downloads

In this new era of music streaming, many people seem to wonder whether song and album downloading is becoming irrelevant. Apparently, not quite yet.

Music downloading is as strong as ever, according to a new NPD study based on data from 5,400 consumer surveys. In fact, streaming only seems to bolster downloads.

Though streaming services, like Spotify, Pandora, and Rdio, have grown at an extraordinary rate, music fans still want to own albums. According to NPD, 44 million U.S. residents paid for the download of at least one song track or album last year. And this number has … Read more

The field of Internet video converters is not short on contenders, some good at what they do and others, not so much. Mega Video Converter (MVC) from Clip Extractor is a new challenger in a very competitive market. Thankfully, it is one of the good guys.

We like Mega Video Converter for being fast, simple, and intuitive. Installation is quick and compact, only taking up about 20MB on your hard disk. However, you do need MS .NET Framework 4 before you can proceed and MVC will alert you if you don't already have it.

Upon launching Mega Video Converter … Read more

Ziggy TV is an all-in-one YouTube downloader and file converter with some extras, including a Net radio player, streaming Internet TV, free movies, and online games. It searches for music and videos on YouTube and plays or downloads and converts files to audio formats such as MP3, AAC, and even FLAC, as well as video formats. It's compatible with most versions of Windows, including Windows 8. While it's freeware, it's the free version of a "Pro" shareware app that offers higher quality conversions and more formats, so some of its premium features may be disabled.… Read more

Even the residents of Vatican City need to be entertained, but are they pirating porn?

The blog TorrentFreak recently compiled a report alleging that computers located in Vatican City are downloading pornography. A recent tale of Irish priests enjoying first-run hits at their home movie nights piqued the blog's interest to see what the residents of Vatican City have been downloading.

TorrentFreak recruited the help of ScanEye, a Web site that tracks and analyzes this type of online activity. ScanEye's data found that computers inside Vatican City were downloading films like "Love Actually" and TV shows … Read more

As people around the world become increasingly more reliant on their mobile devices, the app market continues to grow. New research from market analyst firm Canalys shows that the top four app stores hit 13.4 billion downloads worldwide in the first quarter of 2013. This is an 11 percent increase over all of 2012 combined.

"Apps have had a huge impact on the way consumers use mobile devices, what they value, and what they expect from smart phones and tablets," Canalys chief analyst for analytics Adam Daum said in a statement. "They are now central to … Read more

Often, users want to watch Internet videos or edit them offline. Kigo Video Downloader for Mac, despite problematic operation in some instances, works well when it comes to saving and converting online videos.

The native installer set the program up quickly without any user agreement required, which was good for a freeware program. Upon startup, Kigo Video Downloader for Mac did contain a link to user instructions. In addition, the program's interface included arrows and descriptions of the particular buttons and their functions. The user interface was well-designed and intuitive, with good graphics and detail for each of the … Read more

Mozilla just released Firefox 20 (download for Windows | Mac | Linux), which introduced a few new features, including a brand-new download manager. The new download manager works similarly to the old one, but with a couple of new twists.

The first change you'll notice is a new Download button next to the Home button. This gives you quick access to the last three downloads. The Download button will actually display the time remaining during a download, then change to an arrow when the download completes.

You can click on "Show All Downloads" or use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+… Read more

Formerly known as plain old YouTube Downloader, the recently renamed YTD Video Downloader updates to version 4.0 with a promise of 2x faster downloads and 2x faster video conversions, and perhaps more usefully, the ability to resume downloads after the temporary loss of an Internet connection. As usual, the installer includes a Spigot-based YTD Video Toolbar and offers to change your default search engine to Yahoo and add 5-6 shopping extensions to Google Chrome. Clicking the "Decline" button during the lone advertising screen in the installer lets users easily opt-out of all offers.

Downloading worked very well … Read more

Video Downloader Super Lite promises to allow you to download videos from the Internet through a proprietary browser on your iPhone. This alone is a very powerful tool for those who want to take training videos, Webinars, or even music videos on the go from your favorite Web sites. There are, however, a number of limitations, and the performance of the app was variable depending on the video being downloaded and the speed of our connection.

Upon initial installation, you can immediately start browsing. The app uses a very simple Web interface with a banner ad placed below the address … Read more