I remember during the Tech Crash earlier this decade, a lot of my friends took advantage of the downturn to start a new company, many of which formed the seeds of what we now call Web2.0. Just in time for today's economic downturn, Microsoft has started a new initiative, BizSpark, that gets you all the software tools needed for your new business -- for free. 

You have to meet a few basic qualifications (e.g. you can't have more than $1M revenue), but when I talked to the team yesterday it was clear they are trying to target a LOT of startups.  This is not some secret, hard-to-join program.  If you're a start-up doing software development, you'll want to apply.  It basically means you get all the powerful Microsoft software you want, for the same price you previously paid for all that open source software.  Actually, the MS stuff (I claim) is cheaper because it's commercial-grade software that won't require a lot of your time to find and install.

I used to post all my startup ideas online, but I haven't kept it up.  Maybe I'll dust off some of my ideas and post them to my personal blog so you can copy me freely and start your own business!