This article will present four novel, free note taking apps: Treesheets, Tobu, Cintanotes, and MindRaider. Each one of these apps is unique in its own way, yet they have one thing in common in that they are not your traditional, hierarchical-tree based notes programs.

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com]. 

Canaware NetNotes is a free program that can capture web pages and stores and organizes them within a searchable, local knowledge base. It can capture entire pages or individual elements such as paragraphs, images, or certain code snippets, and allows you to edit them using a full-fledged WYSIWYG article editor. It supports right-click browser integration with both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].

PSPad is a text editor with syntax highlighting that supports many languages and file types. It is feature rich, allows you to define your own syntax highlighting for unsupported languages, is highly configurable, and nearly all options are close to hand.

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Carbonize. Check out his tech blog here].

MindRaider is a multi-platform, free note-taking program that combines a tree-like hierarchical organization alongside a "free form" structure based on tagging your notes. It supports many notes formats (rich text, HTML, TWiki, plain text, and even sketches). But what is truly unique about this program is a visual component whereby your notes structure is either displayed in a "mind mapping" style relationship diagram, or otherwise within a "tag cloud" representation. It also allows you to embed links within notes to other entities.

UbitMenu is a free add-on for MS Office 2007 that provides the option to use an MS Office 2003-style interface alongside Office 2007’s "Ribbons" style interface. It is installed as an additional menu in Office 2007 applications (Excel, Word, and PowerPoint), allowing for switching back and forth at will between the older and newer style interfaces.

PDF to Word Free is a free web service that offers high-quality conversions of PDF files to DOC or RTF formats that can be used in Microsoft word or other Rich Text Editors. It lets you upload PDF files through a web interface and will then send the converted file via email as an attachment.

Impressive is a free multi-platform app that can display any PDF file or folder containing image files (JPEG, PNG, TIFF and BMP) as a slideshow presentation. It can be used to present PDFs or images as full-screen PowerPoint-style presentations or it can function as a full-screen reader. “Impressive” also offers a combination of sophisticated slide transition effects and a number of practical presentation tools, including spotlight effects, box highlighting, zooming in, and an overview screen that displays slides as thumbnails and allows for quick navigation.

TaggedFrog is a free utility that allows you to tag any files on your hard disk by keyword and access or filter them through a tag cloud. Users can also create filters by file-type to filter their results, and create favorite “sets” or combinations of tags for quick browsing.

Shock Bookmark is a free program that provides access to your favorite folders, files, internet bookmarks, and program shortcuts straight from the Windows explorer right click context menu. It also enables quick right-click copy and/or move operations to your bookmarked locations.

StickySorter is a free sticky notes program that introduces a number of innovations such as the ability to cluster stickies in groups, the ability to define fields, the ability to import and save notes into CSV, the use of the front and back of the sticky, and others.