People often think of software as either commercial (including shareware), or free (including open-source offerings). But somewhere in between lies another large category of software: donationware. The creators of such programs give the software away for free, in the hope that appreciative users will donate to support the application or a cause the developer wishes to promote. In this article I cover lesser-known gems.

Apple mobile device users looking for the nearest haunted house this weekend, there’s an app for that, too.

Nifty, free Firefox add-on Email this! is great for anyone who wants to share Web page URLs with others via email software. When you're on a Web page whose URL you want to share with someone, click a button, and the add-in launches your default email client--whether it's a desktop mail client, such as Microsoft Outlook, or Web-based one, such as Gmail--creates a new mail message, and inserts the URL into the body of the message, and the title of the page into the subject line. At that point all you need to do is fill in the recipient's address, type in any message you want, and send off your email.

Utilities and security apps are two of the most important categories of software that PC users download. From keeping your operating system slim and bloatware-free to eradicating cookies and spyware, these apps amply reward you for downloading them. And best of all, they're free!

WebFilter is a free Chrome extension designed to block access to objectionable or dangerous sites, including those that are pornographic, harbor malware, show drug use, or are heavy bandwidth users. It's a generally useful tool, although it is somewhat marred by its surprising inability to block at least one very obvious problematic site.

The free TrackMeNot Firefox add-on takes a unique and creative approach to protecting your privacy from search engines that can create profiles of you based on terms you search for. Rather than hiding your searches from them in some way, it takes the exact opposite tack: It inundates search engines with a blizzard of background searches from you, so that no practical profile can be built because there are too many random searches. It generates those search terms from a group of RSS feeds from sites including the New York Times, CNN, and others.

Telco provider, Optus, announced strong market performance and high hopes for the NBN during the recent SingTel Investor Day in Sydney held by its parent company, SingTel.

The recently released Firefox 4 is a big improvement over previous versions of the popular Web browser, but you can still teach it plenty of tricks.

Microsoft Word is ubiquitous: It's the standard word processor in most places of business, and it often ends up installed on home PCs due to compatibility and familiarity. It isn't the only choice, however. Whether your main concern is price, complexity, specialized functionality, system footprint, or some combination of the above, you might have many reasons to look beyond Word.

ConTEXT is a powerful, free, and open-source text editor squarely aimed at programmers. Its feature set makes it especially useful for system administrators, toolsmiths, and Web mavens, all of whom often have to juggle many small files written in a variety of languages or markups.

Your hard disk is a time bomb, waiting to go off. If you're lucky, like most people, it will never detonate. But if you're unlucky, like some people, you could lose all of your files, works, and applications, with no warning when your hard disk crashes. Acronis Drive Monitor (free) promises to give you warning before that crash, so that you can take action before you're hit with disaster.