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.

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.