Avenue Odd

Oh the CLUTTER.

In my search for a thumb drive that would appreciate an experience that is an intimate peek into the life of a tennis ball on the Wimbledon’s Centre Court on match day, the Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 16GB, trapped in its little plastic enclosure, winked at me.

I thought to myself, a 16GB thumb drive? What on earth am i going to put on it? For a moment (something like two seconds, to be precise), i had an inkling doubt.

Now, this thumb stick has (still is) worked hard for me, enduring seemingly endless lectures without failing, and keeping a small collection of my favourite applications at my fingertips, Over the months, I have assembled a little plethora of portable applications that I simply cannot live without. Considering the widespread use of USB thumb drives nowadays, i thought perhaps i would share my little selection.

Firefox Portable

Firefox is, hands down, the best browser i have ever used. In terms of speed, it is but a tad slower than the simple-looking-but-downright-mean-under-the-hood Google Chrome, but the addons! Oh the addons, what would i do without them. There is nothing worse than getting to say, an internet cafe, and realising that it has only Internet Explorer 6. This is by far, the most used application on my drive. Click here to download.

 

Screamer Internet Radio

For access to tons of internet radio stations, this is my application of choice. Click here to download.

GreatNews RSS Reader

You don't tear newspaper into pieces to read them. Why should reading rss news articles be any different? GreatNews is optimized for full page reading, so you can scan through rss articles quickly. Combined with functions like "Open Next Unread Channel", you don't need to waste any time to find where all the unread articles are.
GreatNews is extremely fast. Even with hundreds of rss feed subscriptions, GreatNews's response is always instantaneous. You can opt to show news from all channels on the same page. And you have full control over how many articles can be displayed at once. Click here to download.

WordWeb: Free English Dictionary/Thesaurus

WordWeb is a one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows that can look up words in almost any program. It works off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the Wikipedia encyclopaedia. Click here to download.

Foxit Reader 3.0

For all the times you need to view a .pdf file and realise that the local computer does not have Acrobat, there is Foxit Reader. It is a small and fast PDF viewer. 50 million users can’t be wrong. Okay, sure they can, but this would be my PDF reader of choice anyway. Click here to download.

7-Zip

 

Many computers are not capable of opening .zip or .rar (both relatively popular formats). 7-zip is the Open-Source (read FREE) alternative to propriety software such as Winzip and Winrar. A portable version is available specifically for carrying around in a thumb drive. Very, very handy. Click here to download.

All of the above software are available for free, do feel free to comment with other portable applications you cannot live without!