Windows; Mac There are some good Twitter clients out there for desktop operating systems, such as MetroTwit on Windows, but there is always room for more. If you haven't found one that you've liked you may want to take a look at Janetter. This free app is packed with features including real-time timeline updates. As your friends post their tweets they will instantly appear in the application.

Windows only When it comes to popular services like Gmail and Facebook there are a wide range of extensions available to make their appearance look a little nicer, but the free Pokki app takes an even more interesting approach to this.

Windows only We've come across quite a few photo viewing and editing applications in the past, but Zoner Photo Studio Free is one of the more powerful apps that we've seen.

Windows only Back in 2008 we wrote about a free tool called IETester that would let you test a webpage in a variety of Internet Explorer versions. Since that time Microsoft has rolled out new releases of the browser, and the developer of IETester has continued to add support for each one.

Windows only If you've been looking for a light desktop email application I'd give EmailTray a high recommendation. This isn't something that is designed to replace those full-fledged programs such as Outlook or Thunderbird, but when it comes to a simple mail manager and notifier it does quite well. Plus this will monitor multiple webmail accounts, POP or IMAP, for free.

Windows only There is something nice about finding an application that focuses on doing one thing, and doing that thing very well. That's how I feel about the Default Programs Editor app. It accomplishes a task I feel should be better managed in Windows itself, but with this no-install/portable program I start to forget about this shortcoming in Windows.

Windows only Do you still print out a calendar every month or every year that you frequently reference? Well, Calme 2011 is a free Java-powered application that includes a dozen different templates that you can customize and print.

I've always added some of my most used folders to the Mac OS X Dock, but at the same time my menu bar has remained fairly empty. I came across a pretty nice app called XMenu that will let you add up to 6 different icons to the menu bar, and each one represents a different folder on your machine.

Every year Donation Coder holds an event called "New Apps for the New Year" (NANY) where developers do some cramming in order to whip up small but useful apps.

A lot of great utilities have come out of Sysinternals, such as Process Explorer, and Autoruns is definitely among the top of the list. It's extremely useful for anyone that deals with bogged down systems on a regular basis. It will essentially lay out all of the items that start up with Windows, and goes way beyond the things you'll find in the built-in msconfig tool.

I've tried all kinds of Gmail notifiers in the past, and many of them leave something to be desired. I have to admit that one of the more recent ones, Spiffy, is on the verge of being awesome. Spiffy is simple, and that is partially because it is available in a portable form. The rest of the simplicity comes from being able to configure up to 5 Gmail accounts in a few minutes.

The book type setting is something I haven't had to worry about much, but that is largely because I don't burn DVD's very much anymore. The last time I did have to burn one, however, it was a DVD+R DL (dual layer) that didn't want to work in the particular DVD player that I was trying it in.

Last week we wrote about how you can use hashes to scan files for viruses using VirusTotal, and referenced a few ways to grab the hashes on both Windows and Mac. One of the recent additions to my portable catalog is a hash calculator called HashMyFiles put out by Nirsoft, who makes a lot of great freeware utilities.

I love the convenience of being able to minimize apps to the System Tray... especially when you're using an OS other than Windows 7, which means each Taskbar icon takes up a significant amount of room. In the past we've written about some great tools such as DM2 and TrayDevil that let you minimize a window to the System Tray, but they are often bundled with a lot of other features.

There have been a lot of times that I've wanted to quickly share a file with someone, but it was just so difficult or tedious that I didn't even want to. When you are talking about files that are over 200MB it can be tricky finding an online file sharing service that will support the upload (for free), and finding one that will keep a file private is even more difficult.

For the longest time I've always been good about regularly defragmenting my hard drives. With Windows 7/Vista that has been a bit easier since it is set up to automatically defrag all drives every Wednesday, but I have to admit that Smart Defrag trumps many of the alternatives because of how fast it really is.

I've always been a rather keyboard-oriented person myself, but mouse lovers can enjoy their own kind of shortcuts. X-Mouse Button Control is a free Windows app that lets you customize all the various buttons on your mouse so that they are a bit more useful, and the best part is that you can customize it on a per-app basis.

I'm not a huge fan of Java-based apps, but IOGraph is actually kinda cool. There isn't any real purpose to the app... it is really just for your own amusement.

Microsoft has been on the right track with the Windows Explorer updates in Vista and Windows 7, and I really like the breadcrumb functionality that they added. I never really understood why they didn't add tab capabilities, which makes sense with how many Explorer windows some users have open at any given time. Heck, at work I probably average having a dozen Explorer windows open at any moment.

We don't write about too many kid-friendly apps, but this one sure is. Rapid Typing is a freeware application that teaches both adults and kids how to type. It has all kinds of lessons that target specific areas of the keyboard, and the beginning stages even target specific letters. It then branches out to punctuation, entire paragraphs of text, and also the number pad.