Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Media Files
How To Optimize Your YouTube Videos Online
Sep 16th
By the time you finish reading this post, over 48 hours of new video content has been uploaded to YouTube.com — that’s a lot of videos each and every minute, day after day.
So the question quickly becomes, how do you make your videos stand out from the crowd?
The first answer is the make sure each video you upload is nice to look at and good enough to pass along. The actual video quality matters.
YouTube has wised up and added one feature I’ve long said they need to give casual users like you and me who want to upload periodic videos to the site. They’ve finally added an EDIT capability. Yea!
Now, you can do some *very basic* video quality optimization so that your iPhone vids get a little polish before others see them online. The video stabilization feature is one of the most interesting options so that your shaky camera footage calms down a bit during playback.
I’d love for YouTube to add features like Animoto offers so that you can go to YouTube as a one-stop-shop for actually creating and editing your work and then publish online all in one spot. But till then, we’ll take whatever we can get that helps us share better quality videos…for at least some of that 48 hours of new content, minute after minute of the day.
Mail Photos As Postcards To Anyone From Your Cellphone For $0.99
Dec 29th
Recently, we reviewed the camera capabilities of the latest and greatest cell phones on the market. Whether you have the 5 megapixel camera onboard the Apple iPhone4 or the slick 12 megapixel cam on the Nokia N8, most people carrying current smartphones can snap photos in a flash at decent quality.
Most of the time, we email the photos right from the phone to friends. But there are times when the photos come out so nice or the event was extra special — so an emailed photo doesn’t really do justice to the memory captured with the cell phone camera.
I’m testing out a new service from CellPhonePostcards.com which creates photo postcards on the fly and mails them via snail mail to anyone in your address book online. Now, I should be able to send a physical postcard to anyone I take a photo with on the spot and they’ll get it within a couple of days — all without licking any stamps.
The service is actually pretty ingenious. You take the photo, and then send the photo via text messaging (MMS) to the service at 77468 (it spells “PRINT” on the phone keypad) and include the hashtag shortcut of the person in your addressbook online, say #KENNY.
The service identifies you via your caller ID and then looks up the person’s address based on the hashtag name you sent. They’ll print the text message message as the postcard message on the back and mail out the photo postcard to your recipient.
All this costs $0.99 per postcard. Given the postage cost of the actual postcard stamp and the going rate for printing out regular photos at the local drugstore like CVS, that means the service costs less than 50 cents for each time you use it. Totally reasonable in my book. The only catch is that you have to pre-pay for bundles of cellphone postcard credits as a 10-pack or more. So $9.90 for 10 postcards at a time. Still, not a bad deal!
Here’s a video that explains the service and how to send a cellphone photo postcard:
UPDATE: Right now, if you sign-up for a new account, they’ll give you 10 free postcard credits – including postage – to try out the service. If you’re going to sign-up, please share a comment below about what you’re expecting or what you find useful or convenient about the service.
Poor Man’s iTunes: How To Download / Extract mp3 Audio From YouTube Videos
Dec 25th
iTunes = Lots Of Choices
There are over 13 million music songs priced at 69¢, 99¢, or $1.29 each on the Apple iTunes store as of 2010. That’s a lot of downloadable music content.
YouTube = Even More
But there’s another source of audio content that some people don’t think about — YouTube. I still use iTunes (or the Amazon mp3 store) for regular music downloads. But I also like to listen to other types of audio content to make good use of my time on my commute, waiting in lines, and other periods of downtime.
YouTube actually has tons of video content that is great even for the audio portion alone — I’m talking about lectures, tutorials, podcasts, interviews, sermons, and speeches. But by having them trapped within a video doesn’t make it as useful when you want to listen to it on the run (and sometimes literally!).
Extract Audio From YouTube Videos
The question is how to get the audio out of a video file on YouTube?
A couple of sites lets you download just the audio within a YouTube video. All you have to do is supply the video url and let them know if you want a regular or high quality version of the audio to be extracted.
Free Download Helpers
Two sites that work well (there are a bunch!) are:
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www.video2mp3.net
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www.vid2mp3.com
After the site does some quick thinking, it supplies you with a download link or even a direct URL to pass along to someone else so they can grab the audio file as well.
There’s over 150 million videos on YouTube supposedly. That’s a whole universe of potential mp3 files to download for you! Enjoy!
A Snapshot of the Top 5 Snapshot Cell Phones Today
Nov 10th
The photographic capabilities of mobile phones are increasing with each new batch of handsets and now it is almost impossible to find a high end smartphone which does not offer high definition video capture along with a high megapixel count for still shots.
Here are five of the best. . .
iPhone 4
With a five megapixel camera and LED flash the iPhone 4 is the best in Apple`s range when it comes to taking pictures. It also has the ability to shoot 720p video clips at a smooth 30 fps and has extra features such as touch to focus and various effects to apply. A forward-facing VGA camera supplements its rear-facing snapper for video calling and with 16GB or 32GB of storage space on board you can capture hours of footage and thousands of photos without filling it up.
Nokia N8
The N8 is intended to be a serious camera phone, so it is no surprise to see its 12 megapixel camera outclassing every other handset in this list. With a Xenon flash it is also the most capable when it comes to illuminating dark spaces. Digital zoom of up to 30x magnification is on offer when you are taking stills or recording video in 720p HD and like the iPhone it has a forward-facing secondary camera for video calls. Geotagging is applied to both videos and photos so you can find out the location later and there is 16GB of onboard storage space expandable by an extra 32GB if you buy a separate microSD memory card, which should be more than enough for all of your media.
HTC Desire HD
With an eight megapixel camera and dual LED flash the Desire HD is able to handle solid still photographs and can also shoot video in high definition at the same 720p resolution as its rivals. You can enable the LED flashes to act as a light for videoing in dark situations and you can tweak the settings from sharpness to exposure using simple on-screen sliders which are touch sensitive and intuitive. The autofocus is fairly competent although unlike other phones you do not get a dedicated macro mode for close-up shooting, which might be a problem for some users.
Samsung Galaxy S
Like the Desire HD this is an Android smartphone and it packs fairly similar five megapixel camera which matches up with the iPhone 4`s unit. Thanks to the 1GHz processor onboard it is responsive and easy to capture images or shoot video at 720p. You can find Galaxy S variants with 16GB or 8GB of onboard storage, which should give you enough room to work with as long as you upload images from time to time. Sadly the lack of any kind of flash, LED or otherwise, means that when the light is dim the Galaxy S is less than perfect.
BlackBerry Torch
Another five megapixel camera is affixed to the Torch, showing that this is the de facto image capture resolution for a high end mobile phone. An LED flash is also present although it is not as bright as the dual-LED solution of the Desire HD or the Xenon flash found on the Nokia N8. You can alternate between different shooting modes depending on the situation, but a lack of HD video capture lets it down.
DO YOU TAKE MORE PHOTOS WITH YOUR CELLPHONE CAMERA OR YOUR DEDICATED POINT AND SHOOT CAMERA?
15 Sites That Help You To Share or Transfer Large Files Over The Internet
Oct 11th
These days, collaboration is a buzz word that is becoming a reality.
Along with collaboration is a nifty term called “file sharing” – it used to be something that sounds easier than it really is.
It used to be you had to put it on a flash drive or burn a CD or DVD to move large files back and forth.
Or if the file was big, but not huge, you could simply attach it to an email and click SEND. But these days, files can grow beyond the 20 MB limit quite easily. And if we’re talking about media files, the 20MB limit is a joke.
But these days, it’s much easier to transfer files back and forth.
Here’s a quick hit list of file sharing services that let you send large files to someone else (or yourself!) over the Internet: Read the rest of this entry »
How To Transfer Big Files To Co-workers, Friends, Family Via Email
May 15th
These days, sending big files to other people via email (or even yourself!) is becoming more and more common.
Any video file, or those huge 12-15 megapixel photos of the kids’ soccer game, etc sometimes exceed the email attachment limits of your email provider.
Most of the popular web-mail email services like Gmail, Yahoo!Mail, and AOL all have file size limits of 25 MB or so for attachments. This means that you may have to send multiple emails, each with the various files you want to send, or you may even be prevented from sending the file at all if it is a large file. Video files typically encounter problems when trying to send through email.
So what can you do besides invoking snail mail? or waiting to hand over a CD or DVD the next time you see the other person?
There are free services online that let you upload files, and then simply send a download link that are live for a limited period of time – many times just a week or less, giving the recipient enough time to retrieve the file before the file become unavailable. Although there are services which let you transfer files via peer-to-peer, so that you don’t have to upload and leave your file in the hands of someone else, most people will want to use web-based services which temporarily hold onto your file until the recipient grabs it at their own convenience.
One of the services I’ve recently been using has an upper limit of 1 GB of file size, deletes the file after 5 days, allows up to 20 downloads of the file and is free. . . Read the rest of this entry »
How To Download YouTube Videos
Mar 6th
Sometimes you need a video clip that’s available online for offline use – like using it as an example for a class or workshop.
Other times, you may want to be able to play it offline for your own review at a later time when it’s more convenient for you, or when you know you won’ t have internet access (like on a plane).
There’s definitely a bunch of sites available now that let you download videos from YouTube and other video sharing sites out there.
Usually all you have to do is copy/paste the video page URL from Youtube, MetaCafe or other video site into the form on the video download site and you’re all set to go.
But once in awhile, your favorite Youtube video grabber site can’t download the video file. That’s when you have to go looking for other options.
Other than Kisstube and Vixy, I found another favorite that seems to work for me . . .
SaveVid.com works just the same. This site does give a couple of download options including flv format, mp4 as well as HD video which YouTube presents sometimes.
SaveVid.com also shares some of the videos that others have used the site to download so you can get a sense of what people are watching and downloading.
Do you have any other favorite sites to download videos from online video platforms? Please add them in the comments below.
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!