For Android Smartphone

On your Android smartphone, launch the YouTube app (if you have not installed it, here’s the link).

Tap the “Menu” button and select the “My Channel” option.

Go to the Playlists tab and select your playlist.

Tap on any video to start playing. Once it has ended, the next video will continue automatically.

For Android tablet

While the YouTube app is the same, the interface is different.

At the top of the YouTube app, select “Your Channel”.

On the left sidebar, select “Playlist”. On the right pane, select the playlist that you want to play.

When you tap on a video to play, it will only play that video and won’t continue to the next video. To play all the videos in the playlist, you have to select the “Play all” option at the top right corner.

That’s it.

Note: From the YouTube app, you can also create new playlist and add/delete videos to/from your playlist. However, You will need to have at least one playlist in your YouTube account before the YouTube app allows you to create playlist. If not, it will show a “No Playlist found” error message.

MyStream is a device-to-device music broadcasting app which allows the users to stream to others the music they are listening. Imagine the scenario where you are listening to a song and you want to share it with a friend, instead of sharing earphone, MyStream app can stream the music to your friend’s device so both of you can listen to the song together.

Immediately when starting the app, you get a welcome screen telling you how to get started. The first step is to create a User ID. You can also connect to it through your Facebook account. Click on the MyProfile tab in the menu at the bottom and add a picture and join the community as well. You’ll need to add in the genres of the music on your playlist, such as rock, pop, country, etc.

The next step is to set up your playlist. Use the MyPlaylist tab in the menu at the bottom and create your playlist with the music you have on your phone or iPod. What it is missing here is a “Songs” option. Any time you do something iPod-related to either play music or make playlists, there are usually options of adding through artist, album, songs, genre, etc. This includes all that, but not just viewing by “song.” There’s also a “Save” function on it that can be easily missed. If you don’t click Save after adding your music, nothing will be added and you’ll have to go through that process all over again. You also can’t add any music on your device that hasn’t been added via iTunes or something similar. Songs added to your iTunes off a CD won’t work with this app.

If you didn’t do so when you were setting up your profile in the beginning, you need to set the Privacy and Streaming options. If you want others to be able to view your playlist, make sure you leave these options turned on. In the MyStream setup process, this is steps three and four.

After this, you’re ready to listen to other users’ playlists. Going to the Streamers tab in the menu at the bottom will take you to a listing of all the other uses that are signed on. You can either listen to the same thing they’re listening to simultaneously, or you can listen to ninety-second samples of all the songs in their playlist. If you’re with someone who also has an Apple device, they use the same app, and you can listen to music together, but both on your own devices.

Ideally, that’s exactly how it’s designed to work. However, I couldn’t find any other Users other than myself. I did read in the FAQs that if you’re having trouble locating other Users, you can turn off WiFi and turn on Bluetooth. It explained that sometimes public WiFi is protected. I’m in a hotel moving my son into college, so I thought this might be the problem. However, after I turned WiFi off, and turned Bluetooth on, I still showed as the only user. I was only able to listen to my own playlist, something I could do without this app.

Ideally, the most people that use this app, the better the app would become. To be able to listen to others playlists and have choices, you need to have multiple other people signed in at any given time. It’s a great idea, and one that could possibly become very popular, but until it does, the usage of the app is limited.

By default, Grooveshark is only accessible via a browser. To use it, the usual way is to open your browser (or open a new tab), go to the Grooveshark site and start listening to your music. This isn’t really the most user-friendly way. What if, with the help of some tools, you can have a better Grooveshark experience? Let’s check them out.

1. Control Grooveshark from browser tool bar

Looking to control your Grooveshark without having to switch to the Grooveshark tab everytime? sharkZapper for Grooveshark is a great Google Chrome extension specially made for that. After installation, you can control your Grooveshark right from your Chrome icon bar. You can Play, Rewind, Next the song and even mute/volume control. It even shows the Album Art and a search box for you to search for songs.

In Firefox, you can use the Grooveshark Remote Control to control Grooveshark without breaking your workflow.

2. Block Grooveshark ad

Seriously, I would not want to block the ads in Grooveshark because firstly, I don’t find them intrusive, and secondly, it is a source of revenue for Grooveshark. However, I know that many of you dislike the ads and can’t wait to kill it even before it appears. The easiest way is to install an ad blocking extension. The most popular is Adblock extension (Google Chrome, Firefox). The ad will miraculously disappear after you have installed the extension.

3. Add keyboard support for Grooveshark

For those who prefer keyboard shortcut to mouse click, KeySharky adds the necessary keyboard shortcut for you to control Grooveshark. Once installed, you can press “Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Z” to play/pause the current song or “Ctrl + Shift + Alt + D” to skip to the next song in the playlist. There are also other useful keyboard shortcut like mute, increase/decrease volume. You can even change the keyboard shortcut to other keys that are more convenient for you.

keySharky (Firefox | Chrome)

4. Display lyrics for now playing song

If you love to sing along while your favorite song is playing, Grooveshark Lyrics (Google chrome extension) can display the lyrics when the song is playing.

5. Import iTunes playlist to Grooveshark

If you already have a huge playlist in your iTunes, the last thing that you want to do is to reconfigure this playlist to your Grooveshark account. Groovylist is a web service that can convert your iTunes playlist to Grooveshark format. It supports Last.fm and Spotify as well, so you wouldn’t miss out any of your favorite track.

6. Using Grooveshark as a desktop app

While Grooveshark is great, it will be even better if we could run it as a native desktop app. GrooveWalrus is one such app that allows you to run Grooveshark as a native desktop app. In Groovewalrus, you can search for the songs and mass add them to the playlist. The interface is user-friendly, so it should be easy for anyone to use it.

7. Remote control Grooveshark

There are times where you are not directly in front of your computer, but still want your Grooveshark music to continue playing. This is where remote control for Grooveshark becomes useful. If you own an Android phone, you can install the Grooveshark Remote (market link) app in the market. This app, works in conjunction with a Firefox extension, allows you to control the playback/pause/previous/next of the songs in your play queue. It is rather minimal at the moment, but at least it works.

For iPhone and other mobile devices, there is no native app to remote control Grooveshark yet. What you can use is GrooveBud Google Chrome extension to control Grooveshark remotely from another web browser. In this case, you can open up your mobile safari, load the Groovebud Control Player and control your play song. I have tested it on a first gen iPod Touch and it worked, but the interface is overly simple and nothing to be desired.

8. Download music from Grooveshark

There are plenty of ways to download songs from Grooveshark. Orbit downloader is one of the most popular one. While installing Orbit Downloader, make sure to select Grab Pro in the installation option and check the box for your browser. Once installed, you can then playback the song in Grooveshark and get Orbit downloader to record the song in MP3 format.

GrooveDown is a desktop-based Windows software that can also be used to download music from Grooveshark. The usage is even simpler – search for the song(s) you want and click the Download button.

9. Using Grooveshark on your mobile device

If you can’t get enough of Grooveshark and want to access it even when on the move, Tinyshark for Android is your best choice. With it, you can search and play Grooveshark music while on the move. My experience with it is that it can be laggy at times, but this is the best you can get from the market.

What other ways/apps do you use to improve your Grooveshark experience?

Luckily, it is not difficult to get your playlist across the cable to your phone. Here are four ways that you can use to sync iTunes music to Android.

1. Sailing Media Sync

Sailing Media Sync can sync your iTunes music, playlists, podcasts and photos from iPhoto or Aperture onto your Android device. It is currently available in two versions: free and premium. The free version copies all your media files every time it performs a sync. It does not keep a record of what has already been sync. Depending on the size of your media library, the whole syncing process can take a long time. On the other hand, the pro version costs $22 and it can intelligently updates your phone, resulting in a faster sync.

The usage is simple. Plug in your Android device with the USB cable and turn on USB storage mode. Sailing Media Sync will automatically detect the device and prompt you to perform a synchronization. You can select from the list whether you want to sync music, podcast and photos.

Sailing Media Sync is available for Windows and Mac.

Download Sailing Media Sync

2. iTunesMyWalkman

iTunesMyWalkman is a open source application that helps you to synchronize the contents of iTunes playlists to your mobile phone or other portable device, including Android phone.

There are several advantages in using iTunesMyWalkman.

1. It works on Mac 10.4 Tiger. Most applications only work on Mac Leopard and above, so it is good to see that iTunesMyWalkman plays well with Tiger too.

2. It includes iTunes scripts and Folder Actions so it can automatically detect your Android phone and synchronize your music and playlist right within iTunes.

3. It is able to re-encode your music on the fly to save space. This is useful if you have a small storage space in your phone, or that your phone does not only support the media format in iTunes.

4. It is able to sync your camera pictures to your hard disk or iPhoto.

Note: If you have a large media library, it will be very slow the first time you perform the synchronization.

iTunesMyWalkman is available for Mac Tiger and above.

Download iTunesMyWalkman

3. Dazzboard

Dazzboard is different from all other apps. It is a web app that works within your browser (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari).

Before you can use it, you have to download and install a plugin from the Dazzboard site. After the installation, you can visit the website again and it will prompt you to launch the web app.

Within the app, you can select the music/video/photo/playlist from either device (your computer and Android phone) and transfer to and fro from each device. in Windows, you can even sync your Android applications to your desktop.

Dazzboard is available for Windows and Mac.

Download Dazzboard plugin

4. DoubleTwist

This article won’t be completed without DoubleTwist. DoubleTwist is a great media player that many even touted it as the “iTunes for Android”. After you have installed it in your computer (Windows or Mac), it will automatically import your iTunes music and playlist. When you connect your Android phone to your Mac, it can detect your phone and give you an option to sync your media content.

Double Twist is available for Windows and Mac.

Download Double Twist

Premium software

While this article is about free tools, there are several premium apps that can sync iTunes music to your Android phone as well.

1. TuneSync – TuneSync allows you to sync your iTunes playlist wirelessly. There are two parts to TuneSync, an Android app and a desktop app. The Android app costs $4.99 (there is a lite version though) while the desktop app is free to download. TuneSync works on both Windows and Mac.

2. iSyncr – Other than the usual syncing, iSyncr also supports smart playlist, song ratings, play counts, podcast and videos. iSyncr also comes in two parts: Android app ($2.99) and a desktop app (free). iSyncr is available for Windows and Mac

3. The Missing Sync – At $40, this is one hell of an expensive app. However, it is also the best synchronization app out there. Things it can sync include calendars, Fliq notes, SMS messages, contacts, music, photos, videos, docs, podcasts and call history. It also supports wireless sync.

What do you use to sync iTunes music to your Android phone?

One option may be to download all the videos in your computer from different video sharing sites and then uploading them back in your preferred video sharing site so that you can get all the videos and create your customized channel. But this process would take hours of work and you can’t get it working in a day or two at least.

Yubby: Create Your Own Video channel from 30 Video Sharing Sites

If you are looking to create a Video channel comprising of videos from different video sharing sites (Youtube, Google video, Metacafe etc) then look no further than Yubby. Using Yubby you can search for videos in more than 30 video sharing sites at once. After you have searched for the videos, the service lets you create a video channel containing all of your chosen videos. The videos can be categorized into channels and you can also embed the video channel in your blog. (See example)

Search for videos

Go to the homepage of Yubby and search for your desired videos. Based upon your keyword, the site will search the top 30 video sharing sites and list the videos one after another. After that you can just drag and drop the videos and start organizing your custom video channel. The interface is very simple and there aren’t any bells and whistles.

You can even restrict your search to specific video sharing sites, if you want. Just click the search options and you are presented with a board containing the names and logos of all the video sharing sites that Yubby supports. Select the sites you want and then you can filter your results.

The search results can be sorted by relevance, newest and view count. You can also search videos by tags and owner name.

Previewing your Video Channel

Once you are finished adding videos and creating the video channel, you can preview it by clicking the “Play Channel” button.

To know more about your video channel just hit the “Video Overview” button. It will show you the following :

• How many videos are added in your channel.
• The tags assigned to your videos.
• The rating of the videos in the respective video sites.
• How many people have viewed the video today.

What makes Yubby impressive is that you can even search for a particular video in your video channel. So if you have added a large number of videos to your channel you need not worry at all. Just go to the video overview tab and you can search for a particular video.

Sharing and Embedding your Video Channel

Sharing and embedding videos is also dead easy. Go to the “Embed” tab and you are given the code of your video channel. You can further customize your video playlist widget to match with your style and feel.

Copy the Html code and you can put the video channel in your blog or Myspace profile. Here is a sample video channel created using Yubby

Registering an Account with Yubby

You do not need to sign up and register for an account to use Yubby. However with a Yubby account you can manage your video channels at a later date. After some weeks, if you wish to add another video to your video channel you can do that from your Yubby dashboard. Other features include : Uploading photos to your Yubby account and having a free blog with Yubby.

To wrap it up, Yubby is a useful web service where you can create specialized video channels and publish these channels in your blog or social media profiles. It also supports WordPress integration so novice bloggers can get started in minutes.