gHacks technology news » download

Video Clip Download

Martin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:29:38 +0000

Video portals are immensely popular on the Internet.The sheer amount of videos makes them attractive to a large audience. The larger portals like Youtube or Dailymotion host millions of videos from daily news over music to tutorials on how to cook the perfect meal or learn a new language.

While most users are perfectly happy to watch the video clips online some prefer to download them to the computer. This has a few advantages like being able to watch them multiple times without using additional bandwidth or the ability to convert the videos into formats that can be burned to DVD or copied on mobile devices.

The number of video clip downloaders is nearly uncountable. There are dozens of browser plugins for various websites, the download managers and specific applications created for the purpose. They all cater to different audiences. Some users prefer to have the functionality build into their web browser, others prefer standalone applications that provide advanced features like downloading videos even if the browser is not active.

One popular application to download video clips from currently more than 70 video portals is xVideoServiceThief, a standalone application that uses a dropbox to catch the videos that it should download.

It’s easy to use the video clip downloader. The dropbox can be activated from withing the program interface and stays on top all the time. All that needs to be done is to move the video clip, either the url from the address bar or the link on the page, into the dropbox area. The download starts instantly

Video clips can also be added by pasting urls directly by clicking on the Add Video button in the program’s interface.

The downloads are automatically stored on the computer’s hard drive and by default converted into avi format. It is possible to pick another format like 3gp or mp3 instead or keep the downloaded files in their original format.

XVideoServiceThief is definitely not the only application that is providing that functionality but the program works without difficulties. It’s also worth mentioning that it is Open Source, available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh and comes as a portable version and installation in the Windows version.

Tags: dailymotion, download, Video Clip Download, video clips, video downloads, video portal, videos, youtube

Free Apps and Games for your Symbian Phone

joshua — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:29:00 +0000

Nokia doesn’t have one wizz-bang distribution store like Apple has with iTunes, and locating applications for the Symbian OS is actually quite a pain. Apparently Symbian is a total bitch to develop for so there isn’t a huge amount of apps like you can get for the iPhone.

There are some resources however, so I’ve put together this list of the best sites to find free (and commercial) applications and more:

Mosh

Nokia’s portal for free apps, games, audio and images. Accessible from your phone and computer. It has a pretty rubbish selection of applications, but if you’re looking for some semi-decent free games then Mosh has quite a few.

Symbian Freak

Symbian Freak provides news and downloads for Symbian phones. It actually has one of the best selections of freeware, some of the applications are even useful! If I had to recommend one resource is would be this.

Symbian Freeware

If you filter through all the crap you might find some decent downloads in here.

Nokia Beta Labs

Actually fair bit going on in here; a number of apps which are coming out of development are worth taking a look at.

Nokia Download!
Download! is another Nokia Portal for free and paid applications. There are few apps here, not a huge amount, hopefully Nokia has some plans to improve this aspect of their products.

My Symbian

Forums and download directory, fair bit here if you browse through.

Dot Sis

Hang out on these forums and you’re likely to find a whole lot of games and apps. If you can be bothered registering =P

Carbide

Carbide.ui is software to create user interfaces for your Symbian device. Easy to use, great for making custom themes.

Tags: application, download, Games, Nokia, symbian

Anti-Malware Toolkit Downloads Security And Cleanup Tools

Martin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:15:42 +0000

After reading the original heading over at Download Squad I thought that the Anti-Malware Toolkit was a software to scan the system for installed security and cleanup tools and update them if necessary. That is apparently not the case. The tool provides downloads to various popular security and cleanup tools of which the latest version will be downloaded to the local computer.

The software programs are divided into four different categories named applications, definitions, recommended and utilities which all contain several programs and checkboxes in front of them. There is also a quick link to four software packages which activate several of the listed applications.

The good thing about this downloader is that it contains several of the most popular applications like Unlocker, Autoruns, Firefox, Comodo Firewall, JavaRa and CCleaner and that it will automatically check if those versions are compatible with the operating system.

The not so good thing is that it does not check if the application is already installed on the system in the latest version. There are also no descriptions of the applications available in the program itself. That’s pretty rough for inexperienced users.

I guess its great for a new system to download several of the recommended applications at once but nothing that could not be done with a web browser or download manager either. Good idea but needs the system scan option in my opinion.

Tags: anti-malware, applications, download, malware, software, Windows

Torrent2exe makes Bittorrent a tad easier

Martin — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:45:35 +0000

The Bittorrent protocol has gone a long way since the beginning and the applications have become increasingly easy to use for most users. They do come with a lot of settings though which can speed up the seeding and downloading and configure the client exactly the way the user wants it to be but usually it’s just an install and use kind of process.

The concept however is harder to explain to users who work with a computer but are not tech-savvy. Instead of telling them to install a Bittorrent client to load the torrent file to be able to download it it would be far easier and comfortable to present an executable file to them which would handle that on its own.

Torrent2exe (via Download Squad) is a web application that can turn any torrent file into an executable. The torrent can be selected from an url or from the computer of the user creating the executable.

The second option determines if the full client will be included in the executable or only part of it which would mean that the rest would be automatically downloaded from the web once the user starts the exe on his computer. The partial download does not make much sense in my opinion because the size of the full client is only about 500 Kilobytes. The size of the partial client was about a tenth of that figure.

After the download completes the program reminds the user to continue seeding. The default value is the size of the torrent that was downloaded but another size or time can be selected instead.

Torrent2exe is an excellent application especially for companies who would like to distribute large files without having to offer the downloads directly or having to explain and troubleshoot downloading via Bittorrent clients.

Tags: bittorrent, download, internet, P2p, software, torrent, Windows

A Comparison of Multiple File-Hosting Sites

Cheryl — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:24:38 +0000

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Uploadjockey, which allows you to upload a file to many of the popular file-hosting sites at one time. I also asked readers for their suggestions and was pleasantly surprised to find there are quite a number of multiple file-hosting sites available. I decided to try out the sites mentioned and am writing about my experiences.

MassMirror: I was quite impressed with this service until I got to the end. Uploading a file was a nice experience. I got a progress bar which told me how much of my file was uploaded, the time left, and the upload speed I was getting. MassMirror has more file-hosting sites covered as well. A file will be hosted on Rapidshare, Picshome, 4filehosting, Megaupload, Fileinsanity, Fastuploading, and Zshare. File size limits are bigger too with the site allowing you to upload files up to 1 GB big. The bad part: When I tried to upload a file, it got stuck at the part where the file is sent to the other sites. I don’t know if the site was down or something but my file just wouldn’t get past the final stage.

Fileducky: Fileducky uploads your file to Badongo, Rapidshare, Sendspace, and Zshare as long as it is under the 100 MB size limit. The upload speed was fine and the progress bar at least had a percentage element but nothing else.

Sharebee: Like Fileducky, Sharebee supports 4 sites namely Rapidshare, Megaupload, Zshare, and Badongo. It too has a 100 MB file size limit but has a better progress bar than Fileducky. When you upload a file on Sharebee, you can see the upload speed, amount of file uploaded, and time left.

The verdict. Sharebee was the easiest to use, followed by Fileducky. If MassMirror can get their act together, they’d definitely be at the top of my list. What about you? Which service would you use and why? Or do you prefer to use just one file-hosting site? Let me know in the comments.

Tags: Badongo, download, file hosting, megaupload, Multiple sites, rapidshare, Zshare

View TV Shows Online with Alluc

Cheryl — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:55:53 +0000

There is only one television in my house so there are times when programs clash. At such times, I often have to forgo watching my choice of TV show. This means that when I watch the show the following week, I’ve missed out on part of the story. My current problem is that my favorite channel has been off air for three weeks because of a signal problem.

To counter this problem, I scour a whole host of online TV sites to catch up. My personal favorite used to be TVLinks but that site got shut down some time in October. Ever since then, I’ve turned to Alluc, which is short for ‘all you see’. This is one of the better show aggregators out there. It has extensive links to movies, TV shows, anime, music videos, documentaries, and sports videos.

Like other sites, Alluc itself does not host any of the files. They simply link to files present on video sharing sites like Youtube, Stage6, Veoh, etc. The home page has the most popular links in each category. If you are looking for something specific, simply click on the desired category and then browse through to see if it’s available. Most of the time, you will definitely find what you are looking for.

The only downside to this site is that they do not have any control over the quality of the videos, since they accept links from all over. Most of the files are in ‘flv’ format, which is not exactly DVD quality. Do not despair since new links are constantly being added. If you come back the next day, you will often find the same file in ‘divx’ format. At the same time broken links are removed so you are not likely to get dead links very often.

Alluc ranks high on my list largely because they have a lot of links. While popular shows are available easily, this site even has files pertaining to older TV shows as well as obscure ones, which got cancelled halfway.

There are lots of online TV sites out there. I’ll be checking them out in the coming weeks and will post reviews of good ones over here. Suggestions are always welcome.

Tags: Browsing, download, Online TV

Download songs, videos, and images with DownloadHelper

Cheryl — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:11:36 +0000

Thanks to Martin, I was introduced to Orbit Downloader and its nifty little assistant Grab++. It has helped me immensely to save certain files to my hard drive. However, not everyone uses Grab++ so how would you manage to perform the same functions without it?

The answer is the Firefox extension DownloadHelper. This was one of the first extensions I added when I installed Firefox. DownloadHelper monitors all the websites you visit and automatically detects any image, music, and video files on that page. If any of these files are there, the icon placed in your toolbar starts hovering. Clicking on the arrow next to it gives a small drop-down menu which displays the names of the files. If you click on any of them, the file automatically starts downloading to your computer.

What I like most about this extension is that it’s easy to use and extremely effective. Plus, if you hit ‘Ctrl + click’, you can add the link to your preferred download manager and download it from there. Another plus is that if you have plenty of tabs open, it will display all the links only from the current tab you are viewing. All in all, this extension is extremely handy to have around for those clips you just cannot save to your hard drive.

Tags: download, firefox-extensions, media

Grab Text from all Files in a Directory

Martin — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:20:13 +0000

The title of this article might be a little confusing at first glance. Why would someone want to scan files in a directory for certain strings and output them in a new file ? Few ideas come to my mind why this could be useful. Imagine that you were surfing a website with lots of images that you liked very much. You could download those images manually or use the software Win Text File Patch to scan all files in your browsers cache for a certain string and output them in a new file.

Afterwards you would import that new list in a download manager and download all images from there. Sounds easier ? It is, indeed. This is of course not only useful for file downloads but also for any other type of information found in files. Password lists come to my mind, proxy lists, any kind of list actually.

Win Text File Patch has a size of only 84K which is amazing if you consider what this application is doing. To work with the software you need to edit a few entries. You specify the source directory, the file types that you want scanned, a destination directory and file and of course the software should scan the files for.

The text part requires some knowledge of how the information are presented in the files. If you were looking for images for instance you would have to know that they begin with the html tag and end with ">. It begins to get problematic if the website in question did use relative links and not absolute ones because of the missing url.


Win Text File Patch offers a way to replace the information that has been found which is exactly what we would need here. This can be a very useful software for several users.
Read More:
Win Text File Patch

	Tags: directory, download, htm, html, internet, win text file patch


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Radiohead is trying a new distribution method
Martin — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:18:20 +0000
Radiohead is a well known English rock band which was formed in 1986. They currently are under no contract with a major record label and are therefor trying to distribute their upcoming album called In Rainbows which will be released October 10, 2007 and exclusively available for purchase on an Internet website.
What makes this rather unique is the approach of the band. Instead of asking for a certain price for the album they let the fans decide what they would like to pay for it. Yes, that is right, you can pay $0 or $100 or even more if you like. Everyone may download the In Rainbows album afterwards.
Even if you select to pay $0 for the album – or better a digital download of it – you have to pay a fee for the credit card transaction. This is however a very interesting experiment which will most likely be a success for Radiohead.
A discbox will also be released which is essentially a double vinyl/double CD release. Everyone purchasing the discbox may also download the music from the website. The discbox will be priced at £40 including shipping and handling.
Read More:
In Rainbows

	Tags: album, download, in rainbows, music, radiohead


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Firefox Image Batch Downloader
Martin — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:44:31 +0000
It is not that easy to download all images from a page with many images in Firefox. It would be possible to use a download manager or wget to get all the images but this would mean that you would have to rely on external tools and know how to use them. A far easier method is to use the Firefox extension Batch Downloader. It does exactly what the name suggests, it downloads all images that have a resolution of 200×200 or more in one batch to your hard drive.
The minimum resolution can be changed to whatever values you deem appropriate.  Whenever you visit a page with images you can use the right-click option to batch download (all) images on that website to a location on your hard drive that you can specify afterwards. The Batch Downloader offers more than that though. You can specify a base url and use wildcards to download all images that are connected to the base url.
 Some websites use formats that are not immediately recognized by batch downloader. This is mostly the case when a scripting language such as php is used to display images. You need to create a gallery using the batch downloader extension first and download the pictures using the normal batch download images option from the right-click menu afterwards.

	Tags: batch-download-images, batch-downloader, download, download-images, images


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Download and Convert Youtube movies in one step
Martin — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 08:14:55 +0000
Not long ago I wrote an article about converting flv files which are used by Youtube and Google Video to another format like avi and mpg to be able to watch them on your computer without the need of using a flv player or plugin. Fastdump pointed out in the comments that the program VDownloader would do the same faster and easier, what can I say – he was right.
Vdownloader is a little freeware program that scans your clipboard for links to youtube, google video, grinvi and dailymotion. Once it detects such a link the movie will be automatically downloaded and converted to the format that you specified in the settings. You may save the video as avi, mpg or psp and change the output size and audio bitrate in the process.
Converting youtube videos did not take long at all. A 2 minute video was downloaded and converted in about 2-3 minutes to mpg. I was trying the same on dailymotion and it was working fluent as well. It takes a little bit longer to convert larger videos of course but it still the fastest way that I know of. It is basically a one click download and conversion program.

	Tags: convert, convert-flv, dailymotion, download, flv, google-video, vdownloader, youtube


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Discover more than 2000 free albums at Jamendo
Martin — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:36:35 +0000
Jamendo is a music service that tries a different distribution model for music albums. Instead of paying money to download and listen to music you download the music for free and pay or donate money later directly to the artist who created the music. You may either donate money using paypal or visit the artists website to purchase music directly to support them even further and receive CDs that are send to your location.
All music available at Jamendo was released under Creative Commons which means that you may download, remix and share the music freely without the fear of being sued. Jamendo offers a tag cloud which can be used for navigation which seems to have roughly 100 different genres from 17sonrecord to zen. The most popular ones seem to be electronica and rock. Alternatively you may navigate Jamendo by artists or albums. 

I think it is pretty nice that all albums have cover art and a genre connected to them. Clicking on an album loads a website filled with information and options. You may listen online to all the tracks (mp3 or ogg), download the full album using bittorrent or emule, spread the album using your website, write and read reviews, buy the album from the artist, donate to the artist, find out about similar artists and rate the album.
You may create podcasts or m3u (winamp playlists) while listening to one or more of the tracks of a certain album. Online quality of the songs is not that great but sufficient for judging the song. Downloads are encoded with roughly 200 Kbps (mp3) and 300 Kbps (ogg).
Jamendo rocks. Oh, you will have to create an account before you can use most of their services. It is free, takes only a couple of seconds.

	Tags: albums, cc, creative-commons, download, free, jamendo, music, riaa


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Save Quicktime Movies from Apple Trailers
Martin — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 09:33:23 +0000
I do not like Quicktime that much. I hate to use additional clients next to VLC to be able to view certain movies on websites. I also do not like the fact that you can’t save movies easily if you do not use Quicktime Pro. I discovered a method that makes it possible to save movies from the Apple Trailer website to your local drive and watch them in your favorite movie player afterwards. I use VLC for this purpose but Quicktime Alternative for instance should be fine as well.
I’m going to explain the method using an example. I’m really looking forward to seeing the movie 300 which will come out in march. A new trailer for that movie was released a few days ago and I want to download it to my computer to be able to watch it again without re-downloading it. The first step would be to visit the apple movie trailers website.
Click on the link to the movie 300. The main page of the movie shows up where you can select the resolution of the trailer that you want to view. Right-click and select view page source. Find either 480, 720 or 1080. Skip the first and copy the second url that you find.
480 – http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_480p.mov

720 – http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_720p.mov

1080 – http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_1080p.mov
Add the letter h before the resolution, it would like this
480 – http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_h480p.mov

720 – http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_h720p.mov

1080 – http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_h1080p.mov
This is the direct link to the movie. You could use a download manager to download it or save the page once the movie has been completely loaded.

	Tags: apple, cinema, download, film, movie, quicktime, save, trailers


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Download the Bebo songs in mp3 format
Martin — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 07:22:37 +0000
Bebo is a community driven website that, among other features, allows bands to have their special place on the web and offer songs and information to their audience. Clicking on the bands tab will load the central page for all bands at bebo. Once you click on a special band information about that band are displayed and a songs link is revealed.
Clicking that songs link leads to some songs that can be listened to on the web. The clever guys at tech-recipes have found a way to download those mp3 files directly to your hard drive. Once you are in the songs menu do the following: Right-click and view the source of the page. Search for mp3 and continue the search until you find a reference that looks like a complete url starting with http:// and ending with .mp3.
This is the complete filename for the first song that was displayed on the songs page. Copy that link and paste it into your web browser or automatic downloader. The song will download just fine and the only step left to do would be to change the name to the name of the band and song.
Continue the search to find additional links to all the other songs that might be in that list. Tech-Recipes suggested to create an account but I was not able to verify that this is indeed necessary. You can download the songs just fine without creating an account.
It could however be that you may listen to additional songs if you have an account at their website.
Update: The described method is not working anymore. I discovered another method which I described in the follow up article Download songs from Bebo.com

	Tags: bebo, download, hack, mp3, songs


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Firefox add-on to discover media links
Martin — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:02:14 +0000
I’m currently using the Video Downloader add-on for firefox to download videos from websites such as youtube or google video. It is working perfectly on those websites but has limitations when it comes to different type of websites that use MMS or RealMedia links for their movies for example.
Unplug steps in providing the technology to discover media links for mms and real media videos as well. It is also working for flv files that youtube and google video use but not that comfortable as the video downloader add-on. Once the extension is installed you can use the add-on by selecting Tools / UnPlug to scan the website automatically for media links.
 A better option would be to add the unplug icon to one of your toolbars for faster access. To do that right-click a toolbar and select customize from the menu. Scroll down until you see the unplug fish and drag it to the toolbar of your choice.
Most of the time you receive a choice of possibilities that could contain the actual movie. It looks more complicated. Unplug tries to help the user by suggesting one or two of the links that it thinks are the most possible correct links to the movie.  I would use this plugin for the sites that the video downloader is not able to process.

	Tags: add on, download, firefox, firefox-extensions, links, media, movie, mozilla, mss, rstp, unplug, video


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Convert Youtube Video Files to Avi
Martin — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 08:04:24 +0000
Youtube and Google Video use the format flv, flash video, to stream the videos on their websites. If you download them using a firefox extension such as Video Downloader you might have problems playing them in your normal video player. One option would be to use a player that supports flv files such as the FLV Player. A better solution would be in my opinion to convert the flv files into avi or mpg which are widely supported and can be send to friends or burned on DVD easier.
The Riva FLV Encoder helps us to convert the downloaded flv files into avi, mpg, quicktime or wmv files. All you need to do is add a local input file (flv in this case) and select an output format by adding the extension to the file. If you want an avi file you simply name it video.avi in the form destination video file.
You may change additional parameters like movie size, bitrate, framerate and audio if you like. Please note that the results will not be good if you choose to increase the movie size for instance. Hitting Encode will start the process. Once that is finished you may preview the result and try again if you do not like the result.

	Tags: avi, convert, download, flv, google-video, mpg, video, youtube


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Download Random Images with SeqDownload
Martin — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 20:16:15 +0000
Many websites post random images every time their page is reloaded, webcams come to my mind as well that load a new image once every few minutes. Saving a sequence of images is really painful if you do it manually. You have to click reload, save the image, reload, save the image. SeqDownload is a nice little freeware application that automates this task for you, download the program from the link above and unpack it into a directory of your choice – there is no installation involved, run it right fom the location you unpacked the files to.

The first start shows a empty table, click on new to add a new automated task. You will have to provide a url of either the image that is constantly reloaded or of a webpage that displays a random image. Select the interval that the image will be downloaded and compared to the existing ones, choose a format for the saved images, select an extension and finally click on create new item.
SeqDownloader automatically downloads the image in the interval that you have specified during creation. If a new image appears it will be saved according to your rules. If no new image exists nothing will be saved.





	Tags: download, random images, seq download, software, Windows


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Auto-Download Images from Image Shack
Martin — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 10:52:34 +0000
I found a pearl script at binaryhack.org that lets you mass-download images that are hosted at imageshack.us. All you need is the pearl script and the mechanize module to download images from imageshack.  If you are running windows you need a pearl interpreter, PxPearl seems to work with this script.
You can edit the code that not only jpg jpeg are saved but also .pgn .bmp and every other image format you add there. They probably add support for more image hosting sites in the future.


	Tags: download, image, image shack, imageshack.us, mass download, pictures, save


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16 ways to search flickr.com
Martin — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:43:34 +0000
Flickr.com is a free internet project that contains thousands of user submitted pictures. Everyone is allowed to create an account and upload pictures to this account. I´d like to give an overview on methods to search flickr effectively. 
The article looks at web applications that enable you to search the site, at plugins for browsers and at external tools. Web applications and browser plugins clearly make the majority of search possibilities.

Web applications:
flickr.com
This one is the most obvious, flickr has a search option build in their starting page, simply enter a tag you would like to find and it displays the results as thumbnails with suggestions for related keywords. Pretty solid results and fast. They also have a advanced search. and a website that displays popular tags.
Associator
Enter a tag and associated tags are displayed.
Flickr random photo browser
Displays six random images every time the page is reloaded.
Lightweight flickr Viewer
Postcard Browser
From the same website as the related tag browser, makes the images look like postcards.
Related tag browser
They are hosting the flickr related tag browser, you enter a search term, click go and you see a thumbnailed results page with related tags forming a circle around them. Nice flash site.
Plugins, Extensions and Bookmarklets:
Flickrfox
A Firefox extension that lets you browse your photostreams in the firefox sidebar.
Flickr Multi-Tag Search Bookmarklets
Search for any or all of the tags you enter using this fine bookmarklet.
Flickr search plugin for Firefox
This is a simple search plugin for your Firefox browser, that allows you to quickly search the public available Flickr tags.
Greasemonkey scripts
Great comprehensive listing of greasemonkey flickr scripts.
Search Plugin:Flickr
Mozilla Search Plugins for Flickr, find people, find tags, find groups and find help are available.
External Tools:
Flickr Auto Downloader
Download photos from specified user or interesting photos, specify size and location to save them. Neat freeware tool for windows.
FlickrDown
Requires Net 2.0, specify a username, tool displays all images and option to download them.
Flickr Explorer
Sourceforge project, photo mass downloader.
Flickr Screensaver
Requires net 1.1., changes your screensavers image with flickr images every 15 seconds.
Flickr Wallpapers
Changes your wallpaper with photos from the flickr website using tags you specified.

	Tags: download, flcikr, image, photo, pictures, search


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Badango free upload and search service
Martin — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 11:40:22 +0000
I found another upload service that lets you upload videos and images to their directory.  They have no information on upload limits, only that the files will be on their server as long as they do not violate their Terms of Service.
They offer a site search where you can search the site for images and videos (adult content optional). I don´t know if your uploaded files  are automatically added to their site search or if you have to enable it seperately.
Nevertheless the site search yields some nice results, try it out and head to badongo.com


	Tags: badango, download, filesharing, free upload, movies


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