Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

There are new video formats on the web all the time, and even some of the old tried and true websites change the way the video is handled. (Even YouTube continues to evolve.)

I like to download videos so that I can watch them uninterrupted and to play later for myself or a family member and not deal with the download time or the bandwidth usage a second time.

You might also guess that I don’t watch many Yahoo! videos, since they seldom play promptly - if at all. And no way I know of to download them.

I just updated my video download page on the website with a great new FireFox add-on that works on every site I have tried except Yahoo!

And it’s so simple to use. Just click the rotating balloon type button next to the address bar. It will come alive if there is a video on the page.

Yahoo! must be trying to make itself ugly to Microsoft to avoid the suitor’s grasp. Why else would 1/3 of the stories on their front page be videos, when all anyone really wants to do is quickly scan a story?

If the story is interesting enough, like a panda sneezing, offer a video as an option.

But here’s something really off the wall for Yahoo! to consider with their videos.. Have them actually PLAY!

Most of the time I feel irresponsible enough with my time to even click on a Yahoo! video all I ever get is a blue box with a spinning circle - seldom does it actually play the video.

Yahoo!, wake up. In America on the internet you get about 3 seconds to grab the surfer’s attention; after that - they’re GONE!

Bonus Tip: If you want to watch videos, go to YouTube, they have it figured out.

You can now checkout my YouTube videos using a cool custom player that YouTube allows producers to create.

You can see it on my website here.

We found a site that allows you to download video from YouTube in the new format post Aug 23, 2007.

DownThisVideo.com

WARNING!

Ads on this site are not safe for work / family.

As soon as we find a better, family-safe site for video download we will post it here.

YouTube changed their video format on August 23, 2007. As a result of this “improvement”, video download programs like javamoya and keepvid no longer work.

I don’t know the details, but quite frankly I wonder why Google (YouTube) doesn’t provide video download functionality itself. If most people have the kind of broadband that doesn’t cause the video to stop and start (or just stop) then my video download page on my website wouldn’t be one of the most popular pages.

I’m not suggesting that lack of video download ability will cause viewers to abandon YouTube in favor of more worthwhile pursuits, of which most anything else is a better use of time, but since Google wants to own the world (that part they don’t already own) it surprises me that they don’t cover all the bases.

In fact, Google even launched a service to allow surfers to scan outer space in much the same way as they can now view the surface of planet earth.