitation created to steal your identity, install Verification Engine now!

Office / Documents (Alternative for Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat)

• OpenOffice - The real alternative for the whole office apps, OpenOffice is complete from Word processing to diagram maker (Visio).
• Cute PDF Writer - Don't confuse the name with what this free software can do. If you don't have the commercial version of Acrobat, you probably can't create PDF files too. Cute PDF Writer is the free version of commercial PDF creation software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a "printer subsystem". This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button!
• WikiPad - Hearts on this free software! What makes WikiPad different from other notepad applications is the ease with which you can cross-link your information. Links in a wiki are created by typing in WikiWords. A WikiWord is any mixed case word typed into the editor. TodoList or JohnDoe are example WikiWords. The term wiki means "quick" in Hawaiian, and wikis are all about quickly linking your information together.

Events / Calendar (Alternative for your real calendar!)

• 30 Boxes - It lets you connect with people who matters most. Does what most calendar do, only in a techie, cool way.
• Google Calendar - C'mon, everybody loves google products. They are light and easy to use. Google Calendar isn't far from those.

Email / Communication (Alternative for Outlook Express and paid POP3 Mails)

• Thunderbird - Another Mozilla product. I once used this, and I could say that it's a great client. If you have a Gmail account, you can use this to instantly download your mails to your PC.
• Desktop SMS - Send your SMS directly from your PC! - Just download DesktopSMS and install it. Desktop SMS allows you to send SMS as easy and convenient as emails. Just enter the recipient and your message, press "send" and your done! Desktop SMS seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Outlook® and Outlook Express®!

Imaging / 2D Graphics (Alternative for Adobe Photoshop)

• GIMP - GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.
• Draw Plus - Are you one of those people who always wanted to unleash your creativity with a powerful drawing and graphics product, but didn't want to spend hundreds of pounds on software to do it? Have you always thought that to produce high quality graphics and animations you'd need expensive training and hours of concentration? The award-winning DrawPlus 4 is the user-friendly program that will enable you to produce outstanding results with all your drawings, graphics, illustrations and animations. You'll be astounded by how much power this amazing software sensation gives you, and all for free!

Desktop Enhancement

• uTorrent - µTorrent is a lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows with many features.
• FlashGot - is a free Mozilla/Firefox/Flock/Thunderbird extension (compatible with Netscape too), meant to handle single and massive ("all" and "selection") downloads with several external Download Managers.

Games (Alternative for many over-rated commercial games!)

• Line Rider - An internet based application. You probably heard about this many times. Line rider had been featured several times on YouTube. I'm not an expert with this game but I find it nice nonetheless. The interface is simple but requires knowledge in Physics! OMG!
• Invasion Force Turbo - features smooth graphics, addictive and fun game play, frenetic action, spectacular and colorful particle effects and it is completely free!
• Plasma Pong - Plasma Pong is a variation of Pong that utilizes real-time fluid dynamics to drive the game environment. Players have several new abilities that add fun twists to the classic game. In the game you can inject plasma fluid into the environment, create a vacuum from your paddle, and blast shockwaves into the playing area. All these abilities have fluid-based kinetic effects on the ball, making Plasma Pong a fast-paced and exciting game.
• MechCommander 2 - MechCommander 2 Shared Source Code Release - This is the Shared Source release for MechCommander 2. This release contains all of the source code an source assets required to build MechCommander 2. This release can be used with the Microsoft XNA Build March 2006 CTP.

Programming / Development

• Krugle - Krugle is the search engine for developers! Krugle makes it easy for developers to find source code and technical information - fast!
• Browsershots - Ever wonder how your blog looks like at IE, Firefox, Opera or any other browser? Browsershots is a free online platform where you can test your web design in different browsers. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will automatically open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

Video Blogging / Multimedia (Alternative for iTunes, Adobe Premier and Nero)

• Miro(Democracy) - The free open-source internet TV and video player.
• Split Camera - SplitCamera is a freeware virtual video clone and split video capture driver for connecting several applications to a single video capture source. Usually, if you have a web camera or video camera connected to your computer, you cannot use it in more than one application at the same time, and there is no standard Windows options that makes it possible. Split Camera driver allows you to easily multiply your web-camera (any models), video cameras ( any model: analog or ditial : VHS, DV, TV-IN or TV-tunner ) in video chat or video conference software like ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype Video, Camfrog, AOL AIM, Pal Talk, or whatever... and to broadcast it to many users at a time.
• ImageToAVI - ImageToAVI will quickly convert a list of image/picture files into an AVI video. That video can then be loaded into your favorite DVD authoring program and burned to disc. Just imagine, your entire family photo collection converted to everlasting 1's and 0's.

Whew! That's it for now. If ever I found new freebies, I will post it here in my blog. If you like this post, please Digg it or Stumbleupon it.