All new Macs come with great bundled software. Between the iLife suite, Safari, iTunes, and TextEdit, plus the ability to access and use cloud applications for free, almost all of the most basic modern computing needs get met for most users.

That said, having used four different Macs over the past seven years, there are several applications that don't come with OS X that I find myself immediately loading onto a new Mac. Most of these are big-name apps that you've probably already heard of, but it's still pretty amazing how much extra functionality you can eke out of a Mac with only ten additional programs, and all of them (save the last one) are free.

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner:

5 ways VC firms can stop shooting themselves in the foot – Venture Capital firms drill the need to create basic credibility into the companies they invest in – but often fail to take their own advice. Laura Grimmer, CEO of Articulate Communications (which works with VC firms), lists five things they could do to build a better pipeline of prospective portfolio companies.

Have an old t-shirt or skirt lying around? With little more than a pair of scissors and a sewing machine, you can turn your old clothes into a nifty wine tote for that bottle of Merlot you're giving to mom. Practically any item of clothing will do, from football jerseys to old jeans. This video provides all the details on measurements, sewing techniques, and even how to hide a stain or tear on your soon-to-be wine tote. Spend a weekend making a few of these babies, buy a case or two of wine, and consider your holiday shopping done.

Despite some security-conscious enterprise experts pointing accusatory fingers at the rather bleak encryption story and only-recently fixed ActiveSync policy compliance on the iPhone platform, there's no doubt that IT and network professionals are grooving on the iPhone -- there are many apps designed for administrators to take control of their operations with a touch of a finger, and now Cisco has stepped in with an informational and alert resource that fits in your pocket.

When pitching to VC’s, entrepreneurs hype the heck out of their ideas, years of experience and management teams. But I’ve never heard of anyone touting their luck or connection to God. After reading the posts on TechCrunch, one could easily get the impression that God doesn’t play much of role in Silicon Valley. But ask any successful entrepreneur in private what made them successful, and you might just hear a different story. In a research project my team just completed, the majority of 549 company founders told us that their most important success factor, after “experience” and “management team”, was “good fortune”.  Many respondents wrote in comments stressing the extreme importance of faith and God.

In a new disclosure, Zynga tells us it makes 90% of its revenues from gamers putting their own money into the system to buy virtual goods.

Zynga says 10% of its revenues come from "offers" marketing, where sponsors agree to buy virtual goods for gamers, so long as those gamers agree to try a product.

The company also says a marginal amount of dollars come in from traditional advertising.

Zynga will reportedly reach $200 million to $250 million revenues this year, though margins are thin. Multiple industry sources say the company spends tens of millions of dollars marketing its games on Facebook and elsewhere. In August, CEO Mark PIncus told us Zynga is profitable.

The sudden surge in interest in Android (largely due to all of the hype surrounding the Droid) has caused a lot of developers to reconsider the platform. Atleast one major development house, however, isn't impressed.

Earlier today, Alexandre de Rochefort, Finance Director of Gameloft, told an investor conference that the company had "significantly cut [their] investment in Android platform, just like … many others". Gameloft is one of the largest mobile games companies around, having pulled in roughly $132 million in the last three quarters alone. While there are plenty of fish in the developer sea, this can't be one that Google is happy to see swim away.

What will Conde Nast magazines look like once they show up on tablet computers  made by Apple (AAPL) , Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and others?

Conde has a demo video it has been showing to advertisers, employees, and plenty of other people, including me. It gives you a pretty good overview of what the publisher and Adobe (ADBE), who is building the software to produce and view the magazines, have in mind. But it's turned down my request to show the clip to my readers.

Proof you can't keep a good hackintosher down: it took a few days, but a Russian-based hacker has created a patched kernel that enables booting Mac OS X 10.6.2 on Atom-powered hardware.

First the 10.6.2 update to Snow Leopard wasn't compatible with Intel Atom processors. Then it was. Then it wasn't again when it was finally released to the masses. Fortunately for the netbook-loving Mac OS X fans out there, the OSx86 scene is only too happy to offer a patched version of mach_kernel to enable booting 10.6.2 on netbooks once more.

It should be pretty obvious by now that smoking cigarettes is bad for your health. What's not as obvious is that it might be bad for your Mac, too. According to The Consumerist, two different people got turned down for AppleCare maintenance because their Macs were used in a house with a smoker. Both people appealed their cases all the way up to Steve Jobs, and both of them lost.

I've opened up a few computers that spent time in a house full of heavy smokers, and the insides weren't pretty. There was this disgusting brown resin built up all over everything, and it pretty much smelled like an ashtray stuffed full of 5-year-old cigarette butts.

This week in Microsoft, we covered Windows 7, Windows Azure, Office 2010, Microsoft Surface, Windows Home Server, Silverlight, and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Let's look back at the week that was in Microsoft news. Here were the top stories:

Inside "MinWin": the Windows 7 kernel slims down: Back in 2003, Microsoft assembled a team of engineers to rethink the lowest levels of Windows, so that the OS could be more easily slimmed down and secured to run in servers and embedded applications. That project, called "MinWin," has now started to bear fruit. Ars takes a look inside MinWin.

Do a search for Google Wave on the App Store from your iPhone or desktop client, and you'll see an application called just that pop up, ready to be installed as soon as you fork over $0.99 (or €0.79 in my case).

One caveat: it's not built, authorized or in any way endorsed by Google.

Spotted by Stuart Dredge over at Mobile Entertainment, the unofficial Google Wave iPhone app seemingly slipped past Apple's usually and notoriously rigorous quality assurance and trademark compliance team and made its way to the App Store (iTunes link – up to you to decide if this is something you want to pay for).