The Download Blog

Evernote, a tool Rafe Needleman and I both use regularly to take notes and archive scanned documents, put out a new and useful feature early Wednesday. Now, when attaching a file to a note it will be available everywhere else once it's been synced. If a change is made to that file, those changes get updated in all other locations shortly thereafter, mimicking the behavior of creating and syncing text notes on the service.

While not being an official hard drive in the cloud, this step brings Evernote a little closer. You still have to attach your files to … Read more

If you're up on your pirate lore, or perhaps have your Pirates of the Caribbean plot flow-chart handy, you'll know that sea-faring criminals are no friends of Johnny Depp-devouring monsters. As it goes on the high CGI seas, so follow the stormy waters of the Firefox add-on world. Yesterday's Pirates of the Amazon plug-in, which adds torrent links to songs and movies in the Amazon.com store, is met today by The Kraken, a plug-in that adds Amazon.com links to torrent Web sites.

The Kraken is extremely simple and there's no configuration required. When you … Read more

In tough economic times like these, good freeware becomes worth its weight in gold. Professionals who squeeze every feature out of their top-shelf software will likely appreciate the investment, but those of us with more modest goals can still do just about anything for free.

Assuming you can put up with a homlier appearance and a few minor character flaws, we've got some tools to help you save your hard-earned dough. This list is by no means exhaustive, so feel free to chime in with your own favorite cash-saving apps.

This is not a flashback to the chart-defying tricks of ambient house music progenitors The Orb, although if you have their music you can use this Orb to play it anywhere. No, this Orb melds module-based personal portals with your hard drive's media content and lets you stream it to almost any Internet-connected handheld device, including iPhones.

The setup will probably be challenging to users who aren't familiar with how to open ports, but, fortunately, there's plenty of help in Orb's user forums. Once you're good to go, the program launches in your browser and … Read more

Communications provider Comcast on Wednesday announced two new tiers of service for heavy residential downloaders, along with speed upgrades for subscribers of its existing services.

The two new plans, dubbed "Extreme" and "Ultra" clock in at 50 and 22 Mbps of downstream respectively and 10 and 5 Mbps of upstream. Comparatively, customers of Comcast's "performance" plans are getting a big jump from 8 to 16 Mbps on the downspeed, however, upload performance remains at 2 Mbps.

The speed bumps, which are being rolled out to 10 major markets between now and next year … Read more

Never let it be said that software publishers ignore the demands of their users, at least in the case of BitTorrent client Vuze.

Back in June, the popular BitTorrent client Azureus underwent some serious reconstructive surgery. The familiar layout of top buttons and a spreadsheet interface was wrapped up in a Web 2.0 package, tied off with a bow of peer ratings and reviews and an emphasis on video content. The old UI was kept but de-emphasized, and the application was renamed Vuze 3.1.

Although it kept Azureus' blue frog logo, fans were not amused. Vuze 4.0 … Read more

Sharing photos is what we all want to do, but the number of ways to get it done can be overwhelming. For users who want to keep their photos in a small, private circle, don't always want to access a Web site to get their sharing on, or for those who want or need to keep their Web use to a minimum, Memeo Share might be your solution.

Driven by a user-friendly setup wizard, Memeo Share lets you sync files from a designated folder on your computer to the computer of one or more contacts. File-sharing becomes a breeze, … Read more

We've all experienced it. You've taken a bunch of photos or a home video at a family gathering and now you're trying to figure out how to share your work with everyone in your family. It's possible to use online photo sites like Flickr, Shutterfly, or Photobucket, but what if you had a localized program that could share photos and videos immediately? Not all your relatives are as computer savvy as you, so you want a program that works quickly and with the fewest steps. You want a program that anyone in your family will be … Read more

A pre-release alpha version of a Mac version of uTorrent, the popular BitTorrent client for Windows, has been leaked to the public.

Available from the Swedish torrent Web site The Pirate Bay, the Cocoa-based client has been expected since 2006 when BitTorrent bought uTorrent and promised to develop a Mac version. There was little said since then, until this past August when uTorrent developer Greg Hazel announced that a Mac version would be ready ''in a few weeks,'' according to the torrent news Web site TorrentFreak.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent's vice president of product evelopment, responded to the leak by … Read more