Lots of people have asked me if its possible to download videos from YouTube and how to go about doing it. Yes, indeed its possible, in fact there are two ways of doing it. A) The free, but lengthy way; B) The cheap and quick way. Lets look at option A first (Click here to skip to the cheap and quick way)

OPTION A) The free but lengthy way

STEP 1 : Identifying the video

Identify the full address of the video which you want to download including the YouTube address (eg : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P6UU6m3cqk. You can get this from the address bar at the top of your browser window or by clicking on the More Info link at the right hand bar, from the URL box. Copy this address and have it ready to be used in the next step.

STEP 2 : Preparing for download

Open up a new browser window or tab and go to http://keepvid.com/. Here you will need to paste the address of the video you copied in STEP 1 into the box which says “URL”. Next click on the download button on the right hand side of the box DO NOT click on the Download, Convert and Play icons they are just advertisements.

STEP 3 : Downloading the video

Depending on the video you have chosen, you will be shown links which allow you to download the video file directly in a green box at the bottom of the page. Here you can choose to download either the low quality (FLV) format video or high quality (MPEG 4) format video by right clicking on the relevant link and choosing Save As. If you choose the Low Quality (FLV) option, you will have to rename the file from get_video to something else with an FLV extension, for example you may call the video “funny.flv”

STEP 4 : Playing the video

Depending on the video format you saved your file in Step 3, you will either need to have an FLV player to view the lower quality video file you downloaded in the FLV format, or an MPEG 4 player to view the high quality video file. FLV Player is a good player to use to view FLV video files. Apple Quicktime and many other video players are able to handle MPEG 4 videos without problems. Enjoy!

OPTION B) The cheap and quick way

STEP 1 : Download VideoPiggy

If you do not want the hassle of performing the steps above each time you need to download a video from YouTube, and want a quick and easy way to get your YouTube videos, I recommend VideoPiggy, an excellent piece of software which will make it effortless to download videos from YouTube and to convert them into any format you choose for various applications (such as inserting into PowerPoint presentations). Video Piggy will also download videos from other video servers including Google Video, Metacafe and MySpaceTV!

Click here to get VideoPiggy now!

Malaysians are greatly disadvantaged since we do not have free access to foreign media unless it goes through the censor board first. Freeview satellite tv is unheard of, and all we have is Astro which is a restricted commercial satellite tv service.

The Internet has been responsible to liberate a lot of such constraints which have been imposed on Malaysians all this while, most notable is the easier access to uncensored local and foreign news on the the World Wide Web. But what about TV? We are still restricted as to what we can and cannot watch.

iSoftwareTV is the perfect answer to this problem. Essentially, it is a piece of software which gives you access to over 3000 channels featuring Full DVD Quality Movies, International TV Shows, Music Videos and much more! This amazing piece of software has received acclaim from CNN, MSNBC, CNET and America Online. The best part is that since it is software, it will work wherever you are in the world! All you need is access to an Internet connection.

Your Astro subscription easily sets you back RM 80- RM90 a month on average, and you get to watch reruns of the same shows again and again. If you are in the United States, traditional satellite TV and Cable services can cost easily in excess of $90/month. iSoftwareTV costs only $39.95 ONE TIME. There is no monthly recurring fee to be paid at all. Even if you convert that to Ringgit Malaysia, it comes up to about RM 120 which is what you are paying A MONTH if you subscribe to every channel on Astro (not including Box Office shows).

So the next time you switch on your TV and start flipping channels looking for something worthwhile to watch, consider getting . It is simply liberating!

The Clarion BLT370 Bluetooth® Receiver is perhaps the best option for anyone who is considering upgrading an upgrade to their car stereo. Essentially, it is a Bluetooth transceiver (transmitter-receiver) which connects to the Auxilliary input of your exsiting car stereo. It supports 3 Bluetooth profiles, namely Handset (or Handsfree), A2DP and AVRCP.

The handsfree profile allows it to pair with your mobile phone so that you can make and receive calls wirelessly in your car. A built-in microphone picks up your voice, while the voice of the other party is played over your car speakers. At the same time, the BLT 370 can also pair with a music device which supports the high-quality Bluetooth audio protocol, A2DP. Many mobile phones today also support this which means you can use your mobile phone for phone calls and music streaming with the BLT 370. The AVRCP profile allows the device to intelligently pause your music and switch to Handsfree mode when you place or receive a call while listening to music.

I have paired mine with my Motorola V3XX mobile phone and 4th generation Apple iPod Photo. I had to purchase a Sony Bluetooth Wireless Transmitter for iPod dongle to allow my music to be streamed via Bluetooth from my iPod. While there are many Bluetooth dongles available the small size of the dongle appealed to me. Plus, it does not need to be charged separately as it draws what little power it needs from the iPod battery itself.

If you are comfortable with messing with the electronics in your car, you can probably hook this device up yourself. I got mine installed from Quest Audio in Subang Jaya, for a mere RM 380 including installation. The sound quality is as good as what my in-dash 6-disc CD changer produces. Another plus point is that I can easily pass my iPod to a passenger sitting in the rear seat and they can wirelessly control the music in the car right from the iPod.

So if you are thinking of upgrading your car sound system, give the Clarion BLT 370 a serious thought. You will be glad you did.

A friend and his wife came over last weekend seeking for advice on a new Flat Screen TV for their new home. There are many technical variables which need to be considered before deciding upon a flat screen tv, but perhaps the most hyped feature is screen resolution. This is commonly marketed as HD-Ready or Full-HD 1080p.

If you were to go to any electronics store in Kuala Lumpur, you would notice that most sales personnel would try to sell you the latest Full-HD screens, whether or not you really need it. The reason? Higher commissions. Full HD screens have driven the prices of lower resolution screens down, which is an excellent thing. Unfortunately, if you are not fully aware of the technical details, you may get influenced by the sales pitch and end up with something that does not mactch your needs.

When deciding on which resolution to go for, the first thing you will need to know is the type of content you are going to watch on it. Chances are, like most people with basic entertainment requirements, you will be primarily watching Astro and an occasional DVD movie. This is considered medium to low resolution content with a typical resolution of about 500 horizontal lines. If you were to watch this on a high-resolution flat-screen TV, the content is going to pixelate. What this means is that the picture is going to look very blocky (like the image of the eye below). This is similar to what would happen if you took a photo with your digital camera at a low-resolution (such as 2 megapixel) and printed it at a large size.

If on the other hand, you are an avid gamer, and have an Microsoft Xbox 360, or a Sony PlayStation 3, you should get a Full HD screen to enjoy the breathtaking detail which videogames today have to offer. Another thing which would justify a Full-HD screen is if you are going to watch high definition video, which comes in either Blue Ray or HD-DVD formats. A Sony PlayStation 3 also doubles up a Blue-Ray player, so you can watch high definition movies.

Personally, if all you are going to watch is Astro and DVD videos, I would recommend that you try and source an older Flat Screen TV with a low resolution of about 1024×768 pixels. You may be able to get this set at a bargain and it will produce a smoother image compared to the newer Flat Screen TVs if you are watching Astro and DVDs.

So the next time you are at the electronics store, with breath-taking images being displayed on the Flat Screen TVs, ask the sales assistant to show you what the screen looks like with Astro or a normal DVD. Do not be surprised to see a pixelated image. But hey, its better to see it at the shop than once you take it back home with you.

Many people use domain name forwarding or masking in order to present a professional image to their readers while being able to host their websites on shared or low-cost hosting. For example, if someone has a free website at www.geocities.com/samplewebsite, they may want to allow users to access it using a personalized domain name such as www.theirwebsite.com.

One option is to purchase a web hosting account from a hosting provider and associate that hosted account with the domain name of their choice. While this is a good option, it may not be the most cost-effective method, since some people may have many domain names, and would instead like to share one web hosting account across all those domains.

The solution to this is domain-name forwarding, which is essentially a simple frame page which hosts the original site within it. This service is usually provided free of charge by most domain name registrars with the purchase of a domain name. The end-user can then key in the more meaningful domain name, while the original domain name is loaded in the background.

However, if you were to host a site based on Wordpress / Joomla or a similar CMS based on the PHP/MySQL platform, you may encounter that you are unable to use the user login (and admin login) feature if you were to access your site from the forwarded domain name, but works fine if you were to login using the original domain name.

The reason for this is that Internet Explorer uses the address bar in the browser to set the cookie (and not the URL of the originating content), therefore causing the inability to login. I first faced this issue when I developed a site using Mambo a long time ago, and found a solution which worked. Since then, I have successfully implemented this in my other sites using Wordpress and Joomla.

If you are facing this same problem, I would like to share the solution with you, and this is what needs to be done. Open up wp-login.php (it should be in your Wordpress root folder), and just below line 9 (in Wordpress 2.x) - the line that says header(bla bla), put this line: header( “P3P: CP=CAO DSP COR CURa ADMa DEVa OUR IND PHY ONL UNI COM NAV INT DEM PRE”);

What this does is that it adds a P3P Compact Privacy Policy to your site. Just by doing this, you should be up and running already, and nothing else needs to be done. However, if you need to know more about P3P or what this is doing in detail, let me refer you to the Mambo support page where I discovered this solution : http://forum.mamboserver.com/showthread.php?t=13076

All the best and do let me know if you need help with this workaround.

In today’s post I would like to share my experience with the Linksys WRT54GX ver2 router. Granted it is based on 802.11G MIMO technology which has been superceded by Draft N technology, it does have some excellent points which make it a strong contender and the subject of this post.

I have experimented with a few Draft-N wireless routers from Level One and Belkin and have discovered they stop short of delivering the promised range on the box especially in multi-storey houses and buildings.

The Linksys WRT54GX on the other hand is able to broadcast a strong signal through several concrete walls despite being placed in less-than-perfect locations, such as below staircases and nooks and corners.

This router has given me excellent service all these years, with hardly any need for power-cycling or resetting, while being paired with a simple TMNet Billion modem. So recently when this router began giving me some trouble I immediately took a trip to Low Yat to purchase a new unit of this exact model, given its reliability in the past. My trip turned out to be a disappointment when I found out this model had been discontinued and replaced with N routers. Given my not-so-fantastic experience with Level One and Belkin N routers, I decided to give the Linksys N routers a skip and went home and decided to perform a thorough examination of the router to determine what was wrong.

Upon further checking, I discovered the router was working well when I connected to it through a wired connection, but the wireless portion was not working altogether. In fact, it was worse, the status screen on the web interface indicated there was no wireless module installed at all. The wireless light on the router failed to come on as well. I decided to upgrade the firmware to version 2.00.20 and it was still the same. Every setting seemed correct and I was beginning to wonder if the wireless module had malfunctioned.

That’s when I performed a search on Google for “WRT54GX wireless MAC missing”. It is amazing what the correct keywords can do for a query. It can really mean a world of difference between getting the results you need and sifting through pages after pages of irrelevant results.

Anyway, the search results lead me to this page on the Linksys forums which was a post by hameluck from the United States with the exact same problem I was facing!

The best part was that he had discovered a solution to the problem, and the reason why the wireless module was not working was that the wireless daughter card in the modem had become loose from its connector. Without wasting anytime, I unscrewed the device and sure enough I saw that the wireless card had become loose from its connector. I pushed it back in, powered the router back on and voila! the wireless module was functional again.

As mentioned above, the router is placed below a staircase and despite all the concrete, it is still able to send a strong signal across an entire double storey house, right up to the very corners of the house. Despite all the marketing hype, I have yet to see an 802.11n router perform as well as this router can.

Most offices today are WiFi enabled, given the ubiquity of broadband Internet and mobile computing. However, these WiFi networks are intended for internal use, since they typically would provide access to company network resources such as printers, servers, shared folders and the like.

So, when a visitor or a client drops by the office and would like to hook up to the WiFi to check his/her email, a potential security risk is created. The risk is not only limited to malicious users with the intention to abuse network resources, it could also cause viruses to creep into the company’s network over the wireless connection.

Now consider a scenario of someone who would like to share their broadband connection at home with the people living around the block, much like a neighborhood hotspot. Despite the noble intention, a huge security risk is created if they were to allow anyone to access their network.

So the question now becomes how to go about sharing a single broadband connection wirelessly, while maintaining the security and integrity of the network? When I came across this need some time ago, I searched high and low on the Internet without much help.  After a bit of experimenting, I discovered the perfect solution to this problem, and is known as Double NAT.

The first thing that has to happen is that you will need two WiFi routers. The reason for this is that you want to ensure your internal network is secure and accessible only to people whom you specifically allow. The other WiFi router will serve as your Public Hotspot. You can even choose to leave this unencrypted if you want to allow anyone at all to use your wireless connection.

Next, you would set up each WiFi router with different SSIDs, so that they serve as distinct wireless networks. It is highly recommended to encrypt your primary (or internal WiFi) connection with WPA, you may even choose to hide the SSID if its purely for internal use and you do not intend to make your internal WiFi discoverable.

Also ensure that the two routers are on different channels so that their signals do not interfere with each other (especially if they are going to be placed within each other’s wireless range). Next, set the LAN IP addresses of both these routers to different subnets. For example, if your primary WiFi router’s IP address is in the range of 192.168.0.xxx, you could set up your secondary WiFi router in the range or 192.168.1.xxx. Finally, ensure that the DHCP server function on both routers is enabled.

Usually, in a typical PPPoE setup, the WiFi router is connected to the ADSL modem on the “WAN” or “Internet” port. The WiFi router is then configured to ‘dial’ the PPPoE connection using a username or password. In this scenario, we are going to extend this network setup by linking the “WAN” port of the second WiFi router to a vacant “LAN” port on the primary WiFi router.

The Internet connection of the second WiFi router should be configured not as PPPoE, but with DHCP, usually with a setting called “Obtain an IP address automatically from my ISP”, or “Dynamic IP address”. Using the IP address ranges in the example above, with this setup, the primary WiFi router will assign an IP address in the range of 192.168.0.xxx to the WAN port of the secondary router, while the secondary router will further assign IP address in the range of 192.168.1.xxx to its clients.

Therefore, you have effectively separated the two wireless networks on different subnets using different encryption keys, while sharing the same broadband connection.

While some people feel that this approach (known as Double NAT) is not good, I personally have set this up in two different locations with perfect results. The wireless clients on the secondary WiFi are able to run all Internet-enabled applications such as Skype, MSN Messenger and the like in addition to surfing the web and accessing emails without any problems or extra configuration.

Recently, TM Net has implemented a series of measures to mitigate the amount of spam on its networks, specifically its ADSL service, Streamyx. One of these measures is stricter filtering, and in some cases blocking of port 25 for all Streamyx accounts with dynamic IP addresses.

What this means is that if you have subscribed to a Personal Streamyx account, or a Business Broadband (SOHO Package), you may experience problems with sending out emails with the default settings of port 25, especially if you are sending out emails using your own domain name. If your customers frequently complain of not receiving your emails, this could be a tell tale sign. Users who are using their Streamyx email accounts may not be affected (example@streamyx.com) by this, since it involves emails on hosted domains (eg info@hosteddomain.com).

Personally, I experienced problems with sending out emails from my locally hosted and foreign hosted domains on port 25 and that is when I discovered this countermeasure by TM Net. In my case, my host Webserver has provided an alternative port, 587 for SMTP and this works much more reliably compared to port 25 (since TM Net is performing heavy filtering on this port). Therefore, it is advisable to contact your web host to find out if they have any alternative ports you can use for SMTP, especially if you experience slowness in sending emails.

If your web host does not have an alternative port, you can try TM Net’s suggested solution, which is to use smtp-proxy.tm.net.my as the SMTP server in place of your hosted domain name (eg mail.hosteddomain.com). For more information on how to set this up for your email clients, refer to this website : http://webmail.tm.net.my/info/proxy.html

If you have a fresh installation of Windows XP, you will realize that it won’t play DVD videos, or a host of other audio/video formats on the Internet, including MPEG4 videos encoded with codecs such as DivX, Xvid, H.264 and the like. Even if you do not need to be able to watch these newer MPEG4 video formats, you will at some time need to be able to at least watch a DVD Video.

However, if you were to pop in a DVD into your computer expecting Windows Media Player to play it, you will be in for a surprise, as it will not play your DVD Video if you have not installed a DVD decoder software. This is most likely to happen if you installed the DVD drive into your computer yourself, or if you have newly formatted your computer (since any DVD decoding software which may have originally come with your computer would have been erased).

If you were to perform a search on Google to solve this issue, you may come across several different websites which will point you in different directions for a solution. Most of them lead to commercial software which then allow your computer to play the DVD content. One example is this excerpt from a blog post entitled DVD Playback in Windows XP, hosted on Microsoft’s servers:

If you are unable to find an installed DVD decoder, you can purchase one from the same vendors from which PC manufacturers license theirs. Ravisent, InterVideo, and CyberLink all have DVD Decoder Packs available for purchase and download over the Internet. Windows Media Technologies also lists third-party software vendors who have DVD Decoder Packs available. The cost from each vendor runs about $14.95, unless you want to pay a little more and get a combo-pack which also includes MP3 encoding. I tried products from the three vendors mentioned above, and they all worked great. Their decoder packs installed quickly and easily, and as soon as installation was complete, Windows Media Player immediately started to play the movie after I inserted a DVD.

While some of the software mentioned above are good, the good news is that there is no real need to fork out your hard earned money just to be able to playback your multimedia content. Windows Media Player is an excellent video player and you do not really need to pay for another video player on your computer. All you really need is a proper set of codecs which will help Windows Media Player (or any other video player on your computer for that mattter) understand the format in which your multimedia content was created in.

Personally, I would recommend the XP Codec Pack, or the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack depending on your needs. Essentially, both of these are a set of codecs which have been carefully put together to enable the playback of most audio/video formats. If alll you want to watch is DVD Video or AVIs encoded with DivX or Xvid, then XP Codec Pack would suffice. If you want to be sure of being able to watch practically any audio/video content available today, regardless of what codec it was encoded with, you will want to go for the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack.

Both of these codec packs also include Windows Player Classic, which allows you to access the various functions included with the codecs, allowing finer control over how the audio and video content is decoded, thereby tremendously improving your viewing experience. So if you find that you are unable to play a certain format of video or audio on your computer, be it DVD content, or a movie you downloaded from the Internet, be sure to install one of the codec packs mentioned above, and you should be well on your way to enjoying your multimedia content.

Someone requested me to recommend a laptop for casual computing (surfing, word processing, etc), and I immediately fired up the browser and navigated to Dell, my favorite laptop manufacturer. When I checked out the laptop deals on offer in conjunction with the upcoming Chinese New Year celebration, I was amazed!

One offer I found irresistable was the Dell Vostro 1400 Notebook, configured with the following specifications:

• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5270 (1.4GHz, 2MB Cache, 800 MHz FSB)
• Windows XP Home Edition
• 14.1″ Widescreen WXGA Display (1280×800)
• 2GB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
• 80GB SATA HDD
• 8X DVD+/-RW Combo Drive (Dual Layer)
• Intel Graphics Accelerator X3100
• Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 Dual Band 802.11a/g 54Mbps Wireless Mini Card
• 1 Year NBD Warranty
• 6-cell 56Whr Lithium Ion Battery
• Dell Lightweight Nylon Case
• Microsoft Works 8.5

Belive it or not, a brand new Dell Vostro 1400 with the above specifications can be yours for only RM 2317.00. As with any Dell system, you are free to tweak the specifications to your preference and the new price will be calculated automatically on-the-fly. But hurry! This unbelievable offer is only available until 01/02/2008.

To check out this and other Dell laptop offers, visit : http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/notebooks_better?c=my&cs=mybsd1&l=en&s=bsd&~ck=ticker&~lt=popup