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This is a list of websites and free programs I use the most! I hope you find something useful as well ^_^

Websites

All Recipes & Simply Recipes - good collections of recipes for all levels.
Amazon.com & Amazon Japan - I use them to look up book reviews and make lists of things that catch my eye. They sell all kinds of things, so if you have a credit card it's a great place for online shopping.
AnimeDB - a very useful calendar showing the airdates of upcoming anime throughout the year~ it's best to check in the present month or a month before, too early won't really bring many results.
Anime News Network - probably the most updated and extensive source of worldwide anime news, in English
BBC News - International News
Book2Book - an informative news source on the book publishing industry
Cyber12 - A place with direct download anime
Dictionary.com - an online dictionary/thesaurus. Another good one is Merriam Webster. There's also Urban Dictionary, which focuses on slang and more modern expressions. For hardcopies, I prefer the Oxford because I my education was largely British-based.
Etsy - is like ebay for hand-crafted products. very pretty things there.
Guardian - a good online newspaper with a clean layout
JGram - revise JLPT Grammar~ has lots of example sentences
Japanese Pod 101 - a good listening podcast on many cultural and popular interest topics
Japan Guide - nearly everything you need to know about planning a trip to Japan~
Japan Today - Japanese News aggregator
Jim Breen's WWJDIC - JDIC probably the most well known online dictionary for the language. You can do searches in English and Japanese (all 3 scripts), and they also have example sentences.
JREF on Japanese Culture - a good supplement to Japan Guide with useful articles on the Japanese society and its culture.
MDBG Chinese - English Dictionary
Manga updates - a good source for upcoming manga and scanlation release info
Our Daily Bread - simple daily devotional readings
Sugar888 - a very extensive list of manga for downloading, and giving a small donation enables you to get VIP excess, it's totally worth it!
The Age - Australian News from Victoria
Tokyograph - news on the latest developments in the Japanese popular media scene, focuses mainly on celebrities, dramas and movies
The Straits Times - Singapore's main newspaper.
YesAsia - A good place to shop for Asian pop goodies, music, magazines, dvds, etc, and their free shipping specials make it worth ordering more!

Free Programs

7-zip, a compressor and extractor that handles many file types.
CCCP - the best codec pack for playing different media filetypes if you don't want to download another player.
Deep Burner - a very fast and useful program for burning cds and dvds.
Extract Now - another good extractor and handles multiple extractions in a drap and drop line-up box. superfast with smaller files!
Fast Stone Screencapture - Allows you to screencap many ways, even certain portions of the screen.
Flashget - my favourite download manager
KompoZer - my alternative to Frontpage, good for the amateur web designer
KMPlayer - I interchange this with GOM. I love GOM's design and controls better, but KMP opens more file types.
Mozilla Firefox - the best and most versatile web browser out there!
GOM Player - a free and lightweight media player, pre-installed codec packs included.
iTunes - even if you don't have an ipod, it's a neat program to manage your music
Spyware Blaster - protects against adware and spyware while quietly running in the background.

Firefox Add-ons

Adblock Plus - disables the majority of annoying pop-ups and ads when you surf the net.
Colorzilla - very useful for designers~ takes out the frustration of figuring out what colours are used on websites and provides the hex and rgb codes~
Copy Plain Text - stop having to copy webtext fully formatted! believe me, it's much more useful that it sounds~
FireFTP - FTP client.
FlashGot - very useful add-on for a good download manager program.
Furigana Injector - adds furigana to most kanji~ makes reading Japanese websites easier~
Google Preview - if you do research on the web alot, this is very handy to help you remember where you've visited
IE Tab - though I'm a Firefox convert, some web pages are still only viewable in IE, so this is very useful~
Fotofox - upload photos to many photosharing websites in a single bar instead of having to open many tabs.
Rikaichan - another useful tool for Japanese language students. Mouse over words and phrases to get the readings and dictionary meanings in English and a couple of other languages.
Tab Mix Plus - the only tabs application you'll ever need!
Wired Marker - basically a multi-colour highlighter function! good for researchers.