Tooble bridges the YouTube to iTunes to iPod divide
Date : 2008 01 14 Category : Web Webware.com
One thing iPhone and iPod Touch users have been enjoying over the past year has been a finger optimized version of YouTube that pulls in videos on demand. However, users of older video-enabled iPods have been left to fend for themselves using a bevy of services to pull down videos from popular hosting sites and reformat them to fit using third-party conversion apps. A new service called Tooble (download) that aims to streamline this process is showing off its wares on the Macworld Expo show floor tomorrow. We thought it would be a good idea to give it a spin, and see how well it performs.
The good news is that it works flawlessly, and for the novice user who wants a highly affordable way of filling up their shiny Apple device with video content, Tooble is hard to beat. The killer app here is the workflow, which lets you queue up multiple videos for downloading at a time. Once finished converting it'll send the videos straight to iTunes so you don't manually need to hunt them down and drag them into your library. I'd personally love a way to avoid iTunes altogether for syncing up video content while on the go, but if you're using Tooble on your home machine, you're in luck (ed's note: Tom Merritt has a good Insider's Secrets video on a workaround here).
Tooble is Mac-only for now, although there's a Windows version on the way which the company is currently beta testing. Additionally if you're looking to simply grab Flash videos off the Web for personal use on any portable device, there are a handful of services including the latest RealPlayer, Hey!Watch, and Vixy, the latter of which I'd recommend using over Tooble if you've got an older machine (read: non-Intel) since it'll do all the conversion crunching on its servers.
Search and browse YouTube videos on Tooble, then download the ones you like to put on your iPod.
(Credit: CNET Networks)