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5 Best Greasemonkey Scripts for YouTube

abhishek — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:28:45 +0000

Greasemonkey scripts let you improve your web experience by adding additional functionalities for any kind of website. And our favorite video site, YouTube is not an exception. In total, hundreds of YouTube scripts are available but there are some, which every video lover should install like the script to search only high quality 720 pixels videos. And now, since Google Chrome supports Greasemonkey scripts, it is my responsibility to publish some of the best scripts so that even Chrome lovers will have the benefit of better and additional YouTube features.

Lets look at best five greasemonkey scripts that every youtube lover should have for total awesomeness:

1. Completely Enhance Video Watching Experience

The Best in all available scripts is the YouTube enhancer script, which actually does justice to its name i.e. enhances the viewing experience by providing all functionalities like playback control, video resizing, quality enhancement, rollover preview, downloading and much more.

This is a single package for the ultimate cinema experience. You can have custom start and end for your favorite scenes, and even put them in repeat loop. It’s a must try for Gtricks readers.

2. Download YouTube Videos in Different Formats

Keep-Tube is by far, the most downloaded/installed Greasemonkey script for YouTube. This script lets users download YouTube videos in High Definition (HD), High Quality (HQ), MP4, 3GP, and FLV formats.

This script also claims to work with other popular video sharing websites like Dailymotion, Magavideo, Google Videos, Vimeo, Metacafe, Myspace, Facebook and others. They also claim to provide more downloading options than other video downloaders.

Once installed, you can find the download link near the video title or at rightmost end of page.

3. Watch Videos Directly without Opening a New Page
What happens when someone posts a video link from YouTube on a forum or some social networking site? We need to click it to view it. However, in the process, we lose our actual page and migrate to new page. In such conditions, Videoembed comes to good use.

This script automatically adds videos to the links so that when you click on link, they show up and start playing without navigating to the new page. Hence saving you both, time and clicks. And this contributes to better user experience.

For example, try searching “Russell Peter” after installing this script. In the search results, along with websites, you will find some YouTube videos. Because of videoembed script, you can see ‘plus’ icon next to the title of the video. Click on the icon to watch video within the search page. Its better to watch these videos in search page than opening them in different pages.

4. Watch YouTube Video Songs with Lyrics

YouTube Lyrics script adds a custom box next to video song in the sidebar to display lyrics. This script searches 11 different lyrics sites before presenting you most relevant lyrics and even you can select lyrics site from the drop down menu.

5. Always Watch YouTube Videos in Highest Quality (HQ/HD)
YouTube HD Ultimate script will automatically load the highest quality of video without refreshing the whole page. The High Quality (HQ) or High Definition (HD) version of the video will be loaded depending on the availability. But it ensures that you watch only high quality 720p videos.

The script is fast and simple to customize. It also provides other features like hiding annotations, removing in-video ads, downloading and keyboard shortcuts.

Bonus Tip: Remove Chrome (In-Video) Ads
If you are annoyed by Chrome or in-video ads that start before YouTube videos, then this script can help you. As the name suggests, YouTube Auto Buffer & Auto HD & Remove Ads script removes ads and also buffers the video without auto-playing so that you don’t have to pause a video as soon as it loads for buffering.

* Flashblock users might face some problems with these scripts. Therefore, it’s better to add YouTube in Flashblock whitelist from Tools > Add-ons > Flashblock > Options > Whitelist.

Remove Google Fade-in Effect or Flash Animation with GoogleSlim

abhishek — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:09:51 +0000

Google’s charismatic fade-in effect or flash animation in its homepage is not received very well among various users. With this effect, whenever you open Google, only the logo, search box and buttons are shown until you move mouse. As soon as there is movement in mouse cursor, other options “fade-in” creating a nice visual effect but it fills the page with too many links.

To restore the clean and minimalistic theme of Google, you can use addons or scripts but unfortunately, they only work in Firefox. For Internet explorer or Chrome, there is no workaround to get rid of this effect. In such situations, GoogleSlim comes to rescue.

GoogleSlim lets you do the same search as in Google but without any animation or effects. Google does not affiliate it but there is no difference in search quality as it only provides a layer over the search engine keeping the same results. There are no excessive ads and it does not compromise search results.

Google Homepage With and Without Fade-In

So, if you want to get rid of fade-in effect, use GoogleSlim. And yes it works in all browsers saving you trouble in installing Firefox addons or userscripts.

Interesting fact : It is believed that the early versions of Google home page was so plain that people use to sit blank for minutes thinking it’s still loading. To overcome this, a copyright message was then inserted to hint completion of page. The bare nature of Google’s home page is due to the fact that its founders didn’t knew HTML. Enjoy some more interesting facts here.

Happy Republic Day – Google Doodle and Mile Sur Mera Tumhara Video

abhishek — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:34:19 +0000

Google India is celebrating 60th Republic Day with a logo decorated with colors of Indian Flag. On this day constitution of India came into force replacing the Government of India Act 1935. [wiki]

Hearty wishes to all Indians on 60th Republic Day.

Check out these video songs featuring Incredible Indians who have contributed to the growth of the nation.

Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara Video Song

Mile Sur Mera Tumhara Video Song

Youtube for HTML5 Videos

abhishek — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:49:31 +0000

Now since every modern browser is supporting HTML5, YouTube has started to deliver experimental videos with HTML5 player. Speciality of HTML5 player is that you won’t need any adobe flash player plugin to view these videos. Let us look at some of pros and cons of HTML5 Videos:

Pros with HTML5 videos:

The biggest advantage is that you don’t need to install adobe flash player or Microsoft Silverlight plugin. That means faster and light-weighted browser with less crashes.

Videos will act like animated images. That means you can style them just like images.

Videos loads quickly than traditional flash videos.

Watch videos with h.264 encoding

Pros with HTML5 videos:

Not every browser is supported. Only Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame supports this latest format.

It doesn’t work with videos that have advertising, captions, or annotations.

Great news is that Firefox 3.6 is launched today with major updates. Unfortunately, Firefox 3.6 doesn’t currently work with the experimental HTML5 video player.

You can start viewing HTML5 videos by joining this experiment. If you have already joined any other testtube experiments, you may not get the HTML5 player, though it works perfectly with light-weight Feather.

Disable HTML5 on Youtube
HTML5 is disabled by default in Youtube. However, if you have accidently turned it ON, then you can disable it by going to Youtube.com/html5 page. Here, you need to leave the experiment, which will then instruct youtube to show only flash based videos and not the HTML5 ones.

Disable,Remove or Hide Chat from iGoogle

abhishek — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:55:25 +0000

iGoogle chat is very annoying especially if you have Gmail chat open or running a separate Gtalk application because it shows duplicate chat messages. In addition, it takes lots of time to load and makes page slow. iGoogle makes a great home page, all information in a single place but chatting makes it messy and also it’s not what we want to do always. Removing or hiding GChat tab makes much sense since for chatting with Google friends, we have similar chat in Gmail or Orkut.

Let’s look at some of the ways to remove or hide iGoogle Chat:

Temporary Disable iGoogle Chat

To temporary stop iGoogle chat, you can hide your online status i.e. make it invisible or just sign out of Chat, if you want to get rid of it for the time being.

This is a temporary method because, once you sign in from Gtalk or Gmail chat, then you automatically get signed in into iGoogle chat.

Permanently Remove iGoogle Chat

To permanently remove iGoogle Chat feature, you need to disable it from settings page or from Chat options. Once you click and then save “Hide Chat”, it gets permanently disabled from your homepage.

Hide iGoogle Chat Tab

We have already written about removing iGoogle sidebar tabs and header to save space and customize tabs by Firefox add-on. Since, this add-on hides all tabs, it can also be used to hide iGoogle chat and by this way, you won’t notice any annoying messages.

10 Power Tips for Gmail Attachments for Search and Everything

abhishek — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:32:40 +0000

Very often, we receive files as Gmail attachment and presuming that Gmail never runs out of space, we never download these attachments. But as time follows, it becomes difficult to keep up with millions of attachment and searching these files becomes nightmare.

The biggest mistake we make here is, assuming Gmail as online file storage service. In reality, Gmail is only a fantastic mailing service. Nevertheless you can also use attachments as file storing or transporting between different computers. Now if you get lot of attachments (pdf, docx, jpeg, txt) it becomes really messy to keep track of these files. More ever, there is no sorting facility in Gmail to sort messages by size or attachments. But, Search facility can come to little use here. Here is a collection 10 power tips to keep track of Gmail attachments and make your life easy and productive:

Gmail’s attachments maximum size limit is 25 MB. For storing and transferring larger files, consider Gdocs, which allows you to upload any file up to 250 MB.

Sometimes Gmail treats large size attachments as spam and without users knowledge, it sends them to spam folder. So the last strategy to search for missing file or mail would be in:spam or in:trash along with other search operator. Because by default Gmail does not search in spam folder or for deleted mails. As a protection, you can alwayswhite list expecting senders.

Gmail doesn’t not allow uploading and sending dot(.)exe files as attachment. The best way, however to send them is to rename them by any random extension and then upload them in Gmail.

Most of the times, we forget to attach some file and then we follow up with a sorry mail. For such conditions, try “Forgotten Attachment Detector” from labs tab in Gmail settings. If this lab feature finds word attach in the text body of the mail, then it will notify you with a reminder dialog box.

Gmail’s HTML version allows uploading only one file at a time. However, with Gmail’s, latest JavaScript standard version, you can upload multiple files at a time. To upload multiple file, just hold down Ctrl key while selecting files.

To search for all attachments use has:attachment in search box.

To search for only PDF attachments, use has:attachment pdf in the search box. Similarly, for other file formats. And if you know the name of attachment file use filename:latest-report.xls to search directly for that missing mail.

Use Operators after: and before: with has:attachment to search for attachments between specific dates.

To know the file type an email has without opening, install this greasemonkey script or this firefox addon. This will let you to see what kind of attachment is in your inbox.

Even if you don’t have Microsoft Office or PDF reader, then also you can use HTML preview feature to view these word attachments.

The following file formats are supported by Gmail for viewing as HTML :
.doc – Microsoft Word documents
.xls – Microsoft Excel spread sheets
.ppt – Microsoft PowerPoint presentations
.sxw – OpenOffice 1 / StarOffice 6/7 documents
.sxc – OpenOffice 1 / StarOffice 6/7 spread sheets
.sxi – OpenOffice 1 / StarOffice 6/7 presentations
.sdw – StarWriter documents
.sdc – StarCalc spread sheets
.sdd – StarImpress presentation
.pdf – Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format)

Note: You can only view the text in above files as Gmail does not support previewing images in documents yet. However, if images are send as separate attachments then you can easily preview them without downloading.

Share Your Google Wave with Everyone by Creating Your Own Public Wave

abhishek — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:12:55 +0000

Google wave is a great tool for communication and collaboration. But unfortunately, new users couldn’t find enough friends or contacts to test and enjoy all the wave features. For this purpose, Google has introduced Public waves where everyone can participate and share his/her experiences.

Public Google waves are like open chat rooms where everyone can talk, share files and experiment wave features with anonymous users. Therefore, the first thing you must do, as advised by lifehacker is to dip yourself in public waves and learn its features. To find public waves, all you need to do is put “with: public” in search box.

One common problem with public waves is its speedy nature. Since, people all over the world share their thoughts, the wave displays them in real time making a complete mess. It becomes difficult to track your own dialog. For this reason, we will learn to make our own public wave, which can be used by embedded and used anywhere and its easy to share your own wave with everyone.

For creating your own public wave, just follow these simple steps in google wave:

1) You will have to add public@a.gwave.com or public@a.googlewave.com in your contact list by clicking at + sign near manage contact link. Press enter even if submit button is not activated.

2) Now create a new wave.

3) Finally, add this public member as your wave participant.

Now, your wave is public and whomsoever knows the address can write in it without being a actual participant. You can also use wave APIs to embed waves in public forums, blogs, orkut scrapbook and other places where your visitors can easily contact. You can also check out our public wave by searching for with:public Gtricks public wave.

Related: Google wave Cheat Sheet

Get Free Data Liberation Stickers

abhishek — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 17:37:00 +0000

Data Liberation Front is already doing a fantastic job of teaching about Google data backup and now they are distributing free stickers to all who want to become their cooperative member. Unfortunately, Google will send these stickers within US only. (Sorry, my Indian mates)

All you have to do is to send a self-addresses stamped envelope to –

The Data Liberation Front
c/o Google
20 W. Kinzie, Floor 9
Chicago, IL 60610

These are vinyl stickers of size 3”x5” that can easily stick to laptops. Also, you can send pictures of your home city to include it in the collage of data liberation barn and probably they will include them in future posts. Optionally, you can send a tweet to @dataliberation displaying the use of free sticker.

Via data liberation blog.

Buy Google Nexus One in India

abhishek — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:28:31 +0000

Google plans to ship its smart phone Nexus One all across the world except in India. However, Indian customers can still purchase Nexus One from 20north.com for Rs. 33,241 as reported by Sree from teck.in.

This high profile smart phone is available for $529 (roughly Rs 24,500 in INR) but Indian customer’s have also to pay shipping charge and custom duty, making a total price of 33,241 INR that is $725 by existing dollor rates. ($1=Rs.46 )

Once, the order gets confirmed, it would take approximately 21-30 days to ship to India. Since, it’s a unlocked phone from the manufacturer, you can easily use pre-existing networks (Airtel, Vodafone or idea) on Nexus One. However, not all features are available in India like Google Voice due to non-availability of 3G services and other limitations in India.

You can also keep an eye on ebay.in where Indian importers have already started selling Google’s Nexus One for Rs. 39,000 to Rs. 40,000.

Note: Nexus One is not covered by international warranty in India. Therefore, for any kind of trouble in phone, you might have to send it back to US and get it serviced at your cost.

Thanks Sree.

Easily manage Gmail Contacts and Attachments with MailBrowser Plugin

abhishek — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:53:00 +0000

MailBrowser is a Gmail plug-in which is ideal for people dealing regularly with attachments and unknown contacts. This plugin works with both Gmail and Google Apps account. You can also configure multiple accounts with this browser plugin. Unlike other plugins or addons available with Gmail, MailBrowser loads into your browser sidebar. And since it remains separate from your gmail inbox, it is non-intrusive and very convenient plugin to use. MailBrowser is available for both Firefox and Internet explorer and you can download it from here.

Contact Features

With MailBrowser, you can get complete list of people you have ever contacted and you can easily save them to Google contacts with a click of button.

It also makes searching and sorting of contacts simpler and better. Since it makes a copy of your contacts on local hard-disk, search is very fast.

You can add tags to contacts for categorizing them. In addition to this, you can “star” important contacts and create Google Calendar events for a contact right from the sidebar.

Attachment Features

MailBrowser is a powerhouse when it comes to attachments. All the attachments are downloaded to your hard disk and thus searching, previewing and opening attachments is superfast.

Gmail lacks searching inside attachments, but with MailBrowser, you can use desktop search utility to search text inside any attachment.

Moreover, MailBrowser provides thumbnail preview, which makes searching and sorting super easy.

MailBrowser is made by an Indian Company- Webyog and as per them that it’s the perfect plugin if you don’t want to use Outlook with Gmail. You can find more official features here. Below video explains how MailBrowser will work with your contacts and attachments.

You can download MailBrowser from here.

Note: Since MailBrowser downloads all your contacts and attachments into local machine, it might take substantial amount of time for the first run.