Useful tool for downloading/converting online videos

Another quick link, (this time somewhat useful) 😉

If you want to download online streaming videos to your pc, you could try vconvert.net. A very simple (and pretty) dialog box awaits you there. You enter the URL to the video (like a youtube link) and then check off which conversion you want to download. One nice thing that I found useful is that they will provide an audio (mp3) version of a streaming video. Many times there are presentations and things that I find interesting, but I end up wanting to listen to them in the car during my commute instead of watching them. I could always do the conversion to extract the audio myself, but this might prove simpler. It appears to be free but I believe they offer up a 3x speed increase with a paid version.

The conversions available are .wmv, .mov, .mp4, .3gp, .mp3 and .flv. I tried it with a couple of our Inkscape YouTube vids and it seemed to work flawlessly – I’ve only tried the mp3 and flv conversions. But of course, as with just about everything online, you spins the wheel and takes your chances. 😉

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Speed Linking? Didn’t know it was called that – but I like it.

David Airey posts about ‘speed linking‘. I had never heard the term before, but I’ve seen plenty of it. In fact, Kent Newsome’s Evening Reading posts could be termed speed-link posts and are among my favourite reads.

It’s actually a pretty accurate term too. I find myself zipping through Kent’s ER posts very quickly. I find them to be low commitment – that is, I go in knowing they’re not going to be in-depth dissertations on a single topic – which in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. I enjoy a good long well-written post, but at times I want something lighter and fast-paced. He gives me his quick take on a variety of topics and provides the links should I want them. No pressure. In and out.

And it’s not a simple link blog post. I get to see what things are piquing Kent’s interest at the moment along with his take on them. And it’s fun – because I never know what I’m going to find in there. The writing style has a lot to do with it too. Someone pointing me to their delicious links or to their Google Reader shared feeds is NOT the same thing.

I’m not sure how long Kent (or David) spends crafting these things. I fly through them quickly and they ‘read quickly‘ if that means anything, but I imagine they’re not so quick to put together. I’d be interested in hearing for instance how long it takes Kent to put together one of his evening reads. David? Kent?

Half the Geek

Whoa! I guess I’m not half the geek I thought I was. Scoble posts his top 35 favourite feeds of the month.

I read only three of those 35 (Digg, Lifehacker and Thomas Hawk).

I dropped Engadget a fairly long time back. Too many posts, too little interest.

Boingboing boinged it’s way off my feed list about 9 months ago. Too many posts, and a little too weird. Sport jacket made entirely of meat anyone?

All things ‘crunch‘ – I grew very tired of web2.0 startup news. I am finding this area of news more pretentious and less interesting every day – and it’s not just Mike. But hey, that’s just me. When Steve Gillmor closed the circus tent, I started losing interest – quickly.

Actually, I’m finding that that there are so many good and interesting relatively low-traffic blogs grabbing my interest that they are slowly but surely shoving aside many of the incumbents in my feed reader.

The old guard had better watch out.

Snap Previews or How To Annoy Your Readers

The relatively recent advent of the Snap Preview plugin seems to be annoying just about everyone. Although it does have its defenders.

You can immediately chalk me up as hating them. It’s almost as annoying as those double-underlined thingys that are annoyingly prevalent on some sites (like linuxquestions.org) which pop up adds when you hover on them. (what are they called anyway?)

As an aside, I haven’t been linking nearly enough in my posts as of late. Expect to see more links here in the future. None of them Snap Previews and none of them double-underlined either.