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Windows users are familiar with a number of utilities for setting system preferences, but Mac users have not had as many options. GeekTool is a solid attempt to remedy that situation by bringing an alternate way to handle many Mac system settings. The app installs quickly and opens to a simple interface allowing you to create "geeklets," which accomplish specific tasks. You drag the geeklet icon to your desktop, which then opens a dialog allowing you to customize the behavior of the geeklet. Options in the dialog vary depending on the type of geeklet you are creating.

To … Read more

Learn Mac Edition is, not surprisingly, a port of the Learn tool to the Mac platform. A video training course app, Learn Mac Edition installs easily and launches with more than 5 hours (approximately 90 different lessons) of high-resolution training videos included. Of course, if you like the approach Learn Mac Edition takes, you can buy additional videos online for $1.99 each.

The basic lessons included with Learn Mac Edition cover basic aspects of using OS X (including eight videos on new Mountain Lion features). There's a set of videos on basic desktop and Finder use, and a … Read more

MacX YouTube Downloader for Mac is a free utility for downloading and locally saving videos from YouTube. YouTube has recently implemented changes to prevent downloading of its videos, but MacX YouTube Downloader for Mac seems to be able to bypass the current tricks (unlike some other similar apps). You can download MacX YouTube Downloader for Mac from the publisher's site or from several Mac download portals.

Installing MacX YouTube Downloader for Mac is easy, and the app functions well. There's configurability in the way it operates and the formats it handles, but the defaults will suffice for most … Read more

WD announced today that its My Book Thunderbolt Duo now offers up to 8TB of storage space, up from the drive's initial cap of 6TB of when first released in March.

The My Book Thunderbolt Duo, which we've already reviewed, is WD's first Thunderbolt storage device. So far it's been the most affordable Thunderbolt storage device on the market in terms of cost per gigabyte. The new 8TB-capacity drive follows that tradition with a price of just $850, and it now comes with a Thunderbolt cable included.… Read more

Converting videos to allow them to be shown on an iMac, iPhone, or iPad can be a tricky process if you don't know what to do. Dual-OS users already know the frustration of converting videos supported by Windows (such as WMV or AVI) into the MacOS environment. Any Video Converter Lite is a free product that can perform conversions several ways, readying your video clips for the supported formats of an iDevice.

Any Video Converter Lite installs on an iMac or MacBook Pro quickly and easily. The entire process took just a few seconds. Once installed, converting video files … Read more

Need a mammoth backup drive to connect to your router, Pogoplug, or PC? No, really, I mean mammoth, as in the highest capacity you can buy.

While supplies last, Newegg has the Toshiba Canvio Desk 3TB USB hard drive for $127.49 shipped. That's after applying coupon code EMCJNNF79 at checkout.

Update: This code is now producing a "not valid" message, and the info on Newegg's product page indicating it was valid until Oct. 6 is gone. I've reached out to Newegg to get some explanation for this and will update the post if and … Read more

Downloading videos from sites like YouTube, Dailymotion, and other Flash video providers should be easy, but we've encountered all too many downloaders that make this task needlessly complicated. SpeedBit Video Downloader delighted us with its ease of use; there was no trial and error, no need to consult the Help file, no guessing about how to proceed. We simply clicked a few buttons to download and convert our desired content. If you use Firefox or Internet Explorer, downloading Flash videos doesn't get much easier than this.

Once installed, SpeedBit Video Downloader appeared as a toolbar at the top … Read more

You may have noticed that many YouTube videos are actually music with some kind of visual accompaniment added, such as still image slideshows, cover art, psychedelic effects, and a particular favorite, a video camera pointed at a spinning turntable. You can download and save tunes from YouTube with the greatest of ease with YouTube Music Downloader -- videos, too. This free tool makes it easy to grab and save YouTube files to play later, share with your friends, and do the other things you can do with freely available content. But YouTube Music Downloader lets you quickly choose your audio … Read more

Web browsers and bandwidth feel the pinch as online video formats get better and better (and bigger and bigger, too). SpeedBit's Free Video Accelerator for YouTube is designed to work with your Web browser to improve how it downloads and plays online video, especially high-quality formats streamed over broadband connections. It buffers and smooths audio and video playback and reduces or eliminates freezing, crashing, dropouts, and distortion. It's freeware, though a premium upgrade adds HD playback, iTunes acceleration, and automatic setup.

SpeedBit's setup wizard lets you choose between installing the freeware and the shareware version, which includes … Read more