What is the "Other" folder on my mac? and how do i reduce its size?

i have an "other" folder on my macbook pro which is 54gb in size? and i have no idea what is in this file or how to delete it? Can anyone help?
i do not understand why it is so big, it has grown by 3 gb today alone.  I also have smaller "other" folders on my ipad and iphone but they are only 1gb.
Does anyone know what these folders actually are?? and more importantly how to delete them?

Read: http://pondini.org/OSX/LionStorage.html

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