For mind mapping software, I’ve been a fan of FreeMind for a couple years now. I took a look at some of the other software available now and FreeMind is still my favorite, and it’s open source.

After recently taking a really in depth look at a number of Content Management Systems including Drupal, PHPFusion, and Serendipity - WordPress is still my favorite by far.  The number of free theme templates and pluggins is staggering but the quality is fantastic.

Mouse and keyboard sharing accross two computers

Synergy is an open source application that allows you to drag your mouse off the edge of one computer display, and onto the display of another computer.  You share a single keyboard and mouse across multiple computers, multiple displays, and multiple OSes.  It is awesome!

The other day I was trying to find a way to connect two external monitors to my iMac so that I’d end up having three (3) displays.  After figuring out that there is no simple way to do it, I stumbled across Synergy and was blown away by it.  I now have my desk set up with my iMac, a secondary monitor for my iMac, my PC laptop, and a secondary monitor for my laptop.  I can drag my mouse across all 4 monitors.  I can copy from my PC and paste to my Mac.

I haven’t had a chance to play with it by Synergy doesn’t seem to have a limitation to the number of computers you link together with it and you can configure computer displays in any number of orientations:  right, left, up, down.

Very cool stuff,

7-Zip is the best compression/decompression tool I’ve used so far.  It’s also free and doesn’t have any of the anoying advertisements other software has.  7-Zip is way better than WinZip in every way.

A free FTP Client that I highly recommend is FileZilla.

Nothing but good things to say about it and it blows everything else I’ve ever used out of the water in terms of usability and reliability.