Metafilter had a nice thread the other day offering a round up of some sites which provided downloadable computer games free of charge. Never one to miss out on a freebie, the Ferret thought you lot might also be interested in said information. So here, cheapskates, enjoy – Game Hippo – huge selection and nice design. Caiman – comprehensive but slow loading. Acid-Play – cute. Noodan – ok, but some banners NSFW. Planet Freeplay – nice selection. I would add Pop Cap – lovely selection of free Flash games…and……

Unlock your mobile phone handset for free. Or try this instant online service.  This site will supply you with all the necessary information to unlock your Nokia mobile phone! You will be surprised at just how easy this is! Nokia Unlocking has never been so easy! The main objective of this site is to show you the cheapest (often free) unlocking and flashing solutions that are available on the web.

Vanilla Forums. Free Open Source PHP/MySQL application which offers a twist on the usual boring forums concept. Definitely worth a look.  With Vanilla we wanted to break the mold created and followed by just about every other forum on the web. We sat down and thought about what we liked, and more importantly, what we didn’t like about web forums. We wanted emphasis on the discussions rather than the statistics.

SmartShopper. A clever idea marred by a dumb implementation. In other words it’s a sidebar comparison shopping tool which is Internet Explorer only. Stupid. OK, IE is still the leader, but even so…Anyhoo, I like the fact that it includes eBay listings as well.  Fast, easy to use, and free – with SmartShopper, you can always be sure that you’re getting the best deals from the best merchants, while still shopping how and where you want. SmartShopper gives you timely advice on…

The Amazing Webpage Emailer. Very neat toolbar which lets you email a web page, without the adverts and rubbish, with the proper formatting and even if it’s locked behind passworded doors. Fast too. Plug-ins for IE, Firefox and Netscape. They do ask you for your email address while sending though, so be prepared.

StoreGrid. Peer 2 Peer backup software, using ‘robust’ encryption and ‘trusted peers’. Doesn’t look too bad actually, although the free version doesn’t have remote backup capabilities which is a shame.  StoreGrid’ P2P deployment capability is based on the concept of trusted peers in an intranet whose desktop space can be utilized in a peer-to-peer fashion. Another important feature of StoreGrid is the ease with which end users can configure backups and restore them, when required, without the help of system…

TVTAD. The TvTorrents Auto Downloader does what it says on the tin. OK, it doesn’t have a tin, but if it did. Set it up with programs you desperately want to watch from around the world, and it will happily check out the Torrents and automatically download when your choice arrives. You’ll need to supply your own RSS feeds though, note! Nevertheless, pretty excellent and pretty free.  TVTAD is an RSS feed reader with support for unlimited feeds. It will automatically…

The Hibernator. Freeware screensaver which promises to fix all those naff power management problems with Windows – and particularly Media Center – that plague us mortals. The cool thing is that you can set it to run a script on wake up, like for instance recording a program on resume. Which seems kind of useful, eh?   “The Hibernator” is installed as a screensaver. Its’ purpose, when activated, is to monitor CPU, Disk and Network activity for a user set…

The iOpus Private Internet Gateway (iPig). At last, something with an i in it that’s got absolutely nothing to do with an iPod. Honestly. Nope, instead think WiFi and security encryption software. For free. No snoopers snooping your snoops, dog.  Unlike other technologies, iPig works with any kind of Internet connection (Wifi, WLAN, 802.11 a/b/g, wired ethernet) and requires NO configuration of any kind. You just start your favorite web browser, email client or chat software and switch the iPig…

Free NAS. Yep, free Network-Attached Storage software. Courtesy of the wonderful Open Source movement. Under 16MB, perfect for installation on your Compact Flash, hard drive or USB flash drive.  FreeNAS is a small (less than 16Mo) Operating System based on FreeBSD 6 that provide Free Network-Attached Storage services (CIFS, FTP and NFS).

Dude, when you’re done hacking your Windows XP so it can happily boot on that new Apple Intel machine, why not do yourself a favour and drop the sweet FlyakiteOSX skin on top of it to complete the illusion. OK, so that’s an Apple, running Windows, dressed up in Mac OS X clothes? I may need to lie down for a short while.

Those of you in marketing might be interested in the new beta of Google’s AdWords Editor. Work offline, do bulk changes and manage your advertising account, all from the comfort of your own tax exile. Splendid stuff. And free.  AdWords Editor is Google’s free, downloadable account management application for your computer. Now you can download your AdWords account to your computer, make your changes, then upload your revised campaigns. Benefits and features include: