How to download youtube video to S60 phone

(tested on Nokia N82)

How to download youtube video to your S60 phone?

I recently was presented with the challenge – I’ve received link to an interesting music video in twitter (I use and recommend Gravity). I could watch it using Operamini or native S60 browser, but downloading it to my phone was a pain. Commonly used sites (like ssyoutube.com, or youtubemp4.com) that help desktop users to download youtube clips, failed to work properly in the phone browsers (and I tried native browser, operamini, o3zone). Sometime they used ajax to show links, sometime they asked you to right click on the link to save file (how the hell can one do this on non-touch Nokia?) The only way that I found to ahieve the desired result, was to use keepvid.com which present simple download links in the resulting page.

If you already know ID of the video that you want to download, then it is pretty easy task, just form the following address in your favourite browser http://keepvid.com/?url=http://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID follow it, and press on of the download links (.flv or .mp4). If, you want to get HQ quality, add &fmt=18 to the end of the url.

Now the 2nd obstacle is to get ID of the specific video from tinyurl (or any other link compressor, I guess). If you open tinyurl in your browser, it goes to mobile youtube page. Save bookmark at this moment and open it for editing. Surprisingly, I could not open bookmark address for editing in operamini (probably a bug related to very long address). But it works in the native browser, where you can see VideoID at the end of the address (the XXXXXXX after v= ). Copy it.

Now you can form download url as discussed above, adding to VideoID to

http://keepvid.com/?url=http://youtube.com/watch?v=

You also can save this address among bookmarks for easier use next time.

Now, I am looking for a way to extract audio track from .mp4 video on my phone and making a ringtone out of it. :)

Virtual Box 3.0 Beta has DirectX9 support

But fails Windows Performance Index, so no Aero yet. Google Earth hangs too. :(

Problem installing Nokia Maps 3 on N82

I was getting error message from Nokia Map Updater, that compatible phone is not found, until I tried to run old version of Nokia Maps (2.x which comes in v31 of firmware) for the first time. After it has started and created some registry settings and own files on the phone, Nokia Map Updater immediately found my handset and proceeded with installation of Nokia Maps 3.

OS X on Asus Eee PC 1000H

From my archive.

Technorati Tags: os x,eeepc 1000h

Windows 7 x64 Ramdisk

Since the beginning of times, I speed up Firefox on all my computers by putting its cache on a ramdisk. Only recently I started to use Windows x64 and faced with the problem that it is impossible to start any free ramdisk under W7 x64. Luckily, there was a solution on on sevenforums.

Download the Ramdisk from
CENATEK: High Speed Storage Systems
Select the 1st one on the top (Public Beta V.3.5.107) and save the msi file to c:\
Don't start the MSI, it will not work.
Decompress the MSI-File (Start/Run CMD as Administrator):
msiexec /a Dataram_RAMDisk_v3.5.107.msi /qn TARGETDIR=C:\Driver

Since we have no "add hardware" in control panel, we have to install this driver manually.
The Hardware-Wizard still exist.
Start/Search -> hdwwiz.exe
- Button "next"
- select "hardware manually (expert)"
- Button "next"

- select "All Devices"
- Button "next"
Now you have to search for the Button "have disk". Click on this button and search for the folder
C:\Driver\Program Files(x86)\Ramdisk

select RAMDiskVE.inf
- Button "OK"
- Button "next"
- Button "next"
To Configure the Ramdisk start the program
C:\Driver\Program Files(x86)\RamdiskVE.exe

For me (solnyshok) RamdiskVE reports failure to start ramdisk, but after rebooting the computer, ramdisk with the required parameters is there. So, don’t panic if you get this error.

The 2nd part is easy and described in detail here. Requires creating a string browser.cache.disk.parent_directory containing the path to new cache location.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,x64,ramdisk,dataram,firefox,cache

CoLinux Ubuntu 9.04

Yesterday I played with CoLinux on my laptop with Vista x32. Tried it first with Windows 7 x64 but turns out that CoLinux is only available for x32 bit environments. Anyway, it started find with Vista x32 and I even upgraded the original image (Ubuntu 8.04) in two steps to 8.10 and then to 9.4. Had to increase image size from 1.7GB to 8GB. Increasing image size involves creating a new empty image file under windows, then mounting it under CoLinux and copying all information to it, quitting CoLinux and restarting with new image file. Instructions are in the Colinux FAQ section. Maybe 8GB is an overkill, and 4GB would have been enough, but I made it bigger just in case I will want to install more programs.

It works great, faster than virtual machine. Internet works, but I still have to figure out how to see local network.

Dual core Atom based home server

Here we go, the small box based on Dual Core Atom 330 with total consumption around 50W replacing a 150W old Pentium 4 tower. It used to be around 35C in my wardrobe, now we are back to silent operation and normal room temperature. As I mentioned before, I have there 1TB 3.5” drive mostly idle 95% of the time and 500GB 2.5” laptop hard drive for 24*7 torrents.

And I am using W7 x64 build 7100 (RC) with it. I tried Home Server 2008 R2, Ubuntu 904, FreeNAS. I believe that W7 beta is so far the best value proposition, as it is very stable, versatile and free till the June, 2010.

What’s best for your netbook – Ubuntu, Moblin, Solaris or Windows?

During last week, expecting new Ubuntu 904 to appear shortly, I cleared the partition where my Ubuntu 810 used to reside, and played a bit with various alternatives. I installed and tried in quick succession OpenSolaris 906, Ubuntu low power MID edition, Ubuntu netbook edition, Moblin Alpha 2.

Disclaimer! This is a rant that do not in any way intend to claim to be the ultimate truth. I am only using Linux for half a year. While I feel comfortable digging through forums to enable support for various network and graphics hardware when I have free time to do this, I feel that at the moments it is not worth it. E.g. spending couple of nights to get Linux drivers working, costs me more than buying a Windows license. Having said that, I still enjoy Linux in a freaky kind of the way, treating it as a brain muscle stretching Lego for adults, and enjoying the process whenever time allows it.

OpenSolaris is interesting alternative to other Linux distributions, but not for a netbook. While I spent couple of days last year customizing Ubuntu 810 to work with all my hardware in eeepc 1000h. I do not feel like I want to spend such time again, since Ubuntu 904 supports all of it out-of-the-box. And I do not feel like I need ZFS on netbook. Its benefits are in ease of use of multi-disk storage, and all netbooks have only one disk.

Various Ubuntu derivatives – Netbook edition and lowpower MID edition. Netbook edition could be useful for touch enabled netbooks. Larger icons that make it easier to navigate with big fat fingertips. You do not need it on non-touch device. As to the the low-power MID edition - I had problems using it. It has increased fonts and icons, and after that, does not fit 1024x600. I wonder what kind of display they had in mind developing it.

Ubuntu 904. Loads quite fast (I use new ext4 file system) and supports all hardware features of eeepc 1000h. Compiz is still the best eyecandy you can get. Recommended.

Moblin – still in a hardcore alpha stage. Promising. Not recommended.

Windows 7 – RC (builds 7077 and 7100) are very stable. If you want to do any light gaming, or connect with Microsoft exchange or some other MS only corporate services,  or comfortably play 720p videos (1080p still out of question) then you have to get Windows 7.

Conclusion – for web browsing and document editing, watching movies and taking notes, ease of setup and use – Ubuntu 904 finally matches Windows. I like eye candy of Ubuntu more, but Windows still feels speedier to use. I am going to multiboot Ubuntu 904, Windows 7, and OSX on my laptop.

My new home server build on DualCore Atom

I am in that sweet time phase, when I made my research and ordered the parts. ETA is on Monday. I am building my home server on

Modecom mini ITX case with external power adaptor (96w, $70)

DualCore Intel Atom 330 in Intel D945GCLF2 (90$) – which has 1 IDE, 2 SATA connectors, Gigabit NIC

2GB RAM ($25)

500GB 2.5” laptop hard drive ($100)

and I will reuse my 1TB Barracuda 3.5” SATA from my old server.

Going for a laptop hard drive was a tough decision. I had to consider that laptop drives have limited capacity, that they are 2 more expensive than 3.5” drives, and the fact that 2*3.5 drives do not fit into mini ITX case (at least the cases that I could find in Latvia) because most of MINI-ITX cases support only one 3.5” drive and a slim CD/DVD. An alternative was to go with micro-ATX case, but then I would have to deal with the problem of finding the low-power PSU, which are not available in Latvia at all. Buying those online is possible from mini-box.com or minipc.de, but it costs an arm and a leg (upward of $100), negating any savings on purchasing a larger hard drive.

Moreover, I had to give up any idea of toying with the RAID for data protection. I will backup my personal data, which includes about 30GB of documents, photos and music, between server and my gaming pc hard drive, but for the movies, there will be no backup in this setup. I think that movies are not a critical information, because you can restore most of them from internet. At the same time, I am happy with the setup, because my space requirements will be met for another year. (I managed to fill about 700GB during 1 year). Only the small drive will be running 24x7 for torrents. It consumes less energy than larger drive and make less noise too. By the way, noise was not a consideration in this build, since I have a separate technical room for my computers. If I had to build a completely calm pc (for use on the table or in a living room) I’d had to take more expensive fanless MSI board with SSD drive, which cost too much to my taste anyway.

As for OS, I will be choosing between WHS and FreeNAS. I have seen FreeNAS, and I have yet to try WHS for the first time. And of course, there always is W7 and Ubuntu, but I do not see a benefits to running those on a headless server.

Shozu problem

I don't get why people like this program. I honestly try it once or twice a year, hoping to start using it. But I again find that it is useless for me. I have some photos (5mpx) that I want to reduce in size and upload to blogger service. But there are 2 show stoppers. 1 - it would resize only to some ugly qvga resolution. 2 - it would create a separate post for each photo. No go. I need to resize to VGA or 800*600 and send multiple pictures as single post. And if they could allow for additional extra - like creating an embedded slide show or collage from those photos - I would love them.
Unfortunately, the most important change in Shozu that I noted so far, is that now it correctly processes russian encoding. Deleted. Will try it again after 6 months.