Explore Pokki

Navigate to the Pokki website and sign up for an account. Once you log in, you are free to explore the options available for social shortcuts. Choose from “social sites”, “useful utilities”, “”productivity” (including the popular Pomodoro Timer) and more.

When you hover over any of the site icon, it will give you detailed information about the shortcut and the features it offers. The screenshots will help you see how efficient they will be compared to logging into the sites directly.

Choose Your Sites

Tweeki

This shortcut is a great mini version of Twitter. Since the shortcut is right in your taskbar, it’s easy to take a quick look at what’s going on in your Twitter feed or to post a Tweet yourself. Click the Tweeki Download button on the Pokki page and follow the prompts to access you twitter profile.

The icon automatically loads onto your taskbar for easy access. To open it, click on the Twitter bird icon and log into your account.

Upon logging in, you will see that it looks like a mobile version of Twitter with all of the necessary features of the full size site. The first tab is the Trends tab where you can see what the most popular topics are.

The feed is the next section, which will likely be the one you will keep open on your desktop. You have the full feed visible and have a place at the bottom to add your own tweet or re-tweet something of interest right from the shortcut.

The mentions, direct message, and search features are all there as well. Everything you know and love about Twitter right on your desktop! This Twitter shortcut is best for the simplicity that other social media managers don’t offer and with a 100% user rating, I’d say many others agree!

Facebook

The Facebook shortcut gives you a very streamlined look at your news feed and notifications in an easy to see and use interface. The icon in the taskbar will display a number if you have notifications so you can take a quick peek and also catch up on any current happenings in the news feed.

To install it, go to the social Pokki page and click on the Facebook Download to install the shortcut. It will now appear in your taskbar along with any other shortcuts you downloaded. Click on the icon to open and log in and you’re ready to roll!

Gmail

If you have one or more Gmail accounts, you will find this shortcut extremely useful! You can now access all of your Gmail accounts with the click of a button right from your desktop! Never wonder if you have email messages waiting in your inbox again- any waiting messages will be displayed next to the icon,

To get started, go to the Gmail page in Pokki and download the shortcut. When you sign in, click on the arrow next to your account name. A drop down menu will give you the option to sign into more accounts and sign out of individual or all accounts. You can also switch between accounts by clicking on the name of the account you want to access.

YouTube

If your business or hobby revolves around YouTube video’s, you may like this shortcut for keeping tabs on your competitor’s content or for finding future ideas. Just like the other shortcuts, navigate to the Pokki YouTube page and download the YouTube shortcut. The play button for the YouTube shortcut will be placed directly on your taskbar upon download for easy access.

All the features you need are available in the shortcut version so you can search and watch video’s from each category or by entering keywords in the search bar. The only thing I would like to see added to this shortcut is the ability to log into your own YouTube account to create and view your content as well as track the analytics. Hopefully that’s a feature that will come in the future.

I love having these shortcuts on my desktop for easy and quick viewing. The one click access means I can get in and get out without interfering with my productivity. Let us know which shortcuts you downloaded and how they are working out for you!

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Getting Started

To begin making a video, go to the YouTube Video Editor page. Alternatively, in YouTube, select the drop down menu in the top right. Go to “Video Manager -> Video Editor“.

1. Name Your Video

To add a Title to your video, enter it into the toolbar on the right. Don’t click publish until the final step of the editing process because it cannot be undone.

2. Choose A Video To Edit

If you have your own video that you want to edit, click on the Camera icon in the toolbar. To use an existing public video, click on the CC button in the toolbar. Search videos by using the drop down menu or entering your keywords into the search box.

When editing your video, keep in mind that the video cannot exceed 15 minutes.

3. Select License Type

In the “Broadcasting and Sharing Options”, there are two options for licensing your video. The first option is the “Standard  Licensing” which allows viewers to watch your video but not download, copy, alter, or distribute it. The second option is the “Creative Commons Attribution License” which allows you to search and edit other people’s content (via the CC button in the toolbar) and for others to search and edit your content should you make it a public video.

4.  Gather Clips

You’ll want to gather the clips you are going to use to make your video. Either hover over a clip and click the + button to add it to your scroll or you can simply drag and drop them. To change the order of clips, drag and drop them into place. If you want to remove a clip from the scroll, click on the x at the top of the clip.

Clicking on any of the clips in the sequence will play in the preview window. While it’s playing, there will be white brackets on either side of the clip which can be used to change the length of the clip by widening or shortening the brackets.  As you alter the length, the preview window will show you how much of the clip you trimmed and the blue bar above the play button will show you how much of the clip is left after it’s been edited.

Once a clip has been edited, a pair of scissors will appear in the bottom corner allowing you to keep track of what’s already been edited.

For precise editing, you can click and drag the magnifying bar and make adjustments to the timing.

5. Make Some Music

You can easily add a soundtrack to your video by using one of YouTube’s approved musical tracks submitted by users. To view the list of tracks, click the “Music Note” in the toolbar. You can filter results by category, artist, or enter keywords to search. Preview the music by clicking the “Play” button beside each song title.

When you’ve found a soundtrack you want to use for your video, drag and drop it in the space below your clip scroll. Use the volume bar on the right to control the ratio of background music and the audio from your clips to balance things out. To remove a track, click the x at the right of the volume bar or drag another selection on top of it to switch to the new selection.

6. Smooth Transitions

Transitions can be added to your scroll to fade in and out of clips. To select a transition, click the tab with the two inward facing arrows. Experiment with different transitions by dropping them between your video clips and playing the sequence to see how clips will look as they pass from one to another.

To make a transition longer or shorter, click on it in the sequence and use the white brackets to adjust the time.

Some transitions also allow you to adjust the transitions direction. To use this option, hover over the thumbnail in the sequence and click the center icon if one appears.

7. Add Text And Banners

To add text to your video, select the “a” tab in the toolbar. You will have two choices for placing your text. A Banner which is a shaded bar on the bottom of a video or a Centered Title which appears in the middle of your screen.

Here are some ways you can use banners and text clips:

To create a clip with “text only”, drag the text format and drop it before or after a clip

To overlay text over a clip, drag the text format and place it directly onto the clip. A window will pop up where you can enter your text. Next choose the size of the text and the color. View the text preview and click save.

To edit a banner, hover over the thumbnail and click the “a” icon again.

8. Edit A Clip

To edit a clip, hover over the clip and click on any of the icons shown. The “Reverse Arrow” icon allows you to rotate a clip. The “Wand” allows you to customize and enhance a clip by adjusting the contrast, brightness, make the clip black and white and set the stability. Clicking “I’m feeling lucky” will automatically select these values for you.

9. Publish Your Video

When you have finished editing your video and are happy with the way it looks, click the “Publish” button in the top right corner. A window will open and let you know the video is being processed. You can also edit additional information about the video. Choose a name, description, category, and tags to make sure your video gets found by searches.

Now that you see how easy it is to make your own video, get started! It’s a great way to share an event with family and friends or to promote your business or product! Tell us what tips and tricks you used to create your videos!

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1. Create An Account

• If you are new to YouTube, you can set up an account in a flash using your Google credentials. If you don’t have a Google account, then create one and return to the YouTube sign in page.
• Once you have an account, a channel will automatically be created for you. To begin adding video, click the “Upload” button in the top right corner. The video will be added to your channel. To view your channel, click on your username at the top of the screen.

2. Link Your Accounts

• On the left side of the screen, under the “Subscriptions” tab, you will see “Social”. This is where you will begin the steps to link your social media accounts to your YouTube channel.

• In order to start sharing your content and viewing your contact’s video feed, begin by connecting your social media accounts. Connect your Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Orkut accounts by clicking “Connect” next to any you want to share content to. It will prompt you to sign into those accounts during the setup process, but not again after it is linked. If you ever want to unlink an account, simply click “Disconnect.”

• Once you are connected to your social media accounts, the feed on your YouTube channel will auto-populate all the video’s that your friends and social media contacts have been watching.  You can get a better feel for your subscribers interests by clicking their name. Doing this will bring you to the social media account from the social network the content was shared on. This method is fine for specific viewing but not the best way to see who your audience is. A better way to build better content and gauge demographics and interests, is by using YouTube Analytics.

Linking your social media accounts will save you time, by seamlessly updating all linked accounts whenever you upload or favorite new content. This method will increase the exposure your content receives, increasing your chances of creating viral material.  Whatever method you choose to promote your business, make sure that all of your social media accounts represent a cohesive view of your business.

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1. Content Filter

This filter allows you to search specific videos or all results that contain a specific keyword. Select the video you want to see analytics for, and the data will change the charts to display just that item’s data.

2. Geography

In this tab, you will see a break down by state, country or region. Viewing this kind of data isn’t just good for targeting your audience, it can be really cool to see that people all over the world are watching and sharing your content.

3.Date Range

As the title suggests, this tab controls the period of time you want data from. It’s always good to do week to week and month to month comparisons to make sure your channel viewers are interested and engaged in sharing your content.

Note: If you want to return to the full channel view, simply click the x in each category box.

View Reports

After you have uploaded your video, you should be tracking the number of views it gets each week, as well as the source it was viewed from. Your content may have a million views, but without knowing your audience, it will be difficult to know if you are communicating your message effectively.  The Views Report tab will give you an overview of channel views. You can dig even deeper to target the exact audience for your content by using these additional reports:

1. Demographics Report

Here you will see the age, gender, geographical location of viewers as well as the playback location which, shows you where people are watching your videos online. Use this data to create follow up content that will attract higher view counts.

2. Traffic Sources Report

This is definitely a report you will want to track weekly. With insight into where views originated, you can determine if video’s are gaining exposure directly from your YouTube channel or if it has been embedded on a blog or social media site.

3. Audience Retention Report

To improve your audience retention rate, keep content length at approximately 2-3 minutes. Create interesting content that will grab the viewers attention from the start, and keep them focused and interested through the remainder of the video. The Audience retention Report will show you how much of a particular video people tend to watch. This will be vital information as you create follow up content.

4. Engagement Reporting

The Engagement Report is broken down into five sections: subscribers, likes and dislikes, favorites, comments and sharing. Each category adds valuable information to your reporting and should be considered for production of future content. Here I will go into the two most important categories:

5. Subscriber Report

Having and increasing subscribers is important, but learning what brought them to your channel to begin with is more important. With the Subscriber Report, you will be able to see a list of subscribers and what video actually drove them to become subscribers. Again, this data will help you create like content to keep bringing viewers back.

6. Sharing Report

Knowing where your content is shared most, and what social channels are pushing your content, will indicate where you need to create a presence. The sharing tab will help you narrow that down by showing you how many times a video has been shared and the service it has been shared through

7. Data Reporting

You will likely be tracking all the data you have collected about your channels and videos on a spreadsheet. Every report tab in YouTube Analytics has a “Download Report” tab in the top right corner of the screen. It will download your report into a CSV file to open and use in Excel or Google Spreadsheets.

If you are thinking about monetizing videos using Google AdSense, the reports will show which videos are monetizable, and what your total estimated earnings would be if you chose to monetize them. With this type of comprehensive analysis, you will increase your channel traffic and continue to build bigger and better content if you use the reports to your advantage.

There are so many ways to use this data. Let me know what part of the YouTube Analytics you would you like to see more in depth!

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Sure, within YouTube itself you can save your favorite videos to a playlist to watch in a constant stream, but what about videos that are new to you? Every time you search for a video, YouTube always displays a list of others it thinks you might like. It allows you to go off on several different tangents as you can easily get caught up watching for long lengths of time. But you have to keep searching and clicking and looking. NowBox does the searching, clicking, and looking for you.

Setting NowBox to work with your choices and taste in videos is a simple two-step process. After starting the app, it asks for your interests, for those videos you enjoy watching on YouTube. These cover a wide area of basics, such as entertainment, news, tech, how-to, etc. Simply tap the ones that interest you.

Next, sign in to the services you use. Not only does NowBox utilize your YouTube account, it also uses your accounts with Facebook and/or Twitter. It not only learns of your interests through what you watch and post to social networking sites, it learns from videos that your friends and followers watch and post on Facebook or tweet about on Twitter.

NowBox sets up your channels the way you told it to, and gives you some basic subscriptions as it looks throughout YouTube subscriptions, viewing history, and your friends’ videos that they have posted about. You can choose a channel to start viewing.

Once you start playing a channel, it comes up with a continuous playlist. There is no searching for other videos in between. It’s doing all that work for you. You can also view the videos in a listing below. As with YouTube, you can go full-screen to watch the videos. Just like with many apps, you can post directly to Facebook and share your finds.

While NowBox works with your YouTube subscriptions, it also suggests others you might like. At any time you can get more information on a channel. It gives you a short description and tells you how many videos are in it as well as how many subscribers. You can unsubscribe or subscribe at this point.

You can also get a listing of all the channels NowBox has found for you, which includes ones that you are already subscribed to, ones your friends and followers have posted about, or ones that match your particular interests.

NowBox is always working and checking for new videos for you. Every time you open it up it goes back to your YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to find new videos for you. It allows you to just sit back and relax while you watch. Additionally, it works with AirPlay, so you can view the videos on AppleTV as well, not being confined to your iPad.

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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.

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“ShowDocument” is that super-collaboration website.

Introduction

ShowDocument is a user-friendly website that lets you freely collaborate with online friends using numerous web applications. The collaboration apps provided by the site include a document creator plus editor, a video conference tool, a live chat room with translation features, an online whiteboard, a tool to watch YouTube videos together with your friends, and many more.

Usage

Before you can start using ShowDocument, you will need to sign up for an account. With it activated, use your account information to login to the website. You will find a big orange “Start a Session” button.

Clicking on this button will display a new window with the available applications that let you collaborate.

A wide array of collaboration apps are available for use. In addition to the abovementioned apps, these apps include sharing a computer file, sharing the feed from your webcam, sharing your monitor’s output, jointly using a units converter, jointly browsing websites, and playing Set or Tick-Tack-Toe with online friends.

In this review, we will be covering the YouTube application. You can easily try out the other apps and use the sharing procedures outlined below – they apply to all ShowDocument apps.

The ShowDocument YouTube Application

To open the YouTube application you simply click on the corresponding icon. A application tab will be opened in the same window. All the opened apps are viewable via tabs on the top. With the YouTube, you get links and thumbnails to popular YouTube automatically displayed. You also search for YouTube videos and enter the URL of the video if you already have it.

The selected video is played across all participants’ windows at the same time so you all view the YouTube video together. While you view the video, you can draw on it using the pencil tool; the drawings are shown across all participants’ screens.

In the left-most pane of the application window you will find a chat window where participants can talk to one another.

Inviting Participants to Your ShowDocument Application

Under the participants list in the chat window you will find a button labeled “Invite New Participants.”

Clicking on this button opens up a window that displays the URL to the ShowDocument application you are using.

In addition to the sharing the URL, you can send email invitation or copy share the numeric code; friends can type in the code at ShowDocument’s homepage and reach your app’s page. Before joining the application, friends specify a nickname for themselves. That is all they need i.e. they do not need to register for a new account on the site in order to start collaborating with you.

Pricing

ShowDocument’s free account offers collaboration sessions that are only 30 minutes long. You get only 10MB of storage and each app can have up to 3 participants with the audio and video disabled in chat. These restrictions are lifted if you go for the paid option; the paid account costs $30 per month. Before going for the paid account you can test it for free for 30 days.

Conclusion

ShowDocument is definitely an amazing website. It is perhaps the only website that merges so many collaboration web apps and provides them under a single dashboard. The features offered by the free account are sufficient to benefit most computer users.

You can visit ShowDocument by clicking here.

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If you are looking for a way to add subtitles to your online video, all you have to do is pay a visit to “Universal Subtitles”.

Introduction

Supported video formats include FLV, MP4, theora, webM, and HTML5. The site offers a very user-friendly interface that makes adding subtitles to online videos an uncomplicated task.

Usage

The first step in using Universal Studios is to create an account on it. With this step complete, you can start by specifying the online video’s URL on you Universal Studios dashboard.

The video is fetched from the provided URL and you are asked to indicate the video’s language and subtitle’s language. You will find that nearly all languages are present in the list that Universal Subtitles provides.

With this step complete, you can play your video. As the video plays, you can create a list of subtitles by typing them in the area right under the video player.

When you have entered all your subtitles, you can begin synchronizing them with the video. This is done through a very easy procedure. As the video plays, you click on a big purple button to indicate the beginning of the next subtitle. This method is far more friendlier than other subtitle tools that require you to enter the starting and ending times of each subtitle.

With the syncing process complete, you can publish your video. The video, along with its subtitles, is published under a unique Universal Subtitles URL.

When a person visits the URL, he can play the video. By default, the subtitles are off. These can be easily turned on using the subtitles button in the lower left of the video player. The language of subtitles is indicated on this button. Viewers of the video can use these options to view available subtitles in other languages, improve the subtitles, and download the subtitles.

A little farther down this subtitles button is the option to add subtitles in other languages. Viewers can help expand the audience base by translating the subtitles into various other languages.

To the right of the video you can find an embeddable code and a permalink. You can share this video page using the permalink whereas the embeddable code can be used to embed your subtitled video on your blog or website.

In case you have videos uploaded to your own website, you use the given code by Universal Studios to add the subtitles button to all videos. This way, site visitors will have the option to add subtitles to your videos.

Conclusion

Universal Subtitles is an excellent web service. It helps expand the audience base of videos that would otherwise be restricted to a certain group of people only. By adding subtitles through this web tool not only will you reach viewers of other languages but also people who suffer from impaired hearing.

For anybody who deals with online videos, this website is invaluable.

Universal Studios.

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For those who are having this problem, here’s the fix:

1. Disable hardware acceleration

1. Open your browser and go to YouTube.com. Start playing your video.

2. Right click on the video and click Settings.

3. On the flash popup, uncheck “Enable Hardware Acceleration”. Click Close.

Restart your browser and play the video in full screen mode.

Overriding GPU validation

If the above trick does not work, here’s what you can do:

Open a terminal and type the following command:

sudo mkdir /etc/adobe

echo "OverrideGPUValidation=true" >~/mms.cfg

sudo mv ~/mms.cfg /etc/adobe/

Start your browser and play the video in full screen. It should work now.

Other options

If you are using Firefox, you can install the FlashVideoReplacer extension. It replaces the flash player with movie player and is able to play the video in full screen and in HD quality.

via Ubuntu Forum

image credit: smemon87

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Trick 1: Fast forward/Rewind the video

To fast forward the video, you just have to press the “right” arrow key on your keyboard. Similarly, press the “left” arrow button to rewind the video.

Trick 2: Skip to a particular section of the video

To skip to a particular section of the video, you can press “1, 2, 3…” or any number button to skip to 10%, 20%, 30%.. of the video. Press “0″ to go back to the start.

Note:

1. Trick 2 does not work in full screen and embedded mode.

2. Both tricks work when the video is playing or is paused.

3. In Firefox, if you have enabled the “search for text when typing” feature, you will have to click on the YouTube player to give it focus before you can perform trick 2.

What other YouTube tricks do you know?

via The Next Web

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The Basics

To work with JayCut, you first register an account at the site (don’t worry, it’s free). Unfortunately, JayCut will send you a copy of your username and password over plaintext email after the signup, so it’s probably wise to avoid using a login similar to ones you normally use. When that’s done, you’re ready to create your own video magic.

As you can see, there are tabs near the top to access different categories of media you might wish to include in your project. This can include audio-only tracks and still images. Video transition affects are included here as well, and will be covered in more detail later in this guide.

Adding Audio and Video Clips

Chances are, you’ll want to start adding video clips to work with. This can be done either by uploading a pre-existing file from your computer or by recording directly into JayCut. Both audio (via microphone) and video (via webcam) tracks can be recorded directly into JayCut through Flash. To being any of these tasks, you start by clicking the Add Media button in the upper right corner.

From here you can choose the source (existing file or new recording). If you choose a local file, it will be uploaded to JayCut and will show up in the Video tab.

If you choose to record from webcam or microphone, you’ll be given a screen like the following to choose the appropriate devices.

Followed by a test screen where you can verify that everything is working as intended.

Arranging Clips

Once you’ve finished recording and clicked Save, your clip should show up in the Video tab. If you don’t see it after a few seconds, try going to another tab and back again. When you see your clip, drag the thumbnail down to the sequencer at the bottom. Sometimes you have to drag verrrrrryyyyyy slowly and carefully, as not all browsers can handle JayCut with ease.

Continue with any other clips you want to add to your video.

Transitions

Once you’ve got your clips, arrange them so that you have the desired amount of overlap for a transition, as shown in the screenshot below. Then go to the Transitions tab and drag the desired effect into the row between the clips. It should snap for you to the correct location.

If you just click the thumbnail without dragging, the preview window on the right will give an A>B example of the transition effect.

Text Annotations

You can, of course, add a bit of text to your videos with a choice of font. In fact, if you use JayCut, you might end up the one person on all you YouTube not using white script on a blue background. The process is much like that for transitions. You open the Text tab and drag the desired style into the sequencer. Once it’s placed (and you can stretch the edges to determine time) you’ll see the text edit screen where you can enter your annotations along with font and size choices.

Saving/Publishing Your Video

While the free version of JayCut does not allow saving of the master version for later editing, you can publish your video to the web or save to your hard drive through the Publish/Download button in the lower right of the page. This will allow you to save or media to the location of your choice.

Update: The developers of JayCut has clarified that the “Save” button wasn’t disabled. It is just that it is always autosaving and LOOKED disabled.

Problems

JayCut isn’t perfect. As it requires some pretty intense browser power, it tends to run somewhat slow, at least on non-GPU accelerated browsers. Stability can occasionally be a factor as well, particularly on systems that already have some trouble with Flash. The worst issue, in my opinion, was not with the software itself but with the way the site handles new signups. I would think that in this day and age, they would know better than to send your username and password unrequested over plaintext email.

Conclusion

Those few problems aside, JayCut is an extremely impressive site. Prior to seeing it for myself, I’m not sure I could have believed you could put this much functionality into an easy-to-use web app. JayCut is part of the new breed of web applications that are beginning to challenge the belief (held by myself and others) that web apps will never quite match the speed, power and comfort of local applications. Will it be the editing platform of the next summer blockbuster? Probably not – but it will play a part in my next home video.

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1. Minitube

A pure Qt application, Minitube is cross-platform and integrates well with KDE. Plainly put, it is a desktop YouTube client. Rather than opening a web browser and watching YouTube videos from the website, this little app allows you to watch up to 1080p streaming YouTube videos, just by entering a search term. The app is great for lower-powered devices, such as netbooks and tablets, that may lag when viewing Flash-based videos. Minitube is available for Linux and Mac OS X.

2. Skrooge

Pinching pinnies tends to be associated with negative, stingy people, but with today’s economy, most people are struggling financially. Skrooge is a KDE Extragear app that helps you manage your personal finances. It allows you to add multiple bank accounts, balance your checkbook, schedule bill payments, import bank statements, and run reports, complete with helpful graphs and charts.

3. Konvertible

With the multitude of devices many people have these days, you may need to convert audio files on a regular basis. Aside from dropping to the command line, there are not a lot of options for converting media files in Linux. Konvertible makes it easy to convert a wide variety of audio codecs: Mp3, Ogg Vorbis, and anything else supported by your version of ffmpeg.

4. PlaybaK

Former known as KDE Media Player, PlaybaK is a full-featured media player that aims to provide comprehensive media management and playback support, including music, videos, and more. It is still in early development but already supports many formats and has received very positive ratings and reviews on KDE-Apps.org. Both source code and some Linux distribution binaries are currently available for download.

5. Silence

I am not even sure if I fully get Silence, but the features and possibilities make it an app to watch. The developer describes it as an “information management tool” that allows you to store your data, search through it, and view it in an hierarchical way. It supports plain text, rich text, images, and programming code (with syntax highlighting), making it ideal for note-taking, coding, and just about anything else you can think up that requires organized information. It is light, fast, and free.

Finding KDE Apps

The best way to find these apps and others like them is to search KDE-Apps.org. The ones I have mentioned are those that I find useful, but you may find many others that better suit your needs. KDE-Apps.org includes ratings and comments from users, a helpful search tool, screenshots, and provides the ability to contact the developers directly. As developers update their apps, they usually post their updates to KDE-Apps.org, making it ideal for tracking apps in early development. Like all KDE applications, these work in other desktop environments, such as Gnome and LXDE, and most are available for multiple operating systems.

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There are many methods that you can do to download YouTube videos, but almost none is available to download directly to your mobile phone. But if you use jailbroken iPhone, there are few ways to directly download YouTube videos. One of them is by using an app called aTube.

Finding The App

The first step is obviously downloading the app. The question is, from where? In your jailbroken phone, open an app called Cydia, then go to the search bar on the bottom of the screen on the right. Then all that is left to do is do a search with “aTube” as the string, then tap at the result.

Then you will have the installation page. Tap on the “Install” button. The quick download review page will be opened, tap “Confirm” to start downloading the app. The download indicator will show you the progress, continued by the installation process. When everything is done, tap the “Return to Cydia” button to finish.

Searching And Downloading The Videos

Now we’re on to the fun part. Fire up aTube and start to rock and roll.

I think that the app was built on the premise that the users already know what videos they want to download from YouTube because the only way to find videos is by searching. There’s no way to browse around latest or popular videos. To do that you need to use the official YouTube app or visit the mobile version of the website from Safari.

With videos in mind, tap on the search tab on the toolbar below and start searching. When the search result appears, tap on the one that you want. The download summary page gives you two option; either “Download” or “Watch” the videos.

Using aTube, you can download more than one videos at once. Just make sure that your internet connection can handle the number of downloads that you have. The downloads will be located under the “Downloads” tab.

Each downloaded video will have its own download progress bar and the remaining download time under the title. I found a flaw though; the remaining download time is too small to read.

One feature that I found very useful from aTube is the ability to “Pause” and “Resume” downloads. So if your download is interrupted, you can just continue it from where it stop and not redo it from the beginning. It’s also possible to delete any download that you don’t want.

When your download is done, the result videos will be moved to “Videos” tab. The app provide you with all the information about the video such as: Title, Duration, VideoID, Size, and Download Time. Just pick the one that you want to watch and tap on the “Watch” button. And if you decide not to keep the video any longer, just tap the “Delete” button at the top right of the screen.

There’s nothing that you haven’t already know about playing the video. The interface is simple enough; aside from the control buttons, you have the progress bar and “Done” button to end the video player.

Aside from aTube, there’s also another alternative to YouTube downloader called MxTube – also from Cydia. The interface is more simple, but less featured compared to aTube.

So if you love short videos from YouTube and want to be able to enjoy them offline, aTube can help you to download them. If you know other alternatives, please share them using the comment below.

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Truthfully, GoogleCL provides a feature-rich command line tool set that will be useful to Linux geeks and regular users alike. With it, users can perform tasks quickly and efficiently.

GoogleCL is a cross-platform python application that includes tools for the following Google services: Picasa, Blogger, YouTube, Google Docs, Contacts, and Calendar.

Download and Install

You can download GoogleCL at the project’s Google Code page.  There are two available package formats: deb (for debian, ubuntu, etc.) or tar.gz (for other non-Debian distros). On an Ubuntu machine, double-click on the file after it finishes downloading, and follow the on-screen instructions to install.

1. For the tar.gz file, extract the contents with:

tar zxvf googlecl-0.9.7.tar.gz

2. Next, change to the googlecl directory:

cd googlecl-0.9.7

3. Make sure you have python 2.5 or 2.6 and python gdata installed.

4. As root, run the following command:

python setup.py install

Running Commands

There are two ways to execute GoogleCL commands:

1. type “google” followed by the necessary arguments and options,

2. type “google” by itself to run the program and then enter commands from the google prompt.

To get general help with GoogleCL, type “google help”. To get help with a specific service, type “google help services”. For example, you can type “google help docs” for help with Google Docs.

Run “google” once to allow GoogleCL to create the config file. There are a few options to configure to make GoogleCL work well for you. The configuration file will be located at ~/.googlecl/config. Make sure you specify the editors you want to use for the available file types.

To run a command, you should include the service, task, options, and arguments. The services will be picasa, docs, contacts, etc. The task will be terms like post, edit, delete, upload, etc. Options will use terms like title, query, name. Finally, arguments will include specific references to items like the names of documents or path to a video.

Examples

To create a blog post in Blogger, enter:

google blogger post –title ‘Test CLI Blog Post’ ‘This is a test post for my new command line Blogger client’

To list your Google contacts, enter:

google contacts list name,email

To post a video file you have created to YouTube, type:

google youtube post –category Education My-First-Command-Line-Movie.avi

When you attempt to use the google command for a service for the first time, it will open your web browser and ask you to authenticate it. Click “grant access” and then press Enter back in the terminal window.

GoogleCLI will even let you edit documents from your computer (In order to use it, you will need the latest version of python-gdata). For example, to edit a document called “Cool Ideas”, type the following:

google docs edit –title ‘Cool Ideas’ –editor nano

You can choose the editor of your choice for your actual editing or leave off the editor argument if you have already configured it in your “config” file.

GoogleCLI provides users who love the power of the command line with a very useful tool to perform basic or advanced tasks from any computer. Best of all, GoogleCLI is free and open source. Download it, contribute, and enjoy.

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Like KDE’s Plasma desktop, Amarok has the ability to display widgets. It is divided into the three columns. The left column is the music browser, which displays the user’s local collection or the Internet music library of his or her choice. The right column shows the current playlist, and the center column can hold a number of widgets. Users must click the wrench icon at the bottom to add, remove, or reorder widgets.

1. Albums

The Albums widget provides users with the most recently added albums when nothing is playing, and when a song is playing, the widget displays the current artists albums. You can navigate through the list of songs for quick access to any other songs by the artist currently in your collection.

2. Current Track

Current Track shows the Album cover, title, artist’s name, Last.fm love button, position marker, play count, score, last played, and track rating.

Right click on the album cover and click “Display Cover” to see the largest available version of the image. Click “Fetch Cover” to download cover art from Amazon. Most of the time this works just fine for big industry artists, but there are some instances where it will display the wrong art or find none at all. In those cases, you can click “Set Custom Cover” to add your own. In addition, click “Tools” and “Cover Manager” at any time to download covers for all of your albums or edit any current ones.

The rating system has a 5-star scale, and each star has a 1/2 setting. You can change your rating of a song at any time, and when no song is playing, the Current Track widget will display top-rated tracks.

3. Lyrics

Rather than having to search the Web for song lyrics, Amarok has a built-in Lyrics widget. Whenever a song starts to play, just click on the Lyrics button to display the widget. Click the configure button in the top right corner to change font style and size. If no lyrics are found, you may have to search the Web, but you will only need to do it once. Simply copy the lyrics you find, click the Edit Lyrics icon, and paste them right into the widget.

4. Photos

One of the features that I just recently discovered is the Photos Widget. While a track is playing, it will run a slideshow of photos from Flickr. In most cases, it will accurately display pictures of the currently playing artist. In some cases, particularly with rappers or singers who have improper nouns as their stage names, you will have to do some configuring.

Click the configure button and add additional keywords that will help Amrok search Flickr for the right photos. You can also set the slideshow animation type and the number of photos to display.

5. Videoclip

The Videoclip widget harnesses the power of YouTube to offer quick links to videos of the song you are currently playing. Because almost every song is on YouTube, you are certain to find something, although it may not always be an official music video.

Once you select a video, it will play within the widget window. To play fullscreen, double click on the video or right click, and then click “fullscreen”. If you click on the link rather than the video thumbnail, it will open the video in your web browser.

6. Wikipedia

Want to know more about your musician? The Wikipedia widget does just what the name implies: displays the Wikipedia entry for the currently playing band or artist. Like the other Internet-based widgets, it assumes that a Wikipedia article actually exists for the person or band you are playing.

Final Thoughts

Amarok is a powerful music player with most of the standard features, such as playlists, album art, and collection/library management. What sets it apart is its extensibility. The widgets that come installed are impressive, and the ability to add more makes Amarok an application worth giving a try. Amarok is free and open source software, released under the GPL and is part of the KDE software compilation.

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Signing Up

The sign up is really straight forward; choose a name, password, username and email. From there, it takes you to a few different screens to help you collect your saved videos from different sites around the web.

Importing

When you go through the typical sign up for a free account, you can import videos from a bunch of sites. This is pretty cool if you are an active video blogger or make a bunch of videos and post them to different sites.

One cool import option, if you choose to use it, Popscreen will go through all of your Delicious and Digg bookmarks and look for videos to import if you let it. I don’t typically bookmark the actual video when I read a post with an embeded video, I usually save the page it is embeded to.

Supported Sites

Currently, over 90 sources are supported with more on the way. As you may suspect, larger more well known sites like Youtube, Vimeo and Metacafe have more “pops” than some sites. One site I was surprised didn’t have more pops was ESPN. I would have thought there to be more greatest plays saved. Here is a link to their supported sites.

Live Streams

Sites that offer live streams can be “Pop’d” (bookmarked) as well. I have seen a a good amount of bloggers really embracing live feeds. It is a good way to let get more connected to their audience through live interviews or Q & A sessions. Ustream, Justin.tv and others do just that.

Saving

When you are jumping from site to site and see a video you want to keep, Popscreen makes it super easy for you add the site for late viewing. You can add shows with either a URL, the embeded code or using the bookmarklet. To keep things sorted, you have the option to create playlists.

Sharing

Off to the side of the videos as you watch and also when you add a new video to your library are several links to popular social sharing options: Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon…

When you are watching one of your videos and want the permalink URL or the code to embed it into a web page of some kind, you can click the embed tab to the right of the video. This will display both options.

It seems these days everyone has a short URL for their site; Popscreen is no different. When you share a video, a short URL (same as the permalink for the video) is provided. Here is an example: http://popd.it/WHV.

I did notice when I used the Twitter share button, there were several extra characters used by blank spaces. Not a big deal to hit the space bar a few times, but still it would be better not to need to.

Conclusion

Overall, the site is really easy to use and the bookmarklet makes adding a video a breeze while surfing the web. Since the site is fairly new and in beta, I suspect there will be more to come in the near future.

How did you keep track of your videos before Popscreen?

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Apart from reviews of the latest gadgets, YouTube is also a great place to watch, well, almost anything that moves!

The only thing that I don’t like is that I have to keep going back online to view videos. Also, I can’t email YouTube videos to my friends who have had YouTube blocked in their offices to save bandwidth or for other reasons.

I’ve seen software for Windows which let the user save videos from YouTube for offline viewing, but since I’m a staunch Linux supporter, I really wanted something similar for Linux and went searching for a YouTube video downloader online.

And I found the perfect utility for the job called youtube-dl. This is a command line utility so you’ll have to be familiar with the Linux command line to use it.

This isn’t that tough and if you’ve been using Linux for any length of time, you probably know how to fire up Terminal, gnome-terminal, konsole or any other Terminal application that you have for your flavour of Linux.

Downloading a video using youtube-dl couldn’t be easier. To download a video you just have to give the URL of the video to the youtube-dl script and then let it do its job. For example, to download the video with the url http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2FpDDEVWtk&feature=channel, I just need to use the command:

youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2FpDDEVWtk&feature=channel

As you can see, the script figures out the actual video path by itself and then starts saving it to the local hard disk. When it has the complete video downloaded, it informs the user and tells you the name that is has saved it under.

The youtube-dl command also supports a couple of parameters which let you do things like saving the video file with the title of the video as the filename, or giving a completely different filename to the downloaded video.

Options:
-h, --help            print this help text and exit
-v, --version         print program version and exit
-u USERNAME, --username=USERNAME
account username
-p PASSWORD, --password=PASSWORD
account password
-o FILE, --output=FILE
output video file name
-q, --quiet           activates quiet mode
-s, --simulate        do not download video
-t, --title           use title in file name
-l, --literal         use literal title in file name
-n, --netrc           use .netrc authentication data
-g, --get-url         print final video URL only
-2, --title-too       used with -g, print title too
-f FORMAT, --format=FORMAT
append &fmt=FORMAT to the URL
-b, --best-quality    alias for -f 18

If you’re trying to download a video which requires you to enter a username and password on YouTube, you can enter that using the --u USERNAME and --p PASSWORD parameters as can be seen in the help menu above.

I’d love to hear about other tools that you guys use to download videos from online sites for offline viewing. Let us know about your favourite tools for the purpose in the comments.

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