Firefox: If you’d like to save a video you’ve found on a popular streaming video site, NetVideoHunter is a handy Firefox extension that makes that download a snap.
You’d never guess it from the name, but Bluegobo.com is basically YouTube for musical theatre geeks. YouTube itself is not short of the odd tune or two from musicals, but Bluegobo slightly ups the ante by including basic information on each show (even though many of the clips are from TV performances). Got another YouTube alternative you like whiling away the hours with? Share in the comments.
You want to be the supreme ruler of your own virtual cutting room? Better break out the checkbook—your film-chopping powers aren’t going to come cheaply. Photo by FaceMePLS.
Fancy yourself an aficionado of online video? Curate your own long-playing video playlists with Embedr, a new site that links together online videos from popular video sites (including YouTube) into one embeddable video extravaganza. The service is a breeze to use: You’ll need to create an account to make your own playlists, or just head to the site and enjoy some compilations (like the “Best Moments from Lost” video embedded here). Creating playlists is as simple as pasting the URL or embed code from any of the many supported sites. Like the idea? If you give it a go, share your video compilations in the comments.
Embedr [via TechCrunch]Windows only: If you’re looking for a fire-and-forget video converter to help stock your iPod, iPodME is a dead simple and lightweight tool for bulk converting your video files. iPodME is a completely portable standalone application—a GUI wrapper of the venerable ffmpeg for the curious among you. Operation is as simple as running the application, dragging and dropping a list of video files you want to convert onto it, and adjusting the basic video settings. You can select the video dimensions and the quality using the plain English metric provided–slow, quality or turbo, size for instance—to determine the conversion speed. If you dig into the options menu you can also tweak the process priority. The default for the application is to take advantage of idle cycles and back off when you’re actually attempting to do work. Using the fast, quality setting and leaving it on the default of idle, it took approximately one hour to convert 20 episodes of Fraggle Rock into iPod-compatible MP4 files. An unexpected bonus in such a small package is support for SRT subtitle files, if you have them for your favourite foreign media you can embed them as you convert. If you’d like more fine tuned control over your video conversions, check out the candidates in the Hive Five Best Media Converters and the Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters to fulfil your tweaking needs. iPodME [via Freeware Genius]
The past ten years have completely changed the way we listen to music, watch movies and television, and take photos, and one thing is abundantly clear: The future of your media lies undeniably in the digital realm. Now you just need to find the perfect media centre application to pull it all together. Photo by Aaron Escobar.
YouTube switched to widescreen format a week and a half back, and now the popular video sharing site appears officially to be streaming videos in HD. From the look of things, most videos that were uploaded in HD should now have a watch in HD link to the bottom right of the video for high quality HD viewing. The site has offered a watch in high quality option for a while now, but the new HD option looks like they’re serious about moving into high definition for their streaming video. Here’s a before and after version look like:
A couple of items in a list of Top 10 telecoms industry trends published this week by consultant Telsyte struck me as interesting:
Year of mobile content” fuelled by next-generation smartphones, dropping mobile data charges and user preference to go “off deck” Birth of an advertising-subsidised mobile market, powered by location-based technology
It would certainly be nice to see more reasonable prices for mobile data, and there have been a couple of useful indicators in that direction. The just-about-to-appear BlackBerry Storm has an almost-all-you-can-eat data plan, and while the iPhone doesn’t have (to my mind) great data deals, it’s certainly played a key role in getting people using more mobile data. Getting good mobile sites will require some sort of advertising model, but I’m not so sure that’ll happen in a hurry — if only because Australia’s population makes it harder to justify that kind of advertising investment than in the US, where a handful of cities can provide all the revenue you need. In any event, we’ll need the cheaper rates first.
When you really want to stay in touch over a long distance, a simple phone call or voice chat pales in comparison to a face-to-face video chat. You can look your long-distance significant other in the eyes while you talk; your parents can watch their grandkid grow up; and under the right circumstances, video chat can also be an excellent tool for work-related calls and collaboration. The question is, what tools should you be using to get the most out of your calls?
If You Tube had an overly-intellectual kid brother who preferred Noam Chomsky to Naruto, that brother would be Big Think. Big Think is a web site built around interviews with prominent scientific and political figures about a broad range of topics.
[Big Think's]shorts are studio-shot, first-person interviews. Each clip features the interviewee answering a single question or waxing on a single topic: for example, UCLA law professor Kal Raustiala explaining his “piracy paradox,” the puzzle that intellectual property protection may be inhibiting creative progress in culture and industry.
Big Think can be searched by keyword or browsed by the various topics such as Identify, Truth & Wisdom, and more concrete topics like History or Science & Technology. The clips are well lit, professionally done, and full of interesting ideas and viewpoints you may not have come across otherwise.
Big Think [via The Boston Globe]
