StreamTransport is a free video downloading software that can download media from video sharing sites such as YouTube as well as encrypted media (video or music) from sites such as Hulu. It can browse and download media from sites using HTTP, RTMP, RTMPT, RTMPE, and RTMPTE protocols, which covers most video and media sharing sites.

While there has been a general proliferation of video downloading apps and “YouTube downloaders”, only a handful of these are actually able to download encrypted media (video or music) from anti-leeching” websites that use encryption such as Imeen, Pandora and Last.fm. Two that can that were mentioned previously at Freewaregenius are TubeMaster++ and Orbit Downloader, but even these are unable to download from Hulu. I have tested StreamTransport and can confirm that it can download from Hulu as well as other encrypted sites.

Have you ever wished you could have pop-up notifications of the latest stories on the websites you read, the latest Tweets of people you follow, or even the latest eBay and Craigslist postings for items that you are interested in? This is exactly what Feed Notifier can do for you.

Feed Notifier is a free, system-tray based RSS feed notifier with some advanced functionality, such as the ability to filter items based on keywords, support for RSS and Atom feeds, and support for authenticated feeds that require a user name and password. It is also generally very versatile and highly configurable.

Check out the following video to see PageZipper in action:

PageZipper is a free Firefox extension and IE Bookmarklet that can merge articles or listings spanning multiple pages into a single browser page. It is useful in situations where you are interested in grabbing a web-clipping or exporting the entire article or listing to another application in one fell swoop, or simply if you would prefer not to have to keep pressing the “next” button to get through the article.

PeerBlock is an open source IP filtering application partially based on the PeerGuardian code. It is designed to prevent your computer from making undesirable connections, such as to machines flagged for anti p2p activities, corporations, governments, etc. This can significantly decrease your chances of being detected when downloading from p2p or Torrent networks, or of contracting malware/spyware from known sources. PeerBlock is available in portable form and works with all versions of Windows (including XP, Vista, Seven).

Free Stock Ticker is a free, small app designed to display stock ticker(s) on your desktop, as well as stock related headlines as hovering tooltips. It can also display regular RSS feeds or a combination of both.

The people that brought you Firefox extension "InvisibleHand" would like 200 of Freewaregenius readers to be among the first to try their new version 1.8 beta. Just go to this page and use the access code "invisibleGenius".

Firefox extension "InvisibleHand" is an on-the-fly comparison shopping tool designed to instantly retrieve and display the best prices from a wide variety of online vendors for the items that you are looking at as you surf. See our Freewaregenius review here. Some of the added features in this new version are as follows:

BrowserMaster is a free app that registers itself as your system’s default browser and gives you the option to select which browser to use when opening internet links. It applies to links clicked from outside a browser, such as desktop shortcuts, links in documents, links in IM and email apps, etc.

Songr is a free desktop app that can find downloadable MP3s from multiple sources on the internet. In addition, it allows for a “lyrics search” option that can identify and download songs  based on parts of lyrics that a you might remember. It also can download YouTube videos or alternately only the audio part of a YouTube video as MP3.

Changedetection.com is a free web service that monitors website(s) you want for changes and sends you email notifications when they occur. Changes are highlighted on the page and a history of changes is kept and is accessible for future reference.

TweetMyPC is a free Twitter application that can shut down your PC remotely and/or perform a range of commands as soon as you send it a tweet. Other commands include restarting your PC, downloading stuff to your PC, and even sending files to you from your PC – all based on your tweets. TweetMyPC v2.0 is multiplatform (Windows/Mac).

[Editor’s note: this review was contributed by blogger Ishan of ILoveFreeSoftware.com].

This posting will describe how to change your default system browser on Windows XP to a portable version of Mozilla Firefox using a free program called DefaultBrowser, doing so reversibly and without installing the non portable version. The same process described here could be used to change your default browser to any portable (or non portable) browser.

[Editor’s note: this posting was contributed by Freewaregenius reader Elioz Hefer; to whom I offer my extreme thanks and gratitude].

There are many ways to check RSS feeds. Two of the most popular are using a local RSS client (such as RSSOwl) and using a web-based reader (such as Google Reader). This posting will present nine interesting (and at times unusual) free ways to check RSS feeds, including using dekstop widgets (KlipFolio), RSS feeds as tabs on the side of your screen (Stick), RSS feeds within a dockable desktop area (SideSlide), as desktop sticky notes (Note Mania), embedded in your desktop wallpaper (Chaos Wallpaper), as news-tickers scrolling across your screen (EasyDeskTicker), and delivered as emails in your inbox (FeedMyInbox).