OpenOffice provides a fantastic replacement for M$ word and excel. I prefer to post in this format, even though OpenOffice can read and write M$ documents, to encourage people to switch to non-proprietary document formats, that the whole world can share freely.
See also Richard Stallman's writeup on the evils of word attachments.

PDF is a widely supported format for "digital paper". I use the xpdf viewer on linux hence the icon. Windows users may want to try GSView.

This icon stands for a link to a web page. The content will be stuff that I have posted. I recommend not using the Internet Explorer browser for pragmatic as well as political reasons. Why not give the much superior mozilla firefox a whirl? It makes life on the web seriously more fun. Plus it's where I nicked the icon from.

OGG vorbis is a patent-free, and higher quality way to encode digital music than mp3. Most music players support it. I am really chuffed with xmms on linux, and I often use the proprietary winamp when I am on a windows machine.

This icon means the file is a plain text file. Plain text is the most straightforward way to communicate when using a computer. It's made up of characters that can be read and understood by humans. Plain text files include most source code for programs, as well as HTML and XML. The ASCII form of plain text is used by all files on this site. In building the site I have used extensively the Bluefish HTML editor, jEdit and the vim text editor, all of which are free software projects, and all of which I thououghly recommend fulfilling for your plain text viewing and editing requirements.