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The Daily Download: Software tips, news, and opinions from Download.com editors

Download.com editors cover the world of downloadable software, web applications, and beyond.

Featured Freeware: SageNovember 28

Sage is a basic RSS feed and news aggregator for Firefox. Its no-nonsense approach and ease of use will appeal to all user levels.

The extension is meshed with Firefox's sidebar. It's very easy to navigate, with buttons for checking and searching feeds, and two view panels. The top panel displays each feed that you're subscribed to, and the bottom panel displays the specific feed headlines. The Options menu gives you display options, and lets you manage your feeds. Copying and pasting feed URLs to add them to our list of feeds is as easy as it should be. Clicking each feed link introduced the individual feed headlines in the lower panel, and also displayed the feed Web site in the browser window. The program lets you manage individual headlines, marking them as read or unread. If you'd rather not interrupt your browsing, you can just hover your mouse over each headline, and a window pops up with the first few sentences of the story.

This free Firefox extension required little effort to understand, and will have you viewing your feeds in no time. Highly recommended to those who want a feed reader that's rolled into their browser, but not a Web app.

Featured Freeware: Secunia PSINovember 27

Not only does Secunia Personal Software Inspector provide extensive details on the software installed on your computer, it also gives you direct links to update programs that are older and potentially not secure.

The interface mixes professional layout with a text-heavy, spartan design. At the top right of the program window, users can choose a Simple or Advanced layout. Under Simple, Secunia provides basic information about the installed program statuses, with a chart to gauge their security over time and a simplified listing of any errors. Clicking on an error leads you through the proprietary Easy-to-Patch program update process, which automatically excludes more challenging updates. The Advanced layout tab exposes more details and more updates. It also checks your Microsoft XML, your Adobe Flash player installation, and others programs, looking for mission-critical holes and their respective updates. Installed programs get flagged as Patched, End-of-Life, and Insecure, with the most recent reported threat noted with a colored bar and a mouse-over label on the right column.

Scanning can be slow, and occasionally the scan restarted for a second round automatically after completing its first pas

Featured Freeware: NetVideoHunterNovember 22

Don't be deceived by this Firefox extension's unassuming user interface, it's actually a very capable video player.

NetVideoHunter operates via a tiny icon and counter that appear in your status bar. When you click on the icon, a window appears for viewing videos. A step-by-step guide walks you through the process--a definite plus for novices. Watching a YouTube video, for example, adds it to the counter. From there, click on NetVideoHunter's tiny icon to reveal a video link. We had two choices: to play or download the video. Play starts the video, while download saves the FLV to your hard drive.

Watch out for where you save the video, and be wary of a help link on how to play FLV files that did all of nothing. Those are minor problems, though, and NetVideoHunter works great. The videos quickly appear in the queue, and play/save worked without any issues. This app is recommended.

Screamer Radio: Rock out while you workNovember 18

Screamer Radio may not be the most feature-rich desktop app for streaming Internet Radio, but it is light, compact, and effective freeware that fits the way I like to listen to music while I work: without thinking too much about what's coming next.

(Credit: CNET)

To fulfill a set-it-and-forget-it listening experience, there's Screamer Radio's lengthy list of preset stations organized by global region, language, and genre. While many preset links work well, there are also many that don't, because the links point to a Web site and not to the streaming URL. If you like the station, you can always follow the link to the site, find the correct streaming URL, and add it manually to your personal list of favorites. It's just too bad that your corrections don't work Wiki-style to update the link for everyone.

While I prefer letting a radio station run its course until I change my mood, there are a few controls for those who enjoy getting more hands on. Recording songs is the most active extra. Press the Record button to begin capturing and the Stop button to end the recording and save it in another folder as an MP3.

You'll just need an editing app like the freeware

SlyDial launches mobile apps for easy weasel callsNovember 17

SlyDial, the telephone service that lets you dial directly to someone's voice mail, has launched three new mobile applications for users on Windows Mobile, Research In Motion's BlackBerry, and Apple's iPhone. The new apps have direct access to your phone's contact list so you can begin a SlyDial call without having to first phone in to the service then remember your contact's number.

All three are free, and with the exception of the iPhone app--which is pending Apple's approval, are available right now. The iPhone version is also the only one of the three that does not require you to be a registered SlyDial user to make calls.

Since we covered SlyDial's official launch back in July, it's added a handy feature that lets you assign numerical shortcuts to contacts you think you're going to call frequently. This lets you call them by dialing in the first four letters of their name (or nickname) followed by the # key.

Below is a demo of how this works on a BlackBerry, effectively giving you the option to SlyDial from anywhere via contextual menu: