Free Software Surfin'

So, with my laptop back from the guys at Securas, LLC with a new harddrive and nothing salvaged from the old one, I've been going download crazy with the insane amount of available space. Recently, I downloaded MailPlane. It's a desktop gmail client, it's like having your gmail inbox on your desktop all the time. I like it, but between the six e-mail addresses I check daily, only half of them are gmail accounts. I probably won't keep it, but it is much more attractive than Apple Mail or Outlook.

Second, my roommate gave me the hint on DeskShade, and I'm definitely keeping this one. It's an program that more or less pulls a shade on your desktop that looks exactly the same as your wallpaper, which effectively only hides your icons, making it nice and tidy instantly. It's like when mom told you to clean your room but you shoved everything under the bed instead. There's also a feature to lock your screen with a password, and should any nosey roommates or siblings attempt to guess your password, it will log all of their attempts.

Lastly, is Adium. I've had Adium for a quite a while, but after redownloading, I went ahead and spent the extra twenty minutes fully customizing the preferences. This is definitely one my favorite free programs that I've ever downloaded. It's a chat program that merges your AIM, Facebook, Myspace, Bonjour, Mac, Jabber, MSN, or ICQ accounts into one buddy list. And like AIM 6.0, you can merge all of your chat windows into one window with tabs. I'm a big fan of it; very convenient when you need to contact someone quickly and only have their FB or Myspace account.