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Here’s a quick tip for YouTube users. Let’s say that you’d like to show a YouTube video in class, live from the web. (See this post to learn how to download YouTube videos to your computer for viewing offline.) You link to it from your PowerPoint slide. Once your browser loads and the video begins to play, you remember that the first 5 minutes aren’t relevant to your lecture. You use the controls at the bottom of the video to advance to the spot. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just create a link to the YouTube video so that it would take youRead More →

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Earlier this week I posted information on how to use Zamzar.com to download YouTube videos. I’ve since had some inquiries from readers regarding downloading TED videos. To download any video using Zamzar.com, you need to locate the video file itself. With the TED videos, this takes a little extra effort. Go to the webpage that displays the TED video you want to download. Click the red share button below the video. Then click the copy button next to “embed this video.” Open Word, or your email program, or anything that will let you paste and view a healthy chunk of text. After copying the ’embedRead More →

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UPDATED 6/24/2012  Zamzar received a cease and desist letter this month from Google, the new owners of YouTube.   Google pointed out that downloading YouTube videos violates YouTube’s terms of service.  Read the letter. Zamzar, a free online file conversion tool, has been around for a while. But just because it’s been around doesn’t mean that you know about it, right? Zamzar lets you convert audio, image, document, video, and ebook files from one format to another format. I can envision many scenarios where you might want to do that, but I’m going to cover how you can download videos from a site such asRead More →

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For those who worry about being misunderstood in email, how about video recording your message instead? The cleverly named Eyejot provides an easy web-based user interface for recording and emailing video. They also provide a bookmarklet, a small program that runs inside your web browser, for attaching your own video commentary to web pages. Their bookmarklet is called “Eyejot This!” You just drag the bookmark to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar. Surf to any website, click the “Eyejot This!” bookmark. This window will appear – with your face on the screen, if your webcam is working. Hopefully you won’t see my face on your screen. ThatRead More →