Friday Freebie

Happy New Year freebie hunters! We had a bit of an extended break over Christmas, as we thought you'd have more than enough new stuff to keep you occupied.

By now though you're surely bored of playing with the boxes your presents came in, and have frittered away any lingering cash in the sales. An ideal time then to regale you with the latest and greatest content you can cram onto your pocket gaming gadget of choice, sans charge.

1. More free fiction for your DS, iPod or PSP
Back before Christmas we pointed you in the direction of a free e-book from fantasy author Darren Reid. Now, he's released another. The new offering, The Sword of Oz, is first of a planned trilogy of intriguing interactive adventures set in the world of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Sword of the Oz is available for download from today.

2. PSP game demos
Looks like it's not only us who had a break from giving out freebies over Christmas: The pickings at Sony's PSP download shop were less rich than we might have expected after a month's absence. Fortunately there are still a couple of gems of note in amidst the advertising videos, obscure music, and breakfast cereal screensavers.

The pick of the bunch is undoubtedly the demo version of the Pocket Gamer 'Silver Award' winning Mercury Meltdown. The trial version of Killzone Liberation is also worth a look. (Click those links to go to the shop).

3. MobileRated.com's top 25 free games of 2006
The chaps at MobileRated.com have a simple mission – to bring you the pick of independently developed mobile games. Whilst there's certainly plenty of chaff amongst the wheat, not to mention some interesting copyright issues (we're not sure id Software would have given its blessing to Doom 3D), there are certainly a few titles (such as Jamtris and 5udoku) in their top 25 games of the year that look well worth adding to your collection.

4. Mobile demo of the rather impressive Planet Riders
If you really want to show off your mobile, you might also want to pay a visit to the home of developer Fishlabs, which is offering free demos of its 3D games including the Silver Award winning Planet Riders.

5. Turn your DS into an organiser
The DS's Swiss Army knife rivalry continues apace, with homebrew developers finding ever more uses for the touch screen marvel. For instance, the enterprising chaps at Dragonminded have come up with some software that turns Nintendo's handheld into a virtual Filofax. DSOrganize has a calendar, to do list, address book, and even a file browser – and it's available for nowt!