Five YouTube video downloaders worth a look By Brien Posey July 23, 2012, 1:50 PM PDT Takeaway: If you like to watch YouTube videos offline, there are several good downloaders out there to help you out.
If you ‘ve ever taken the time to sift through all of the clutter, you probably discovered that there are plenty of hidden gems buried deep within YouTube. Unfortunately, YouTube does not provide an option to download videos, which can be handy if you want to watch them when no Internet connectivity is available (such as on a plane). Fortunately, there are plenty of YouTube downloaders available.
Note: This list is also available as a photo gallery.
Solid YouTube Downloader and Converter (Figure A) lets you download YouTube videos and convert them to a variety of formats, including AVI, MP4, FLV, and WMV.
Figure A
Solid YouTube Downloader and Converter
Although this is a somewhat basic utility, there are two features I especially like. First, the tool gives you the option of specifying the download quality. This is great when you want to download a high definition video. The other feature I like is that you can turn a video into an MP3. This could be handy for converting music videos into audio files. Just be sure to respect any copyrights that might exist on the content.
Solid YouTube Downloader and Converter sells for $29.95, but a free trial is available. The trial version is limited to downloading 50% of the video.
YouTube Downloader (Figure B) is a free utility for downloading videos from YouTube (as well as from a huge list of other sites). Like most of the other utilities listed in this article, it can convert downloaded videos to a variety of formats, including MOV, MP4, 3GP, WMV, AVI, and even MP3.
Figure B
YouTube Downloader
This utility seems to work well and it’s hard to argue with the price tag. However, the software throttles your download speeds and blocks the automatic conversion feature unless you upgrade to the Pro version, which costs $19.90.
GetFLV (Figure C) is a tool for downloading videos not only from YouTube, but also from a number of other sites, such as Hulu, MTV, and Fox. (Again, be careful to respect video copyrights.)
Figure C
GetFLV
One look at the interface and you can tell that GetFLV is a higher end solution than the other utilities we’ve looked at so far. In addition to basic downloading and converting capabilities, GetFLV includes a very welcome FLV repair utility. The application tops things off with a utility for creating your own FLV files. GetFLV costs $59.95, but you can download a free 14-day trial.
Free YouTube Downloader (Figure D) is another free tool for downloading and converting YouTube videos. This tool is extremely basic, but it does not feel lacking in any regard.
Figure D
Free YouTube Downloader
My only beef with Free YouTube Downloader is that the installation process is a bit treacherous. The installer tries repeatedly to install toolbars, change your search page, etc. You really have to be on your toes to keep from accidentally installing something that you don’t want.
GetGo YouTube Downloader (Figure E) is another free utility for downloading YouTube videos. The interface for this utility is really basic. GetGo YouTube Downloader can convert the video to any number of formats.
Check out this video if you have ever considered starting a design contest or asking for spec work from a designer. It really isn't cool or fair, and you may end up with copyrighted work.
I really agree with this article. Search marketing, or paid marketing in general, is usually low on the priority list for small startups. While I understand there are so many overwhelming tasks for a startup, this should not be overlooked.
I’ll just put it out there: I think search marketing doesn’t quite get the cred it deserves from the startup community.
I’ve lived and worked in Silicon Valley for 15 years, and I have more friends and ex-colleagues doing the startup thing than ever before. Seemingly everywhere I go, folks are getting their grind on.
Once in a while, as a change of scenery from my home office, I drag my laptop into coffee shops like University Cafe in Palo Alto, a major VC/startup meeting place. Just about every table is humming with industry buzzwords. Seed round. Big Data. Hadoop. “Cloud” this and “mobile” that. It’s pretty exciting around these parts right now.
Downtown Palo Alto Although I’ve been in online publishing for five years, I am not a subject matter expert in Internet marketing. Allegorically speaking, I can drive the car, and I know where the gas goes in, but don’t ask me where the transmission is or how to change the oil. When it’s time for some crazy off-roading, I know enough to slide over and let one of my experts take over, or at least let them advise me on what path to take.
So I say this as a search layperson and startup observer: SEO (“Search Engine Optimization”), SEM (“Search Engine Marketing”), ORM (“Online Reputation Management”), etc. all seem to be treated as dirty TLAs in startupland. Best case scenario is they’re as “nice-to-haves” that one scratches down on the medium/long-term checklist. Perhaps pre-launch, there’s some time spent spitballing with a consultant. But search marketing as a whole tends not to be treated as a critical component of early launch plans. From my perspective, this does both the search marketing industry and the startups a disservice.
An exception is made for social media. Startups loves them some Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Certainly, we’ve all seen the success stories of companies and/or individuals who have done everything from 10xing their market share to finding a job by wielding the power that is social media. And Twitter et al were once startups themselves, so perhaps there is some perceived kinship, as well.
Cheesy stock graphic of social sharing visual inserted here! But the line between social media and search is ever blending, and to spend hours on your company’s Pinterest account while neglecting how your newborn brand is faring in SERPs is a bit foolish, in my opinion.
Getting a blurb in TechCrunch is exciting, but it doesn’t count as a linkbuilding strategy. And “viral videos”, ugh. Successful ones that actually accomplish positive things for a brand or a product are equivalent to winning the lottery.
I would argue that a well-integrated search and social strategy should always be considered a key component of early go-to-market plans, and it should be put in play well before launch. Good, basic fundamentals can be accomplished on a budget with freelancers; no glossy agency with astronomical min spend is required.
Perhaps startups dismiss search marketing due to some bad actors that are infamous for secrecy and questionable boasting. It’s true that the industry has its share of scammers and people who are just plain bad at it. But to be fair, so do the medical, legal, and name-any-profession. Perhaps there is an inordinately sized spotlight on our rogue characters, given the inherent nature of what search marketers do. If you want attention on the internet, it’s not hard to find if you know enough to be dangerous.
But search marketing in all its forms is effective, when done correctly. Here’s an example of Google acknowledging SEO in their own Webmaster guidelines (with the standard caveat regarding irresponsible professionals):
SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer.” Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:
Review of your site content or structure Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript Content development Management of online business development campaigns Keyword research SEO training Expertise in specific markets and geographies. Source: Google Webmaster Tools
I would love to see the search marketing and startup worlds join forces more uniformly and early on. There are so many synergies between the two that it seems strange to me that the tipping point hasn’t happened yet.
Until then, Search Engine Journal has an interesting read about one Internet marketer’s experience working with a startup that decided to launch without a search strategy.
As a marketer I have experienced the stress of having to justify social media spending, whether budget dollars or just time. It can often be a difficult thing to measure. The social media conversation is a slow one. You slowly forge a relationship with your customers that is so much more meaningful than traditional advertising and marketing allows.
Check out this cool infographic to explain social media ROI:
Top 10 Websites For Designers – July 2012 Posted on July 2, 2012 by Megan Lane Patrick Categories: Best Design Websites & Great Sites for Designers, Featured. Every month HOW scours the web and pours through submissions from creatives to discover the top design websites. We’re looking for the best promo sites of talented designers and illustrators, as well as design tools, resources and fun sites for creative time-outs.
Check out the best design websites below. (You can also submit a site you think should be included in this list of cool design websites next month.)
Culture Pilot Culture Pilot is a creative agency that aims to do good while connecting clients with audiences through engaging, interactive and well-designed experiences.
LiveAreaLabs This site for the full-service digital retail agency jumps right in with visually rich and readable case studies and technology that rewards exploration with delightful details.
Rodgers Townsend The spare, ever-changing site for ad agency Rogers Townsend was built with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript and serves up the agency’s work using a randomized grid system that helps users navigate with minimal clicks.
John Madere Blog Photographer John Madere’s site showcases lots of wonderful portraits, but it’s on his blog that they truly come alive with back stories and behind-the-scenes shots. Be sure to check out all his wonderful portraits of designers including Milton Glaser, Stefan Sagmeister and Michael Bierut.
Eric R. Mortensen This very simple self-promo site houses some amazing design work from recent MICA MFA grad Eric Mortensen, who is currently looking to move his creative enterprise to Brooklyn.
mabu “mabu is the nom de plume of Mads Burcharth, designer, bon vivant, type aficionado and fan of espresso.” It’s also a place where you can see stellar typographic work.
From Cover to Cover This is an awesome creativity challenge by designer Jenny Volvovski where she redesigns the cover for any book she reads. The rules are: green/black/white for color, Futura/typewriter/handwriting for text and scanned paper/drawing for the image. But sometimes she breaks the rules.
Cooke With An E This elegant site promotes the services of British designer Gary Cooke, whose life is dedicated to creativity. For nearly 30 years he ran a successful agency in London, before starting Cooke With An E in 2011.
Beau Ideal Editions Beau Ideal Editions is an artisanal stationary company based in Brooklyn, NY, that specializes in screenprinted paper goods featuring hand-drawn illustrations and typography.
Able Simple and bold, this self-promo site highlights the work and philosophy of a small, Philadelphia-based design studio.
Increase any PC's performance with these 10 steps By Justin James July 3, 2012, 3:51 AM PDT Takeaway: Justin James lists 10 simple steps that will help improve the speed and performance of any PC.
There’s so much information out there about PC performance (especially on Windows machines), it’s difficult to be sure what’s right and what’s not so helpful. Here are 10 proven performance enhancements you can make to your computer, many of which are free.
This blog post was originally published in the 10 Things Blog.
1: Get rid of malware
New machines shouldn’t have malware on them. But one of the most common causes of the “my PC used to be fast, and now it isn’t!” complaint is actually the presence of malware. Malware can sneak onto a computer in a zillion different ways and quite often it sits in the background slowing your machine as it sends out spam emails, searches for other computers to infect, works on cracking cryptography, or performs any number of the other nefarious tasks that hackers like to use their botnet slaves for. There’s a good chance that the malware brought even more friends with it (that’s often how you see computers with thousands of viruses on them not long after the initial infection), and the infection may be bad enough to justify a wipe and reload. My first step in investigating a slow system is usually a virus scan.
2: Upgrade to a better video card
For typical business productivity tasks, a video card probably isn’t an upgrade that will have a lot of value. But for gamers and other similar uses, a video card is a slam-dunk upgrade. If your current card and motherboard support SLI or CrossFireX, adding a second card and bridging them will be a good option as well. In some scenarios, better video cards can be a huge benefit even without heavy onscreen video work, because certain applications can leverage the GPUs for calculations.
3: Get a faster drive
Many times, the real performance issue is the speed of disks. Look at numbers like the RPMs, cache size, seek speed, and transfer rate to justify buying a faster drive. Often, a good drive will seem slow because the computer’s power settings are allowing it to spin down. You may want to consider changing these settings to make sure that the disk is more likely to be ready to work when you need it to. While the SSD vs. hard disk debate is still continuing, SSDs usually seem to feel faster to users. Boot times are usually cut for sure. But something about an SSD makes a system feel more responsive or “snappy” to use, and for day-to-day work, that’s a great feeling.
4: Address hardware and driver issues
All too often, system slowness is actually a sign of hardware problems. For example, if your CPU isn’t being properly cooled, it will often have its speed reduced in an effort to keep it from overheating. Recoverable errors with disk access can kill your throughput while not showing up as a dead drive. And bad hardware drivers can often make the whole system slow, especially video drivers. Using utilities to check your CPU speed and various temperatures, scanning for hard drive errors, and updating your drivers is a good start to investigating performance problems. Often, problems caused by hardware or drivers are not just poor speeds, but system flakiness too.
5: Use a RAID
Using a RAID can dramatically lower the read and write speeds of your disks, depending on the RAID level you choose. You will want to do some research to see what RAID level fits your needs the best. Personally, I am a fan of RAID 1, 6, and 10 because I feel that they offer appropriate levels of data protection along with a good measure of speed improvements.
6: Try a different browser
It’s no secret: Different browsers perform differently, and most people spend a lot of time in their Web browser. Benchmarks really muddy the browser speed conversation. Some browsers perform well on some but do poorly on others, even when they are supposed to test the same thing. The problem with the benchmarks is that what they usually test is not real work performance! While JavaScript is an important part of the modern Web, few Web applications beat on the JavaScript engine hard enough to produce a noticeable impact on performance. That said, it’s been my experience that the Chrome browser is the fastest for actual work. If you want to have your Web browser feel more responsive and lively, consider a switch to Chrome.
7: Remove junk
It’s easy to have a computer get loaded up with junk that slows it down. The worst part is, we invite this garbage into our lives by installing “helpful” utilities, toolbars, and other add-ons. I could easily write a list of 10 kinds of computer-stalling junk. Here are some of the things you’ll want to seek out and remove for best performance:
Automatic update systems for various applications (but be careful: some apps, like Flash, Acrobat, QuickTime, and Web browsers are prime malware targets and you will want to keep these up-to-date) Things that run on startup Windows services you don’t really need Crapware from the PC maker Toolbars Browser plug-ins (the Skype browser plug-in is an especially bad offender, I’ve found) P2P applications Web servers and database servers that were installed by since-removed applications, but left behind 8: Add a faster DNS lookup server
Most ISPs love to brag about how much bandwidth they are giving you. But they don’t mind letting the rest of their infrastructure slowly get overwhelmed or deteriorate. Among the biggest offenders are the DNS servers our ISPs use. If you want to know why things seem to take forever to start loading, slow DNS servers are often the cause. Consider adding a fast DNS server as your primary DNS server in your TCP/IP settings. Google’s Public DNS server is a great option.
9: Defrag
Defragging your hard drives is a great way to get some more performance. While modern Windows systems automatically defrag on a regular basis, I’ve found that the Windows defragging is fairly unaggressive. We’ve reviewed a lot of different defrag apps here at TechRepublic. I suggest that you check out your alternatives and find one that does a better job for you.
10: Check network connectivity
Time and time again, “system slowness” actually is caused by networking issues. Our computers do so much on the Internet that slowness there can affect just about everything you do on a regular basis. While there isn’t enough space to write an exhausting troubleshooting list here, some of the things you should try (or investigate) are:
Replacing the network cables, switches, routers, WiFi access points, etc. Calling the ISP and checking the distance from the CO (for DSL) or the local segment’s current load (for cable); the ISP may need to rewire or rework its connectivity. Satellite customers will want to double-check their dish installation and ensure that it is tightly locked down and pointed in the right direction. Malware scanning on all PCs to see if malware is burdening the network Inspecting the wiring of the phone lines (for DSL) or coax (cable customers) to look for loose connections, corrosion, or flaky wires For cable customers, finding out how many splitters are between the line from the pole and their modem. If it is more than one (and preferably only a two-way splitter), they should rewire so that they have only a single two-way splitter between the pole and the modem to ensure the cleanest signal possible.
Posts
