The Internet was literally born to be shared and it has kept that spirit even as it has become commercialized. I am utterly grateful to those dedicated souls who use it to give away their labors of love. In particular, I appreciate the efforts of those who make software available for free and those who maintain useful news sites for the Pocket PC with little or no remuneration.
In recent months I've come across some excellent freeware listings. One of the best is Greg's iPAQ and Pocket PC Software List (www.ipaqsoft.net/php/freeware.php). When I last visited he had links to hundreds of freeware titles. You can sort them by category or display one long list of freeware. His site is fast and efficient and a good way to get a quick overview of the free software available.
Chee Wee from Singapore has quite a comprehensive list of freeware (ppcsg.org/links.php). He's spent a considerable amount of time hunting through the major software download sites, including Tucows (pda.tucows.com/windowsce.html), CNet (download.cnet.com), and ZDNet (www.zdnet.com/downloads/ce) to gather together all the freeware titles. He lists over 350 programs on his site, Pocket PC Singapore Community.
He says he has personally checked every piece of software to insure that it is, in fact, free. His listing is searchable by keyword, as well as being divided into categories such as database, eBooks, games, graphics, Internet, PIM, and utilities. In addition to compiling this list to provide convenient access to freeware, Chee Wee says he was eager to debunk the myth propagated by Palm users that there's not enough freeware for the Pocket PC.
There's also an excellent site that's devoted exclusively to freeware called Pocket PC Freewares (www.pocketpcfree wares.com). The site is in French, but they say that an English version is coming soon. Until then you can use the Web site translators available online to see it in English.
The site has a well-categorized list of well over 200 freeware programs. It also highlights a listing of programs recently added so that you can check in regularly to see what new items have become available. And it lists the top 10 most popular programs.
For each program the site gives a screen shot, description, download link, and information such as author and popularity. Like the other freeware lists mentioned here, the software doesn't reside on the site. You are simply redirected to the item's listing on a site such as CNet for the download.
Even if you don't understand French, you can still get most of what's going on here, since a lot of the terminology is the same. Categories such as emulation, Flash, and graphisme were obvious to me. I have to admit that I was confused by the bureautique category, which translated as office automation when I used AltaVista's Babel Fish Translations. Other categories include clocks, Internet, games
(jeux), multimedia, music, Today plugins, sciences, task manager, file utilities, system utilities, miscellaneous utilities, and travel.
The AltaVista translation service (world.altavista.com) works surprisingly well. The featured product when I visited the site was tdLaunch. Here's the first sentence of the description in French: "Un Launcher-like au fonctionnement similaire à celui de Scott Seligman mais avec d'appréciables améliorations ergonomiques." And here's how it appears in AltaVista's Babel Fish version: "Launcher-like with operation similar to that of Scott Seligman but with appreciable ergonomic improvements." Simply typing the URL of Pocket PC Freewares into Babel Fish brings up a new version of the site with everything in English.
I'm grateful to those who create the freeware—and to those who ferret it out and make these listings. I'm equally grateful to the many individuals who have created Web sites for the Pocket PC, often without any reward other than the satisfaction of helping others.
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