My new favorite OS X application has landed and it’s beautiful! A French project, with English and French versions, Poladroid lets you take normal digital photos and turn them into virtual Polaroids via an elegant drag and drop and intuitive “developing” feature (shake them to develop faster!). You can also export the finished photos for print or sharing on the Poladroid Flickr group. You might not be able to find the film as easily anymore, but at least you can relive the good ole days with a little bit of grainy Polaroid visuals on your desktop.

Lego is cool, whether you’re 3, 13, 30 or even 90 and nothing can give you that feeling of being a kid again better. Now you can get that feeling from anywhere you can carry your laptop, with the Lego Digital Designer, a brilliant digital twist on playing with colored little square plastic bricks. Version 2 has recently been released, with an improved building experience, over 760 brick types and a completely redesigned user interface.

Read more: Lego Digital Designer

Created as a Master of Science thesis by a Computer Science student in Umeå University, Phun is an amazing little educational game giving players a rich physics playground where they can easily build and tear apart environments, creating havoc upon squiggly line blocks, water, bits and so much more. Great for teaching a young class about the concepts of physics or just a fun little toy to waste your time at work.

Download it at Phun.at

Armchair astronomers and space freaks listen up! The amazing developers behind Stellarium have accomplished quite some amazing things. Used by many real planetariums for their projection showings, Stellarium is an amazing feat of open source software development, giving the user a realistic, 3D sky on a desktop environment, allowing users to enter coordinates, browse the night sky or even beam it onto your ceiling before going to sleep. The educational usage and possibilities of this is amazing and I for one am considering purchasing an HDTV projector simply to see Uranus on my ceiling at night!

Download: Stellarium – Open source planetarium for your computer

I’m currently setting up my new smart phone so that I can carry around as much of my online data as possible in my pocket. First and foremost, I’m prioritizing the hundreds of RSS feeds in my online reader and putting the most important onto my device, purposely avoiding the default RSS reader shipping on my Symbian phone. So far, I’ve been able to find two interesting mobile apps for storing, reading and organizing your RSS feeds, both of which are sharp-looking, free and easy as pie to operate. Though I haven’t decided on a clear winner yet, I’m still always on the lookout, so if you have any other suggestions, by all means, let me know!

Hit the jump to take a look at my two favorites so far, Mobispine and Widsets..

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The desktops are alive with the sound of widgets and now more than ever thanks to Wigipedia, a wiki community collecting everything there is to know about desktop and web widgets for Windows, OS X and Linux computers. Wigipedia is attempting to catalog the development of all widgets and gadgets, across all platforms, allowing developers to upload their creations in order to collaborate with other developers and offer their small apps directly to end users. There’s also a comprehensive section with tutorials and code samples so you can learn to create your own desktop widget!

Widget more: Widgipedia.com

So your favorite band came through town, you missed the show and now your friends are all telling you how killer it was? Have no fear, a pair of grad students have gotten fed up and have developed a delightfully simple tool for keeping track of both your MP3 library AND your favorite band’s tour dates so you won’t miss the next killer do. The tool is iConcertCal and it’s a free iTunes plugin that monitors your music library and based upon your most playlist, generates a personalized calender of upcoming shows in your city. THe interface mimics iCal and is available for both Windows and Mac OS X.

Download: iConcertCal

So Twitter is our new fun obsession and what better way to enjoy a newfound hobby is there than to find all the free and open source software you can for it!? NONE! Twitterrific is a light and fun little application that lets you easily publish “tweets” to your Twitter account or read tweets from your Twitter contacts, all while stylishly occupying a small spot of real estate on your Mac’s desktop. Let your friends know what level your World of Warcraft character is or how badly you want the iPhone you’re reading about without having to leave your desktop!

Download: Twitterrific | Twitter

For many, using open source software is about equivalent to breathing, but for most, we need certain commercial software in order work, easy communicate with family or even to sometimes surf the internet. But that’s quickly changing. As the quality levels of many open source projects begin to soar and more and more developers are opening their software up, the need for certain commercial software is rapidly diminishing. Still lost? Well, let osalt.com help you find your way. Collecting links, descriptions and explanations to some of the best open source apps this side of the www, osalt guides you through the process of open sourcing your Windows XP, Mac OS X or Linux machine with ease, offering you open source alternatives to some of the largest commercial software in existence.

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Working in web development I’m constantly finding myself taking screenshots, which I am then manipulating manually, cutting and pasting here and there and back again, in an attempt to get the perfect shot. I knew of screenshot tools on the PC, maybe even used one or two here and there, but, for some reason they just never stuck. Now that I’m fully using OS X for everything I do, I’ve noticed the need for taking screenshots rapidly, with as little downtime as possible, and I think I’ve finally found the perfect piece of software for me. InstantShot! is a freeware piece of software (free as in beer, or bier) which creates a menu icon under OS X, assigning an easy to use UI for OS X’s screenshot functionality, allowing you to capture whole screen, partial screen and timed captures. All this for the low-price of nothing, but donations are highly encouraged.

Read more: InstantShot!