For Mac OS X users, two seasonal presents from the freeware world: Art of Illusion, a 3D rendering editor with impressively sophisticated features; and a new version of VLC Media Player, for playing those files that QuickTime doesn’t recognize. Oh, and a week or so ago, the Participatory Media Foundation released their most recent version of Democracy Player.
And you don’t have to wait two weeks to download them.
(I have not yet tried any of these out, though I’ve never had problems with earlier versions of Democracy player or VLC. Any pernicious consequences for your system are between you and the coders.)