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We have all been there: You shot a video on your digital camera; you drag it into iMovie, and then: Rejected! For all its simplicity and “it just works” philosophy, too many video formats are rejected by Apple’s introductory video editing application, causing major headaches for editing novices. So after scouring the depths of Google, I found MPEG Streamclip. With ease, it stepped up to the plate and knocked my video out of the park.

The goal behind Firefox was simple: a lightweight browser with the basics for a satisfying Web surfing experience, but the groundwork for a user to customize their feature set by installing add-ons. On the other end of the spectrum is Flock. Out of the box Flock can do just about everything you can imagine you might possibly (one day) use, and a little more.

For the past month I’ve been privately testing Evernote, a feature rich note-taking application. I don’t normally glean much enjoyment from closed betas, as the apps often have too many bugs to be practical. I find myself least trusting of notes apps because it’s never wise to devote my most important information to untested software that’s liable to implode at any time, taking all of my data with it.

Firefox 3 released to much fanfare Tuesday with millions of downloads, earning the browser a place in the record books — literally. Firefox achieved the Guinness World Record for most downloads in a day. Excitement for the software launch bordered on the ridiculous, with thousands of people attending and hosting Firefox 3 launch parties. But behind all the hype, there really is a great deal of substance. Firefox 3 is fast, stable and packed with features.

Address Book has always been a great place to store contact information for all your friends, family acquaintances and coworkers, but it’s not necessarily the best way to easily access all that info. There are tons of solutions, from Quicksilver and Spotlight to the Dashboard widget. TapDex. is yet another way to get at all those phone numbers, email handles and mailing addresses stored in Address Book.

After installing the System Preference pane, the small TapDex application runs in the background, consuming very little system resources, and is ready to spring to action when the user invoke its hotkey (F1 by default). When initiated, the TapDex search window pops to the front, allowing you to type search criteria. Press enter and a list of matching contacts is displayed.

Microsoft’s seventh version of its Messenger chat client for the Mac adds two of the most requested features from the Windows side: video conferencing and voice chat. That is, if you’re on a corporate network running Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. When using Messenger 7 for personal chat on the global network, you’ll find the same limited list of features Mac users have grown to expect.

If you want to be the next lonelygirl15 or Angry Video Game Nerd, Vidnik makes the process a snap. The freeware application from Google Mac developer David Phillip Oster lets you record video segments using your Mac’s iSight camera and upload them directly to YouTube in just a few clicks. It’s ideal for video diaries that require little editing or for a quick video response to a popular YouTube clip.

Last month I reviewed VideoDrive, an application for quickly adding just about any movie file into your iTunes library. The developer, Aroona Software, gave us three licenses to give away to our readers. We had 17 entries, and now we have three winners.

The winners of the licenses are Janko Lauterbach, Maria and systek.

If you won, you should be receiving your license shortly. Thank you to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners. For those that didn’t win, VideoDrive costs $14.99.

Last week I reviewed Master Kick, a foosball game. The developer, Industry Entertainment, gave us four licenses to giveaway to our readers. We had six entries, and now we have four winners. So if you entered, you had a pretty good chance of winning.

The winners of the Mac license are Colby G, Alex J. and Dan. And the winner of the full license is Keith Sheehan.

Organizing digital videos isn’t easy. The vast majority of music files have been in MP3 format since the digital music explosion, but videos are a different story: MP4, H.264, DiVx, Xvid, WMV, M4V, MOV, AVI containers. When you download a movie, you never really know what to expect, and neither does iTunes, which only plays a limited number of video file types. So users who download movie files are forced to use QuickTime or third-party software to convert them to another format, which is always a lengthy process. Fortunately, though, there is an alternative:

It seems like every medium has tried to recreate the world’s most popular sport. There’s the interactive table version of soccer, called foosball. And then there are tons of soccer video and computer games that try to realistically imitate the sport. However, few computer games have attempted to emulate the look and feel of table soccer, but that’s exactly what’s been done with Master Kick. And there’s one really good reason why it might be a better alternative: a decent foosball table can cost more than $100, but you can get Master Kick free if you win MacApper’s giveaway.

As if the social networking arena weren’t crowded enough, make room for newcomer Net4Mac, a network catered specifically to Mac users. You can connect with thousands of Apple lovers by joining any of the more than 700 user-created groups, each containing a forum and a comments section similar to the Facebook Wall. A network-wide chat room, a section for classified ads and a personal calendar are among the features in Net4Mac’s premiere release.

For years Firefox users have been able to enjoy the many benefits of the StumbleUpon toolbar, which allows users to experience the StumbleUpon social bookmarking site in all its glory. Now thanks to Stumbi developer Eli Kaufman, Safari users can get much of the same functionalities that have made the Firefox add-on a wildly popular download.

StumbleUpon is like channel surfing for the web. The site, which ranks in the top 500 on Alexa Traffic Rankings, lets you specify a list of categories you’re interested in, whether it be art, music, humor, technology or a slew of others, and then jump randomly between popular sites in those areas. Not uncommon for a social bookmarking site, Stumble features user profiles and friends lists. Once you start Stumbling, you may be surprised at how addictive it is.

There’s nothing quite like getting a group of people together in a dingy garage and playing live music together. But eJamming AUDiiO comes close.

The eJamming software is like Skype for musicians. It allows you to connect with fellow rockers over the Internet and jam — even if your drummer lives a few states away. And because you can do this all through a set of headphones, you won’t have to worry about the police knocking on your door after your neighbors file a noise complaint.

If you’re using Apple’s latest keyboard, released in August, or if you’re fortunate enough to have a MacBook Air, you’re already enjoying the benefits of dedicated iTunes keyboard buttons.

However, not everyone is so lucky, which is probably why iTunes controller applications are so popular and plentiful.

An iTunes controller is a companion to Apple’s jukebox that allows you to play, pause, skip between tracks and adjust volume using either keyboard shortcuts or buttons in the menu bar. As more people listen to music while surfing the web, with a recent survey by Olswang finding about one in five computer users listen to music on their computers daily, there’s a big market for these apps.