But who offers such a service?   These tools are not normally offered in a very prominent place and you have to do some digging on each site for them. After some browsing, I found 5 services who offer secret email addresses for you to update while on the go.   There are probably many more but here are 5 of the top ones that a lot of people normally use.

Flickr

Flickr is the first service I found that supplies secret updating email addresses.   If you take a photo with your phone and you want to directly send it to your Flickr photostream then doing so is extremely easy.

Just go here to see your own updating address (Flickr log-in is required).   Then add that address to your email address book (you can even ask Flickr to send the address to your email address book if you are too lazy!).  You can also specify any default tags you want added to emailed-in photos.   Since I will always be using the email function with my mobile phone, I chose to have added #frommobile with these pictures.

Then in the future, when you take a photo with your phone :

• open a new email window
• add your secret email address
• add the photos as attachments
• put the desired title of the photo in the email subject line
• put any photo description in the body of the email
• tags can be put in the subject line or in the body of the email using the tags: title.

Or for those of you who like graphical explanations :

When I tested it, it took 15 minutes for photos to arrive on my Flickr photostream. So it isn’t an instant thing. But if you are out and away from your computer anyway, 15 minutes won’t make any difference.

If you think your secret upload email address has been revealed to others, you can also easily reset the address by pressing a button on your Flickr page.

As soon as the picture(s) arrive at Flickr, the site even offers to put them on your blog automatically.   Is there anything Flickr won’t do for you?

YouTube

This one is a bit redundant for me as my Android phone already has YouTube uploading built in.   But for those of you who haven’t got this feature by default, here’s a quick and easy way to send your videos to YouTube.

By going here (again, log-in required), you will see your secret uploading YouTube email address.  Now whenever you want to send a video to the site, just attach it as an email attachment and send it to your secret address.

Be aware with this one that virtually all email services have an attachment size limit.   Videos are normally huge in size so unless you keep the video clip small, you may have trouble getting your email service to accept it.  So no uploading Ben-Hur!  Keep it short, simple and small.

Facebook

The Facebook one seems to only allow the uploading of photos so no status updates or poking with this address.   But if you regularly upload lots of drunken party photos to Facebook then go here and find your secret Facebook uploading address.  Speed is of the essence if you want your boss to find out why you really took the day off sick.

Blogger

Blogger has two methods of letting you post content via your mobile, and of course, me being me, the first method didn’t work at all!  Typical.

The first method, which you can read about here, involves authorising your phone to send content to your blog.   But when I tried, I got an email back saying that my “device was not authorised”.   Wait a minute – a Google Android phone is not authorised to send content to a Google-owned blogging company?   Spot the irony there.

The second method is to set up a secret blogging email address.  Unlike the other services, you can choose what the second half of the address will be (so you can choose a secret word or phrase that only you will remember).   You can set this up by logging into Blogger then going to settings–>email & mobile.

The title of the blog post goes in your email subject line and all blog images go as email attachments.

Posterous

I couldn’t do a post like this without mentioning Posterous, the blogging site which seems to be doing surprisingly well.  The whole concept of Posterous is that you email in everything and it will be automatically posted for you – text, photos, mp3’s, videos, documents, the lot.

Just set up your blog, associate an email address with it and then send your blog entries with that email address to post@posterous.com .   It will then shortly appear on your Posterous page.  The simplicity of it is winning over a lot of bloggers and I have to admit, I am starting to weaken.

So there are 5 services where you can email in your updates.   Do you know of any more?   If so, let us know all about them in the comments so I can update my email address book…

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In this article, let us look at Free FLV Converter, a simple freeware application you can use to convert FLV videos to AVI.

Free FLV Converter is developed by Koyote Soft, and can also be downloaded from CNET Downloads. Free FLV converter can download embedded FLV (or SWF) videos directly from the Internet, and can convert FLV to AVI, iPod (MPEG4 or H.264), iPhone, 3GP, PSP, or MP3 audio only. Conversely, it can also convert videos from other formats (DivX, XviD, MpeG, DVD, and AVI) to FLV.

Installation

Download and run the setup program to install the software. It is a light-weight download at 6MB, compared to most other video converters, and does more than just convert videos as we shall see. The only thing you would want to take care of during installation, is to avoid installing the Dealio toolbar. This is a “bloatware” toolbar that is promoted to support this freeware application, but you can easily opt out of installation by deselecting the two checkboxes during setup. Select your preferred language the first time you launch the program.

Convert FLV To AVI

Let’s say you have already downloaded a video in FLV format to your PC and want to convert it to AVI. On the Free FLV Converter toolbar, click the Conversion from FLV button.

This will bring up a Select File Dialog from which you should select the FLV video file you wish to convert. A conversion window opens up showing the file to be converted at the top, and settings to be used for the conversion at the bottom. Click the Convert button at the bottom to convert the file.

You can customize the conversion settings if you wish. You can choose the output format, output quality, and location of the output video file in the Output configuration section. The video and audio sections allow you to set advanced settings for the codec, frame rate, aspect ratio, bit rate, etc. The default settings work fine if you don’t want to dive into technical details.

From this dialog itself, you can click the “+” button at the top to add more files to convert multiple videos in batch mode. The program shows you a preview while converting. The speed of conversion is quite fast, and the program did not slow down my PC or interfere with other applications, thus working very efficiently.

Convert To FLV

In much the same way as converting FLV to other formats, you can also use Free FLV Converter to convert other video formats to FLV. Just click the Conversion to FLV button on the toolbar, select the file to convert, and you get a FLV file that you can embed on your website. You also get a HTML webpage created automatically with the embedded video.

Search Videos

You can use Free FLV Converter to search for videos on popular video sharing websites without opening your browser. Click the Search button on the toolbar to search for videos. You can select websites like YouTube, Google, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, etc. from the Site drop-down list, enter your search terms, and click Search.

The search results are shown in the right pane. You can play, download, or go to that video’s page on the site. You can multi-select and download multiple videos at once.

Download Videos

If you already know the URL for a certain video that you wish to download, click the Tube downloader button on the toolbar. Here you can enter the URL of the video page that you wish to download.

You can also load a text file containing a list of URLs of videos you want to download.

For a freeware application, Free FLV Converter’s feature set is very impressive. Are you familiar with any other freeware FLV to AVI converter? Share with us in the comments!

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All this changed when YouTube introduced their HQ video streams, and a little time back, HD videos. They even have a YouTube HD page, so you can more easily find that high(est) quality material.

Most YouTube download services haven’t progressed that far. They’ve stayed behind with support for downloading low quality FLV’s and decent quality MP4’s. Today we’ll show you an alternative application to download HD YouTube videos to your computer.

YouTube Downloader HD

YouTube Downloader HD is as straightforward as it sounds.You can use it to download those trailers, movies and holiday YouTube video keepsakes to your computer in just a few clicks with the mouse. The application works more or less the same as most YouTube downloading web applications, allowing you to specify the video by providing the relevant YouTube link.

The biggest difference with YouTube Downloader HD is that you can specify in what quality or file format you want to download the YouTube video. Most people don’t know this, but an FLV converter is usually unnecessary, because most videos can be downloaded in AVI and MP4 format as well. As such, all HD videos are stored as AVI’s and will provide no hassle if you want to watch it on your computer.

As an example, we tried downloading the latest Sherlock Holmes trailer, a movie that has called for a lot of critique, but is one that you should certainly grab when it comes out. The YouTube link is here.

After opening YouTube Downloader HD, we paste the link in the first text field. Because I’m a fervent supporter of eye-candy, we choose AVI HD – High Definition as our download option. Note that AVI HD and MP4 downloads will only work if the video has an HQ or HD relative on the side. If the trailer would only have been uploaded in Standard Definition, we’d be forced to download a lower quality FLV or AVI file.

Pick your destination directory and press download. Wait a few minutes or get a soda while the video is retrieved. Thanks to the fast YouTube servers, the download will nearly only be limited by your own internet connection.

Little more than a minute in and the download has finished. Click ‘open‘ to browse through the relevant directory and open your video file. As you can see, the file plays crystal clear, and nicely fills my screen.

Enjoy the YouTube Downloader HD. Do you often download from YouTube or other video sites? Tell us about it in the comments!

The biggest difference with YouTube Downloader HD, is that you can specify in what quality or file format you want to download the video. Most people don’t know this, but an FLV converter is usually unnecessary, because most video’s can be downloaded in AVI and MP4 format as well. As such, all HD videos are stored as AVI’s and will provide no hassle if you want to watch it on your computer.

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The makers of this Internet music player have perhaps got the right note when they describe it as iTunes meets YouTube meets Spotify.

TubeRadio.fm is YouTube at its core with the look of iTunes. And functionally it offers the streaming access to millions of songs like Spotify. It’s better as an alternative because Spotify is not available in a lot of countries including my own. The free web app has Last.fm behind it.

We have many online jukeboxes and we can always go to YouTube and ‘listen’ to the tracks…

So Where Exactly Should We Put TubeRadio.fm?

TubeRadio.fm wraps it all up and comes out as a slick dedicated Internet music player for YouTube. But the power of the web app is not merely playing the music but it’s in the way it lets you find and organize the music videos. Search for your favorite artist or band and add the track to your custom playlist. From just this single search, you can get all their available albums and build a complete playlist with a couple of clicks. And another click can take you to Amazon if you desire to purchase the albums. The whole process takes seamless seconds.

Let’s Build Our First Playlist

Let’s dive in (with a free registration) and see if TubeRadio.fm can walk the talk. Let’s build a playlist with some tracks of a favorite band of mine.

1. The first snapshot is of the TubeRadio.fm interface. The iTunes like interface should be intuitive enough for a music lover.



2. Start by searching for your favorite artist or band using the YouTube/TubeRadio.fm search field. The search yields a lots of tracks and you can mouse over them to see thumbnail previews of the videos.



3. You can click on any of the video tracks to listen to the track or watch it in the YouTube player at the bottom half of the screen. Or better you can make yourself a playlist. Making a playlist is simple – give a name in the new playlist box and click Add. Playlists can be renamed, moved up or down, deleted and shared.



4. To build the playlist, you can individually add the singles by clicking on the Add to Playlist button next to the track. But if you want to really build up the playlist go for the Discography tab. The Discography search gets you the entire catalogue of albums released that’s available on YouTube. You just need to click and select the albums you want and then click the little plus which says Add Albums to Playlist. From the little box which pops up, you can build a new playlist or add it to the existing ones.



5. The videos get processed into your playlist and a notification pops up with the status.



You can get into your playlist and fine tune it (Edit, Delete, and Find Replacement) by clicking the little gear icon next to each track. Your own playlists (My Playlists) are searchable from the search box on top.

The Shared Feeling

These days no web app is complete without a community. TubeRadio.fm lets you share public playlists. Enter the name of the band and click on Public Playlists. Click on it to see the tracks and click on the Subscribe button to bring it under your Shared Playlists. Shared playlists also get updated across the board if there are any changes to it. Unsubscribing from one also takes just a click. You can also rate the shared playlist by giving it stars.

What about the Player Itself?

If it’s the visual experience you want, you will be disappointed because the YouTube video player gets the shrinking treatment. It takes up very little space at the bottom of the browser. TubeRadio.fm is more about listening rather than watching. Of course, you can click on that little video and open it up in all its YouTube glory in a separate browser window. What I liked though was the extra information (Lyrics, Bio, Similar bands, Releases) that’s available with a click.

The track management features are simple. You can sort the tracks by clicking on the columns or custom sort them to play in definite order or just keep them shuffled. You can move the videos around between playlists and edit video information by clicking on the gear icon. Don’t like the video; then just replace it with another one from the same gear icon.

The Final Note

TubeRadio.fm is a wonderful attempt to bring all of YouTube’s musical goodies under one interface. It’s smooth and not difficult to navigate. For iTunes users it will be easier still because of the similar looking interface. The video player does not get much prominence but then it was supposed to be about the audio in the video anyways.

The only problem that might raise its head is with the quality of audios themselves. Not all YouTube videos have high bitrates. Bitrates in the region of 128kbps should be good for casual listening. Little things like the high definition tag on the playlist videos and YouTube star ratings for the videos would have made selection and sorting easier. But that’s minor bellyaching when the web app has the other nice things on offer.

Play TubeRadio.fm and let us know if this Internet music player struck the right chords with you.

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Nowadays there are so many video sources on the internet it can be hard to find exactly what you are looking for. Today I was browsing the MakeUseOf Directory and found this gem – Videosurf.

VideoSurf is a video search engine that allows you to not only search videos visually but it also allows you to search multiple sites all at once! Those sites include YouTube, MetaCafe, Comedy Central, Yahoo Music, ESPN, Hulu and many others. So if you are looking for full TV episodes, a funny video, or even a music video this is the place to search. Let’s see how it works.

Browse on over to VideoSurf and you will see a search bar, as well as people in the spotlight (famous people that have videos about them) and 3 more sections at the bottom. The sections are Viral videos, TV Full episodes and celebrity videos. So if the Pirate Bay downfall got you wondering where you can find TV shows or movies this might be a good alternative.

Go ahead and type something in the search bar and hit Search Videos. Don’t worry we won’t judge you because you searched for Hannah Montana or The Backyardigans (Who are we kidding hell yeah we will make fun of you!!)

They have old and new listings and a total of 29,393 videos which is a lot! If you are looking for that old school music video this might be the perfect place to find it. Go ahead and sit back, relax and watch them at your leisure or sort the video search engine’s results by relevance, popularity, age, length (short or long) as well as season and episode (for tv shows)

They sort by popularity first so you will see the videos with the most downloads first. Once you are done checking out your favorite rapper you can head back to the homepage to see some of the viral videos. I usually like this stuff and I could use a good laugh (I am on 37 minutes sleep today how’s that for funny?)

Ok so Acne isn’t funny and I am not the biggest sports fan so I choose the Best Science Teacher Ever video and clicked through. The original video was located here so they have lots of little sites crawled as well. When I went to play the video I saw this:

You can see they broke the video down into 12 clips so you can jump around. This works well on YouTube and Hulu but not on this video. Still this is an awesome feature and I can see this company getting scooped up by YouTube or someone else.

What is your favorite video search engine? Share them with us in the comments – someone might just find a new favorite!

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• YouTube.com – Online Video Sharing Site (23)
• Watch YouTube Videos on Your Large Screen TV (4)
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• vTap – Download videos on your mobile for FREE (10)
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Why? Simply because the whole Britney issue was really ‘hot’ at that time, after she gave herself a haircut and was battling in court over her kids. Millions of people were searching for ‘Britney’ on YouTube. This is where you have to get them – the search bar.

When you’re contemplating how to make an unforgettable YouTube video that will explode all over the internet, you have to think about what people will enjoy and more importantly, what they search for.

Open up a tabloid newspaper to see what’s happening or get a group of friends together to see if you can think of a video that will have people in fits of laughter, outraged or grossed out. It has to be something edgy. Those ten minute mini-dramas that were hot when YouTube first came out in 2005 are long gone.

In order for your video to be a success it has to be under two minutes so it can bounce quickly around offices, schools and anywhere people have access to computers. Keeping it short and sweet also stops people getting bored and as a result, clicking out of your video.

Keeping it small will also help you because time is of the essence meaning you have to get the finished product live before the trending topic fizzles out.

Take for example that fateful day when Twitter went down due to hacker attacks. People immediately went on Google and searched for answers. Any video about Twitter got huge views that day and still are because it’s a very hot topic. Other hot topics where YouTube views went through the roof were the Iranian Elections, Swine Flu and Chinese suppression. By making a video about something popular you’re allowing the video to do its own publicity in the search engines.

So now you know what kind of thing you should make your YouTube video about; trending topics. However, that’s only half the battle. Now you must actually make the video.

I’d suggest first getting a good quality camera. Phone cameras with low quality will only get good views for things like riots, football matches and ‘on the spot’ news where you wouldn’t be expected to have anything else on you. But for feature videos where you’re putting in serious time and effort, a good quality camera is required because it’s 2009 and people want to watch good quality videos – in a few years HD will be the big thing.

Choosing what style to do your video in is also extremely important. For example, serious news topics such as the Iranian elections could be done in a mock news broadcast with outrageous reporting that’s funny but not offensive. On the other hand, the whole swine flu debacle could be done in a mock ’28 Days Later’ or ‘Coverfield’ style as though people turned to zombies or mutants when they caught it. This is funny because of how the tabloids are instilling public fear over the disease and it is a good chance for the public to have a laugh at themselves.

The number of ways in which you could make a YouTube video are endless. However, in order to have a successful one, it must be done in a way that appeals to the public. This differs from video to video depending on the subject matter and what is socially acceptable.

Parodies, vlogs, news reports, animations and mock documentaries do very well on the web and should be focused upon if you want to make a well-known and unforgettable YouTube video. Here, in the swine flu screenshot you can see that actual news reports do very well, as well as advice as people were nervous about the symptoms and of course the inevitable – a funny song written about swine flu.

As soon as you have uploaded your video, give it a little push out there. Don’t be spammy as this annoys people. One or two tweets or sending it into a few popular blogs for them to have a look can work a treat and give it the kick start it needs.

All of that said, the Internet can be a cruel platform for indie-publishing. You could make a hilarious video that should well be a superstar but it may never catch on. On the other side of that coin, how many times have you sat and stared at the screen watching what’s supposed to be this ‘really cool video’ and felt like you wasted five minutes of your life when it was finished? Nobody ever said life was fair.

But who knows, your video might get picked up by FOX News and be shown on national TV just like Chris Crocker. Now that’s exposure!

As for tools you might need to make the video, see following posts:

- Make Professional Looking Videos with Windows Movie Maker (Part 1)
- Make Professional Looking Videos with Windows Movie Maker (Part 2)
- Top 5 Tools To Make A Home Movie Online For Free
- 5 Easy-to-use Freeware Video Converters

Have you ever made your own YouTube videos? If so, tell us about them.

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• Improve Your YouTube Videos With TestTube Features (6)
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Despite both services prominence, when I first got my iPod I was a video-deprived user. I didn’t want to buy videos that I would only watch once, and downloading them from file sharing programs is highly risky given the amount of viruses circulating on them, not to mention falsely named files that waste your time.

As time went on, I just kind of abandoned the video function on my iPod and used it mainly for listening to music. However, every now and again such as when I was going on a plane journey or just bored around the house, I would wish I had a few short videos to keep me busy. Around eight months ago I discovered DVD VideoSoft promising YouTube to iPod video. I was sceptical.

A little while ago, Jeffry wrote How To Get YouTube Videos On Your iPod that posts already covers everything you need to convert Youtube videos for iPod but DVD VideoSoft in my opinion makes the whole process a lot faster and simpler.

Surely it would be like the other programs that want credit cards, leave watermarks or which are limited free trials, I told myself. I took the chance anyway. As it happens, it overcame the two main problems that you encounter when trying to download YouTube videos onto your Apple iPod.

Firstly, there is the problem of downloading a video off the internet since YouTube does not generally provide a download service. Secondly, the file must be converted into a format which the iPod can understand and play.

Once you have downloaded DVD VideoSoft, select your language and allow the program to initialize for the first time. When this is done, it will load and you will see the screen pictured here.

You will be asked for the Youtube URL so go to YouTube and locate the video. Once you have it, copy it into the space provided in the DVD VideoSoft screen.

Below this, there is another text entry box that says ‘Output File’. Click ‘Browse’ and select the folder you want the video to be saved in, for example ‘My Videos’.

Having done that, you will see a drop-down menu at the bottom of the window. From this, select Apple iPod. To the right of this there is another drop down box. Select ‘iPod High Quality’ from this. You can select a few other video formats such as PSP or for your mobile phone.

When you are satisfied with all of your information, click ‘Download’. This may take a few moments depending on the size and quality of the video. What this is actually doing is downloading the YouTube video and then converting it into .mp4, a format which the iPod can play. Once this is done, a pop up will appear informing you that it’s completed. Click ‘Output Folder’ in this box.

This will open the folder where you saved the video. You should see your video in an mp4 format.   Now we just need to move it over to your iPod.

Open your iTunes Library and click ‘Movies’. Drag the new movie into this Library. Then simply connect your iPod via the USB connector that came with it. The sync process should start automatically. When it has finished syncing, disconnect your iPod and your video will be under videos.

If you use another piece of software to sync your iPod such as SharePod, the procedure is much the same. Open up the syncing screen and drag the files into it from Windows Explorer. Click ‘Sync‘ or other relevant button (in SharePod its marked ‘Copy to iPod‘) and it will transfer.

Note : DVDVideoSoft will only work for when you want to download YouTube videos onto your iPod and will not work for any other video sites such as MetaCafe. You must also be connected to the internet until the video is finished converting and is saved on your computer.

Do you know of any better and / or faster alternatives to DVDVideoSoft that let you download and convert Youtube videos for iPod? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit :  Orange_Beard

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Most videos uploaded to YouTube are made by amateurs like you and I, usually with modest video making equipment. It’s not a surprise that you’d find a lot of the videos lacking in quality and/or content.

Now, quality is something that you can’t do much about but if it is the content that is bothering you and you have the inclination and enthusiasm to make some changes, we’ll tell you how to go about it.  Maybe one particular scene in a video really bothers you and you want to take it out.   Well here’s one way to go about it.

If you want to know how to copy Youtube videos and edit them, it typically involves three steps. Since you can’t edit the videos on YouTube online, the first step is to actually download a copy of the video locally to your computer.

How to Copy YouTube Videos to your computer

There are a couple of different ways that you can copy YouTube videos to your computer and we’ve talked about a few in the past, see 18 Free Ways To Download Videos. So we won’t dwell too much on this part. Searching MakeUseOf for "download youtube videos" will bring you plenty of options.

Which brings us to the second step in the process.

Converting FLV files to Windows Media Video Files (WMV)

There are dozens of software available all around the web that could potentially help you do this conversion, but why bother with all that searching when we have the coolest open source solution for the job, ffmpeg. If you’re comfortable with the command line, you can use ffmpeg directly or download and install the excellent WinFF utility, which is basically a graphical wrap-around for the app.

Launch WinFF and click on the add button to add the FLV file you just downloaded. Select “Microsoft” from the Convert To drop down and select the WMV2 Generic option from the Device Presets drop down. Choose a location to save the converted file to and click on convert. WinFF will launch ffmpeg which will do the conversion for you without you having to use any command line kung fu.

Editing Videos using Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is a free software bundled with Windows which can be used to edit and enhance videos and it has built-in support to read WMV files. Mark has previously written two excellent articles on editing movies using Windows Movie Maker and those should be enough to get you started.

Use WMM to remove the offending scene(s). Use the preview window to view the results of your artistry as soon as you’re ready.

When you’re done with editing the video, click the Publish Movie button and export the movie using one of the many choices given, including burning the movie to a DVD or writing a new WMV file to the disk for playing on a computer.

Do you know of any better ways how to copy and edit a YouTube video?  If so, let us know.

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• Top Online File Converters (Video, Audio, Images …) (23)
• One Online Tool to Handle Five Tedious Tasks (6)
• How to Easily Compress Video Files for Web with Movie Maker (17)
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For the start, you can’t just download YouTube videos directly from the site. You’ll need some help to do it. And after you finally get the videos you want, they couldn’t be played on your iPod because of the differences in file format.

So, to be able to get YouTube videos on your iPod, you’ll need to:

1. Find and download the videos that you want.
2. Convert the videos into the format that iPod understands.
3. Import the converted videos into iPod.

There are countless ways to achieve those objective and finally get YouTube videos on your iPod, from the unknown tools and the alternatives to the one click solution. But I’d like to cover a bit different angle here; a thorough method and yet simple and general enough that anybody could use.

1. The Converting

Assuming that every person has his/her personal preferences of videos, I won’t discuss about choosing which videos to download. I also save the downloading for later and will instead start with the video conversion process.

The reason is simple, not everybody has enough horsepower in their machine to make the process less time consuming. And with all the free online and desktop video converters out there, it would be logical to let the expert do the conversion while we can make use our computers to do something else. So, the only thing we need to do is downloading the end result.

The one that I will use here is the good ‘ol Zamzar (which strangely still in beta).

There are four easy steps to follow

1. Insert the YouTube video’s URL, such as "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ9jrBg4Lwc"
2. Choose the format to convert the file to. There’s "iPod" as one of the format choice. But if you are not using Zamzar and there’s no iPod in the option, you would want to choose the format which is playable by iPod like MP4.



3. Enter your email address as Zamzar will send you email with the download link after the conversion process is done.
4. Click "Convert", then "OK" on the pop-up confirmation window, and you can continue working on whatever you are working while waiting for the email to arrive.

2. The Downloading

There’s nothing much to tell in this part. You get the email and you click the link in it.

You’ll directed to the download page where your already converted YouTube video is waiting. Another click is needed here. Then you wait until the downloading process is finished.

Please note that if you are using the free version of Zamzar, your download link will only valid for 24 hours.

3. The Importing

Now, the for the most fun step: importing.

But first thing first, don’t forget to rename the file to something ‘understandable’ since YouTube files tend to have ‘inhumane’ names.

And to import the video to iPod, you have to import it first to iTunes. All you’ve got to do is right click on the file and choose "Open With" and then "iTunes". If there’s no iTunes in the list, choose "Other" then pick "iTunes" from the pop-up list of application.

The video will reside in the iTunes folder and the next time you synchronize your iPod and iTunes, the video will automatically copied to iPod’s hard drive and ready to be watched.

If your iPod is not set to import the movies from iTunes, change the preferences by going to the device folder on the left side of iTunes and choose Movies tab. Give check mark to the "Sync movies" option.

Of course, synchronizing with iTunes is not the one and only way how to get YouTube videos on your iPod. There are other tools which have already been discussed here, here and here, so I won’t talk about it anymore.

One final note, the process I went through here is done using a Mac, but it is more or less the same thing under Windows.

Do you watch YouTube videos on iPod? Do you have other method of getting the tubes to the pod? Share using the comment below.

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• Download & Convert YouTube Videos for iPod with DVDVideoSoft (13)
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However, with its extremely large user base and plenty of tools at your disposal, few may argue that YouTube is the place for your videos to be.

Some time back we showed you some YouTube URL tricks that allow you to change how the player behaves. Right now, allow us to present forth some of the most popular tools out there to go along with YouTube and the super cool stuff you can do with them.

Rip Audio

If you are only interested in the audio of a particular YouTube video and want to rip it off quickly, you can do so using ListenToYouTube. Paste in the URL of the YouTube video that you want the audio extracted, allow it to do its thing and then download the audio as a MP3 file.

Mac users may find that iExtractMP3 performs the same function.

Create Ringtones

If ListenToYouTube allows you to grab the audio, MadRingtones allows you to play with audio. It enables you to make ringtones from YouTube videos or MP3 files from your computer. Creating ringtones is quick and easy: simply navigate to the site, enter the URL of the video or MP3 file and click ‘Load’. Listen through, and it lets you specify the tone’s start/end points and then download it to your computer as MP3, AMR, OGG or M4R file.

Splice and Chop!

There are times when you only like a certain part of a video. You could use the “#t” URL trick to skip to the interesting part. However, if it is more than just viewing the interesting part of the video that you are trying to accomplish, you should check out TubeChop or Splicd. Both these sites allow you to specify a YouTube video URL, the part you want to keep and cut the rest off. You can then embed the “chopped” video on your blog/website or share it with your friends.

Remix or Dub videos

Want to add an MJ track to your dancing kid video? YtDub is a cool video dubbing app which lets you easily dub any YouTube video with audio from another video. Works easy, simply enter YouTube IDs of the video you want to dub and the video you want to use as the background track, hit ‘Dubbo’ and you will get a link to your newly dubbed masterpiece. Play it, share it or do whatever you like.

Dump the default interface

Searching and then clicking to view a video is all fine and dandy, but there is always room for a little change. Bored of the Youtube interface? Then check out:

• YouFlow – which adds a coverflow-like interface and allows you to play multiple videos in a single browser tab.
• YouCube – which lets you map YouTube videos on to the faces of a cube and then share it with others. You can spin the cube to switch between the videos.

• Darao and InfiniTube – let you enter a keyword and returns a playlist of the search result. Hit Play and you have got yourself a non-stop video viewer

Use the cutting edge features

TestTube is like Labs for YouTube. It is a place where you can test drive the latest from YouTube developers. At the time of writing, TestTube includes – CaptionTube – to add captions, Video Annotations, Active Sharing – to show other people what you are watching, Streams – to chat with others who are watching the same video, Warp – a tool to visually browse videos and a demo of the HTML5 Video Tag. There are new ideas added (and taken down) from time to time.

Find sites that have embedded your videos

YouTube provides you excellent tools to track statistics pertaining to your videos. Here, we explained how you can use the tools to track which sites are embedding your videos.

Set a video alarm

A simple online alarm clock that wakes you up with a YouTube video of your choice. Set the alarm time in simple English (tomorrow at 7am, in 45 minutes) and pick any YouTube video you want. No-registration required.

Add Subtitles to YouTube Videos

Ever wanted to add subtitles to Youtube videos and share them with friends? Subyo is a web service that can help you with that. Before anything else, you’ll need to register and get yourself a Subyo account. Next, copy and paste a YouTube video URL into the provided field and click on “Add Subtitles”. Then video will load in the Subyo editor where you can start adding subtitles.

Watch flagged videos without logging in

There are lots of videos on YouTube marked as inappropriate by users. Due to this, YouTube restricts viewing of these videos to registered users only. If you do not have an account (or you don’t want to add a video to your history) and want to view a flagged YouTube video, check out NSFWYouTube. BE WARNED: Due to its niche (if I may call it so) the site has explicit NSFW content, discretion adviced!

Turn Youtube links to videos

Use the Videoembed Greasemonkey script that reads links to video sites on any website and embeds the corresponding video right next to the link so you don’t have click it or visit Youtube to watch the video. It works for a number of other video sites as well.

Get rid of distractions

QuieTube is a cool browser bookmarklet which allows you to view any YouTube video all by itself on a page, removing the surrounding bells and whistles (somewhat like the “Turn down lights” in Youtube). Just drag & drop the provided bookmarklet to your browser toolbar/bookmark bar and click it when viewing a YouTube Video.

Add text, graphics and links to videos

KickLight is a tool that lets you add text, graphics and links to your YouTube video without obscuring it any way. The application inserts a space just below a video and then lets you add your content (text, images and links) there. It also allows you to customize how and when added content should be shown.

Download Videos

There are scores of tools, tricks out there that let you download videos from Youtube. From Firefox extensions, to greasemonkey scripts to complete applications to specific sites — when it comes to downloading, there are probably more than what is required. We covered the best, have a look.

Come Again?

Did I hear you murmur a name we missed? Well go on, use the comments to flame us! Tell us about it. If you have used any of the tools we’ve listed, do share your experiences.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Choosing the best YouTube video downloader among that crowd could be troublesome. But for Mac, there’s one name that keeps popping out as the preferable choice: MacTubes.

The iTunes for YouTube

This app often dubbed as the iTunes for YouTube because the interface gives you the familiar look of – well, you’ve guessed it: iTunes.

The first time you launch MacTubes, you’ll get a blank interface. Even though it seems very logical for some that the first thing to do is to search for videos, some other might get confused because of the “non-online look” of the app.

The search results will be shown on the main pane of the window with small thumbnails for a quick glance. Hover your mouse over any item and a description box will pop out. If you click and choose one of them, the thumbnail will appear on the small box on the bottom left corner.

Click the Play button at the bottom of the main window and the play window – which look very similar with YouTube’s – will appear as if you were playing a video file from your hard drive.

You may get a warning window telling you that the video can not be played from the embedded URL as some YouTube videos are set to be played only from the site. MacTubes then will suggest you to open the video using your web browser.

There is another pane at the left of the main window. You can add and remove folders, playlists, searches and feeds here. Arranging and re-arranging the position of each item can be done easily by dragging and dropping. MacTubes also allows you to add videos from the main pane to one of the the playlist or folder.

Downloading the Videos

When you find videos that you like, it’s possible to download them just by right-clicking on the items on the list and choose Download from the pop-up menu.

The cool thing is that you can download the videos as FLV, MP4 or HD. While the size of HD video makes it a no-no for people with slow connection, the preferable format for many would be MP4 as iTunes and iPod can play this format with no problems.

The download window is similar to Safari’s and will show you a list of downloaded videos and their progress. Very convenient if you ask me.

I don’t consider myself a YouTube person but after fiddling with this app for a while I think I would convert to one.

Have you tried MacTubes? Do you have other preferable alternatives? Share them using the comment below.

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Instead of attempting to circumvent the school’s computer system to access YouTube, you could always make use of that cool little Windows Mobile device you were able to convince your parents to buy you for your last birthday. No matter where you are – sitting on the bleachers at the football game, riding the bus, or sitting way in the back of the class during an exceptionally dull lecture – just enable your wireless Internet connection and start watching hilarious YouTube videos on your phone!

How to Get on YouTube at School with Your Mobile Device

If you have a mobile device that’s installed with Windows Mobile, and you’re lucky enough to have a decent mobile Internet plan, there are a number of methods you can use to post YouTube videos, such as this MUO review of Cellspin – an app you can use to post to eBay, Facebook and YouTube. However, YouTube itself now offers the ability to both play videos and broadcast your own videos from your mobile phone. This feature now allows anyone to instantly stream realtime videos directly to YouTube.

No more waiting until you get home so you can load it onto your computer and upload it to the website. With this feature, you can instantly post witness accounts of a natural disaster or government atrocities no matter where you are or where the nearest computer is. If there’s a cellular provider with a mobile Internet plan, this YouTube feature turns you into a walking online witness through which the whole world can see the sort of things that you see every day. Start telling your story through video images streamed directly up to YouTube from your phone.

Whether you choose to “play” or “create” on YouTube from your mobile phone is up to you, but both features offer very cool opportunities. Now you can watch videos while you’re sitting and waiting for your name to be called at the restaurant. Capture a video of a crime in progress (don’t get too close) and feature it at your YouTube account before even the local media has any clue what’s going on.

How to Play YouTube Videos On Your Mobile Phone

Playing YouTube videos on your mobile phone is easy. All you have to do is open up your mobile web browser and visit “http://www.youtube.com.”  If you visit from a mobile device, you are automatically redirected to the mobile version of the site. This mobile version of YouTube will work whether you have Windows Mobile of just an Internet-enabled cellphone.

You can search through videos or browse the front page of the newest ones. Watching videos from the mobile version of the website includes two technical requirements that you need to be aware of. Your mobile device needs to support RTSP streaming, and your cellular carrier needs to allow streaming video on your device. Now, if it doesn’t work on your mobile device, don’t despair. As you can see, there’s an option to download the YouTube application to your mobile device. If you do have a Windows Mobile device, then you’ll want to consider clicking on that “download application” link, as the mobile application version of YouTube is much more functional (and better looking).

Within the YouTube mobile application, most of the videos play clearly and with very little skipping – especially if you’re connected onto a Wi-Fi network.

If you’re only on the cellular data line, you may need to give the videos some time to download to your device before you click the play button.

Uploading Your Mobile Videos Directly to YouTube

Now, uploading the videos you recorded with your device is almost as easy as downloading videos to watch. All you need to do is sign up for your own YouTube account (you can connect it with your Google account). Once you do, YouTube will provide you with your own mobile email address ending in “m.youtube.com” where you can send your videos to get instantly published under your YouTube account.

Setting this up takes just a matter of minutes. Then, turn on the video capture feature of your mobile device, send the video file to your mobile YouTube email account, and you’ve just instantly posted your own mobile email to the Internet without the need for a computer. Now that’s sweet. To test it out, I took a 17 second, blurry video of my skinny cat who was lounging in bed. In less than 5 minutes of emailing the video from my phone to my mobile YouTube email account, the fuzzy video of the silly little critter was up live on YouTube!

All I’d have to do is increase the resolution of my video capture and I could become the next online Oliver Stone! Just imagine the “compromising” situations that you could capture your friends in at school – and then publish it on YouTube instantly for the world to see!  Now, no corner of the world is safe from the snooping video-camera eyes of the mobile phone crowd. Be afraid… be very, very afraid.

Have you ever used any other tools to instantly post video from your mobile device to the Internet? Share your own tips in the comments section below.

Not using a Windows Mobile device? Grant shows you how to stream live video from almost any cellphone or you could check Qik out.

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• Watch YouTube Videos on Your Large Screen TV (4)
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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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• YouTube.com – Online Video Sharing Site (23)
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It used to be that there were only a few video file formats and they were easily download by right-clicking and saving them. Now there is the Flash Video format (FLV), Windows Media Video (WMV), MPEG-4, QuickTime and many more.

Let’s take a look at the tool I would recommend, personally.

So, How To Download Streaming Video

DownloadHelper is the application I use. It plugs in to Firefox, so it’s always there in my toolbar, right when I need it. Any site I’ve been on, where there is video content, I’ve always been able to download it.

Download and Install DownloadHelper

Point your browser at the DownloadHelper site. Once you are there, look for the Add to Firefox button and click right there.

After clicking on the button, you’ll see the Software Installation screen. To continue, click on the Install Now button.

What happens next? Well, let me show you. Camera guy, are you getting this?

It downloads quickly. Then, it self-installs. All it wants you to do now is Restart Firefox. So let’s do that.

Once Firefox restarts, you’ll see the DownloadHelper button in your toolbar. Sure, it’s greyed out, but once we begin to use it, you’ll see how it works.

How To Use DownloadHelper to Download Videos

Let’s say, I go to DailyMotion and I want to download the Glutes are Made For Walking video – just to send it to my wife, because she doesn’t believe me that women do this sort of thing. Seriously though, check out the video. It’s funny, yet creepy – kind of like someone poking you in the belly button.

Once the video starts playing, you can see the DownloadHelper icon in colour, and spinning.

Now, if you just want the video so you can watch it later,  just click on it and click on the file name of the video. You may want to note that the file name isn’t always something easily recognizable. In this case, it’s a bunch of numbers.

DownloadHelper even gives me the ability to convert the video from FLV to, say, AVI or any other format. If this were a documentary, I might want to change it to AVI, so I could burn it to a DVD. To perform the conversion, you need to have some more software installed like FFMPEG, which you can learn more about over at FFMPEG.org. It appears to be the backbone to many video conversion software applications.

DownloadHelper also comes with other features, such as multiple video download, great documentation and a guide, of sorts, to sites featuring videos. It is freeware, but I would recommend donating a few bucks to the developer. It’s definitely good work. Keep the karma going. Just like the glute exercises….

Do you save your online videos? Will this little add-on come in handy? Are you aware of any faster/easier way to download streamig videos? Shout out in the comments!

For other methods of saving online videos, check out:

4 Quick Ways To Download YouTube Videos Off The Net
18 Free Ways To Download Any Video off the Internet
Download, Viewing and Converter Tools for Youtube & Google Video

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I’m sure you have noticed that YouTube is far from optimized for your huge display. Google has heard all your bellyaching and ultimately super-sized YouTube for your TV!

So, if you’ve been itching to play some YouTube videos on your TV, now is as good a time as any to try it out. YouTube XL is another interface for accessing YouTube, except everything is huge!

As you can see above, the site’s format gives you a much easier time to click on icons or links that actually fill up the entire screen. When I tried this out on my tablet connected to my Toshiba 52” flat panel it was a breeze to navigate and play videos. It was love at first site!

I did a quick search by selecting the search box in the upper right hand corner away from all the other links and typed in Eminem.

My results were shown in an easy to choose format and playing a video was just as easy. I selected the top result and I was on to watching my video.

The controls are easy to use as they are also large and in charge.

You can do anything here you can do on YouTube and it is a great user experience for us big screen YouTube watchers! Thanks for listening Google/YouTube! Any one have any other requests? Shout us out in the comments!

Be sure to check out MakeUseOf’s popular posts about YouTube:

• Watch Full Star Trek Episodes Online on YouTube
• 10 Youtube URL Tricks You Should Know About
• My Top Ten Favourite Funniest YouTube Videos Ever

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Using Grab Tube’s Web Converter you can convert any online or downloaded video (.flv, .mp4, .3gp, .avi) and using their service, convert it to MP3, 3GP, AVI, FLV or MPG. This is really useful to grab a friend’s youTube video and throw it on your phone to share.

Let’s see how it works…

First we browse on over to http://www.grab-tube.com/converter where the converter lives and you will see a screen that looks like this:

The URL bar at the top of the screen let’s you simply paste a URL of an online video to download. Drop down the format next to it and hit the download button.

You will see the next screen with links to download the file to your computer. With the file, you can then use the service to convert it to another file type.

Click the link to download the file and save it to your computer.

Then after you have the file on your local machine, click the logo at the top of Grab Tube to take you back to the home page. Once there, browse to your file, choose the format to convert it to and hit the Convert file! button below.

Once the conversion is complete, you will get a link to download the newly converted video, like you see below. Now, you can do what you need to with it! Enjoy.

Do you have another method of doing this? Well then, what are you waiting for?? Share it with us in the comments!

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1. View high quality videos

Youtube gives you the option to switch to high quality videos for some of the videos, however you can check if a video is available in high quality format by appending ‘&fmt=18′(stereo, 480 x 270 resolution) or ‘&fmt=22′(stereo, 1280 x 720 resolution) for even higher quality.

2. Embed Higher Quality Videos

While the above trick works for playback, if however you want to embed hig quality videos you need to append “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″ and “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″ to the embed url.

3. Cut the chase and link to the interesting part

Linking to a video where the real action starts at 3 minutes 22 seconds, wondered if you could make it start at 03:22? You are in luck. All you have to do is add #t=03m22s (#t=XXmYYs for XX mins and YY seconds) to the end of the URL.

4. Hide the search box

The search box appears when you hover over an embedded video. To hide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0′ to the embed url.

5. Embed only a part of Video

Just append ‘&start=30′ to skip first 30s of the video. In general you can modify the value after start= to the number of seconds you want to skip the video for.

6. Autoplay an embedded video

Normally when you embed a Youtube video and load the page, the player is loaded and it sits there waiting for you to hit the play button. You can make the video play automatically by adding ‘&autoplay=1′ to the url part of the embed code.

7. Loop an embedded video

Append ‘&loop=1′ to make the video start again without user intervention after it reaches the end.

8. Disable Related Videos

Publishing your content in the form of Youtube video? Don’t want people to see other people’s content that may be related but may as well be in competition to you? Just add ‘&rel=0′ to the end of the url part of the embed code and you just turned off the related video suggestions!

9. Bypass Youtube Regional Filtering

Some videos are only available in certain parts of the world. Your IP Address is used to determine your location and then allow or deny access to the video. Change the url from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<somecode> to http://www.youtube.com/v/<somecode>

10. Download Video

Although not inherently a youtube trick but useful all the same for downloading videos. Just change youtube to kickyoutube in the url of the video and it will take you to kickyoutube.com with all the options for downloading the video you were watching.

Do you know of some similar Youtube URL tricks and hacks? Fire them in comments!

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• YouTube.com – Online Video Sharing Site (23)
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We have previously covered Google Labs features for Gmail. Here are 7 more innovative Gmail labs features that should not escape your awareness.

To enable Gmail Labs features, log into your Gmail account, go to >Settings >Labs, browse all experimental features and check enable for the ones you would like to use, then finally save your changes. As will be described below, some features require further settings to come into effect.

Signature Tweaks

No one wants to scroll through pages of quoted text to find contact information in the signature, right?

Signature Tweaks is one of the most simple features, taking care of this signature dilemma.

It tweaks your signature so that it will appear above the quoted text, rather than below it, which would be the default behavior. Simple, but cool.

Location in Signature

If you travel a lot, Location in Signature could be a fun feature or simply an easy way to share with your friends where you currently are.

To make your location appear in your signature, you need to enable this feature, have a signature (>Settings >General) and check “Append your location to the signature” below the signature box.

If you’re sneaky you could of course cheat a little and change your location manually. I wonder whether anyone has sent eMails from Mars, yet. April Fools Day anyone?

Superstars

Superstars gives you several more “stars” to star or visually tag your mail.

You can edit your superstars by going to >Settings >General and dragging icons from “not in use” to “in use” and vice versa.

Personally, I would love to see an even bigger variety of icons, for example gif images to draw extra attention and smileys.

Previews In Mail For Yelp, Picasa, Flickr & YouTube

Here we have one of the newer set of features added in mid March. It’s actually four individual features, but the essence is the same. If someone shares a Yelp review, a Picasa, Flickr or YouTube link, you no longer have to open the URL in a new browser tab. You can view the preview right in your mail.

Multiple Inboxes

Gmail supports filters, but filters can too easily drag mail from your attention, by silently moving them into the target folders. With Multiple Inboxes you can move important mail back into your field of vision. It gives you five extra panels that will appear in a custom location next, above or below your inbox.

Once the Multiple Inboxes feature is enabled, you can go to >Settings >Multiple Inboxes and add search queries for messages you always want have handy.

Here is how that will look like. On the left is my inbox, on the right you see the extra panels, which are starred messages, drafts and eMails from Twine.

Mail Goggles

This one will keep you from sending stupid mails in the middle of the night by making you solve math problems before being able to send an eMail.

Per default it is active Friday and Saturday between 10pm and 4am, but you can manually adjust days, times and difficulty level under >Settings >Generals.

Undo Send

Despite any precautions, accidents happen. So if you still send the wrong mail to the wrong person, you may be delighted to learn that Google has just recently implemented a feature that allows you to call your mail back.

Unfortunately, the undo feature will only work for a few seconds right after the message was sent. So you have to quickly realize your mistake!

What novel features would you like to see in Gmail Labs?

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One thing though, before you upload that video of yours, it is important to get it compressed to the smallest possible size so that your movie can be more easily watched by people over the Web. Luckily, you do not need to be a tech guru to be able to compress your video files. If you are using Windows XP and above (excluding Windows 7), you already have a great tool in your Start menu that allows you to compress video files for web easily – Windows Movie Maker.

For some reasons, if your computer does not come with the Window Movie Maker, you can download it from the Microsoft website for a price of FREE.

In this tutorial, I am going to illustrate how you can compress a video file for web to half its size with Windows Movie Maker.

As seen for the screenshot below, the video file that I used for this tutorial is of size 61.8MB. Let’s see how much we are able to compress by the end of this tutorial.

Open up your Windows Movie Maker. Click on the Import Video link on the left pane.

Select the video file that you want to compress and import it into Windows Movie Maker.

Drag the movie to the timeline.

If you want to edit and add effects to your movie, you are free to carry on. If not, proceed on by going to File->Save Movie File.

Select a location in your computer.

When it comes to the Movie Setting page, check the box “Other settings” and select “Video for broadband (340 Kbps)” in the dropdown option.

Alternatively, you can also choose the Video for broadband (512 Kbps) options, which mean the video will be streamed at a higher bitrate (and a bigger file size).

Click Next to start compressing the video file. It will take sometime while the Movie Maker compresses and saves the video file.

The Result

The following image is the screenshot of the video file after compression. You can see that there is a whopping 64% reduction in the video files.

Conclusion

To say the truth, Windows Movie Maker is nowhere comparable to a professional video editor software. However, taking into account that not everyone is a tech guru, Windows Movie Maker has done a great job in simplifying the process of compressing video file for web and make it easy for almost everyone to use.

As can be seen from the tutorial above, it is VERY easy to compress a video for the web and the result is impressive. Best of all, it comes preinstalled in your computer, so there is no need to search, download and install. Though it is not the best, i don’t have much complaint about it.

What about you?

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How Is This Possible?

With Muziic, a free online music player that allows you to access millions of songs free of charge, you won’t get into trouble for it because unlike Napster was at one point, it’s completely legal. This app enables you to search through a wide variety of songs in a music catalog that showcases all types of genres all the way from classical hits to hip-hop or R&B.

You’re also able to view small clips that are associated with the song of your choice, courtesy of YouTube.

It might seem a lot to take in at first once you open the user-interface, however you’ll come to find out that it’s pretty easy to search and listen to tracks once you get the hang of it.

Here’s How

The first thing you have to do is open up Muziic, then once you see the following window pop-up you’ll know that everything is in place.

As soon as the complete Muziic player window opens then you can scroll through the list of genres all the way to the left side of your window. You can open up a genre and view songs that have been previously uploaded by other users by simply clicking on its name.

Once you’ve browsed through the list and found songs you want to listen to, just click on the plus sign next to the song and it will be instantly added to your playlist.

Now in order to play the songs in your play list all you have to do is double click on the song and it will begin to load and play on the music player at the top left hand corner.

The End of Our Small Journey

Muziic player also allows you to configure the quality of your songs depending on your Internet connection speed by clicking on the Settings tab and choosing between Standard and HQ Stereo (HQ Stereo requires faster speeds).

There were a few things I wasn’t too fond of.  It doesn’t have the option to listen to radio stations like you can with Last.fm or Spotify. I also found no easy way to manage the playlist or quickly browse through it as well.

However, once you take all of these things into consideration and the fact that it’s a free music player you’ll see past a few of the drawbacks (since you can’t have everything) and you can begin to enjoy free music with Muziic.

Please feel free to MakeUseOf our comment box below and leave us a thought!

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Although you can not yet (legally) watch a whole lot of classic TV episodes on YouTube like Star Trek episodes, which would be very convenient, there are tons of entertaining, informative and exciting channels that fit into any schedule and are not interrupted by annoying commercials. And that’s what makes YouTube so cool.

So I have put together a list of 10 channels I find unique, here it goes…

1. communitychannel

This girl is hilarious! Basically, she’s ranting and nagging about stuff, in a way that’s very entertaining. You definitely have to check it out.

2. AmazingPhil

AmazingPhil is the male pendant to communitychannel. A guy from the UK ranting and doing weird things and being even more crazy than the girl from down under.

3. Underground Wellness

Let’s be a bit more serious for a moment. Underground Wellness covers alternative nutrition and exercise information. Instead of imposing procedures on you like most doctors do, here is an effort to share with you the essential information that will help you understand your health-related issues and why this or that action may improve your condition. The guy behind Underground Wellness is a diet and lifestyle coach and a certified personal trainer.

4. ScienCentral

Even more serious, ScienCentral features short, comprehensive clips about scientific topics that are of interest to the general public.

Recent topics included the cuddle hormone, food flavor, corn ethanol and global warming. These clips are also shown at the local TV affiliate stations of the US TV channel ABC.

5. Break A Leg TV

Here we have an internet sitcom that aired its final episode in October 2008. In 17 episodes we follow the writer David Penn through his life which is bound to conclude “in a storage room, with a gun to his head and the sounds of a fake laugh track in his ears.”

If you haven’t seen it yet, at least you won’t have to wait for episodes to be completed, but can watch it right through to the end. And maybe the Break a Leg team will come up with a new project (or a second season) soon.

6. PCWizKid’s Tech Talk

Very comprehensive and well-commented screencasts, featuring tips, tweaks, hardware and software reviews for Windows Vista, Windows XP and Ubuntu. These tutorials are suitable for both the novice and the slightly more experienced user.

7. Gingeronymous

This channel features videos of the 94 year old WW2 veteran Les Loken, telling his life story to his daughter, who caught it on video to share it with the world. The man passed away in 2007. He certainly lived an interesting life and had some interesting stories to tell.

8. GidovGent

This is a channel that collects short documentary clips concerned with the mysterious, such as the Loch Ness monster, aliens, crop circles and the like. The videos are from different credible sources, like National Geographic, the BBC or the Discovery channel. Make up your own mind.

9. okiedokie969

This channel here mainly appears to collect videos of UFO sightings, but also covers material dealing with other mysteries, conspiracies and the like. Consume these clips with caution! It’s not true just because you draw the wrong conclusions from what you believe to witness. Although it may be.

10. MyDocumentaries

Here we have the most serious channel, dealing with highly political and controversial topics. The screenshot above shows a very small selection. You have to sign into YouTube to be able to watch those since some of the material is R-rated and not suitable for all audiences. So be prepared.

So what do you think? Worth your time? What are the things you watch on YouTube? Please share your coolest links with us!

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Note that all of these are individual apps that only allow you to access one service at a time. But what about an app that can let you receive updates from all of these social networks all in one place?

Ziibii is an iPhone app developed by Zumobi that allows you to connect to various social networks and receive all the updates in one centralized place. Instead of loading several apps, now you only need one app to rule them all.

Ziibii currently supports Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and also has a built in RSS reader. One good thing about Ziibii is that it doesn’t require you to set up an account with them. You simply load Ziibii, sign in to the various services and receive instant updates for those services.

There are three main icons on the Ziibii main page – River, List and Settings. Let go to the Settings page first.

The Settings page is where you enter your login credentials and configure the settings for each service.

Twitter

You just need to enter your login name and password to start receiving updates from your friend.

Facebook

When you login to Facebook, it will prompt you to install the Ziibii app in your Facebook account. This is to allow Ziibii to retrieve your friends updates and notifications from your account.

Flickr

You are not required to login into Flickr. However, you can configure what and whose photos are retrieved from the Flickr server. The default option is for it to fetch the daily Interesting photos. You can also configure it to retrieve photos from a particular Flickr user or tags.

YouTube

There are plenty of video channels in YouTube and I am sure you won’t be interested in all of them. This is where you get Ziibii to retrieve videos from your favorite channels.

Web Feeds

Ziibii comes preloaded with several RSS feeds from popular sites of a different nature. You can easily tap on the feed to select it. You can also add custom feeds to the feed reader.

While most RSS feed readers require you to enter the feed address of your favorite sites, one good thing about Ziibii is that you can simply enter the site’s URL and it will automatically search and retrieve the respective feed address. This means that if you have forgotten MakeUseof’s RSS feed address, you can just enter http://www.makeuseof.com and it will automatically fetch the feeds from the MakeUseOf site.

Receiving updates

After you have completed the setup, now is the moment to check and receive updates from your friends. There are two views that you can use – River and List.

In River view, the background is a river and every item (updates/feed/videos/photos) will just float across the screen just like a raft on a river. At any moment in time, you can tap on the Pause button (on the top right-hand corner) to stop the motion or tap on an individual item to access its preview.

In the List mode, all the rafts are arranged in a list and you can swipe the screen to access the next list of items.

Whenever you see an update/feed/video/photo that you like, you can easily tap on it to see it in a new window. There are also options for you to retweet it or email the item to your friends or to view the item in a browser.

Currently, all the information on Ziibii is only one-way traffic, which means you can only receive, but cannot tweet, update your status on Facebook or upload videos or photos to YouTube and Flickr. If in the future the Ziibii development team can include these features, this will definitely be a great app.

Download Ziibii now (iTunes link).

Do you use Ziibii? If so, what do you think of it? How can it be improved? Do you use something better? If so, tell us about it.

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Most sites serve their videos as FLV (Flash Video) files. I’ll just be using YouTube as an example. Video files from YouTube are generally in 2 formats: FLV and MP4. Normal quality videos are formatted in FLV and high quality videos are formatted in MP4.

Contained within a flash video are the video and audio tracks. Using iExtractMP3, the audio track can be split from any FLV file. The perk of using this particular application is: no transcoding is performed when extracting the audio – meaning that there is no loss in quality.

That’s right, iExtractMP3 only grabs the audio, whatever the format (AAC or MP3) from the video file. And it does it amazingly fast too. It managed to extract the audio of a 3 minute long video in only 4 seconds.

And you don’t need to be a brainiac to use it, either. Simply download videos from YouTube, we’ve covered several methods here at MakeUseOf:

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And drop the FLV file into iExtractMP3, select a destination and click ‘Extract’.

If you fancy an online method of exactly the same procedure, Karl has the low-down.

iExtractMP3 is Universal Binary and will work on Mac OS X 10.4 and onwards. Here is the original website in Japanese.

Oh and for those of you who prefer web apps, you may try VidToMP3, an online video to MP3 converter.

Do you know of any other Mac (or Windows) application which can extract audio from FLV files? Share them in the comments!

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This shows that YouTube has come a very long way from laughing baby videos and it is now being considered by the major studios as a serious platform for full length TV shows.

You can find and watch Star Trek shows online by going here. There is a complete playlist.

If Star Trek is not your thing or if you’re looking for something else to watch after all 70 episodes are finished, CBS has also uploaded other full-length TV programmes. As you can see, this includes MacGyver, Jericho and Beverly Hills 90210. If you keep a watch on that page, I’m sure they will upload other TV programmes in the future.

However, if you are outside the US, you will not be able to watch full Star Trek episodes online and will be greeted by this message when you try to click on one of the videos :

Typical of CBS to be spoilsports! However, fear not because you can easily bypass this restriction by downloading and running Hotspot Shield which suppresses your IP address and makes YouTube think that you are in the US. Then click on the YouTube link again and you will be taken straight through to the desired video. MakeUseOf had a thorough guide on how to set it up in How To Watch Movies and Shows on Hulu & Sling from Abroad.

Do you know of any other legal full length TV shows on YouTube? For instance, a while ago we also showed you that Youtube is a great place if you want to watch standup comedians online. Tell us the links in the comments and we’ll check them out! HBO’s channel seems to be just programme highlights and there doesn’t seem to be official YouTube channels for Fox, ABC and NBC.

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Presently, the feature only supports videos from Google Video or YouTube and it is available only in the Gmail version of Google Talk and not in the Google Talk desktop client.

The process, as all things Google, is simplicity itself – just drop the video URL into the chat window. A small thumbnail appears within the chat box with a preview and the loading button. Click the button and an inline video player opens up at the top of the chat box. So, a user can watch and discuss the video at the same time.

The previous way of doing things was to click on the received link and open it up in another window. Yes, we still do the same with most of the other chat services (Yahoo messenger 9 though does allow video sharing); Gmail now lets us continue chatting without browsing away to another page. That’s a time saver.

For the musically inclined like me, I use it to share some of the latest song bytes I find on the video sites. Also, one can upload home videos using a YouTube user account and then share it with a chat user. It makes for an entertaining chat session. Yes, the limitation of using video links from Google Videos and YouTube remains. Also, Google Video is on the wane according to some reports following Google’s acquisition of YouTube. But hopefully, as the feature catches on we might see more variety in the Google menu with other video sites being added.

Add this to the fact that Google has added voice and video chat to Gmail, this new arrow in its quiver is another user-friendly step forward.

Have you used this recent feature? Does it add or detract to the chat experience? Share your views with us in the comments area below.

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So I dug deep into my YouTube favourites and picked my ten favourite funniest YouTube videos ever. Here they are.

Beaker’s Ode To Joy

Beaker from the Muppets tries to play Beethoven’s Ode To Joy but predictably everything blows up around his ears.

The Death Star Canteen

Eddie Izzard’s famous sketch, using Lego, on what it is like in the Star Wars Death Star canteen.

“I am Lord Vader! I can kill you with a single thought!”
“You’ll still need a tray!”

Korean Drummer Steals The Show

Watch the drummer in the background. He’s either high on something or he thinks he’s Larry Mullen in U2. His crowning moment is at 3.01. Make sure you’re not drinking anything at that point or you’ll choke on it.

Chad Vader – Day Shift Manager

There’s been lots of Star Wars rip-offs over the years but this one is definately one of the best ones. This one is Darth Vader’s brother, Chad, who works as a grocery store manager. Needless to say, Chad is a bit of a loser, overshadowed by his brother, but always seem to come out on top in the end.

If you want to see the other episodes, the complete playlist is here.

Chad Vader – Grocery Store Training Videos

Not as good as the Day Shift Manager videos but still very funny. Here’s episode one – A Spy In Produce – and the complete playlist is here.

The Blue Danube Waltz

Back to the Muppets again. “The Blue Danube Waltz” as conducted by The Great Gonzo and featuring the lovely Camilla.

Phil Collins Gorilla Cadburys Chocolate Advert

This advert was apparently extremely popular in the UK and it advertises Cadburys chocolate. Watch the eyes of the gorilla as he goes for it at the drums. Classic.

Ask Palpatine

Another Star Wars rip-off but one that is really funny. This one is Emperor Palpatine and he takes questions such as Death Star design flaws, sings songs and so on. The show is obviously very low budget and it’s looks like papier mache with a hood over it but that doesn’t stop it from being one of my must-watch shows.

Here is the playlist to watch all the episodes.

Homer Simpson Tries To Vote For Obama

Homer tries to vote for Obama but the voting machine registers his vote for McCain instead. When Homer loudly complains, the machine tries to eat him.

Ken Lee

Hillarious Youtube video. And I’ve saved the best till last. This is a woman who entered a Bulgarian version of American Idol and wanted to sing Mariah Carey’s “Without You”. But she made up all her own words (thinking they were the real words and thinking she could speak English). The song’s title is “Without You” but she thinks it’s called “Ken Lee”. Watch and I challenge you to keep a straight face. Watch the judges struggle to keep their composure.

Oh and by the way, this woman is now apparently famous and is constantly asked back to the show to repeat her performance!

So that’s my ten favourite funniest YouTube videos so far. What do you think?

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For the second year in a row YouTube is offering a greetings channel for sending personalized video cards. If you weren’t among the millions who tried it last year, here’s another chance. With 2008 about to take its curtain call, YouTube is back with its ‘Holiday Video Cards’. The only difference seems to be that you have more themes and videos to choose from.

• To turn a video into a season ending greeting, sign-up at YouTube.
• Pick out the video of choice from the ones featured courtesy the YouTube community.
• Pick a theme. Themes are like e-card backgrounds. There seem to be only seven themes now.
• Compose your personal message (upto 230 characters only) and add the addresses of the recipients (maximum 25 at one time). Now, click ‘Send’ to spread the cheer.
• If you want to send one of your own, just record one with your webcam. The AudioSwap feature is enabled for your personally created videos. It lets you add audio/musical tracks from the YouTube AudioSwap catalog. The catalog has now included many holiday themed tracks.
• Though the featured videos seem to be more geared for the holiday season, you can send any video on YouTube as a video greeting. Every video has been given a ‘send as a greeting card’ link.

In conclusion, it’s a nice way to send video greetings within YouTube itself. I only wish YouTube had included a “date to send” option to allow us to time our wishes better. Oh yes, choose a nice user name to log-in because it’s what goes into the card.

Did you try YouTube’s holiday greetings last year or this year? What do you think about this seasonal feature?

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There’s lots of reasons why you would want to add music to your videos. For a starter, music can add to the atmosphere of the piece. Imagine a bird soaring through the sky, a man and a woman kissing, Leo and Kate standing on the bow of the Titanic….or you’ve simply said something embarrassing about your relative’s waist size and you want it cut out before they cut YOU out of their will.

Whatever the reason, you can now have the video soundtrack easily removed and have it replaced with a soaring uplifting melody, a funky pop song, a headbanging rock and roller or some relaxing classical tune.

So as usual, here’s MakeUseOf to guide you through how to do it :

1. Decide which video you want to replace the audio for

Log into your YouTube account and go to your videos. Find the video you want to replace the audio for and in the options, you’ll find a button called “AudioSwap”. Click on that little baby right there.

2. Choose the music you want to use as a background

This is harder than it sounds.There are literally LOTS to choose from – LOTS of songs and LOTS of artists in LOTS of genres. You really are spoilt for choice. Just skimming over the list, you can have Alicia Keys, Cranberries, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. As I said, no Shakira shaking her hips or Bono with his sunglasses but you can’t have everything you want in life.

If you want the song to end when your video ends, you can filter the songs down to “only show songs of similar length to my video”.

So just scroll through them all, click what you want and you can preview each song before you finally make your selection. When you have made your selection, just click the “publish” button underneath your video and your video will be re-uploaded to YouTube along with the selected music. The previous soundtrack will be deleted permanently.

As an intended example, I tried changing the soundtrack to my Rudy video which I used for my annotations article. I changed the soundtrack to a rock song called “Therapy” by “Finger Eleven”. But it is taking quite a long time for YouTube to “process my request” to change the soundtrack and re-upload my video – in fact I am still waiting 24 hours later! So you need to bear that in mind when doing your own. Don’t expect immediate results. Be prepared to wait in a long line.

Have you used YouTube AudioSwap? If so, what music did you use for your videos? What do you think about the whole service? Worth using? Have you had your videos done sooner than 24 hours?

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Doing so has made me realise all of the customization options I never knew existed up to now and you can spend literally ages tweaking it and twunking it (I think I’ve just invented my own word) the way you want it.

So let’s take a look at some of the things you can do to make your YouTube user page your own.

The first step (of course) is to make your YouTube account. Then, once you are logged in, your user page can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/YOUR USER NAME. As you can see from the screenshot above, the box at the top left hand corner of the page has a yellow “edit channel” button. Click that to find the customization options available to you.

The three options are :

Channel Info

It’s highly recommended that this is filled out properly as this information is indexed in the search engines. So make sure the description and the tags are done properly.

Channel Design

This is the most important option of all. This is where you can specify the colours of your page or specify a background design. You can also rearrange the layout of the boxes on your page, specify which video will show at the top of your page and much more.

Now many users may choose to have a default plain colour on their page but did you know that you can upload another wallpaper as your background? Jimmy recently talked about Twitter wallpapers and you can use those same wallpapers on your YouTube page as well. Just upload your wallpaper in the “advanced design customization” section, choose “repeat background image” and bingo, you’ve got yourself a nice background.

It’s worth taking a lot of time over this option until you get things exactly the way you want it.   You can change the font, the playlists that are displayed, the boxes that are displayed, the colour of the links and the colour of the text.

Organize Videos

This option is not so important in my opinion. All it does is allow you to rearrange the order of your uploaded videos so you can move certain ones to the front. So if you have a video that you would like to display more prominently, you can bring it forward. But if you don’t care, you can give this option a miss.

So these are the three options that YouTube offers you to customize your page. If you spend some time working on these options, you’ll be amazed at how great your page looks afterwards.

What customizations have you done to your YouTube page? What tips and tricks can you offer to people looking to spruce up their page? Let us know in the comments.

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[display_podcast]

Here’s the video I talk about in the show.

and here’s the full interview with Tan Dun.

And… keep listening after the show for some bonus Tan.

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