Google ChromeOS
Love google or Google Chrome? Well soon google will be launching Google ChromeOS, its a complete operating system. Yes a complete operating system, that would be free and easy-to-use! According to google, they want it to be fine tuned for the use of internet. This video might help in understanding the concept.
Thus, Google Chrome will be at the heart of the system. They have released a concept video which shows how its going to be like:
Its basically going to be a Linux based operating system, not very different from Ubuntu. Infact, google has already hired engineers from Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu). Thus it would be far more stable and fast than windows and would be virtually virus free!
For now no dates for the release have been announced but for those who want to get a taste of it, google has released instructions to use ubuntu and build upon it to make the open source version of the OS. You can find them here. You can also get a VMware version of it to try here, yes someone did all the work and made a virtual hard disk of it for you to try!
How to extract audio from Youtube videos and convert it into other formats!
It happens quite a lot, you are searching for a song and you find it nowhere except youtube. Now to get it to your music player or pc
as a simple mp3, if thats what you want, is not that difficult. The most simple and easy way, i must say, is to head to this website:
or
and simply provide the link of the video and download it as mp3. For those who want to do it themselves, preserving the best quality just do the following things:
1. Download that video.
Yes, first get it to your pc. For that you may use the firefox addon I mention in an earlier post (link), or use other methods you prefer. www.kissyoutube.com may also help.
2. Download a video converter.
On windows, wmconverter works good. Its free and easy to use. You can get it here. The advantage of using this is that you can convert the video into other video formats as well.
For those who use linux, get winff. Its in the repositories! In ubuntu, open the terminal and type:
$ sudo apt-get install winff
this will download and install it for you.
Now you can convert the downloaded video using these tools. Remember, the better the quality of the youtube video, the better mp3 you would get and an Audio bit rate of 128 kbps is recommended for your mp3.
Extensions for Google Chrome / Chromium browser
It has been some time now since extensions (Equivalent of addons for Firefox) were introduced in the Google Chrom
e browser. A quick search shows quite useful extensions, including chrome versions of Adblock+, Youtube video downloader, Flash blocker etc. already popular with Firefox. Thus the fast and sleek chrome browser has become event better and a nice alternative to Firefox, especially on netbooks. The extensions can be found on the following websites:
http://www.chromeextensions.org
Just find the right extension through your Google Chrome and click on install that will download it and ask you to install. Yes that’s it! You don’t even need a restart! You might need to configure your extensios, simply type the following in the address bar and you’ll see all your extensions:
chrome://extensions/
Happy browisng!
Wallpaper Roundup
Install KDE pointers (Oxygen) in Ubuntu
The default pointers of gnome are not very attractive and you soon get bored of them. However, the pointers in KDE are beautiful and provide the eye candy. Installing them in ubuntu is quite simple. Simply open the terminal and enter this command:
$ sudo apt-get install oxygen-cursor-theme
This will install the white cursors.
For installing a range of colors, enter this command afterwards:
$ sudo apt-get install oxygen-cursor-theme-extra
These commands will download and isntall the cursors for you. Then you can set these from:
System>Preferences>Appearance>Customize>Pointer
Enjoy the eyecandy!
5 must have Firefox addons
Addons make your life much easier, tailoring your browser to your exact needs. The list is large, so which of them to install? Well i would personally recommend you to visit the firefox website and search for addons according to your needs. The list is long thoug, it might not be easy so i have compiled the following list to make things easier:
1. Adblock Plus
This is THE MOST useful tool i guess. It blocks all those creepy hads you hate! Yes, those shouting smilies and those annoying facebook adds will all be gone forever! Just use the link to install it and once you are done restart firefox and chose an ‘easy list’ in provided options, the first one works fine with me, and you are done!
2. Fast dial
You would be familiar to it if you have used opera or chrome. It makes your home page display thumbnails of your favorite websites so you don’t have to type them each time! Plus you can add searches, themes and modify the number of thumbnails you see. Awesome!
3. DownThemAll
The built-in download manager of firefox is not bad, but its a bit simple and not very advanced. D.T.A. fixes that very well, it adds an option to download stuff through this download manager and it not only accelerates downloading but also makes them easier to download.
4. Ubiquity
From the developers of firefox, this addon is simply awesome! From translating text to defining words to mapping addresses, this addon has got a lot! You would really need to see this video to see and understand the functionality of this addon!
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
Ever wanted to download a youtube video to show your friends on your mobile phone? And you had to face all those problems from finding a downloading client and then converting the video to an MP4 or 3GP format? Well here’s an easy solution, it simply adds 3 text links below a video where you can select the format you want to download. Thats easy!
