This article tells your how to download videos, not only from YouTube, but also from other video sharing sites using Firefox. I’ll be considering only YouTube here. The procedure will be the same for any streaming media.

Note (07 Jul, 2009): Though this is a very cool trick, right now, I personally use Internet Download Manager with it’s integrated browser add-ons for downloading embedded stuff (including flash, videos and audio).

Note for linux users: See this comment by Binny V A

Step 1: Go to YouTube and play the video you want to download.

Step 2: After the video has loaded, open a new tab (Ctrl + T) or a new Firefox window and type

about:cache

in the address bar.

Copy the location of the Cache Directory. (It’s different for everyone)

Screenshot:

Step 3: Open the Run dialog box (Start -> Run), paste the path of the Cache Directory (Ctrl + V), and press enter. You’ll now see a list of files with weird names

Step 4: Sort the files according to their size. The biggest file is most probably your video. Usually, the size of a 4-5 minute long video is around 10 MB.

Step 5: After you locate the largest file, copy it to some folder on your computer and give it an extension – .flv

You can play this using any player which supports FLV format. A good player is the Media Player Classic which is available with the K-Lite Codec Pack. You can also try FLV Player.

If you want to convert the flv to an avi file, you can download Free Flv to Avi Converter.

This trick can be applied to any video sharing site. The only thing is that you have to give the correct extension (In youtube, it’s .flv) to the file.

Cheers!

Won’t a background image look great for your Pen Drive? This is a brief tutorial on setting a background image for your USB Drive (Note that this is also applicable to folders). This is for Windows XP (it might work for Vista too, tell me if it does). Let’s begin.

1. If you want to use this trick for a folder (say, C:\Games), then first open command prompt (Run -> cmd). Then type

attrib +s C:\Games

and then do the following.

Create a desktop.ini file in your Pen Drive (folder) and copy the following into it.

[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]
IconArea_Image=bg.jpg
IconArea_Text=0×00000000

2. Put your background picture into your drive (folder) and modify IconArea_Image suitably.
For example, if the name of your image is, say, wallpaper.jpg, then you need to replace

IconArea_Image=bg.jpg

by

IconArea_Image=wallpaper.jpg

It’s not necessary that your image should be a JPEG. You can apply this for most of the popular image formats. For example, if you want a gradient.png as your background, then

Replace

IconArea_Image=bg.jpg

with this

IconArea_Image=gradient.png

You can also modify the Icon’s font color by giving the hex code corresponding to the color you want.

To give a white color to the icon text, replace

IconArea_Text=0x00000000

with

IconArea_Text=0x00FFFFFF

You can also use any other color by replacing the last 6 zeroes by the corresponding color codes (refer this for color codes).

3. Change the attributes of desktop.ini and the image to hidden. You can do this by selecting the files (desktop.ini and the image file), Right-click -> Properties, and under the Attributes section, enable Hidden. This is not necessary, but it’ll help you impress your friends more

Refresh your folder to see the result.

Here is my screenshot

UPDATE (3/15/08): Code shortened.
UPDATE (3/16/08): Tip for using this trick for other folders added.
UPDATE (3/20/08): Code shortened even more. Thanks to Mechwarrior5.

Cheers

Note: This trick is not specifically for BSNL Broadband, It applies for anyone who uses a broadband connection which requires you to connect using your username and password.

Wanted to schedule your BSNL Broadband Night Unlimited Connection to dial up automatically to the internet when the “happy hours” start because you wanted to download a huge file/use uTorrent? Well, here is a simple method. Now you don’t have to wake up every morning at 2:00 AM to connect or again at 8:00 AM to disconnect your connection.

Well, lets begin assuming that you have already finished setting up your connection, port forwarding etc. (see this for more information if you haven’t). This trick is very short and simple.

Open notepad and type:

rasdial [connection name] [username] [password]

without the square brackets.

For example, If I have named my connection Dataone, my username is pranav and my password is iwonttellyoumypass, I’ll type

rasdial Dataone pranav iwonttellyoumypass

Got it? Now click on File -> Save As…

Type in Connect.bat as the file name, select the location.

Note: You need to select a place where you will keep it permanently, If you move this file later on, then it won’t connect automatically.

For making a batch file which disconnects, open notepad again, copy and paste the following:

rasdial /disconnect

Save this as Disconnect.bat in the same location as before(not necessary).

But we need to schedule the connection. So what we do is open the Scheduled Tasks program(Thought it was waste when you saw it somewhere in the start menu, did you? Well now that is coming to your rescue!!!)

Go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Scheduled Tasks

Double click Add Scheduled Task to open a wizard. Click Next > Then click Browse, go to the location where you saved the Connect.bat file, click on it and then press open. Now select Daily and click next. Set the start time to 2:05 AM(This is the time when the night unlimited time starts. Since there can be uncertainty about when It becomes 2:00 AM for BSNL, we set a safe 2:05 AM or 2:10 AM) and press Next. Enter your Windows XP account password, if any, or else leave blank.

For those who didn’t enter a password:
Press next, check Open advanced properties for this task when I click on Finish and press finish. In the advanced properties dialog box which pops up, check Run only if logged on option at the bottom of the box. Click apply and then ok.

For those who entered a password, click next and then click finish.

Now, your computer will automatically connect to the internet at 2:05 AM.

If you also want to schedule disconnecting, then repeat the above steps selecting Disconnect.bat and setting the start time to 7:55 AM.

Now you can keep your computer running and sleep peacefully. Sweet dreams!

Wanted to learn java but never knew where to start? Well, if you have ever tried downloading the Java SE Development Kit (JDK), you might have found out that just installing it does not let you start programming right away! There are a few things to be taken care of. For people who came here looking for instructions after downloading the JDK, skip to the installation part.

Step 1: Downloading the Java Development Kit

For any programming language, you need to get some necessities in order to begin. For beginning programming in java, you’ll need the Java Development Kit. When I’m writing this, the latest version seems to be JDK 6 Update 4. So download it. If you are having problems downloading, I’ll outline the steps quickly.

Select platform: Windows, check I agree to the Java SE Development Kit 6 License Agreement (I doubt if anyone’s going to read this!?) and click Continue. Check the Windows Offline Installation and press Download Selected with Sun Download Manager. You’ll get a downlaod prompt for a .jnlp file. Either open it on the fly or download it and open it. Now the Sun Download Manager will open. Cool, isn’t it? Enter your download destination and then finish off with the settings. Your download of the JDK will now start. In case it doesn’t start, press the Start button.

Step 2: Installing the Java Development Kit

To install the JDK, browse to the location where you had downloaded the JDK(most probably a file called jdk-6u4-windows-i586-p.exe) and double click on the it. Go through the normal installation process and then reboot(only if the installer asks you to).

You have installed all the files necessary for compiling and running your first java program, but it will be a bit tedious now. You will have to provide the full path to the java compiler (C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_04\Bin) each time you compile a program. Do you want to do that? I don’t think so. So now, lets make the process easier by setting the PATH and the CLASSPATH. Don’t worry about what they are right now.

Step 3: Setting the PATH and CLASSPATH

1. Right click on the My Computer icon and click on Properties.

2. Open the Advanced tab and click on Environment Variables(wow! this is something new isn’t it?)

3. Click the New button for System Variables. Type the Variable name as

JAVA_HOME

and the Variable value as

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_04

Please note that you need to type the location of your installation directory. It may vary on where you installed the JDK. So make sure you are typing the correct path.

Click OK to finish the process.

4. Now scroll down in System Variables itself to find PATH. Select it and click the edit button. Warning! Do not delete the existing value

Add this to the beginning of Variable value

.;%JAVA_HOME%\bin;

5. Click the New button again

Enter the Variable name as
CLASSPATH

And the Variable value
.;%JAVA_HOME%\lib\tools.jar

and finally click the OK button.

6. Apply the effect (Press OK for the Environment Variables windows, APPLY and the OK for the Advanced tab)

Finally, exit all windows (close all command prompt windows, if any) for the change to take place.

I just found a much better way to set the path. Here is what you have to do:

1. Open the Run dialog box by pressing Win + R or by clicking on Run from the start menu.

2. Type notepad C:\autoexec.bat and press enter.

3. Most probably, a blank notepad file would open. Type the following

set path = C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_04\bin

and then save it.

4. Reboot your computer to start off writing your first program

Step 4: Testing a Program

If you are new to java, you can test the your first java program by following the instructions given here

In any case, here is a sample program if you’re to lazy to click on the link above

1
2
3
4
5

class HelloApp {
public static void main(String Args[]) {
System.out.println(”Hello World!”);
}
}

I hope this tutorial could help you. If you like this, then be sure to Stumble it.

Cheers

Does your torrent downloads work properly? Is your µTorrent client downloading stuff at its maximum speed? Have people told you to “forward ports” and you never understand what they mean? Then this is the right article for you! In this post, I’ll explain how to remove the or the signs in the status bar of µTorrent and get the sign.

This guide is mainly for BSNL Broadband (formerly Dataone) users with the UTStarcom UT3000R2U router. The instructions given in this guide may/may not work for other routers. So think before you experiment.

When I entered the world of BSNL Broadband (around 2 months ago on plan 500, 2mbit), I was quite satisfied with the connection speeds. But within a day, I spotted that my µTorrent download speeds were lower than the speeds I used to get on my previous 256k connection. I was sad. Immediately, I began searching for a solution. I came across many discussion posts where people suggested PortForward.com.

I tried it out, but I never even found the page described in the screenshot. It took quite many days, but finally, I came across 2 methods to fix the problem for those on the UTStarcom routers. So in this post, I’ll explain step by step, both the methods and help you fix the “port not forwarded” problem in µTorrent.

Method I:

1. Point your browser to http://192.168.1.1 (Note: Preferably use another browser, not the one that you are reading this post from)

2. Enter the both User Name and Password as admin and press OK.
You will see something similar to this:

3. Click on Advanced Options in the sidebar and select NAT under it.

4. You will see a field called DMZ Host IP Address:

5. Open Start Menu -> Run. Type cmd and press enter.

6. Type ipconfig /all. You will get something similar to this:

7. Search for your connection in this list and note down its IP Address. In my case, it was 192.168.1.2. Most probably, you will also get the same.

8. Enter this IP Address into the DMZ Host IP Address: field and press Save/Apply.

9. Click on Advanced Setup (Sidebar) and press Save/Reboot. Wait for a minute and connect again.

10. Open µTorrent and try downloading something. If it didn’t work, redo your steps. If still it doesn’t work (very low chances), try Method II.

Method II:

This is a fast and easy method.

1. Repeat first two steps from Method I

2. Click on Advanced Options in the sidebar and press the edit button for your connection. Most probably the first one in the table.

3. Click next for the ATM PVC Configuration.

4. Set the Connection Type to Bridging, leave Encapsulation Mode as LLC/SNAP-BRIDGING and press next.

5. Check Enable Bridge Service: (If unchecked) and press next.

6. Click on Save. Press Save/Reboot. Wait for a minute and connect again.

Congarts! Now their is nothing to prevent µTorrent from getting poor connections!

Hope this guide helped and please give some feedback.

Cheers!

Have fun!