Yougle developer Steven Harding has released a major update to his Windows Media Center plugin which lets you access online video and image sites like YouTube, Soapbox, and Flickr. Yougle 0.4.0 includes a slew of new features including an improved menu layout, improved parental controls (and an option to enable adult video channels if you're not worried about that kind of thing), and a slew of other updates, including:

• Yougle 0.4.0 automatically saves your data more frequently so you don't have to worry about losing your saved filters or other information in the event of a crash
  
• New content sources have been added
• Google Video has been removed from the list of sources, due to problems with playback

Youtle 0.4.0 beta is available as a free download.

[via Ian Dixon]

Steven Harding, the developer behind Yougle has issued a major updated to his MAMECenter plugin for Windows Media Center. In fact, it's a big enough update that Harding gave the program a new name, EMUCenter.

EMUCenter provides a 10 foot interface for launching classic console games using emulators including MAME, ZSNES, KEGA Fusion, and CCS. In other words, if you've got Roms for Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis or Commodore 64 games lying around, EMUCenter helps make it easier to play them on your media center PC.

EMUCenter is Windows Vista only, and it's currently in beta, so don't be surprised if you find a glitch or two. Harding gave the MAMECenter interface an overhaul, and added the ability to launch Windows games.

You'll need to download and install the emulators separately, and of course you need to legally own any of the games that you want to play using EMUCenter. But we didn't have to tell you that, now did we?

[via Ian Dixon]

Yougle is a Windows Media Center plugin that lets you search, browse through , and watch videos from YouTube, Google Video, Grouper, and DivX Stage 6 from the comfort of your couch.

Version 2.0 is in development, with support for Windows Vista. The developers are looking for alpha testers. Right now, there's a lot of work to be done, as you can search for videos with the latest version, but you can't watch them yet. That should be fixed any day now.

If you ask me, online video search is the sort of thing that Microsoft should be building into Media Center. But failing that, it's nice to see the user community and third party developers picking up where Microsoft leaves off.

[via Chris Lanier]