Qashqarian

Along all these years as software reviewer I’ve come across many applications that let you download videos from YouTube and other popular online video websites. But it wasn’t until yesterday that I tried out a handy little Firefox add-on called Video DownloadHelper, and after only a few hours of usage I’ve already decided this is the only app I’ll ever use to download YouTube videos.

Video DownloadHelper is installed just like any other Firefox add-on. After the ubiquitous Firefox restart you’ll notice a new button on your Firefox toolbar that will light up with colors and move every time you’re on a web page with embedded videos. Click the button and you’ll access download links for all the videos included in the page, both in FLV and MP4, as well as a series of available actions for each selected video. There’s also an icon beside the video’s title that lets you access the same menu. All you have to do is click the link of the video you want to download, and you’ll be prompted for the target folder. That’s all!

But what about all those other options available in the context menu? They let you perform several different actions with the selected video, besides downloading it straightaway to your hard drive:

Download & Convert - Helps you convert the selected video to a handful of formats, including WMV, iPod and iPhone, 3GP, MOV and AVI. This tool requires the installation of a third-party video converter - ConvertHelper, also developed by the Video DownloadHelper guy. You can easily get this tool in the extension’s settings menu: go to Tools > DownloadHelper > Preferences and then click the Conversions tab.

Tweet this video - Lets you send a message about the selected video to your Twitter account. You need to fill in your Twitter credentials (username and password) in the extension’s settings menu, inside the Services > Twitter tab.

Copy URL - Copies the video’s URL to the Windows clipboard so that you can use it elsewhere. Note that this option doesn’t copy the standard YouTube URL you see on your web browser, but the address that points to the actual video file - either in FLV or MP4.

Add to black list - This option enables you to add certain websites to a blacklist and thus block them from appearing on the list of available media generated by Video DownloadHelper. It’s a smart way to avoid advertising videos, for example. You can also check the complete blacklist in the settings menu.

Send to mobile phone / Send to locker - Lets you upload the selected video (or only its audio stream) to your mobile phone or your personal web locker via a special online service called MP3tunes. You need to set up an account though. Video DownloadHelper lets you create one in the Services > MP3tunes tab inside the settings menu.

A few months ago I installed Xobni and since then my experience of Outlook has improved tenfold. I was looking for something similar for Gmail in order to better navigate my bulging inbox, and I came across MailBrowser. This free little extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer adds an Xobni-style sidebar to Gmail, giving you a much clearer view of your contacts and allowing you to sift through attachments much more easily.

After installing MailBrowser, open up Firefox (or IE) and you’ll see the MailBrowser sidebar displayed on the right of the browser. You can toggle this sidebar on and off using the MailBrowser icon that appears underneath it. Click ‘Add an account’ and enter your Gmail credentials. The app will then begin indexing your contacts and files, which can take a while if you have a big inbox. Make sure you have plenty of memory, because all this data is downloaded to your hard drive.

Your contacts are displayed in the sidebar à la Xobni, and you can ’star’ any that you wish to mark out. Now, if you want to manage your Google contacts or schedule Google Calendar events with any of your contacts you can do so simply with the click of an icon.

Click on a contact and you can view all manner of information about your dealings with this person, including a log of previous conversations, exchanged emails, and details extracted from their email signature. You can even apply tags and notes to a contact to facilitate better searching in future.

There are a few settings you can tinker around with using MailBrowser, available via the ‘Preferences’ icon. For instance, you can choose to show only received files or display all inline signatures and images too. To further streamline your contacts list you can choose to show Google contacts only, or only display contacts to whom you have sent at least one mail. MailBrowser supports multiple Gmail accounts, and lets you set specific rules for each one.