1) EverNote

Available at: http://www.evernote.com

Trust me, once you get used to using EverNote, you'll find the following changes:

• You'll never buy a notepad again
• you'll never forget anything again
• you'll have a flawless Christmas shopping list

EverNote is essentially a collection of notebooks which you can add pretty much ANYTHING on your computer/the internet to. I get the most use out of it for my work as I have a notebook for storing code snippets and a notebook for creating draft documents ( like this one for example ). It’s also great at keeping track of things I want to buy and I even keep a permanent shopping list on there for when I got for my monthly food shop. (It has a brilliant iPhone and Android application as well so if you have an iPhone or Android enabled device I recommend it even more)

2) RocketDock

Available at: http://www.rocketdock.com

The quick launch dock in windows XP and onwards is all well and good but the taskbar should really be used to keep active windows open in a tabbed format. RocketDock frees up the start bar by adding a Macintosh style dock to the top of your screen. You can drag and drop applications and web addresses onto it for easy one-click access. It also allows you to minimise windows to it - a very useful feature for items that you don’t like to keep open all the time. Many people have replaced their taskbar entirely with RocketDock.

3) Launchy

Available at: http://www.launchy.net

Launchy is a brilliant little application that will save you a fair bit of time if you are a regular computer user. For a lot of people Launchy is a complete replacement for the start menu (and even negates RocketDock) I’m not quite there yet, I still prefer a combination of Launchy and RocketDock).

The basic premise of Launchy is that you can open ANY application or perform an internet search (or even control iTunes if you download the right plugins) without ever touching your mouse. You simply press a hotkey on your computer (usually alt-space by default) and the Launchy bar will open up. You then type the name of the program you want to run and press enter, after a few launches it will learn the application and it will take less keystrokes to open the application (I can now open Firefox by pressing 'alt-space', 'f', 'enter') if it cannot recognise what you have typed it will run the query as a Google search.

4) EventGhost

Available at: http://www.eventghost.com

Ok I admit this may not be everyone’s cup of tea but if you have more than one computer at home (or a computer and an iPhone/Android phone) this could be the most amazing tool you’ve ever used. With this simple program you can do so much, a few quick examples would be:

• Set your computer up to recognise when your phone is in range
• Remap the keys on your keyboard to something more useful
• Control your Home Theatre PC Completely.

If you have the time and money you can even set it up to control pretty much every electronic item in your house.

Imagine if when you walked through your door you were greeted with a freshly boiled pot of coffee and your favourite music playing on the stereo.

You can read more about EventGhost here

5) Spotify

Available at: https://www.spotify.com

Do you still pay for music? If you live in the UK (or one of the other European countries it is available in) and you are still using iTunes (or something similar) to provide and play your music collection then you are severely missing out on a revolution. Spotify is best summed up by giving you a hypothetical situation and ending it with ‘guess what, that’s Spotify’:

Imagine if you could make your own radio station, you could pick every song, you could keep up on the latest music and you could tell your friends to listen in if a great song is on. Well guess what...

Spotify comes in two flavours, Free (with adverts) or Premium (£9.99 a month) personally I go with the premium version simply because I like to listen to music on my Milestone and the Android Spotify app requires a premium subscription to use it (as does the iPhone version).

However, there are other plus sides to the premium version:

• You can download music for offline listening
• There are no adverts.
• The songs are sent at a higher quality (although I must admit, I’ve not noticed a difference)

Matt on the other hand only listens to music at home (he is cursed with a BlackBerry) and the ads don’t bother him enough to pay the fees. We both get a great experience and I personally don’t even have any MP3’s on my computer anymore as Spotify has become my exclusive music player.

If you are American and feel cheated out of great, free music then don't despair, there are rumblings on the net that you guys are getting it later this year.

Have We Missed Anything?

There are literally hundreds of great applications out there which can help to make your day a bit brighter and I’m sure there are plenty out there that I’ve not even heard of. If you think there has been a glaring omission then please let us know in the comments.