Free Stock Ticker is a free, small app designed to display stock ticker(s) on your desktop, as well as stock related headlines as hovering tooltips. It can also display regular RSS feeds or a combination of both.

The people that brought you Firefox extension "InvisibleHand" would like 200 of Freewaregenius readers to be among the first to try their new version 1.8 beta. Just go to this page and use the access code "invisibleGenius".

Firefox extension "InvisibleHand" is an on-the-fly comparison shopping tool designed to instantly retrieve and display the best prices from a wide variety of online vendors for the items that you are looking at as you surf. See our Freewaregenius review here. Some of the added features in this new version are as follows:

BrowserMaster is a free app that registers itself as your system’s default browser and gives you the option to select which browser to use when opening internet links. It applies to links clicked from outside a browser, such as desktop shortcuts, links in documents, links in IM and email apps, etc.

Changedetection.com is a free web service that monitors website(s) you want for changes and sends you email notifications when they occur. Changes are highlighted on the page and a history of changes is kept and is accessible for future reference.

TweetMyPC is a free Twitter application that can shut down your PC remotely and/or perform a range of commands as soon as you send it a tweet. Other commands include restarting your PC, downloading stuff to your PC, and even sending files to you from your PC – all based on your tweets. TweetMyPC v2.0 is multiplatform (Windows/Mac).

[Editor’s note: this review was contributed by blogger Ishan of ILoveFreeSoftware.com].

This posting will describe how to change your default system browser on Windows XP to a portable version of Mozilla Firefox using a free program called DefaultBrowser, doing so reversibly and without installing the non portable version. The same process described here could be used to change your default browser to any portable (or non portable) browser.

[Editor’s note: this posting was contributed by Freewaregenius reader Elioz Hefer; to whom I offer my extreme thanks and gratitude].

There are many ways to check RSS feeds. Two of the most popular are using a local RSS client (such as RSSOwl) and using a web-based reader (such as Google Reader). This posting will present nine interesting (and at times unusual) free ways to check RSS feeds, including using dekstop widgets (KlipFolio), RSS feeds as tabs on the side of your screen (Stick), RSS feeds within a dockable desktop area (SideSlide), as desktop sticky notes (Note Mania), embedded in your desktop wallpaper (Chaos Wallpaper), as news-tickers scrolling across your screen (EasyDeskTicker), and delivered as emails in your inbox (FeedMyInbox).

Jdownloader is free software designed to download files from Rapidshare, MegaUpload and other one-click file hosting services (as well as many video sharing sites) in an automated manner without user intervention. It will automatically decrypt “encrypted” download links, manage wait times, recognize enter CAPTCHAs, and attempt reconnections from dynamic IPs in order to circumvent wait times, when possible (this function depends on your router/internet setup). Other options include pausing/resuming downloads, Firefox integration through Flashgot, vlipboard detection, automatic de-compressing/merging of downloaded files, and faster downloading for subscribers of the premium services of the hosting services. Jdownloader is Multiplatform (Windows/Linux/Mac).

Invisible Hand is a free Firefox extension that kicks into action when you visit any of a number of well-known online shopping sites. It can monitor the pages you are browsing and notify you if the items you are looking at are available at a better price in any of the other sites on its network.

Printee is a free Internet Explorer extension designed to remove elements of a webpage to create a perfectly printable page without ads or extra information (e.g sidebars, unrelated images, other stories on the page) that you might not want to waste ink and paper printing. Provides a single-click wizard when pressing CTRL+G that can provide a printer-ready page on-demand, instantly eliminating extraneous page elements.

Tubemaster Plus Plus (the sequel to previously mentioned Tubmaster Plus) can download media (video/audio) from video sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, MySpace, Dailymotion and others, as well as encrypted media from “ani-leeching” websites sites such as Imeen, Pandora and Last.fm. TM++ can also perform on-the-fly format conversions as well as general Video and MP3 searches.

Double Vision is a freeware program designed for viewing web video (such as YouTube, Netflix, and Fancast) while you work, by providing a semi-transparent player that shows through all other windows and programs that are visible on your desktop.