Many smart-phones do not support flash, but you can view YouTube videos with the help of some apps. The official YouTube app is pre-installed in almost every Android phone. But with this app users can only stream the videos and can not download it. Even if you go directly to YouTube with your browser, you can’t find that option in the mobile version.
Downloading YouTube videos from your android phones is not a hard task. Here is a guide which will help you.
Download YouTube Video on Android
Go to Android Marketplace and search for the app called ‘TubeMate’ and install it.
Now use the app to navigate in YouTube and select the video you want to download.
Once you select it, the page of the video will appear, showing the video info and related videos. Single tap on the video.
Now a menu appears giving 2 options : Download or Watch. Select Download. 🙂
When You click on download you will be given several resolutions. You can select any resolution you want. You can download it as HD video, normal video or even MP3.
Clicking it, will download the video to your SD Card.
In this way, you can download YouTube videos in any resolutions with tube mate. I haven’t found any better alternatives for it. Remember that, the TubeMate will only support the resolutions that the video has on YouTube. You can’t download a low quality video as HD.
I hope this post was useful for you. Do Drop comments ! 🙂
After almost two weeks, I do not see this new widget activated. I asked around a few friends and family members and even they have not had this widget activated 15 odd days later.
What is a People Widget on Gmail?
The people widget shows up on the right hand side of your Gmail layout. It has information about your contacts.
On clicking on these contacts, we can view their activity over the last couple of days. This mainly would highlight emails sent by them and other messages and documents shared.
I got the impression that it would be a truly great social innovation from Google and more importantly, it focused on interactivity and not just sharing links like Buzz or Google’s +1 is doing.
Is Google being over-cautious?
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Gmail, indicated that it would be rolled out, over the next two weeks. After two weeks I still see quite a few people still asking about the new “People Widget”.
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I think the slow pace of roll-out might be because of the bad press they had with Google Buzz when it was rolled out.
A quick look at the help forums on Gmail, still get you the standard reply that it will is rolling out the people widget and we should soon see it. 🙁
It would have been nice for Google to give us a post on their blogs, to update us on why the slow roll out. I miss the old Google which was lucidly open with it’s users and fans.
Has your Gmail account seen the new People Widget? Do drop in your comments and view about it.
As a tech blogger, I need to catch the latest tech news and updates daily. Thanks to Google Reader, it saves me a lot of time as I don’t need to check each site individually. The Chrome Webstore has some really nice extensions to extend the ability of Google Reader such as converting partial feeds to full feeds, adding custom themes etc.
#1. Google Reader Minimalist
This browser extension increases readability of Google Reader, you can remove up to 50 unnecessary interface elements like Google bar, logo, search, footer etc and set custom item width, custom CSS and even keyboard shortcuts, thus makes Google Reader less distracting. It comes from the home of Minimalist extensions.
The previously mentioned extension is an all-in-one tool for Google Reader. It comes with 30+ themes which change the way you use Google Reader, if you aren’t satisfied with those skins, you can also apply iGoogle themes. You can add custom favicons, fix the unread count, remove advertisements and much more. You can also add new sharing options (which are not present in Google Reader’s sendto menu) like Addthis, Read it later and more.
#3. Super Google reader | Full text RSS feed builder
It’s a common practice among popular news aggregators and blogs to offer partial feeds instead of full feeds, with partial feeds, the reader is given a short excerpt of the post and then he needs to read the rest of the post on the respective blog/site. This will be quite irritating and time consuming, hopefully we have two solutions here. They are –
Use Full text RSS feed builder to convert partial feeds to full feeds, you just need to enter the URL of the partial feed you want to convert to full feed and then the app will give you the URL of the full feed within seconds to which you need to subscribe.
The above method will be time consuming if you have a lot of partial feeds in your Google Reader, here’s an easy workout, download Super Google Reader extension, you can access full feed of any partial feed you’re viewing by clicking the Readable tab, If you want to read the article from the site itself, then click the Link tab.
#4. Google Reader Play Bookmarklet
Google Reader Play has a highly visually appealing interface, especially when you’re reading a media-rich article, switching to Google Reader play is the best option. With this Bookmarklet you can enjoy the current article on Google Reader play with a single click.
I mentioned this extension in my previous article, it eases sharing articles from Google Reader on Twitter. Do check the previous article for detailed review.
Don’t want to miss any of your Google Reader articles? Then enter Google Reader notifier, it will display the unread count and clicking the extension will preview the latest unread articles. Simple and effective.
PS: Clicking the links in the Reader preview will take you to the original link of article not the link associated with Google Reader (feed link).
I must say this is the best extension I have ever found to spice up my Google Reader, having 1000+ articles in my reader it’s very hard for me to skim through every post, now Post Rank comes to the rescue. It gives grades (good, great and best) to all the posts so I can segregate the best from the worst! 😀 It analyzes the engagement activity (tweets, facebook shares, diggs etc) and rates them accordingly.
Want to track changes of a webpage even though it doesn’t provide its feed? Page2RSS is perfect for you! You can subscribe using Google Reader, Bloglines, Yahoo!, Netvibes and even through Email! Just click the extension on the page whose changes you want to track and select your reader.
Google has launched the +1 Button with a lot of noise about how it will make discovering new content a little more social.
Google has made an unsuccessful foray into the social sphere with Google Buzz. It had no impact and now we have Google +1 buttons which act as a vote of confidence by users to links on Google search, YouTube and more.
I do not think this new social product from Google will succeed and here are 5 reasons I think which will lead to it’s failure.
Google’s +1 doomed to fail?
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No Originality: The +1 button seems to be very similar to Facebook’s “Like” or “Share” button. While looking up links or pages on the web we can see if your contacts have also clicked on +1 button for it. The point is if I have a Facebook account, why will I stop using the “Like” button and use “+1”?
Google Profile is not Facebook: A few geeks and die-hard Google fans are aware of Google Profiles. Beyond that not many even visit their Google Profile once a month (yours truly being one of them). So we can see all the links we like via +1s, on Google Profile. But, the fact is Google Profile is hardly anywhere close to being as interactive and fun as Facebook.
Simple Idea: When we like something on Facebook, we click on the “Like” button. We do the same with blog posts and even videos. With Google +1, there is no simplicity to it. Sure I can, +1 a video on YouTube, but I can also “Like” or “Dislike” it. So what is the exact idea behind +1 again?
Zero Awareness: People were aware of Google Buzz, because they introduced it compulsorily in all Gmail accounts. Why would people be aware of Google +1? Chances are most people will simply ignore it altogether.
More Curative than Social: The whole idea behind +1, seems to be one which will allow people to curate the good links from the bad. If that is the case, expect this feature to be misused. As I made the first point, people do not even visit their profile everyday on Google and hence might not care about clicking on +1 buttons incessantly.
People tend to stay longer on Facebook than they would anywhere else. This is the main challenge for Google. Until it, finds a way to make people stay on Google Search longer than they are now, all its social experiments will inevitably fail.
What are your views on Google +1? Do drop in your comments.
Google has recently announced that Bangalore will be the first city in India, to have Google Street View. This will surely open a Pandora’s box and will start of a few debates about privacy in India. If you are living in Bangalore, you might expect to get cars like in the image below buzzing about scanning the streets of Bangalore.
This might be a welcome move for street view fans, who can look up streets level imagery from their computers. But, Street View does not serve any real purpose except that it makes Google maps a lot more interactive and addictive.
Popular tourist destinations have probably found that such street view imagery with Google Maps might actually encourage more tourism.
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Concerns on Privacy and Safety
Google Street View has had its fair share of controversies and some countries consider it illegal. It has been banned temporarily in Austria and Czech Republic.
It is not countries like Israel due to security issues cropping up.
The biggest controversy wallowed in certain as when Google collected and stored encrypted data from Wi-Fi connections in Germany. Google has apologised and said the data was picked up unintentionally. Since April 2011, Google has discontinued Street View in Germany.
What are your views on Google Street View, do you welcome it? The geek in me welcomes such innovation as long as it stays clear for privacy issues for people. Do drop in your comments.
Google yesterday unveiled the Chromebook which is pretty much a netbook running on Chrome OS. The Chromebook is basically a computer with only a browser as the operating system. Everything is on the web, no files are stored locally.
The idea is to replace all local stored applications with web apps. All data is stored on the cloud. The first Chromebooks models are rolled out by Samsung and Acer.
As everything is on the cloud, users will not be affected with viruses or frequent updates.
Google’s plans with Chromebook
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I have read a lot of comments and views on the internet about Google wanting to replace MS Windows for internet users. I do not think, Google is trying to compete with Windows or Mac at all.
What it is trying to do, it make sure that people who want cheaper computers for only their internet usage, end up using Chromebooks. Basically, Google is trying to gobble up the netbook market.
Chromebook’s Availability
Chromebook will be available from 15th June, 2011 onwards in major retailers in Europe and also available online with Amazon and Best Buy.
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Initially it is being rolled out in US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain. More countries will be included later.
Video on Chromebooks
Below is the video, that explains the concept of Chromebook.
With this development, if I ever think about getting myself a netbook, I will probably opt for a Chromebook.
Will you be buying a Chromebook? And why will you be doing so? Do drop in your comments and views.
If you search for a racing car image on Google search, you get some relevant images. The images are shown by relevancy based on the search query. This means if we are looking for an image of a particular brand, we need to enter the brand name in the search query.
Google has made searching for images a lot more easy by sorting them by subject.
As you can see in the image above, a new option shows up that allows sorting images displayed by relevant and subject. The subjects are displayed separately as different links that allows further exploration.
Next time you are looking for images online with Google search, try out “sort by subject”.
Here is a video by Google, demonstrating the advantages of using “sort by subject”.
Try out the new feature with Google Image search and do drop in your comments.
Google has introduced a new Chrome experiment, which visually represents Google’s search volume by language from across the world. The globe is a lot like Google earth, and runs on Google Chrome.
The globe uses the computer hardware for creating the 3D graphics.
Interesting trends from Search Globe!
India seems to have a lot of search traffic, but the language is still English. Possibly the only country in Asia with such high volumes for queries in English.
The lack of search volumes in Russia, China and much of Africa is because of various reasons. Lack of internet freedom and lack of internet facility in many places in Africa shows those region dark.
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Try out Google Search globe by visiting the Chrome experiments page. The project has been open-sourced and web-masters can even include the globe on their own website with their own data.
I tried checking if the experiment works on IE9 and Firefox 4 and it did not work on both browsers. It had no issues working on my Chrome browser. Maybe it is another back-handed way of showing off Chrome’s superiority by Google.
We all search for a lot of things online and about 70% among us use Google. Most people might be searching for news, products, maps, prices and more. The other day I was searching for the URL of Chrome’s Beta channel. I obviously used Google, but then I thought, there must be a few queries on Google about Google’s own products.
If people are searching for Google products and services online, then it would be easy to check out which Google services are most popular. This is thanks to the auto-complete feature from Google.
What is popular on Google about Google?
So on searching Google showed up popular queries as prompted, I found that Google Maps was the most searched or popular query.
While it was no surprise that Google maps was most popular, I was a little shocked to see Google Chrome so far below. I thought it was the fastest growing browser around and a lot more people might be searching for it than say Google docs or Google scholar.
Next I decided to check what does Google India, suggest for the same query.
Well it seems, people in India are searching for Google Earth a lot more than Google Maps. Also people “google chrome” as a suggestion is 4th from the top and not languishing at the bottom.
Does this mean Indian’s search for Chrome more than people in the US do? Chances are it is probably true in terms of average but not in volumes.
Which Google products do you most search for online? Do let me know in your comments.
Apple and Google might be rivals in the mobile market with iPhone and Android respectively. But now this rivalry is moving online. The battle is over”Cloud Music” the online music store.
Apple has completed the work for an online cloud music storage service and is all set to launch it ahead of Google. Though both of them has been beaten by the Amazon with it service called ” Amazon Cloud Drive“.
What will Apples Cloud Music storage service do?
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Apple plan will allow its iTunes users to store their music tracks on the server and access them anywhere through the internet.
Google was expected to launch the service for the Android last Christmas but they did not. Amazon had launched the service early of the April 2011, without considering the new licenses which may got to legal process.
Now three of most valuable companies are in a long term war over the cloud music storage.
There are still some interesting questions left, like how will these company tackles the licensing process?
Apple will have an edge of Google and Amazon as it has many iTunes user which we didn’t think of migrating to other services. Also it has a millions of iPod users who would want to use this service.
Google has to keep their Android user happy with the music store and they will mainly focus on the Android only. As far as Amazon is concern it will be difficult to them to survive from the Apple and Google even though they had launched the services earlier.
Important dates over Cloud music:
Dec 2009 Apple bought the “Lala” a cloud based company.
May 2010 Apple shut down “Lala” .
May 2010 Simplify Media, bought by Google closed down.
Mar 2011 Amazon launches Cloud drive.
April 2011 Google acquires PushLife.
So who do you think will dominate cloud music service? Do drop in your comments.
Many smart-phones do not support flash, but you can view YouTube videos with the help of some apps. The official YouTube app is pre-installed in almost every Android phone. But with this app users can only stream the videos and can not download it. Even if you go directly to YouTube with your browser, you can’t find that option in the mobile version.
