Note that downloading retail .nds ROMs is of questionable (il)legality – more of a black area than gray as the games are still current generation – sold and marketed as of right now. If you want to stay on the legal side, use homebrew ROMs instead.

We’ll be covering the Windows version of DeSmuME. Fetch the latest Windows binary from their website.

You should have downloaded a zip archive. Extract it to its own folder, and you should see several files, including DeSmuME.exe, which is the Nintendo DS emulator itself.

Downloading Games

We can’t condone downloading the retail DS games’ ROMs, though we’re quite sure you know the common avenues. Your second option is to find homebrew DS ROMs – this website has a small collection of them, but you may need to click through to developer websites to see more of their own projects.

In the end, you’ll usually end up downloading an archive including an nds file – this file is the one you want. For our own purposes, we’ll be downloading “Yoshi’s Bad Brother,” a homebrew game, from this developer.

Playing the Games

When all is downloaded and unarchived, you should end up with an nds file, and perhaps a readme or other files.

Browse to your nds file, and hit Open.

The game will load – the bottom half of the Nintendo DS emulator is for the “touchscreen” input, which you control with your mouse, and the top is the top screen of your “DS”.

You can find the various key bindings in the Config > Control Config.

Basic Functions

We’ll be outlining some of the basic functions of the emulator:

File

• Save State As: Allows you to save the current exact state of the emulator – everything will be the way you left it when you load this file.
• Load State As: Allows you to load the files made from Save State As.
• Save State / Load State: Does the exact same thing as the above, except it uses numbers instead of forcing you to specify a file name.
• Other functions in the File menu allow you to save screenshots, audio, and video captures.

Emulation

• Pause and Reset are self explanatory.
• The Cheats menu will be explained in greater detail later.

View

• The various options on the view menu allow you to change the emulator size, rotation, and screen separation. You can also display an FPS counter, among other things.

Cheating in DeSmuME

Cheating is quite rudimentary in DeSmuME. We’ll be showing a simple example using the game New Super Mario Bros.

Head over to Emulation > Cheats > Search. A window will pop up, asking for the number of bytes and search type. For our example, we’ll stick with the defaults.

You’ll be prompted to enter a value. Since we’re going to freeze the number of lives, we entered 10, which was our current number of lives.

The window will tell you the number of results. Close the dialog (do not click Restart).

Change the number of lives. We went in and lost a life to reduce the number of lives we had to 9. Go back to Emulation > Cheats > Search, and enter the new number (ours would be 9) and hit Search.

The number of results should have dropped significantly (I ended up with 4). You can either die again and search a new number to reduce the number of results again, or just add all the values. Either way, once you’re done, hit View, and select each value and click Add.

You can either freeze the value, or change it. I opted to freeze it, and clicked Add. That’s all – for a more detailed guide, view DeSmuME’s guide.

That’s all the basic functions of DeSmuME. Download it at their website. If you have any questions or issues, please voice out in the comments.

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• Top 3 Sites For Nintendo DS Walkthroughs (6)
• Top 3 Sites For Nintendo Wii Game Walkthroughs (8)
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Another bonus is the support for a Linux client, but today we’ll be focusing on Windows to Windows streaming.

A couple of limitations:  one, you’ll have to pay to use resolutions higher than 640 x 480 while streaming. Two, the graphics quality will be reduced quite a bit as you’re streaming the game and you’ll be limited by your network. Three, they also ask you to pay to stream over the Internet beyond a trial.   You can see here what you can do with the free version versus the paid version.

Setting up the Server

• One of the first steps is that you’ll have to register an account to download their server and player software. They’ll ask for an email, username, and password.
• Download the server/player installer to both the computer that will run the actual game (server) and the computer that will be receiving the stream (client).
• Install the software. It’s a pretty straightforward installation, and all the options can be left as is. You’ll have to reboot your computer at the end of it.
• There should be a new icon in the system tray – a red circle with an S in it, and a green checkmark – this is the Streamer Server. To begin, we’re going to add a game. Right click the icon and hit Add Games:

  

• In the Add Games and Applications window you have two options – you can have the software scan your entire Program Files directory looking for applications, or you can add them manually. Since the scan is not particularly fast, we’ll be using the Select a Game or Application.
• I’ll be adding the game Crysis, which happens to store the game executable (by default) in C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis\Bin32\Crysis.exe. Double click it, and the name of the executable will be added to the list.  At this point, you can either select more programs, or you can click on whatever you added and hit Add Selected:

  

Using the Client

• On the client computer, browse over to your Your Games page. The game you added in step 6 under Setting up the Server should be listed.
• To play the game on the client computer, click on the second icon from the left under Start Streamer Service, which displays a house and the StreamMyGame logo in the corner. The tool tip should say Stream Game At Home:

  

• You’ll be directed to a page where you can choose the various settings, including video bandwidth, audio bandwidth, and resolution. For free accounts, the max resolution is 640 x 480. You should experiment with the various video/audio bandwidth settings – my laptop on a wireless network operates at 5Mbit/s for video bandwidth.  Hit Save Settings once you think you have acceptable streaming settings:

  

• To play, click the big button above the Local Area Network Streaming Settings (the house with the StreamMyGame logo) and allow your browser to start the application:

  

• A window should pop up asking for your login details and an option to save them. Login with your StreamMyGame account, and the game should start on the host computer, while the client computer receives a stream. That’s about it to stream games from one computer to the other:

  

  And a view from the host:

  

Few Notes

• If the game has a noticeable lag between the input and what is shown on the screen, you may need to reduce the allotted video bandwidth, or make sure that no other applications are taking up your network bandwidth. Switching from a wireless to a wired connection will also help.
• No sound? You’ll need to enable Stereo Mix or “What U Hear” or other similar recording functions on the host computer. Head to Control Panel, double click Sounds and Audio Devices, and on the first tab under Device Volume, click the Advanced button. In the new Master Volume window go to Options > Properties, and change the Mixer Device to “Line in/Mic in” (if you do not have this option, browse for the selection that allows you to adjust volume for recording). In the selection below, make sure that the box for Stereo Mix/What U Hear/similar terminology is checked, and unmuted. StreamMyGame has a little quick tidbit on this if you need more help.

Image Credit: shanewarne60000

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• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2) (19)
• Top 3 Sites For Nintendo DS Walkthroughs (6)
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• How to Build a Gaming PC [PDF Guide] (2)
• DeSmuME- Free Nintendo DS Emulator to Play NDS Games on PC (21)

We’re going to show you how to start your own Internet radio station with SHOUTcast – and help you set up a player on your website.

To start off your own Internet radio station, you’ll need the following:  SHOUTcast Radio DNAS server, Winamp, and the SHOUTcast Radio DSP Plugin.

Also note that there are various legal implications for playing copyrighted works, which you can read at the bottom of the SHOUTcast download page.

Setting up the SHOUTcast Server

• Download and install the SHOUTcast Radio DNAS server.
• Browse over to C:\Program Files\SHOUTcast\ and open sc_serv.ini in your favorite text editor (I prefer Notepad++).
• You’ll need to edit a couple values:
  • On line 21, edit the MaxUser value. The comment above it tells you how to calculate your possible number of listeners – take the upload rate of your connection in kbps and divide it by the bitrate you intend to broadcast at.
  • For example, my upload speed is approximately 993kbps, and if I wanted to broadcast at 96kbps, I could fit in roughly 10 listeners at once.
  • On line 29, choose a password for the Password value. This will be used so Winamp can connect to your server, and for the web administration.
  • On line 37, PortBase can be left alone unless you have an existing server that utilizes port 8000/8001.
• Download and install Winamp. Make sure to uncheck any offers to change your search engine, etc.
• Download and install the SHOUTcast Radio DSP plugin.
• Open Winamp, head to Options > Preferences, then scroll down to DSP/Effect under Plug-ins. Click on Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP and a small window should open:



• Switch to the Output tab and under Address put “localhost” without the quotes. For Port use 8000 unless you changed the value in step 2, and Password uses the password you configured in step 2:



• On the same tab, click where it says Yellowpages and configure the settings, which should be fairly self explanatory:



• Switch to the Encoder tab. Set Encoder Type to MP3 Encoder, and choose an Encoder Setting. Keep in mind the number of users you intend to be able to broadcast to at once – multiply the number of users you chose in step 2 by the bitrate you select and make sure the resulting number doesn’t exceed your upload speed:



• Start the SHOUTcast DNAS. Make sure to let it connect to the Internet.



• Switch back to the Output tab on the Winamp SHOUTcast window, and hit Connect. Head back to the Winamp library, and pick a random song. The SHOUTcast plugin under Status should start showing a quickly increasing number. You’re free to close the plugin window now that it’s connected:

Broadcasting on the Internet

At this point, your server is accessible anywhere on your local network. You’ll need to port forward to make it Internet accessible, and there are a few solutions to get your broadcast playing on a webpage.

• You’ll need to port forward ports 8000 and 8001 to your local computer. If you need help port forwarding, select a router from this list, and select ShoutCast when choosing an application. To find the port you need to forward to, follow the first step of Ryan’s FreeProxy article here.
• To verify that your server appears on the Internet, switch to the SHOUTcast server window, and wait for the following to appear:
  

  [yp_add] yp.shoutcast.com added me successfully

  If it fails for any reason, see the error it provides, double check the steps, and consult this forum thread if all else fails.

Embedding in a Webpage

Assuming everything has worked perfectly up to this point, we’re assuming you need a way for people to listen from a webpage. For all of this to work, you’ll also need to grab your external IP address, which you can find at WhatIsMyIP. There are a couple of solutions at this point:

WaveStreaming Player: This player requires you give them a name and an email address – but it’s pretty straightforward and requires no editing of code:

Once they give you the code, just copy and paste anywhere you want the player to appear.

StreamSolutions.co.uk Embedded Player Generator: Another simple solution, but doesn’t ask for your name or email. Simply give your station URL and port as directed, and select a version of the player. Note that this player is rather unwieldy in Firefox if the appropriate plugin is not installed.

Minicaster: Download Minicaster and unzip the archive. Edit minicaster.xml in your favorite text editor. Replace all the code in the file with the following, replacing your_ip_address, your_port, your_website_url, and Your Title Here:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”iso-8859-1″ ?>
<config version=”1T” xmlns=”http://www.draftlight.net/dnex/config/ns/1T/”>
<mp3cast>
<mount>http://your_ip_address:your_port/;</mount>
<website>your_website_url</website>
<title>Your Title Here</title>
</mp3cast>
<init autoplay=”0″ volume=”80″ reload=”5″ xfade=”0″ />
</config>

Upload minicaster.xml, minicaster.swf, and to be utterly simple, EXAMPLE2.html. You could alternatively embed the following code in a web page that shares the same directory (or edit the parts in bold to reflect directory structure):

<object id=”fmp256″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”minicaster.swf” width=”180″ height=”70″>
<param name=”movie” value=”minicaster.swf” />
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” />
<div>
<h4>Minicaster Radio Playhead</h4>
<p>To listen you must <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer/”
title=”Click here to install the Flash browser plugin from Macromedia”>install Flash Player</a>. Visit
<a href=”http://www.draftlight.net/dnex/mp3player/minicaster/” title=”Draftlight Networks”>Draftlight Networks</a>
for more info.</p></div>
</object>

That’s about it to starting a basic SHOUTcast server. If you have any comments or questions, please direct them below.  Also, let us know where to find your newly created radio station so we can come over and listen!

Image Credit : LoopZilla.

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Today, we’ll show you how to use this service and find out which websites have embedded your video.

Let’s start it off.

Head over to YouTube and go to your My Videos page. Browse for the video you want to check to see which websites have embedded it. Click the button labeled Insight for that video.

You should be able to see a line graph of the number of views and a world map showing the location of the viewers. On the left side, there will be a list of options under the video name (Views, Discovery, Demographics, Community, Hot Spots). Click Discovery.

You’ll be greeted with a list of the number of people who have accessed and watched your video. Look for the option labeled Embedded Player and click it.

At the top, you’ll see a range of dates which represent the time period YouTube is getting the data from. In order to get a larger picture of the sites that have embedded your videos, click the range of dates and click 1y. If you want to see a more current list, click 1d instead.

Underneath the date range, you’ll see a list of all the websites that have embedded your video. Click any of these entries to be taken to the webpage (note: the link doesn’t bring you to the exact page where your video is embedded).

A Few Problems

YouTube does not specifically tell you which page these views came from. A workaround is to visit the YouTube video page, and open the Statistics & Data above the Comments. This will give you a list of all the websites that have “linked” (read: also embedded) to your video, along with a specific URL to the page.

You can also attempt a Google search with the following query: site:domain.com video keywords – replacing domain.com with the domain listed on the Insight panel and video keywords with any keywords related to your video or that you may find on the page embedding your video.

If a user visits your video through the related videos scrolling browser within YouTube players, Insight will believe that your video was embedded on that website as well (which it isn’t) – giving you an erroneous result. These are easily identifiable by the low volume of total views for that particular website.

Did this help you track down all the sites which have been showcasing your YouTube videos. Are you surprised to see your videos spreading like wildfire? Let us know if this “hack” has helped you!

Other interesting articles regarding YouTube:
10 Youtube URL Tricks You Should Know About
10 Unique YouTube Channels You Should Watch
4 Quick Ways To Download YouTube Videos Off The Net

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There seemed to be no way to play Kongregate games offline. Until now.

We’re going to show you how to download Kongregate games and play them locally on your computer.

This tutorial requires Firefox with the Live HTTP Headers addon. Get them before moving on.

Download Kongregate Games

1. Open up Firefox and head over to Kongregate. Click Tools > Live HTTP Headers. In the resulting window, switch to the Generator tab. Check request and uncheck images and CSS on the right  side. Make sure Capture is checked at the bottom.
   
2. Load game you want to download, and watch the Live HTTP Headers window fill with entries. Uncheck Capture when the game starts to load (or you’ll be bogged down with a large number of irrelevant entries). Look for the following pattern:
   

   #request# GET http://chat.kongregate.com/gamez/[numbers]/[numbers]/live/[game-name].swf?kongregate_game_version=[numbers]

   For our example, we’re going to use the Little Wheel game. Our entry appeared like this:

   #request# GET http://chat.kongregate.com/gamez/0004/8108/live/littlewheel.swf?kongregate_game_version=1244712350

3. Right click and Copy the entry.
   

   Paste it into Firefox, remove #request# GET from the URL, and when the page loads you should be greeted by the Flash game filling the whole window. Hit File > Save Page As and select a location to download. It should save as a swf file.

Playing the Game

Head over to where you saved the Flash game and Open With… > Mozilla Firefox. There are two possible outcomes:

1. The game opens fine and perfectly. You’re at the end of the article. This is the case with Little Wheel.
2. The game opens, but the game doesn’t work or a message displays telling you to go to Kongregate. You’ll need to follow the next part of the tutorial, which requires XAMPP. XAMPP will emulate a web site so we can trick the Flash game into believing it’s operating on Kongregate.com. In the video tutorial below, we’ve used the Fantastic Contraption game, which doesn’t work without this following step.

The Workaround

1. Grab the Self Extracting ZIP Archive from the XAMPP download page. Double-click the extractor, and let it place the files at C: (it’ll create a folder called “xampp” automatically). Don’t be creative with the path, by sticking to a top level folder you skip a step.
2. Head into C:\xampp\htdocs and create a folder called kongregate.com
3. Move the Flash game file (swf) into the newly created folder (C:xampp\htdocs\kongregate.com)
   
4. Run C:\xampp\xampp-control.exe and fire up the Apache server by clicking Start next to where it says Apache. It should say Running once you click it, as seen in the screenshot below
   
5. Direct your browser to http://localhost/kongregate.com/. You’ll be greeted by minimalistic list of files in the directory. Click on the Flash game you put into the folder. If all goes well, it should work perfectly – the game should fill up the Firefox window.

To further clarify the steps above, I’ve prepared a short video tutorial:

That’s it for saving Kongregate games to your computer and playing offline. If you have any questions or aware of any easier way to download Kongregate games, feel free to tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

For more post on flash games, check out:

MUO Games – The Best Websites to Play Flash Games
4 Web Flash Games to Kick-Start your Brain
The Best Online Flash Games
Orisinal.com – Cute Flash Games For All

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Installing phpFreeChat

• Grab the latest phpfreechat-x.x-setup.php at Sourceforge (1.2 is the latest version at the time of this writing).
• Upload it or move it to a local web server directory. We’re going to be using a XAMPP installation, so we’ve moved it to the root directory. You don’t want to put the install file where you want the chat to be.
• Navigate to the file. Our URL would be http://localhost/phpfreechat-1.2-setup.php. You’ll be greeted with a Pre-Install Check. Hopefully it looks like the picture below. Hit ‘Next’.



• You’ll be prompted for an install path. By default it creates a phpfreechat directory in the current directory, but you can change it to whatever you wish. Hit ‘Next’.



• It’ll ask you to confirm the install. Click ‘Next’. Watch the pretty progress bar. Once it’s finished, click ‘Next’.
• It’ll have installed itself in the directory of your choice, ours being http://localhost/phpfreechat/. Do as it says and delete the phpfreechat-x.x-setup.php file.

Quick Configuration

Setting up the Admin Account

The equivalent of an IRC channel op, the admin password allows you to gain access to privileges such as kicking, banning, and viewing user IP addresses. Admin status is global across all channels.

Prompt for Nickname Upon Entry

By default, the chat assigns you a nickname guest followed by random numbers. To force the user to choose a nickname when they enter:

Remove Censor and Flood Protection

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Google Tasks on Your Desktop

Available for all platforms capable of running Adobe Air.

The first method we’ll be exploring is putting the tasks list on your desktop (which may or may not be to everyone’s fancy). We’ll be using Snippage to accomplish this.

• Once Snippage has started, either make new snip or expand to browser view with an existing one.
• Login to your Google Account from Internet Explorer – make sure Remember me on this computer is checked.
• In the browser view of Snippage, navigate to the following URL:
  https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig
• Size the snip to a preferred size.

Google Tasks Gadget in Gmail

Granted, Google offers a link to Tasks from inside Gmail, but why not save yourself a click and embed the gadget directly in Gmail (like iGoogle)?

• Make sure the Add any gadget by URL Lab feature is enabled. Head over to the Gadgets tab and add the following gadget: http://www.google.com/ig/modules/tasks.xml
• The iGoogle gadget should now be conveniently located in your Gmail sidebar – no more clicking to open the Tasks list required.

Google Tasks in the Firefox Sidebar

Want to keep track of your tasks while browsing? Users of Firefox can enjoy a feature to load bookmarks in the sidebar – which can be used for Google Tasks.

• Bookmark the following link: https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig
• Head to the Bookmarks menu, right click on the new bookmark, and hit Properties.
• Make sure Load this bookmark in the sidebar is checked, then hit OK.

Shortcut to Google Tasks with Chrome

For users who like to keep their desktop clear of “out of place” widgets, you can still get your Google Tasks as a shortcut on the desktop (anyone for distraction-free task viewing?). Don’t have Chrome? Download it here.

• Head over to the following URL in Chrome: https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig (if prompted to login, do so, and make sure Remember me is checked).
• Hit the Page menu (the one with the picture of a page) and hit Create Application Shortcuts. Select the options you want, and hit OK.

Google Tasks on Your Startpage

Google offers an iGoogle gadget for Tasks, and both Netvibes and Pageflakes offer a method to add a webpage as a widget/flake.

• Add the applicable “Web Page” gadget to the startpage.
• For Netvibes, browse to Essential Widgets and select Web Page.
• For Pageflakes, browse to Tools II and select Web Page.
• Point it to https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig

We’ve just highlighted five ways to access Google Tasks from a variety of methods. If you know of your own method, tell us about it in the comments.

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In this post I’ll be exploring active desktop replacements for the now defunct Active Desktop feature – Snippage, AveDesktopSites, and minibrowser.

Snippage

Snippage is a neat application (requires Adobe Air) that allows you to “snip” parts of websites and place them onto your desktop. The interface is intuitive, allowing you to expand to a browser to find a site you want to snip from, and an easy to use dragging and resize mechanism.

In the above screenshot, you’ll see that I’ve clipped the Most Popular stories from CNN. However, Snippage is still in beta (at the time of this writing) and therefore is not a completely polished product.

Best suited for keeping track of portions of websites – it combines the idea of Active Desktop and WebSlices into one useful application.

Snippage is compatible with any system that can run Adobe Air.

minibrowser

minibrowser is a Vista sidebar gadget that basically does what it says – gives you a small window to browse in. It’s useful for monitoring websites and small scale browsing – but unlike Snippage, it doesn’t allow you to create customized snippets of a web page. Rather, you’re faced with something similar to crunching a website into a confined space, which usually doesn’t work too well (see above screenshot, I’ve configured minibrowser into a 640×480 space). It’s also unable to be dynamically sized (you’re faced with guess and check pixel measurements in the options panel).

However, it’s the only app in this list to feature a zoom toolbar (not enabled by default) which allows you to dynamically size the content – great for broadening or narrowing the scope of what you’d like to see.

Best suited for light web browsing – this app is also the most similar to Active Desktop with a slightly larger feature set.

minibrowser is compatible with Vista, and with a little hacking, XP.

AveDesktopSites

AveDesktopSites (click on the screenshot on the website to download) is a small application – it can take a portion of a webpage and display it on the desktop. Unfortunately, this is the only thing it can do – the scroll bar appeared to be nonfunctional. Links don’t work, so consider this a very basic application best reserved for keeping track of news front pages or other equally simple tasks.

Best suited for keeping track of changes in a website. In comparison to Active Desktop, it can be described as a weaker contender – but perhaps this is all you need.

AveDesktopSites is compatible with Vista only.

Conclusively, these three applications all have their similarities and differences with Active Desktop. Snippage offers a unique take on the “web on your desktop,” minibrowser offers a feature set most similar to Active Desktop, and AveDesktopSites offers an extremely basic set of features.

Do you know of another (better) active desktop replacement? Any Active Desktop clone? Share it in the comments.

Photo Credit: Dave Child

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Today we’ll show you an all-inclusive method that can download songs from Pandora and most, if not all, websites. The drawback? No automatic naming, the files are in FLV format rather than MP3, and you’ll have to drag them out of the cache yourself. However, user input is minimal, especially on playlist type websites.

BEFORE YOU PROCEED! : The following instructions described below may violate the Terms of Service of the aforementioned websites (and also have various moral implications). This tutorial is provided for your convenience only – all actions you undertake using this tutorial are yours alone and MakeUseOf cannot be held liable for any damages incurred.

The basic premise of the method is to kill the HTTP headers that tells the content to expire so that the content will be cached – where you then drag it out of the cache, convert it to MP3, and add it to your library. We’ll be using a small program called Proxomitron, and as usual, we’re focused on Firefox.

Set up Proxomitron

1. Download and install Proxomitron. When you first run it, you’ll be greeted by a rather interesting (eye stabbing) interface. To change this, click Config and select Don’t use textures.
2. Uncheck Web Page Filters, we will not need them. If you want, you can take a selective look by clicking Web Page under Edit Filters, but at least one of the default options interferes with the ability to use music streaming websites.



3. Click Headers under Edit Filters. Check the following, but uncheck everything else:
   • Cache-Control: always cache (in)
   • Expires: always cache (in)
4. Hit OK. At this point, Proxomitron is all configured. The next steps will deal with setting up Firefox to use Proxomitron.

Set up Firefox and Download Songs

1. Open up Firefox. Head over to Tools → Options… → Advanced → Network → Settings, and hit Manual Proxy Configuration. Set it to use localhost and port 8080. Also check that the cache quota is sizable based on the amount of music you want to download at once (I have mine set at 50MB).



2. At this point Firefox is configured to run its connection through Proxomitron, which will filter out the unwanted HTTP headers. Head over to a music streaming website of your choice and load up a song.
3. Head over to the cache folder once it’s finished loading. You can do this step after loading a bunch of songs, as long as the number of songs you’ve loaded doesn’t grow beyond the cache size, at which point files start getting automatically pruned.
   • On XP it’s C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random].default\Cache
   • Vista: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random].default\Cache
   • Portable Firefox: \FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\Cache



Sort the list by Date Modified so that the most recent files end up at the top. Generally the Date Created is when the streaming was initiated, while the Date Modified is when the stream finished downloading. Make sure the size is realistic (you generally want something above 1000KB), then copy/paste the file to a different folder and rename it with a .flv extension.

4. Convert the .flv file to .mp3 with a program of your choice. I prefer WinFF. You may also use online FLF to MP3 converter like FLVto.

That’s the process in a nutshell. Find a website that defies this method? Any easier method to download music from Pandora and alike music streaming sites? Tell us about it in the comments.

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The Meebo Firefox Extension

The Meebo Firefox extension adds some nifty features to Meebo. Improvements include “toaster” style notifications, a sidebar to access your buddy list, and auto-login. Unfortunately, this extension requires the Meebo tab to still be present, meaning that your conversations don’t carry on in the sidebar, but the actual Meebo tab.

The main addition of the extension is the sidebar, which allows you to see your buddy list in that sidebar – with no need to switch tabs. However, when you want to IM someone, clicking their name in the sidebar will automatically switch your Firefox tab back to Meebo – where you can chat there. This means that you can’t browse and chat at the same time, which is often inconvenient.

The second main addition of the extension are the toaster-style notifications, which tells you about certain events (can be chosen in the options panel) without having to be focused on the Firefox window.

Meebo’s Mobile Interface As A Sidebar

The mobile interface – while sub par to the actual interface, is a convenient way of accessing Meebo from the Firefox sidebar.  It allows you to carry on conversations in the sidebar without switching tabs. However, the Firefox extension doesn’t work in tandem with this method – so you’re stuck between the Firefox addon that depends on the Meebo website interface, or the less than stellar meebo sidebar.

It displays recent messages from contacts (listed in order of recent messages), which you can click on to chat with, and also click back to the buddy list through an icon next to the input area. An apparent bug is the status picker, which makes it impossible to see the options without highlighting over them. Sound is absent.

To use this interface, create a Firefox bookmark for http://www.meebo.com/mobile/ and set it to load in the sidebar.

Greasemonkey Scripts

Change the Background Image

Meebo offers a selection of background images you can use (if you like product placements) through the preferences – appearance menu, but to use other images, you’ll need the customize meebo backgrounds Greasemonkey script. It allows you to choose a URL to grab a wallpaper from (sorry, no local options) and makes it the background for Meebo. Make sure you choose dark wallpaper (as link text appears in white for all themes) and the gray theme tends to look best with all images. (Note: I had to add http://www*.meebo.com/#* to the includes of the script to make it work).

Meebo Control Panel Script

This Greasemonkey script has a number of options that change Meebo features including hiding various elements of the page and adding the ability to sign on while invisible.

Unfortunately, it sticks an ugly blue link on top of the Meebo logo to access the “control panel” (presumably because it hasn’t been updated to keep up with Meebo’s design; the author states you can change line 91 of the script to reposition the link).

Do you use Meebo for IM? Maybe some other online instant messenger? If so, do you have any tips, tweaks, Greasemonkey scripts or any other hacks that you would like to share with the readers? Please share them in the comments!

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