# Favorite 100% free software and web apps and utilities

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-100-free-software-and-web-apps-and-utilities/366088>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 26, 2006, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-100-free-software-and-web-apps-and-utilities/366088 "2006-07-26T14:13:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2006, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-100-free-software-and-web-apps-and-utilities/366088/21 "2006-07-28T02:01:40Z")

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[QUOTE=bouv]  
I’ll second that. Especially when coupled (tripled?) with Real alternative and quicktime alternative.  
[/QUOTE]  
Another vote for this combination. Add the [ffdshow](http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow) codec library and you can play just about any video you’re likely to come across, without installing dozens of annoying individual codecs.

[Autostitch](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html) is a great little program for taking a series of digital images and turning them into a panorama. [Here](http://www.pbase.com/mhendo/image/60332665) is an example of a panorama i took a few months ago at a hotel outside of Amenia, NY.

For quick editing, joining, splitting, and encoding of mpeg and avi files, you need [VirtualDub](http://www.virtualdub.org/) (avi) and [TMpgEnc](http://www.tmpgenc.net/en/e_main.html) (mpg).

While i don’t have my own website and don’t need an uploading ftp client, i use [SmartFTP](http://www.smartftp.com/) to download from ftp sites like [archive.org](http://archive.org). It allows me to control bandwidth use so that i can download large files and still browse the internet.

I use [Skype](http://www.skype.com/) to make long-distance phone calls within North America and to friends and family in Australia.

I use a bunch of other free stuff (Thunderbird, Firefox, Opera, Audacity, etc.) that has already been mentioned in this thread.

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**Author:** ![Savannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2006, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-100-free-software-and-web-apps-and-utilities/366088/22 "2006-07-28T06:10:52Z")

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[QUOTE=Garfield226]  
For writing with no distractions, I like [WriteRoom](http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/product/writeroom) for Macs, and a clone, [Dark Room](http://they.misled.us/dark-room/) for Windows.  
[/QUOTE]

Hey, that one’s pretty cool. While “writing”, I often find myself procrastinating by playing with the font, the colour, the background, the font again, the font size… That’s pretty ‘shut up and write’! I will keep it around.

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**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2006, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-100-free-software-and-web-apps-and-utilities/366088/23 "2006-07-28T08:46:26Z")

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Firefox and Irfanview, as well as several WoW UI enhancements and a bunch of abandonware.

I use gmail which is also free.

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