TubeSock, PodTube

• NewsFire 1.4 v68 ($20) is a RSS news feed fetcher that features animated warnings when a new feed arrives, along with smart folder support. This new version adds official support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard; one of the first applications to add support for Apple's unreleased next generation OS. Also added is better support for prefix or suffix string rules alongside several minor bug fixes. This version required Mac OS X 10.4 or later; there is an older version available for Mac OS X 10.3. [Download - 747KB]


• Xbench 1.3 (free) provides users with a range of benchmark tests made for Mac OS X computers including CPU and graphics tests. This version was built with Xcode 2.4 and corrects a mistake that caused the altivec test to be turned off on PowerPC machines, disables coalesced graphics updates for all platforms on Mac OS 10.4.4 and higher, switches compiler to GCC 4.0 on PowerPC, new support to automatically sync with Xbench database, enhances graphics support under Tiger, adds partial Leopard support, and revises the machine database to include the MacBook, Intel iMac and several other models. This version requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. [Download - 288KB]


• Googalyzer 2.0 (free) allows users to search the internet using multiple Google services for optimal results while offering support for Web, image, video, blog, book, news, and many more searches with a single search. Version 2.0 adds the ability to save bookmarks for later reference, a streamlined UI, new Growl notification when adding a bookmark, options to view the cache of the current page, view similar sites, view sites that link to the current site, view other pages from the current site, enter Fullscreen mode, new documentation, and a new integrated word processor. Googalyzer requires Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later. [Download - 828KB]


• TubeSock 1.0 ($15) grabs YouTube videos from the web and copies them to the user's video iPod, Mac, or PlayStation Portable. TubeSock is capable of converting the retrieved video using the codecs and bitrates best for each device. TubeSock also supports grabbing videos and depositing them into iTunes for later viewing (in iTunes or FrontRow) or syncing with iPods. To operate TubeSock, all users must do is copy & paste the YouTube URL, and TubeSock will play the video for and give the option to save the video to your computer or iPod. TubeSock requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later with iTunes 6.0 or later for full integration. [Download - 3.4MB]


• PodTube 1.0 (free) allows users to encode any YouTube video for their iPod with Video by downloading the file, encoding it for the device, and then adding the video to the user's iPod library. Also allows users to retrieve YouTube videos from Safari with a single click. PodTube requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later and for iTunes integration, iTunes 6.0 or later. [Download - 3.7MB]

by MacNN Staff