Hey Sparky! This is great...I'm always looking around for great apps...I have a bit of app obsession...and I prefer FREE
In no particular order...
All of these are free...
*1 Tap - add a shortcut bar to your notification shade (any shortcut you can think of...I have one bar with 4 direct dial shortcuts on it)
*Air Droid - View and control your phone on your computer wireless over wifi .. No set up or registration required
*Metro Station - Basically a set of icons that you can set to any color...pretty handy and very simple
*Pulse - keep track of all your feeds...from news to blogs to twitter to jokes...very nice layout...my favorite news app (I have one page just for android feeds)
*Simi Folder - Sweet little folder app...assign your own icon...add things to your folder...tap icon and scrolling folder pops up...fully customizable
*Swipe Pad - An overlay grid that you can access from any app by swiping screen (I have all of my apps (or most) organized into folders..I keep my folders on my swipe pad..you can do any shortcut
*Touch Note - Send actual postcards in the mail (I have this because for the month of August its FREE...send free postcards with any pic you choose) i may delete next month..
*ZD Box - awesome little all in one tool box...battery, mobile traffic, cache cleaner...app to sd
*Weekly Ads & Sales - it's a shopping thing...I check all the sale papers for grocery and there are coupons and all that..not just grocery..it's like looking at all the sale ads in your sunday paper
*Shelves - An organizer app to keep track of things like ..well anything...I keep my DVD collection (couple thousand) on there (I scanned them in) it displays like they are on a wooden book shelf
*Skyvi - Personal assistant app...plenty of debate over which is best...this one doesn't do everything but I love it for in car to call and text hands free...(I think I can get Google Now now that I'm rooted..may delete skyvi if that works out)
*Pictarine - replaces your My Gallery app - it pulls pics from many sources to view on phone (or you can just view phone pics) but I make yearly family albums on shutterfly and now I can view on my phone
I could probably list another dozen...lol...maybe I'll add more later