Naveen’s Blog

This week I have updated my Real Player to the latest Real Player v.11 and I am very impressed with it’s glossy look and amazing features. One of the interesting features is downloading the streaming videos on the web with one click.

In my previous posts, I explained about various tricks to download videos from YouTube, LiveLeak etc using Greasemonkey scripts. You might have also seen that there are lot of sites that help you to download the streaming videos into your system.

Now forget about all these tricks and sites, and install Real Player Version 11, which is available on the Real Player’s website here (Free Version). Get it, install it, and restart your system. Now, whenever you mouse over on a streaming content, you will see a link to download it with Real Player download manager. Without installing any script or software, now you can download videos from MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, YouTube, Google Video, and almost all video streaming websites.

It has inbuilt download manager that shows you the progress of downloading and also lets you pause and resume the downloads.

written by Naveen

I was recently searching for the codec to play a movie that is in Matroska (.mkv) format. I found one that makes it possible to view the .mkv file. I installed it, but it did not work for me. I might have installed it wrong or it does not support the latest Windows Media Player. Suddenly, VLC Player came into my mind and within few clicks, I landed onto the features list and thank god, VLC plays the .mkv files.

What is VLC?
VLC Player is an open source cross-platform media player, which supports “n” number of audio and video formats. No need to download any codec. Just install it and it starts playing almost all except .rm (Real Media) files. Website states that VLC will support Real Media files in the next version, 0.9.0.

Another good thing about VLC is support for skins. With the use of skins, you can make VLC look like your Media Player 11 or old light blue Media Player just by adding respective skins to the skins’ folder in VLC’s installation folder. Browse the skins repository for a good number of interesting and nice skins.

It is an open source application and you are free to download, use and redistribute. It is currently available for Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, SUSE, Red Hat, Slackware, and many more.

VLC’s Homepage | VLC Skins | Supported video and audio list

written by Naveen

Today, I have added three tools to my blog:

• YouTube Video Downloader:  You can download the YouTube videos into your system in FLV format.  Later, your can convert it into AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, or WMV.  Check it to know how?
• Google PR/Alexa Trank/Backlinks Checker:  This one checks PR, Alexa Rank, and Backlinks for a given domain in Ajaxy way.
• English to Telugu Convertor:  Just type the Telugu words in English and it will convert them into Telugu on the fly.

written by Naveen

Browzar is a tiny browser that is only 220K in size and a standalone application. Just click and run, no installation needed. It is mainly aimed at browsing the net with privacy. It dose not store any cookies, cache, or browsing history, so you don’t need to worry about the traces that browsers normally leave. It is too small and you can carry it on a USB stick to browse the net safely at net cafés.

When I wrote about the Browzar for first time in December of 2006 on my WaveNine blog, I pointed out the downside to change the default homepage, which was set to Ask. Now, the new version 1.4.0.0 does allow the user to change homepage and the interesting thing is that it supports tabbed browsing.

Browzar is becoming thin as it is growing. It was 273K when it was introduced and now it is only 220K with more number of features. It is currently available only for Windows with two themes, black and silver. Mac OS X and Linux versions are on the way.

Browzar’s home page: http://www.browzar.com/
Read all the features here: http://www.browzar.com/keyfeatures/index.html
Download it here: http://www.browzar.com/download/index.html

written by Naveen

I am already using Andrew Spencer’s YouTube video downloader script to run my own YouTube video downloading site. Now this article shows you the way to download streaming video from LiveLeak in an FLV format.

What is LiveLeak?
Liveleak, based in the UK, is a website that lets users post and share videos, similar to sites like YouTube, but it allows some sexual content and emphasizes reality-based footage such as war scenes from various parts of the world, grisly accidents, executions, and crimes. – Wikipedia

Why I went to LiveLeak?
I was searching for educational autopsy videos in Google and I got link to a video shared on LiveLeak. I searched for the term “Autopsy” in LiveLeak and surprised to see number of videos, which aren’t available in any of video-sharing sites. Hey….don’t see the videos if you have a weak heart .

So….let’s start the hacking. We need Firefox (I forgot IE and permanently deleted it from my XP ), Greasemonkey Firefox extension, and LiveLeak Greasemonkey user script.

What is this Greasemonkey?
Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way web pages look and function. It’s a tiny extension that does wonders. Just head over to userscripts.org to see what Greasemonkey can do.

First, install the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

Official homepage of Greasemonkey: http://www.greasespot.net/

Restart the browser and you will see a monkey icon on the status bar of the Firefox.

Then, go the LiveLeak Greasemonkey user script page here: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/6442 On the right side, you will see the link “Install this script.” Click that and it will popup a screen like this:

Click the “Install” button, and you are done. Now, you are ready to download the videos from LiveLeak. Go to any video page and you will see a download link like this.

Right click on it and select the option “Save Link As” to save the video to your desktop. You can use Wimpy standalone tiny FLV player or VLC Player to play the FLV video.

written by Naveen

TechSmith’s Camtasia is a complete professional solution for recording, editing and sharing high-quality screen videos. It is easy-to-use, affordable, and is the quickest and most effective way for you to communicate. Easily record your screen to create compelling training videos, screencasts, and presentations without ever leaving your desk.

Click here to go to the promo page on TechSmith’s website. Enter your correct email address to receive the serial key of Camtasia Studio 3.1.3. You can upgrade it to the latest version that is 5.0 at a concessional rate of for just 88 £ (New version is 176 £).

I think this promo will be for a short period, so hurry up and download it before it is closed.

Camtasia Studio 3.1 Features:

• Capture everything you see on your screen.
• Edit and enhance the videos - pinpoint cursor movements with special visual effects, perform sophisticated moves such as highlighting, zooming, and panning, and even record what you draw on the screen.
• Share in the industry-standard AVI and streaming media formats.
• Side-by-side display that allows users to determine the dimensions of the camera and screen video windows to provide emphasis and focus the viewer’s attention.
• Flash 8 support with direct publishing to FLV that ensures bullet-proof delivery of any content for any audience via the ubiquitous Flash player.
• Section 508-compliant open captioning that makes content more accessible and more memorable. Users can add their own text captioning, import speaker notes from PowerPoint, or paste in text from any document.
• Interactivity and quizzing enhancements that allow instructors to embed questions into their multimedia content and to receive feedback via email without requiring a Learning Management System (LMS).
• QuickTime 7 and H.264 support in Camtasia Studio that delivers the industry’s highest quality video with spectacular compression for customers who want to publish their content in the QuickTime format.
• Third-party Project Streamer hosting so individuals can easily share their content online with others by simply emailing or posting a link to a website. The option to upload a video from within Camtasia Studio is now available and users can choose which of their videos they want to make available for public viewing.

written by Naveen

My friend called me asking a solution for the above question. He runs a small medical transcription company. When transcriptionists are busy with searching medical terminology, there is a chance for accidentally going to the sites with adult content. He also wants to restrict the net use for the night shift people. He don’t want to spend money buying the content filtering software and it must be easy to setup because they don’t have system administrators to do that. Everything related to systems is taken care of by themselves.

So, I have started searching the net and found these easy steps to stop the adult content showing up in browsers. It is basically about changing the DNS servers in your system.

What is DNS?
DNS (Domain Name System) is a process that translates easy to remember addresses (like www.scrubit.com) to a numerical IP address used by computers (67.138.54.99) Everyone uses DNS. Most DNS is provided to the user by your internet service provider, or a recursive DNS service like ScrubIT. More info you can read on Wikipedia here.

Here I explain about two services OpenDNS and ScrubIt.

OpenDNS: It offers more free services than ScrubIt and more it is faster than ScrubIt. But, adult content filtering is not turned on by default. You have to create a free account on OpenDNS to turn it on. It will give you access to a number of interesting features like Adult Site Blocking, Phishing Site Blocking, Phishing Site Blocking, Stats and Logs, Typo Corrections, etc. Change your DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 & 208.67.220.220, create a free account on OpenDNS, add your IP address, and turn the adult site blocking on. Now you are free from adult sites.

Note that this works only with static IPs as your free account is linked to the IP to gain the control. Lot of broadband accounts comes with static IP and if your internet provider does not support static IP, you can download the Dynamic DNS client to update your IP address automatically. More information is here: http://www.opendns.com/support/dynamic_ip/

Below are some screenshots. It is totally free, so give it a try to learn more about OpenDNS.

Continue reading »

written by Naveen

Yesterday, I have come across this fast and free WhoIs checking software, IDwhois. Before findings this, I was using another free client, which checks only few TLDs like .com, .net, .org, and .info. I use this software to check domain availability across different extensions.

It is too fast and checks nealry 130 gTLDs and ccTLDs. It has checked 500 domains in less than a minute. You can prepare the domains list in text format and upload it when you are ready, and also you can save the results into XML format too.

IDwhois Features :
- More than 130 TLDs to lookup
- Stand alone whois client
- Integrated Parser
- Export results on .HTML, .CSV or .XML for fast reporting
- Import domain name list from a .TXT file
- XML Configuration files to add or modify TLD settings / interfaced
- Multi thread WHOIS lookup
- WHOIS Request timer to avoid registrars/NICs time out
- multi-IP bridge lookup environment (avoid NIC black list)
- Rearrange the information in your whois results
- Tree view result
- Free online support by mail
- Proxy environment

Download it here.

What does “Who Is” mean?
WHOIS is a TCP-based query/response protocol which is widely used for querying a database in order to determine the owner of a domain name, an IP address, or an autonomous system number on the Internet. WHOIS lookups were traditionally made using a command line interface, but a number of simplified web-based tools now exist for looking up domain ownership details from different databases. Web-based WHOIS clients still rely on the WHOIS protocol to connect to a WHOIS server and do lookups, and command-line WHOIS clients are still quite widely used by system administrators. - Wikipedia

written by Naveen