Now you can download videos from YouTube to your PC for viewing offline.
Perhaps this doesn’t sound like anything revolutionary, but for many, a simple and free way to do it has been elusive. This is especially true since YouTube not long ago changed their URL and Embed coding.
About two weeks ago, I downloaded a program that cost $30 to do the job. It worked, and worked well. But just today, I found a program that works just as well, and it doesn’t cost a dime. I downloaded it, tried it a few times, and decided I had to tell you about it if you hadn’t already heard of it.
It’s called YouTube Downloader, and I’ve prepared a quick video to show you how it works. Below the video is the link to the download.
I have to be honest here: The $30 software I bought has an affiliate program, and that is the software I was going to promote. But, in all fairness to you, the readers of this blog, I decided not to do it. The reason is simple. There are a LOT of programs out there that cost money, and they do their jobs very well. In some cases, “free” substitutes don’t give you all the features and advantages. In those cases, I always suggest and recommend the better program, even if it costs money.
But sometimes, you get everything you need without having to “whip out your wallet,” and this is one of those cases.
Corvida from SheGeeks was looking for a custom search to Twitter earlier, so I thought I’d knock one up for her. It’s not tremendously difficult to do, and I might post how to do it on AskOwen sometime soon, but in the meantime, TweeterSearch is available for people to download, install and use.
TweeterSearch adds a new search in your FireFox search bar that lets you search Twitter for a particular user. If there’s only one user matching the search criteria, you’ll get their details on the screen, otherwise you’ll get a list of options to choose from.
Download it, give it a try, and let me know if you think there are any improvements I can add to it. Just drop me a Tweet if you can
Step 1 - With the circular marquee tool, create a simple circle in any color. We will use red in this example.
Step 2 - Give the circle an inner-glow layer effect by changing the glow color to black and changing the blend mode to multiply. Using an inner shadow can result in an angular deflection which is why we use the inner glow method for uniformity.
Step 3 - Load the selection from the circular area. Drag the linear gradient (white to transparent) downward from the top making sure it is close but not completely at the bottom in a new layer.
Step 4) To transform the white gradient, press Ctrl/Cmd+T. Drag the handles bringing it upwards going halfway through, and drag it just a small amount inward from the top and sides. Now to create a merge composite layer: Hide the background. Create a new blank layer on top and press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+E or Option+Cmd+Shift+E on Mac, to create a merged layer on top.
Step 5. take the merged layer and create a circular selection above. the circle should be much larger than the original circle. Again use your eyes to tell you what seems right, then copy the section and paste it in to a new layer. This creates the top portion of the orb. Place it again in the proper exact position.
Step 6. Now to go onto the base of the orb. In a new layer create an eleptical shape that fits into the lower half of the circle. Duplicate this layer and reduce the size a little, as shown in fig.6.
Step 7. Select the larger ellipse layer and load its selection by pressing Ctrl/Cmd and clicking on the layer thumbnail. Now select the cylindrical gradient tool and going with the grey-white-grey-white-grey color combo, drag across.
Step 8. Duplicate this layer too and bring the duplicate upwards, as shown. Now place the white small portion up above the actual gradiated layer. Place it as shown in fig.8. Link both layers and reduce their size by a bit, so that the outer gradiated ellipse is just a bit within the red circle.
Step 9) Select the duplicated gradient layer, now giving it a faintly different gradient of greys and whites. Bring the duplicated gradient layer down, arranging it under both of the other layers. Position it to where it is visible from both sides since it is the rim of the orb.
Step 10) Remove the areas of the orb that are not needed. Keep Ctrl/Cmd pressed and click on the layer thumbnails; first choose the big outer rim ellipse, having the gray gradient, and then Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+Click on the thumbnail of the upper top portion layer. Now the 2 ellipses will be selected, but we need to also select the bottom portion of the orb. Choosing the Rectangular marquee tool, hold down shift and drag over the bottom portion. Inverse the selection (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I) and delete the central part of the orb.
Step 11) Let’s create the glass portion. Make a circle of the same size of the orb in any color and place it behind the other layers.
Step 12) Just like the first outer orb, give it the same type of inner-glow effect, and bring it forward as to cover all but the red outer portions of the orb.
Step 13 -Make the fill amount =0 in the layer palette in order to make the layer invisible, but keeping the layer effects visible.
Step 14. As you had done with the red circle, ie, creating a white gradient reflection, create the same in a new layer above the glass layer, so as to create a more realistic lighting effect. Adjust the settings as required to make it as realistic looking as possible.
Step 15) Select the base layers, which are the grey metal gradient layers and the white ellipse, merging them together. Press Cntrl+U to fine-tune the hue of the layer. Since it is at this point grey, click on colorize, and convert to a reddish color to keep with the color of the orb itself.
Step 16) Lastly, make a very small drop shadow to the upper piece of the red orb, in order to create more realism. The lower portion may seem off, so create a new layer above the red lower orb portion. Select the radial gradient tool in the white to nothing option and drag from a point over the red to just a bit inward. Erase parts that are not enclosed within the red portion.
You orb is ready. You can display any items in there now, just make sure any Items kept in have a good reflection added on. This will give the base a shiny appearance.
Rumor has it that Bluray is the new Betamax. Quite a large sum has been spent on HDTV systems with DVD Players, even HD DVD Players.
Instead of the market being driven by ‘What kind of crap does SONY want to sell us’ it may well be time for the actual ‘market’ to tell the industry what is wanted.
There of course are options the Big Guys would prefer you never considered.
Let’s see:
Maybe Digital Download. Folks that are ‘Early Adopters’ are generally tech savvy and more than likely use broadband at home. Some recent Broadband could do live download, although I’d prefer saving to a storage device to play without the vagaries of commercial bandwidth delivery.
Or here is an idea - Is Blu-Ray Just More Planned ..
It seems that most webmasters and internet marketers have the goal of getting their sites onto page one of Google. I admit that I, too, feel a sense of joy and satisfaction when my sites hit the top 10 for my keywords.
But is the top 10 good enough? Should you rest on your laurels once you’ve achieved page one ranking? Not according to the AOL search data that was compromised in 2006. Yes, that data is two years old, but I think it’s important to revisit those results and remind ourselves of what it revealed.
That compromised data gave us the following break-down of the percentage of clicks received by each of the top 11 search results:
Rank
Percent
1
22.6%
2
6.4%
3
4.5%
4
3.2%
5
2.6%
6
2.1%
7
1.8%
8
1.6%
9
1.5%
10
1.6%
11
0.35%
“Wait,” you say, “those numbers barely add up to 50%!” That’s true. According to the AOL data, that’s because 46% of all queries resulted in no clicks — meaning that the user didn’t see what they were looking for and so tried something else or moved on.
There are a few points I want to make about this. First, this is data from AOL, and without being too unkind to AOL users, well, they’re not the savviest of searchers. That makes a difference. I would theorize that Google searchers would be a bit more prone to “dig” for the result they need, especially since in my own experience the figures aren’t quite so drastic as this data shows.
That said, though, this chart helps to demonstrate the vast difference between the #1 ranking for a set of keywords and all of the other rankings. Basically, the number one ranking gets the lion’s share of the traffic, and the other 9 of the top 10 just get the tricklings.
Number 11, the first result on page 2, gets virtually no traffic at all. I included it in the results to demonstrate how little effect a page 2 ranking has on your traffic.
This is one of the reasons I advocate trying to rank for a series of long-tail keywords, and not putting all of your efforts into one set of very popular keywords. Getting to #1 for a single set of competitive keywords requires an exponential amount more effort than ranking #1 for dozens of long-tail keywords. And, as demonstrated by this data, those dozens of “lesser” rankings will be far more valuable to the bottom line of your traffic than a #9 or #10 ranking for a competitive keyword.
Let me illustrate.
Let’s say that your niche has a set of competitive keywords that generates 10,000 searches a day. Sounds like a goldmine if you have a page one ranking right? Let’s see.
If you managed to get on page one, but only rank #9, based on the AOL data you would only get 150 of those visitors to your site (4,500 or so per month). However, if you manage to rank #1 for 10 keywords that each only receive 1,000 searches a day, you would get 226 visitors (6,780 or so per month). That’s 150% more traffic for the long-tail keywords. And I promise you, it’s dramatically easier to achieve (and maintain) 10 less competitive rankings than it is for one super-competitive one. In fact, in many cases you can achieve multiple #1 rankings for long-tail keywords with the same quantity of links needed just to get you on page one for the super-competitive keywords!
Just ask the happy 3WayLinks.net customer who recently posted at the users’ forum regarding their first $369 day in affiliate profits. Or another forum poster who reached his first $100+ AdSense day thanks to 3WayLinks’ ranking his sites for lesser-competition keywords.
So remember, when planning your keyword targets for your web site, don’t forget to target a variety of long-tail keywords. Even if you are planning on going after a competitive set of keywords, still keep the long-tail on your agenda, and give them at least as much of your time and resources. Do so and you’ll reap the rewards to be found in Google’s “low hanging fruit.”
How long has everyone been telling you that Google loves blogs? Months? Years? Well, it's true, and I wanted to share an experience that helps reinforce that truth to you.
The Blog That Resurrected My Rankings
I had a site devoted to a particular type of exercise equipment. The site was in the top 7 results for its keywords in Google for over six months. Unfortunately I had server problems and the site went down for a few days. Google crawled the site constantly because it was well-linked, and so big G knew instantly that the site was down. Since it stayed down for a few days, Google must have decided it wasn't coming back up, and its rankings plummetted.
After the site did come back up, it reappeared in Google, but this time on the third page (ranking 25 - 28 for its ..
Techno Who!?
This is the response I usually get from my clients when I suggest that they need to link their blog to Technorati.
But, if you have a blog, or you are thinking of adding one to an existing website, Technorati, the largest blog search engine is definately a site you’ll want to romance with. This specialized search engine is devoted entirely to searching through blogs, and lately, it has started to seriously compete with search engine giants such as Google and Yahoo.
So, What Does Technorati Do?
Essentially, Technorati can index your blogs, whether they are about cooking, financing, engineering or entertainment. The name itself is based on a joining of the words technology and literati, the later referring to a group of critical intellectuals (I didn’t feature in the latter group!). By tagging Technorati throughout your post e.g. this post is about commercial financing, you’ll keep your posts at or near the top of the list at Technorati. And, to simplify this process, you can use a plugin called Tagalize It which makes tagging throughout your blog posts a really simple task.
By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key
part of online culture. “Blog readership shoots up 58% in
2004 6 million Americans get news and information fed to
them through RSS aggregators But 62% of online Americans do
not know what a blog is.” - Pew Internet & American Life
Project
Tip #1 - How and Where Should I Start?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service
such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), or other similar
free services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com or
Blog-City.com. The learning curve for using such free
services allow you to spend more on developing your content
rather than worrying about the advanced areas of scripting,
hosting, or programming.
Tip #2 - The Things You Should Decide to Write About
Although not a required prerequisite for you in order to
write a blog, it is highly recommended to try to find a
topic to write about based on your level of interest and
knowledge. The higher your level of interest, the easier it
is for you to get your quality content posted on your blog.
Always try to choose an area which you can enthusiastically
write about on a daily basis.Try to pay attention to a niche
which suites you well. A niche is basically a targeted
product, service, or topic. Read the rest of this entry »
For my first post a decided to help readers start a blog, this is a list of some tools that can help you create your first blog.
Before you can create the actual blog we need to find a good web host to host our files, I currently host with streamservers.co.uk, you can find your own host at free-webhosts.com.
Now that we’ve found our host head on over to wordpress.org and download the latest version of wordpress (our bloging software), upload this to your server and following the install instructions, now you have to find a theme to fit what you are bloging about I’d recomend wordpress.net.
I’ll update this post with more cool stuff you can do with your blog as soon as i can so check back!
Hi, over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about starting a blog, then i did a domain search realized that my name (andreglegg.com) is available, well I’m going to post about some interesting and cool stuff so make sure you subscribe to my rss feeds.
