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. :)

My Worst Mobile Experience :(

Surprisingly enough, I can easily identify my worst mobile experience and unfortunately, it is same for all mobile devices that I ever worked with.

On all devices from Sony Ericsson, Nokia, HP and Raon (and actually all other laptops I used, mostly Lenovo Thinkpads) Bluetooth stack just crashes after some period of use. It takes longer on some devices, or considerably less on others, but anyway, Bluetooth inevitably crashes leading to the need to restart, reboot, sometimes even take out a battery from a frozen device.

Pocket PCs before WM5 were notorios for lack of system drivers memory, and after half a dozen of BT On/Off cycles, BT drivers would fail to load to memory.

Sony Ericsson phones would hang if phone call came during BT connection (file transmission, dialup, syncing)

Nokia handles well under load, but after several cycles of using it with Everun as dialup modem, there comes a moment when it stops connecting to UMPC, until rebooted.

Raon, just as any other XP or Vista computer, doesn't handle well going through several cycles of sleep or hibernation and guess what, at some moment when you need to get online, BT either doesn't start, or connects but doesn't load anything from the phone.

It is my biggest disappointment, that despite being a very old technology, BT stack implementation still remains buggy across various manufacturers. One day I will switch to built in HSDPA or WiMax just because of this.

My best mobile experiences :)

To begin with, there are many good experiences, that I would not rate one above other

 

On Nokia 6120 smartphone

- Unlimited data plan. A musthave for all the goodies that follow below.

- Fring keeps me signed into skype, gtalk, msn and icq.

- Opera Mobile keeps me connected to my multiple gmail accounts, google reader mobile and internet bank

- Updating my life blog with pictures and video by simply sending email to my blogger account with a picture or video attached

- TomTom navigation for driving and hiking while abroad

- Throwing it to my kids for a quick cartoon session (I always keep couple of hours of cartoons re-encoded for QVGA). Playing it with the best player for Windows Mobile and Symbian, the CorePlayer.

 

On Raon Everun UMPC

- This is my mobile office that mirrors my data and programs from a desktop (well, everything except torrent library :). This means 100% compatibe browser and office applications. On the go. Weighing a massive 500g. 8-10 hour battery life.

- And yes, I keep there yet more cartoons for the kids.

 

On iPAQ hx4700

- TomTom navigation

- Skype over WiFi, now replaced by Fring over WiFi and Fring over 3g on my handset

- Gaming - Solitaire, Bejeweled2, Skyforce 1/2, K-Rally, etc.

- Cartoons as in all categories above, watching movies over WiFi from my home torrent storage

- It can do PIM and email, as well as open all office documents, but I do not use it anymore...

Mobile month in Ukraine, with Nokia 6120 Classic

I am back from Ukraine, having spent 4 weeks there with nohting more than Nokia 6120 Classic. http://europe.nokia.com/A4399010

Strangely enough, all my plans previously outlined, have materialised.

I got a full month internet access from Life:) for just 60 Hrivnas (12$) per 1GB http://www.life.com.ua/index.php?area=lifebox&lng=uk&page=15-33

The best thing is that this deal is available also to the prepaid card users. As far as I know, it is the only Ukrainian operator giving such good prices to prepaid customers. Others give good price only to subscribed customers.

I have used phone to keep track of 5 mailboxes, Googlereading, photo blogging and GPS navigation (also internet based as in MGmaps and Yandex Maps). During 4 weeks I have used rougly 500Mb, so I think I have got a good deal there.

As promised, during this time Fring has issued a version 3.23 http://www.fring.com/ which now supports this handset. I have successfully used it on Life:) EDGE network. Some lag was there, but overall it was a bearable experience. Fring supports mobile VOIP over EDGE, 3G, WIFI networks on selected Nokia, Sony Ericcsson and Windows Mobile smart phones. Gtalk, ICQ, MSN, Twitter, Skype and SIP are currently supported.

Another surprise was cheap cost of mobile calls (1hrivna/minute to any country) as outlined here (Ukrainian)

http://www.life.com.ua/index.php?area=mylife&lng=uk&page=3-57

Overall, I am very satisfied with the quality and costs of mobile communications in Ukraine.

Mobile month in Ukraine

I am off to Ukraine for a month from Aug 12 to Sep 6th. I plan to get local GSM mobile number with the 1Gb data plan from LIFE and to keep blogging from my Nokia 6120 Classic to this blog (on the topic of issues facing a mobile blogger in Ukraine) and to my personal blog, letting my relatives see new pictures of relatives and nostalgic towns and villages as I travel.

During one month I will visit Kiev, Kherson, Zalizny Port (Metal Port?), Crimea (Simferopol, Evpatorija, Kazantip dance festival) and Odeassa region. Most of the time will be spent by the Black Sea. I really hope to come back as black as possible.

On the mobile side, I count that I will be regularly checking my 5 mailboxes, and keep working from far away on the development on of my web store (will use Quickoffice and OfficeSuite to open any attachment that come my way).

For browsing I will have Opera Mobile, Opera Mini 2 Russian mod, Opera 4 beta and Nokia S60 built in browser.

For IM and VOIP I will use IM+ (solnyshok (a) gmail.com, solnyshok (a) hotmail.com ) and IM+ for Skype. I do hope that during this month Fring will issue a version supporting Nokia 6120 Classic as they promised in their support forums. That would instantly enable my phone for Skype and Gtalk voice communications. I know that it would work reasonably well even over EDGE network that is currently the best you can get in Ukraine.

For Navigation I have Nokia Maps, Google Maps, MGMaps, TomTom6 and SmartComGPS. The problem is that none of the above have any good maps of Odessa, Kherson and Simferopol. For those, I just use maps from OzyExplorer converted for SmartComGPS. Those do not have street names though. For Kiev, I have quite good TomTom map (EasterEurope v608 beta). NokiaMaps and GMaps are pretty useless in Ukraine. Mgmaps (using MSN Roadmaps) are a bit better, but require constant data connection and do not have street names in the abovementioned southern Ukrainian cities.

I have studied mobile offers from UMS, Kyievstar, Beeline, and Life and came to conclusion that Life will suit me better, because I need not a prepaid, but a contract, and unlike others, Life allows me to use all of signup fee towards communications and data plan. Others just make signup fee (about 200 hrivnas) an entrance ticket. And the cost of data plan wih Life is 60 vs. 200+ with other operators. Of course, all of this is only my understanding, after studying operator websites, I will see if I am right in couple of days.

I am in Kiev Aug12-15, in Kherson Aug 16-18, Kazantip Aug 19-25, Odessa Auf 26-Sep6.

So, I am done with the last post on the proper keyboard for the next 4 weeks. Wish me luck, good weather, and stable network out there in Ukrainian prairies.

Multiple Gmail apps on Nokia

The same .jar files that I prepared for Sony Ericsson couple of weeks ago, also works on my new Nokia 6120 Classic.