Since the egg cracked and YouTube made its first steps into the internet world, users have been seeking ways to save the videos to their home computers. In the beginning there were software wars, one YouTube video saving software versus another and for $9.99 you could be the proud owner.

Lets look at the facts, a YouTube video is simply a FLV or Flash video. Saving a flash video (for FREE) isn’t that difficult. This applies to Flash games and other projects as well.

Firefox has a wonderful extension that makes short work of snagging YouTube videos etc. from any webpage. All you have to do is simply add on the extension to Firefox and after the install, the add-on conveniently puts a little download now dropdown icon next to every YouTube video. Just simply select Download to place the video on your computer for viewing anytime. You could easily cruise through YouTube and download several videos without having to watch one of them online.

IT GET”S BETTER - You can also download videos from YouTube-like sites, music from most sites and pictures albums.

Mozilla Firefox - Save YouTube Video Steps

1. Get DownloadHelper for Firefox and install it. You will have to restart Firefox once it has been installed.

2. Navigate to YouTube and click on a video that you would like to save.

3. You will notice to the left of the video title a little icon that looks like this . Click on it to save the video to your hard drive, or click on the drop down arrow for more options.

Now you can start saving those classic YouTube videos to your own computer. I mean who doesn’t want to own the Leave Britney Alone video, right? I’m kidding, please don’t save that video.

On a serious note, if you’re not already using Mozilla Firefox as your primary browser or don’t know what it is, then do yourself a favor and get it now. Firefox has passed up Internet Explorer as the #1 browser used on the internet. It’s faster, more secure, and gives the user a ton of options for personalization. Get it here.

If you are looking for a better way to organize your Windows desktop and give it a little slice of the “Apple”, then check out RocketDock. RocketDock is a smoothly animated application launcher very similar to Apple’s OS X. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization.

It comes out of the box with some great features, including a simple drag-and-drop interface, multi-monitor support, positioning and layering options, the ability to minimize windows to the dock, real-time window previews in Vista and the best feature of all… it’s FREE.

There are similar products on the market, but judging by comments and reviews that I have read, RocketDock seems to be the best performing.

From my own experience: RocketDock launches quick, doesn’t crash and overall did exactly what I wanted it to. It’s pretty lightweight at 11 MB and is easy on the RAM too. I found that hiding the taskbar in Windows while the program was running opened up even more real estate on the desktop.

If you’re after that Apple look on your Windows machine this software does the trick. Just add a Mac background and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Below is a side-by-side comparison of my desktop before (left) and after installing RocketDock. This was after a particularly messy day on my desktop, but as you can see the software does a good job of keeping things tidy.

Pictures don’t always do justice. Watch the video to see RocketDock in action.

Ever wondered how some people show videos through their webcam? There was a point several months back where I needed this option and after some extensive googling figured out the best way to do it.

There are several reasons that you might want to do this. Lets say that you’re chatting with a friend and wanted to show them a clip of you dancing to Flo Rida’s - “Right Round”. Maybe you spend a lot of time on cam and just want to record a 30 minute clip to run on a loop so you can munch on Funyuns while others think you’re putting on a show. Could be you want to show video of someone else on cam and pretend that it is you. Maybe you don’t have a webcam and want to make it seem that you do.

Whatever the reason may be, I have found that the best way to accomplish this is to use Video2Webcam (I am not a Video 2Webcam affiliate). This program works on all of the popular chatting and webcam services such as MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Camfrog, Skype, ICQ, AIM, Paltalk, ANYwebcam, Stickam, ICUII, Ustream.tv, iSpQ…

The user interface is simple to use and toggling between video and live cam is as easy as pushing a button. Check out the screenshot below to see what the GUI looks like.

The program isn’t free, but the small price I believe is well worth the software. I use it with a Logitech cam and it has been working flawlessly for the past 8 months. There are some other options such as StickerCam , VideoDJ or the free way, which would be to turn your cam towards your monitor and play a video in fullscreen. I wouldn’t recommend the free way, the quality is horrible and it’s obvious that you’re taking the cheap way out. No one likes a pixelated attempt at showing a video.

Did Mc Donalds take a tole on your mid-section this winter? Unless you’re a model, we could all probably use a little help trimming the fat. We could always start eating right and exercise to get that perfect body, but that would require a lot of work. Just let that belly hang and use some Photoshop tricks to tone yourself up in as little as 3 minutes. Read over the instructions and if you still need help refer to the video at the bottom of the post.

Here is a quick way to lose 20 lbs. without breaking a sweat.

How to look skinny using Photoshop

1. In Photoshop, open the picture of you letting that belly sag.

2. Open the “liquify” brush under the Filter tab. You can also use the shortcut (Shift+Control+ X).

3. Change your Brush Size to about 50-60 and leave Density and Pressure around 50 as well.

4. (You may want to zoom in for this step) Use the liquify brush to drag the stomach, hips, thighs, arms and anything that needs work in towards the body. If it is sagging drag upwards. Use short strokes (the length of the arrows in pic below) and work along the outer edges of the body.

NOTES: Try to keep all body parts in proportion to each other so that nothing looks out of scale. Enlarging the breast, if needed, also gives the effect of a skinnier waist (but don’t overdo it). Use the opposite of the technique above on other people in the picture (add fat to them) to make yourself look that much better. Make sure that the background does not get distorted in the process.

For a quick fix, I find that this is the best way to achieve results. It’s amazing the power that the Liquify brush in Photoshop has. Remember the larger the picture or the closer the person is in the image, the more obvious the editing can become to a trained eye. Experiment with Photoshop to get it just right and take advantage of the undo button (ctrl + z) with any mishaps. Refer to video below for visual steps.

If you’re like me, you’re sick of the playlist of songs that you have been listening to over and over again in the car. I mean you can only hear Kanye West’s “Heartless” so many times, right? Yeah, I frequent the iTunes store and buy a song here and there thanks to the iTunes gift card Grandma got me, but a week later its the same old story.

I’ve got hundreds of old CD’s that I occasionally toss in but they’re pretty old. I haven’t actually purchased a CD in the past two three years. FM is a joke where I live and rarely gets played in my truck, it’s all country around here and well that’s just not my thing. Sure, I’ve got satellite radio, XM Sirius or Sirius XM whatever they’re calling it now, but they like to send me a monthly bill.

I was looking for a free medium with lots of variety and at least a little bit of control. Since my niece singing “Umbrella…ella…ellla…aye…aye…” in the back seat wasn’t cutting it, I had to look for other options.

The iPhone stepped up to the plate and delivered. Internet radio is now being sent to my factory speakers through a little cable all thanks, to of all things, my phone. You’ve got to love technology. I always knew that we would end up with internet radio in our cars, I just didn’t think it would be this soon.

Unlike some of my friends, I can’t hook my iPhone directly to my car radio, so there was some expense involved in purchasing an FM modulator. I figured a one time fee of 20 bones was well worth getting some free music that I wasn’t sick of hearing. I’ll get that money back in no time after I cancel my $120 a year subscription to XM anyways.

So I’ve been using the iPhone to stream internet radio to the car for over 2 weeks now and absolutely love it. Rarely does it cut out, no more than my satellite radio does in the jungle of trees that I live in. I was a little bit skeptical about the quality of sound, but it has proven to be equal to if not better than the XM. I’ve tried a few apps out but hands down I’m in love with Pandora internet radio. I’ve always used the service on my computer, but to bring them with me on my 3 hour a day commute to work and back has been a blessing.

Here is the beauty of Pandora if you don’t know.

1. It knows you. Pick any song, artist, genre, year etc… and Pandora will deliver a myriad of music all in some way related to your choice. You won’t always get what you ask for right off the bat, for legal reasons, but you’ll almost certainly hear it within a few songs.

2. The ability to have control. If you don’t like the song choice you have two options, skip it or give it the thumbs down which tells Pandora to never play that song again. I recently had to give the thumbs down to “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Thanks to my hippy parents, I literally can’t listen to that song one more time. You’re only allowed to skip I think 6 songs an hour but you can change or create a new channel at your will.

3. Information. Pandora gives you artist and band info including how the band got started and which songs led them to fame, pretty cool.

4. NO DJ’s or commercials. That point speaks for itself.

Itunes offers several other apps that deliver internet radio… there is AOL Radio, Tuner Internet Radio, Slacker Radio and a whole host of others. Please don’t let my bias towards Pandora (hint hint) persuade you in anyway to not check out the other options.

To recap, if you have an iPhone I recommend that you at least look into streaming internet radio in your car as a viable option to satelite or FM radio. Youre already footing the 100 bucks a month, take advantage of all the freebies that the iPhone has to offer. We are in a recession people, time to pinch pennies.

My girlfriend requested a wallpaper that included her dog, so I thought I would share it on the site as well. Here’s a way to keep your pet within clicking distance on your desktop.

Use Photoshop to add Your Dog to Your Desktop

1. Open a good picture of your K9 buddy in photoshop. High quality pictures with his/her eyes looking into the camera work best.

2. Now use the magnetic lasso tool to outline your dog, as to separate them from the background.

3. Once the selection has been highlighted with the lasso tool, right-click on the selection and choose “layer via copy” to put the selection on its own layer.

4. Now open a new window with the dimensions you choose for your wallpaper. I choose 1440 x 900 for mine. Choose two shades of a color one for the foreground and one for the background and use the gradient tool to drag diagonally across the new window to create a gradient effect.

5. With the layer of your cut-out pet in the other window selected, drag the cut-out onto the new gradient window you just created with the move tool.

6. Once moved over, resize the image of your pet by hitting “control T” or alternatively Edit>Free Transform.

7. Again with the magnetic lasso tool, on the image of the pet that you just dragged over and resized, trace out the head only and right-click to add it to its own layer.

8. With this new layer selected, slightly enlarge the head with “control T” and then move it back over the body to cover the smaller head behind it. The keyboard arrows will give you fine tuned control in this part.

12. Now, with the layer containing the cut-out head still selected choose Filter>Liquify from the top menu in Photoshop. Use the liquify brush to slightly enlarge the eyes, nose and ears of your dog. The brush size should be a tad bit bigger than the actual eyes. You can also drag a slight smile on the mouth your dog too. Click OK when satisfied with the results. By enlarging some of the main features, the dog begins to pop out of the screen more, and looks less like he was just copy and pasted.

13. Last step. Highlight the body layer of your dog and select the Blur tool. With a Blur brush slightly larger than the dogs body, swoop over the body to give it a slight out of focus look. Make sure the head layer is not selected.

All you have to do now is save your project as a .jpg file and apply it as a wallpaper on your desktop. I hope this helps someone.

Final Result

This trick is a few years old, but surprisingly few people know about it. First off, if you’re not already using VLC Media Player for videos then get it now. It’s my primary media player because it recognizes all extension types allowing it to play any video. Okay, on with tutorial.

How to use Videos as Wallpaper:

1. Open VLC

2. Go to Tools>Preferences and click on “Video” on the left-hand side of the screen.

3. Within the “Video” screen, check mark the box for “Enable Wallpaper Mode” under DirectX. Then click “Save” at the bottom of the screen.

4. Now open any video in VLC player.

5. Right-click on the video and choose Video>DirectX Wallpaper

6. Minimize any windows including VLC and you will see the video playing in the background as a wallpaper.

NOTES: If the video appears to be square with black on the edges, then right-click on the video while in VLC and choose as Video>Aspect Ratio>(change to 16:9 or 16:10)

You will also want to put your video on a loop to keep it playing. Go to Tools>Playlist>make sure the video you want is in there and click the icon at the bottom until it says repeat all (refer to picture)

That’s all there is to it. Visit Dreamscene.org for a great place to download free videos made for this reason. They run on a short seamless loop so that your RAM is not taken advantage of.

In a previous post I showed you an easy way to increase your muscle size using the Liquify tool. In this post, using Adobe Photoshop, I’m going to explain a more detailed way of accomplishing the same goal yet rendering higher quality results. Remember, less is more when editing in Photoshop. You don’t want to end up looking like that steroid guy on the Discovery channel who’s arms exploded. Lets get started.

Increase Muscle Size with Photoshop:

1. Open your photo within Photoshop and go ahead and increase the view to 200% focusing on one arm at a time.

2. Get out your Magnetic Lasso tool from the tools window. If you cant find it, go to the “Window” tab and check mark “Tools”. To access the Magnetic Lasso as opposed to the regular or Polygonal Lasso, hold down on the icon to bring up the other options.

3. Trace out the arm with the Lasso, keeping a natural flow around the edge of the arm. The beauty of the Magnetic Lasso is that as you move along the edge of the arm it will automatically trace appropriately. This isn’t always the case though. If the lasso isn’t cooperating then left-click every 1/16 of an inch or so to create your own path.

Try and keep a rounded look when coming over the shoulder. Stay to the outside of the chest, coming back to the arm at the shoulder pit area.

To finish out the selection come back over the wrist in a straight line and click on the beginning of your trace.

4. Right click on the selection and choose “Layer via Copy” to insert the selection on a separate layer.

5. This next step is the most crucial and difficult in photo editing. With your newly created layer selected, hit CTRL+T to activate the free transform option or go to Edit>Free Transform… Stretch the free transform selection of your arm away from the body to increase the muscle to your desired size.

Once you get your size right, you’ll need to rotate the arm by moving your cursor to the bottom corner of the free transform box until you see the curved arrow icon. Rotate back towards the body just a hair to match the angle of the original arm.

Now use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the selection back towards the body until the original arm is covered by your new arm. Pay attention to the shoulder to make sure it keeps a natural look. You may have to play with this step for a while, but you’ll get it. There will be a size difference in the wrist, don’t worry about that for now, just make sure that the new wrist is in line with the hand. We will clean up that part in the next step.

6. Now let’s clean up that wrist and any other imperfections. Use the erase tool to clean up around the hand area. Use a brush size that you are comfortable with and delicately erase parts of your new selection until you create a natural flow between the hand and wrist.

There are two options for cleaning up the unnatural tone colors between the hand and wrist. Note: Remember that you are still zoomed in at 200% and that at the original size this will not be as noticeable.

1. Blur Tool - use the blur tool to slightly blur the contrast area.

2. Clone Stamp - Use the clone stamp tool to clone skin colors from nearby areas and remove the obvious contrast.

Play around with this step for a while to get the results that you are after. Zoom back out to 100% and look over the image closely looking for any obvious imperfections.

7. The next logical step would be to do the other arm and then enlarge the chest, neck and do some touch ups on the torso. We’ll save that for another post. Here is a closeup of the before and after of the arm only.

Wipe the sweat from your brow, you just gained a ton of muscle mass without lifting a single weight.

Bored with the limited selection of ringtones available through iTunes? You could always pay for software that can create ringtones for you, but I’m betting you want to do this yourself and skip the middle man. Here is a quick way to create your own ringtones using iTunes and only iTunes.

Before you get started:

1. This does not work with songs purchased from iTunes with drm on them

2. This does work with MP3’s, aiff files, non-protected aac and songs purchased from the Amazon music store.

Make Your Own Ringtones in iTunes:

1. Find the song you want to use in your iTunes library. To find out if the song is capable of being turned into a ringtone, right click on the bar at the top of your music and choose “Kind”.

2. After choosing the song, you need to decide what selection you want to use as the ringtone. Listen to the song and watch the time to determine a 15 second section you would like to use.

3. Now right-click on the song and choose “Get Info”. A window will open with several tabs, choose the “Options Tab”

4. In the Options window check the boxes next to “Start Time” and “Stop Time”. Enter in the 15 second time frame that you chose when listening to the song and click “OK”

5. Now Choose the Advanced option in the top left corner of iTunes and select “Create AAC Version”. Make sure that your song is still highlighted before clicking create AAC Version. You should now see a copy of the original song in the AAC format at a length of :15 seconds. Quick Note: Go back to the original song after completing this step and uncheck the start and stop times so that the song will play in its full length.

6. Now drag and drop the :15 second newly created song onto your desktop.

7. Change the extension name from .m4a to .m4r of the file you dragged to the desktop. If you dont see the extension after the song name, you may need to go into your settings to show extensions.

8. Before bringing this song back into iTunes, you need to delete the :15 second song that you initially created. This is an important step, if you don’t do this iTunes will not accept the new ringtone.

9. Now, drag the .m4r song from your desktop back into iTunes. Drop it in the left corner over “Library” to insert it back into your music library. Click on ringtones and you will now see your newly created ringtone.

All you have to do now is sync your iPhone and your newly created ringtone is ready to go. To stay legal, only use songs that you have purchased or created yourself.

Want to add some larger muscles to your pictures. Take advantage of the “liquify” option in Photoshop to quickly edit your pictures. Visit my similar post Increase Muscle Size with Photoshop - Lasso Tool for a more complex way of accomplishing this, rendering much better results.

Here is the fast easy way to do it.

Get Bigger Muscles using Photoshop:

1. Open the image that you want to edit.

2. Open the “liquify” brush under the Filter tab. You can also use the shortcut Shift+Control+X.

3. Change your Brush Size to about 50-60 and leave Density and Pressure around 50 as well.

4. Using the liquify brush, drag (left-click) outward along the edges of the muscles to create a natural look. You want to click on the very edge of the muscle and not the center. Don’t just concentrate on the biceps, enlarge the forearms, tris, and shoulders as well. It is important to create a natural look in this step. Don’t get carried away by making the muscles too big.

Right Way

Wrong Way

That’s all there is to it. Now remember this is the basic way to add larger muscles with Photoshop. There is a more complex way that renders better results. The larger the picture or the closer the person is in the image, the more obvious the editing can become to a trained eye. Experiment with Photoshop to get it just right and take advantage of the undo button with any mishaps.

Video Tutorial: