downloaded

Our guest on today's episode is Alex Winter. You might recognize him as Ted from "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," but you might not know that he's also a documentary filmmaker. His latest project is a story about the rise and fall of Napster called "Downloaded."

It traces the history of the file-sharing service but it also looks at the industry waves it caused in its aftermath, leading up to Spotify and iTunes as it exists today.

We'll talk with Alex about the road to making the movie, his introduction to Sean … Read more

Orbit Downloader makes it easy to download lots of files, but it's not really worth all of the junkware it packages with it. There are almost a half-dozen different programs and toolbars this download will try to add. Even the program, itself, is riddled with ads for other programs you don't want. The small boost in features isn't enough to justify this download.

This program throws more junk programs at you during the install than you could ever count. Even if you opt out of all of them, one or two will still randomly start installing themselves … Read more

Flvto Youtube Downloader lets you download multiple videos at once, keeps all of the video's quality intact, and even has some stellar bonuses. Thanks to a great layout and the quick downloads it provides, this downloader is arguably the best program of its kind.

Though this sleek download name-drops YouTube, it was able to grab videos from Vimeo and other sites, as well. All you have to do to download is paste a URL from your site of choice. You can download the video in some of the most popular video formats like MOV, FLV, and MP4. You can … Read more

Free YouTube Downloader offers a powerful solution for downloading videos with more resolutions than you'd ever need, but tries to give you some nasty junk programs along with the install, too. Once you wade through that minefield, the program, itself, is one of the premier YouTube downloaders you can find.

During the Free YouTube Downloader's installation process, it tried to attach six different add-ons for third-party programs. Each one had a different way to opt-out, making it almost impossible to not walk away from the install with some sort of bloatware. Once you're finally in the program, … Read more

Software that promises to speed up your download is almost invariably limited by something it can't effect, namely your Internet connection, and that's the case with Download Accelerator Manager, aka DAM. But DAM does serve as a free, browser-integrated download manager. DAM lets you schedule, pause, and resume multiple downloads, which can be a big help to users who have limited bandwidth or access time, especially when downloading large files such as movies. For instance, you can schedule DAM to download files at night, when local traffic is lighter (or rates lower). To that end, DAM offers features … Read more

There are millions if not billions of photos on Instagram, and Instapull allows you to take any of them and store them on your iOS device, quickly and easily. The app has a very simple interface and while it takes a minute to set up and requires a connection to your Instagram account, it works very quickly to download your files off of the Web-based network to your device.

Whether you want an offline backup for your Instagram photos or would like to download images from someone you follow or whose pictures you enjoy seeing, Instapull is a decent app. … Read more

The Pirate Cinema chaotically visualizes the most popular video torrent files found on The Pirate Bay in a mesmerizing and sometimes visually overwhelming way.

Created by artist Nicolas Maigretto and programmed by Brendan Howell, the cinematic collage involves a custom-programmed box that intercepts real-time peer-to-peer file sharing among the top 100 torrent files (on The Pirate Bay) and projects flashes of the actively downloaded video content on one of three screens.… Read more

Movie411 captures information about even the most esoteric and ancient movies and saves the information along with their movie covers to your computer. The program works without glitches and offers an intuitive user interface.

Movie411 downloads as an executable file directly to your computer. You will need to manually create a shortcut on your desktop for easy access to this program. The program is very handy if you want to quickly find and save information about a particular movie. There are no Help files, though, so you learn as you go, but the user interface is rather intuitive so it'… Read more

Folder Downloader for Dropbox does exactly what you'd think it would, but lacks all of the style and form of Dropbox's own app. However, if you need an app like this, you'll love it.

In case you couldn't guess from the name, this app does require access to your Dropbox account to work. Giving it the right permissions only takes a few seconds, though. How fast the app actually does its business depends heavily on your connection. Folder Downloader for Dropbox borrows heavily from Dropbox's own layout, but inverts it so there is a lot … Read more