Category Archives: Internet

HOWTO: Save nearly any multimedia file in your web browser to your hard drive

Ever wanted to save that video or flash animation that you found on the web to your hard drive? Well, if you’re using Mozilla Firefox, it’s actually pretty easy.

This tutorial will not work with anything streamed or encapsulated (e.g., streaming videos and quicktime trailers like on trailers.apple.com). Capturing those is beyond the scope of this howto (read: I’m lazy)

Also, remember to respect other’s intellectual property: Saving a copy to your hard drive is fair use; taking that and publishing it on your own website is probably not. Check to see if there’s a Creative Commons licence, or get permission from the media’s owner before you distribute someone else’s works.

Enough with the warnings! I’ll assume you have installed Firefox, and get on with the tutorial:

  1. Open the page that contains what you want to save

    Here we have a movie on NewGrounds that my friend Andrew Kepple made. It’s a flash movie, so it’s embedded on the webpage. There’s no link to the file that I would normally be able to right-click and save from.
  2. Right-click the page anywhere except the video and choose View Page Info

    This will open the Page Info window. Tools > Page Info will do the same thing.
  3. From the Page Info window, go to the Media Tab
    On this tab is a list of all the embedded resources on the page, including images, ads, and convienently, Flash animations and other video files.
  4. From the Media list, find your resource and click it
    If you know what you’re after is a video, try looking at filename extensions for AVI, WMV, MOV, DIVX, and such. Flash animations end in SWF, and music files are usually MP3.
    Chances are that what you’re after is quite large, so you could just go through each item in the list looking at the Size field below, and when you find one that’s bigger than the rest, that’ll probably be your file.
    You could also check the resource’s MIME type, which might have the word flash, video, movie, sound or the like in it, tipping you off.
  5. Click the Save As... button
    Then save your resource like any other file. Remember where it is.

Done! It’s easy when you know how! Happy repetitive watching! If you have any suggestions on improving this howto, please leave a comment 🙂

Update: Hi to all visitors from digg.com and the diggnation podcast! Hear Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht talking about this blog post on diggnation podcast #002 between 06m50s and 09m01s

Update: Welcome to those visiting from Lifehacker!

Internet Movies 62 comments

Web Essentials ’05 or BUST!

When my friend CJ got back from Web Essentials 04 she just RAVED about it. So now CJ has convinced me to save up and attend Web Essentials ’05 in Sydney! 29-30 of September… It should be really good; the workshops look like tons of fun, international speakers like Dave Shea, Tantek, and my aquaintence Doug Bowman, and it’s only across the ditch! (for non-NZers, the ditch being the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia)

It’s gonna cost me some serious coinage… admission is AU$700, and hopefully work will pay for some of that, but I still gotta get airfares, departure tax, accomodation, spending money. All up I’m probably gonna have to get about NZD$1500 from somewhere, which probably means saving it.

I’ve never attempted to save this much money before, so it should be a good lesson for me. It’s also my first time overseas — I don’t even have a passport! I kinda want a laptop to take too… cybercafes suck.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get some sponsorship. Maybe some of my fellow attendee out there want to help me out? So I’ve put a Paypal button on the main page. But if you want to donate another way, let me know!

I intend to stay at the Sydney Railway Square YHA Wake Up!, which is only 5 minutes away from the WE05 venue. It’s cheaper if you bunk in a same-sex-room with 4 or 8 other buddies, but I don’t have any same-sex buddies who will be attending yet… If you’re going to WE05 on the cheap, contact me and we’ll hook up 🙂 Of course, if someone wants to billet me, that’d be even better 🙂

Update: As with any good donation drive, you need to give something in return. So if you donate more than NZD$5 (read: more than USD$4.00) then I’ll post you a CD-R with loads of legal Creative Commons MP3s on it, just to say thanks! I might even throw some mashups on there too 🙂 Be sure to include your mailing address so I can send you your CD 😀

Update: Thanks to my good pal Andrew Morrison and my good friend CJ, combined they’ve donated NZD$150 😀

Update: Cheers GuruBob for another NZD$25! Someone get that man a pie!

Update: HUGE THANKS to my new employer, 3months.com for pledging NZD$800!

Update: A big TY to Jenny Crumiller for the donation of USD$40! (~NZD$58.36)

Update: A big w00ta to Scott Buffington who donated USD$20 (~NZD$29.20)! Big Ups!

Update: Two updates today: USD$20 (~NZD$29.20) from Smikwily and USD$5 (~NZD$7.25) from David Pickett: Cheers you guys!

Update: Michael DiStefano donated a sweet USD$4 (~NZD$5.80) — Cheers Michael!

Internet Outside Web Design Web Essentials 05 Work 8 comments

Thinkgeek Swag!

The ThinkGeek stuff we ordered arrived today! Daniel scored a Geek Blanket, a Radio Controlled Shooting Battle Tank, a CHIMP along with a few t-shirts: “Insufficient Memory”, “I don’t work here.”, and “Game Over”, and is still waiting for delivery of his “Cypherpunk” t-shirt.

I scored much less swag. I got t-shirts: “Joystick Junkie”, “Esc”, and “You are Dumb 2.0”. So good! 😀

Photos on [ webfroot gallery | flickr ]

Friends Hardware Internet Photos 2 comments

Glutnix was in Breakpoint City

Recently I got invited to Gmail, Google’s new 1GB webmail service, Thanks to Pozz. A couple of days ago I got my Gmail invites, and gave one to my brother, a couple of people who wanted them, and gave one away on Webfroot.

Then I saw Brian Emling, cartoonist of Breakpoint City, asking for a Gmail account on his site. So I gave him one. So then he did this 😀 Cheers Brian! Go read his comic 😀

Funny Internet Reading 3 comments