News and Support for the Hosting Industry

I recently came across the need to download a YouTube video for a presentation in a building where no internet connection was available. In order to play the video it needed to be downloaded from YouTube. A quick search on Google helped me to track down a program called YouTube Downloader that looked like a decent option to attempt to download the video. This “how to” tutorial will give the full run-down on how to download youtube videos.

YouTube Downloader is a free program that you can download here.

To download the video the first step you need to find the video you want to download on YouTube by loading Youtube.com and navigating to the video. Once loaded you need to highlight the content of the URL box found on the right of the page as shown below, then copy the URL to the clipboard (right click/copy).

[click to continue…]

A cool little hack has recently been found that allows you to control all aspects of Windows 7 from within one control panel. The hack is called GodMode and is very simple to implement.

To access GodMode on your Windows 7 install (works on Vista too but apparently crashes the 64-bit version of Vista) all you need to do is create a new folder anywhere on your computer (the desktop can be used too) and either name or rename the folder GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

[click to continue…]

If you have some video clips you want to share with friends, family or even the world then this guide will show you how to upload to YouTube your videos.

The steps to achieve this are quite simple in that all you need is a video to upload (which I assume you have if you are wanting to upload to youtube), a YouTube account and some spare time to upload the video.

The first step here is to visit the YouTube site and if you already have an account hit the login button at the top right of the page. If you don’t have an account then click the Create Account button also at the top right of the page.

[click to continue…]

If you are running Microsoft Office and need to convert a PowerPoint Presentation to a PDF file then you can use the built in functionality of Powerpoint to achieve this. Reasons for doing this include the ability to share the file more easily with others if you know the recipients don’t have PowerPoint or the PowerPoint viewer installed.

We are currently running Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Beta, so screen shots here are geared towards that version of the software although the same principles apply on other versions such as PowerPoint 2007.

To get started you first need to load up or create the PowerPoint presentation. When the presentation is ready click on the File option in the top menu and click the Save As button shown below.

[click to continue…]

When you install software on your Windows computer it is common for those programs to set themselves to automatically run when your computer starts up. Over time a collection of these programs starts to slow down your computer as more and more memory is used for each additional program loaded at boot. In a lot of cases all these extra programs are not required when you start up your computer as chances are you are not going to be using every piece of software you have ever installed every time your computer is switched on. Luckily there is an easy way to prevent some of these programs from loading up when booting your PC by using a program called msconfig.exe.

Msconfig.exe comes installed with most versions of Windows and allows you to control exactly what is run when booting your PC. To access the program click start (or the Windows button for Windows 7 users) then click run (if on XP) or if on Windows 7 type in msconfig.exe in to the search programs and files box and hit enter. Once done you will be presented with the System Configuration program shown below. Once loaded up select the Startup tab.

Here you see a list of programs currently selected to load up when booting my own PC. Out of the visible list above I personally can remove Adobe Acrobat, Adobe CS4 Service Manager and Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Having these run at boot is not essential for my PC and thus, is wasting valuable memory that could be put to better use elsewhere. [click to continue…]

Google Docs is a free set of online tools from Google that allows you to work with spreadsheets online as well as documents, presentations and forms. This tutorial provides a step by step way that you can upload a Spreadsheet created in Excel to work with it online in Google Docs and perhaps even share the spreadsheet with friends so you can collaborate together on the data within.

How to Upload a Spreadsheet to Google Docs

Visit the Google docs site and log in with your Google username and password. If you do not have a username and password for Google then click on the Get Started button towards the bottom of the login box and follow the on-screen instructions. Registration is a fairly straight forward process requiring you to enter your email address, or create a GMail account and then give it a password and some basic information.

[click to continue…]

If you are a user of Twitter then you probably have noticed the the above image at the top of your Twitter home page. Twitter lists were created to help you cut down the noise of Twitter by creating and adding yourself to specific conversation groups. For example, for this site I have created a list called PC-Tech-Sites that can be found by clicking on that link. When visiting Twitter I might only want to look at what other pc tech sites have to say and if that is the case I simply load up my pc-tech-sites list. I could also add a “GadgetVenue” staff list where writers connect. [click to continue…]