A few folks have been asking me to share what software I use for different purposes lately. Just thought I’d share a small list here:

jEdit – All purpose text editor. Especially for editing remote text files over FTP. Free and Open Source.

Emacs – When I need to edit something fast – and jEdit is choking – Emacs is always reliable. Was my favorite text editor. Free and Open Source.

Eclipse – My favorite IDE. Used all day long for work in Java and Flash. Free and Open Source.

Flash – The Flash IDE. Still the easiest way to compose Flash based applications, however Flash Builder, aka Zorn, looks to be amazing. Check out this video of Kevin Lynch’s Web 2.0 onference presentation. More on Flex Builder on Mark Ander’s Blog. $

If I was still working on desktop apps I’d be joining Nick Bradbury in proposing a “Thanks to the Delphi R&D, QA, and Doc Teams” Day. Delphi was amazing.

AVG Free Edition – Anti-virus. Not a resource hog like Norton. Free.

Sygate Personal Firewall – My favorite firewall utility. Required to protect your PC from malicious access, and from spyware and trojans attempting to send data. Free.

Spybot Search & Destroy – Removes spyware. Not as required as it used to be since I switched to Firefox for my browser. Free.

FileZilla – FTP/SFTP. Free and Open Source.

Putty – Telnet/SSH client. Use it every day. Free and Open Source.

7-Zip – Alternative for Winzip. Free and Open Source.

MWSnap – Screen shot utility. Free.

ifranview – The simplest GIF/JPG viewer around. Free.

VLC Media Player – Plays almost every video format. Free and Open Source.

ffdshow – DirectShow and VFW codec for decoding/encoding many video and audio formats, including DivX and XviD. Free and Open Source.

Winamp – My favorite media player. Free.

Ulead DVD MovieFactory – DVD authoring. $

VSO DivxToDVD – Convert Divx and other video formats to one that can be easily used by a DVD authoring package like DVD MovieFactory. Free.

Audacity – Audio editor and recorder. Crashes here and there. Free and Open Source.

HTTrack – Used to download entire sites when you want to archive them. Free.

Azureus – Bittorrent client. Free and Open Source.

OpenOffice – Free alternative to Microsoft Office. Free and Open Source.

FeedDemon – The desktop aggregator I use to keep up with the over hundred RSS feeds I subscribe to. Syncs with Bloglines. $

Bloglines – The web based aggregator I use when I am on a box which FeedDemon is not installed. Free.

Gmail – Google webmail. I like how its threaded conversation view. Huge time saver. Using POP I download Gmail locally. Free.

Pobox – Service that allows me to have a permanent email address no matter what or who I use.Worth the yearly cost. $

Thunderbird – Desktop email client. I download mail from Gmail and keep an archive with it. Sometimes use it to compose longer emails. Free and open source.

Firefox – My favorite web browser. From tabbed browsing, to the many time saving extensions available for it, I can’t work on the web without it. Free and Open Source.

Gaim – Instant messaging client that allows me to communicate with my Yahoo! and AOL buddies. Free and Open Source.

Firefox Web Developer Extension – Adds functionality to Firefox that I use daily in my work, for example, editing (and previewing) CSS live, keeping the browser cache cleared, or quickly validating HTML. Free and Open Source.

IE Developer Toolbar – Adds similar functionality to IE that the Web Developer Extension adds to Firefox. Not as complete. But it is a great start. Free.

Firefox LiveHTTPHeaders Extension – A terrific extension that allows you to follow requests and responses from servers. Free and Open Source.

Kevin Langdon’s ServiceCapture – Similar to LiveHTTPHeaders – it helps to see, in detail, requests and responses from servers. The great thing about it is how it helps you quickly observe parameters being passed. $

Ethereal – ServiceCapture and LiveHTTPHeaders have removed the need for me to use Ethereal on a regular basis. But if I need to sniff traffic from an app on my machine to the Internet, and its not HTTP, this is the way to go. Free and Open Source.

Chatzilla – An IRC enabling extension to Firefox. Free and Open Source.

Firefox LiveLines Extension – Makes it trivial to add feeds to Bloglines (and in my case that means FeedDemon as well). Free and Open Source.