A friend and fellow Droidian asked me today what my favorite free Android apps were.  I really didn’t know where to begin because I use so many of them so regularly.  This includes, of course, the preloaded ones: music, calendar, gmail, browser, maps, navigation, talk, contacts, messaging, YouTube, Picasa, etc., etc..  But to answer the question, I thought I’d jot down a list of some of my favorite free Market downloads here:

– Scoreboard – All my sports scores, all the time.
– Pandora and Slacker – Personalized internet radio, love it.
– Google Places – Must… find… coffee.  Perfect GPS compliment to Maps and Navigation.
– Flixster Movies – What’s on and what will be on.
– Weather Channel – Faster than looking out the window.
– Google Sky Map, Clear Sky Droid – For my astronomy fixes.
– Google Goggles – Still under development, but fun to try.
– androidVNC and ConnectBot (ssh) – The remote access classics.
– Shop Savvy – Barcodes R us.
– NewsRob, wpToGo, Google Listen, Read Later – For feeds, blogs, podcasts, and news.
– KeePassDroid – The world’s most portable password safe.
– Evernote – Snap a photo or jot a note, and it’s on the web in seconds.
– “Commercial news” readers: Thomson Reuters, BBC News, USA Today, Fox News, etc.
– Toys and Games – Compass, Labyrinth, DailyStrip, Jewels, Sudoku, Solitaire, Frozen Bubble, etc., etc.
– And, of course, lots of mainly pointless apps like Run, Zombie, Run and Talking Parrot.

Of course, half the fun is searching Android Market for any app you can think of that just might be out there.  There’s a good chance it is.