DROID – I finally made the leap from a plain vanilla flip phone to the Motorola Droid this December.  Ubiquitous connectivity, Geolocation, a decent camera and a passable MP3 player.  One of my favorite features is the ability to automatically route international calls out via Google Voice!  Finally I can call friends in Germany or family in England the same way that I can make a call down the street.

GMAIL – Why does anyone use anything else anymore?  Threaded conversations (very pretty integration into the Android OS) and the Labs features.  It just keeps getting better.  My personal tweak of choice: multiple inboxes + superstars. 

GOOGLE READER – Some (@Leolaporte) seem to believe that RSS feeds and readers are dead, and that you can rely on twitter as the internet nervous system to find the important stories.  Perhaps true if you are listening for the big names, but for a more niched area, such as Education, subscribing to the blogs of those in my PLN is invaluable.

GOOGLE DOCS – I rarely start composing anything in word anymore.  If it needs more complex formatting, then I go to MS word, but for my basic writing and spreadsheet needs.  I love the fact that I can share and collaborate between my school (Google Apps for Education) & personal accounts when needed .

EVERNOTE – A new addition for me, but as I’m composing this blog post in Evernote (maybe not the most efficient it seems) I thought I would add it. . . I’ve been using it as a brain dump, shooting a picture of something I need to remember, documents that I need to keep tabs on, etc.  Pre-smartphone this app made no sense to me, now I get it.

DROPBOX – I use three, four if you count my Home Theater PC, Dropbox allows me access to all of my files, with a Handoff folder when I need quick access to a file on an other machine.  2GB free!  When combined with KeepassX for cross platform password management . . . genius!

SYNERGY -At work I often have my laptop and and iMac side by side – Synergy allows me to share the keyboard and mouse across the network (and across platforms if needed.) I just mouse to the right and I am working on the laptop with the same keyboard and mouse.

JING PRO – The best $15 spent on software all year. I’m always a few keystrokes away from pasting the link to a video or picture of my desktop, which comes in handy when helping out with tech issues in the school. And since I added almost all of the images to this post in seconds using Jing, point proven.

THE GIMP – I don’t do quite enough photo or image work to warrant a paid program, but just enough to need something ore powerful.  The Graphics and Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) (and other open source software like Inkscape) fit the bill perfectly at the right price (free).

FIREFOX ADD-ONS – Administering Edline means I often have to activate and de-activate lots of classes based on class rotations.  I love the fact that in Firefox I can use an add-on to click and drag over a whole slew of checkboxes! Amazing!

BOXEE – Since purchasing a $200 Nettop to use as a Home Theater PC I have hardly watched TV in the traditional way.

QUICKSILVER – Under the motto “Wei Wu Wei – Act Without Doing” Quicksilver has transformed the way I navigate on my Macs.  Launchy is a passable alternative on the Windows side.

TWIDROID – Twitter is the internet nervous system, and I stay in touch with my PLN on my Droid via Twidroid, the best Android Twitter client I’ve found so far.