This week, Google brought a little something from ill-fated Nexus Q to Google TV. Even my non-techie wife is amazed, and that's the point. This little something is really big, because anyone can use it and get dramatic benefits.

The new YouTube for Android app installed on smartphone or tablet now acts as a remote control to Google TV, taking interaction far removed and clumsy and making it intimate, fun and easy. If Amazon and Netflix operated similarly -- and the set-top box got Hulu Plus -- I'd cancel AT&T U-verse, baby.

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Finding videos online is generally very easy. Downloading local copies can be more of a challenge, but there are some great tools around that can help -- and FSS Video Downloader is one of the best.

The program doesn’t just support YouTube, for instance. It can also download clips from Facebook. Vimeo. Myspace. Metacafe, Vimeo, LiveLeak, Dailymotion, and assorted other popular sites.

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Berlin-based O&O Software GmbH has launched O&O MediaRecovery 8, a brand new version of its Windows recovery tool that specializes in restoring lost and deleted video, photos and music files.

Version 8, which is also available in 64-bit, comes optimized for Windows 8, plus extends the number of media formats supported and promises to search more thoroughly for missing files, improving the user’s chances of recovering them.

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Converting audio files from one format to another can sometimes feel like rather a complicated process, where you need to browse device profiles and codecs, bit rates, encoding methods, sample rates and more. If you’re more interested in simplicity, though, you might prefer FlicFlac, which reduces most conversion processes to the click of a button and a quick drag and drop.

The program is portable, for instance, so easy to use anywhere. Just download the 896KB archive and unzip it where required. Next, choose your preferred output by clicking one of five buttons: FLAC, WAV, MP3, OGG or APE.

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Google Play Music launched last year, beginning its life known simply as Google Music, growing up quickly since its humble private beta beginning. The app and web service officially launched in late 2011 and have grown quickly since then. Now the latest update has just been pushed out today to Google Play. The search giant also recently announced availability of the store and also Nexus devices in Europe and Australia as well as in the United States directly from Google and T-Mobile.

First, as for the brand new Play Music update, Google has added several features that should enhance the user experience. The update rolled out quietly without any official press release or even a post to their Android blog where these announcements frequently appear. So what is new in version 4.4.811H you ask?

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Second in a series. Welcome to this week's installment of the new "best Windows 8 apps" series here on BetaNews. The first post went live on Sunday but we decided to move the series to Friday instead, which means that there are only five days between posts this time. All posts of this series will be posted on Friday from now on.

The links point to Microsoft's Windows Store, which offers detailed information about each app. To get an application, open the Windows Store on your computer and type the name as listed on the store front to find the program and install it on the system.

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File-sharing pioneer BitTorrent Inc has just released uTorrent 3.2.2, the latest build of its free, lightweight Windows-only BitTorrent client. Version 3.2.2’s most notable change is the addition of Windows 8 compatibility.

The latest build also introduces a new built-in advertising platform, Facebook and Twitter icons, tweaked Add Torrent dialog and a number of major and minor bug fixes.

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The only thing that ever stood in the way of my becoming a major international singer/songwriter was my inability to sing. Or write songs. I took guitar and piano lessons as a kid, and am pretty handy at Rock Band, but I’m not a great musician, so I never really get invited to jam with more musically-minded friends.

However, that might change, if I can persuade some of them to give Google’s latest interactive Chrome experiment a try.

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There are numerous video formats to choose from and you will at some point encounter a file that is not in the format you need to play back on a particular device. If you own an Android or iOS device, Miro Video Converter is on hand to help you to convert almost any video file into a format that can be played back on your mobile device -- most importantly, using the settings and resolution you feel most appropriate. Miro Video Converter 3.0 adds a number of important new options, including batch processing for the quick conversion of multiple files.

Batch conversion is the killer feature of the updated app, but it is far from being the end of the story. There is also a redesigned UI to work with, and you may be pleased to hear that it appears to be in no way inspired by the look of Windows 8. While the program can be used to convert video ready for all sorts of different purposes, it is particularly well suited for converting footage ready for viewing on mobile devices. The plethora of different screen sizes and aspect ratios is reflected in the range of formatting options that are available in the latest version of the program.

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If you’re a software reviewer or a blogger, a gamer or just looking for an easy way to take screenshots, there are plenty of tools to choose from. For anyone keen on sticking with what Windows has to offer, there’s the Snipping Tool but there are numerous other tools available if you like the idea of something a little more advanced. One of the leading commercial tools is SnagIt, but for many people this is restrictively priced. SnapCrab is a free screen capture tool that offers much of SnagIt’s feature set in a well-rounded package.

As you would expect, this is an app that is hotkey driven, and you can create keyboard shortcuts to grab the active window, the entire desktop, or just a selection. You can opt to have the cursor included or ignored and there are extensive options that allow for the automatic naming of files based on the date, time, program being used and numerous other variables. By default your images are saved as PNGs but there are other formats to choose from.

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Windows 8 ships with two versions of Internet Explorer 10. First, the regular version that runs on the desktop and packs all the features one would expect from a browser, and then the Start screen version of IE10, which is a plug-in free version that is limited in what you can do with it on the Internet and locally.

Microsoft has integrated Adobe's Flash Player natively into Internet Explorer 10, but there are again differences in the implementation between the desktop and start screen version of the browser.

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Windows Explorer’s ability to display a thumbnail for a file can be a very useful way to see what it contains. But this often fails to work properly with videos, where typically you’ll be left with some general icon representing the file type, or perhaps a black frame which tells you precisely nothing at all.

You may be able to at least partly resolve this problem by installing the appropriate codecs, and making sure they’re configured correctly. But if that’s not working for you, then it could be simpler to install Media Preview, which handles all the usual complications almost entirely automatically.

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This morning Amazon quietly pushed out a brand new app designed to let Android devices interface with their popular Cloud Drive storage service. Amazon, of course, has a horse in this race with their Kindle Fire HD tablets that have seen increased sales in recent days, ironically at what appears to be Apple's expense. The app is specifically designed for photos, so let's take a walk though and see what it can do.

First, it's a free install and is available from both Google Play and the Amazon AppStore for Android. Once you have downloaded it to your device you are presented with a sign-in screen that requires you to have, or create, an Amazon account, which is something that the vast majority of people probably already have anyway. Users automatically have 5 GB of free storage, but more can be purchased for prices comparable to those offered by Google Drive or SkyDrive.

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You’ve got to hand it to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Despite living under house arrest, his assets frozen, and facing the prospect of extradition to the United States and up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of copyright theft, money laundering and racketeering fraud, he’s pressing ahead with plans for a new file-sharing site.

Mega, his Megaupload replacement, was revealed yesterday, and despite just consisting of a holding page at the moment, was quickly overwhelmed. "Millions of users hitting at once. I'm delighted by the interest. But servers can't handle it. The new Mega will. WOW!!!" Dotcom tweeted an hour after the news broke.

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If your digital photo collection is something of a mess, leaving you rarely able to find the images you need, then you’re not alone. The standard Windows tools just aren’t up to the task of managing large numbers of photos, leaving many people looking for third-party tools to help them restore order.

There are at least plenty of free photo managers competing for your attention, though, and the latest contender is Lunarship Software’s Phototheca, an interesting tool with a range of useful features.

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