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For most web developers, programmers and bloggers taking screenshots is quite a common task. Sometimes you need the screenshot for your next post or article or just to send it to your tech help desk to troubleshoot a problem.

I have been using Snagit for several years and I really like the features it offers and its intuitive interface. Snagit is not a freeware, last I checked it costs about $50. But don’t worry there are quite a few alternatives to Snagit that offer similar features for free. Following are four free screen capturing software that I think are worthy substitutes for any commercial software in this category. More

One of the most popular file-sharing applications DropBox has a new and improved web interface. It now offers a new and improved navigation. They have also transformed their FAQ section into a comprehensive help center. I think the most important feature is the ability to drag and drop files and folders on the web interface.

Some of the improvements are More

If you do a lot of repetitive typing, you may want to consider using PhraseExpress. This recently updated text-replacement application can save you a lot of key strokes.

PhraseExpress saves you countless keystrokes and expands custom abbreviations into frequently used text snippets. Typing ‘btw’ expands into ‘by the way’ or typing ‘excel’ can open your spreadsheet program in a snap.

Basically, you define small text snippets with full text once in the the application and then PhraseExpress expands them to full text every time you type the text snippet.

Some of the features include: More

Ever wanted to use a shade of color you found on a website or an image on your own website? You can find out the text color, background color etc. by looking at the source code of the web page (most often going through the stylesheet documents). In case of images you will need to open the image in an image editor program (Photoshop, GIMP etc). But an easy way of determining the exact hex code of any pixel on your screen is ColorPix
This small and free executable utility is a useful little color picker that grabs the pixel under your mouse and transforms it into a number of different color formats.

The built-in magnifier function allows you to zoom in on your screen to ensure that you click on the color you really want. Just click the mouse button or press a key and the ColorPix will copy the hex code of that color to your clipboard.
Enjoy.

Thanks to Open source movement there are plenty of free software available for our day to day computing needs. Here is a partial list of my favorite software.

• Mozilla Firefox: Firefox is considered by many as the best web browser. Everyday hoards of people converting to Firefox. The features include Tabs, pop-up blocking, themes, and extensions. Download Firefox
• Mozilla Thunderbird: Another powerful software from Mozilla. This free email client has everything you need. To me it is better than Outlook. You can safely replace Outlook with Thunderbird. Download Thunderbird.
• GIMP: A solid image and photo editing software. A good alternative to Photoshop. Download GIMP.
• Paint.NET: Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.Download Paint.Net
• Inkscape: An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Download Inkscape.
• FileZilla: FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with a lot of features. Download FileZilla.
• OpenOffice.org: OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite. Compatible with all other major office suites (including Microsoft Office), the product is free to download, use, and distribute. Download OpenOffice.org
• Notepad++: A much better text editor than Notepa. Features include tabbed interface, configurable syntax highlighting, syntax folding, line numbering, multi-view, bookmarks and regular expression search, brace and indent guideline highlighting and much more. Download Notepad++
• WinMerge: WinMerge is a visual text file differencing and merging tool. It is highly useful for comparing versions of projects, and then merging changes between versions. Download WinMerge.

Do you have a list of your own free software? Let’s hear from you.