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Filed under: Utilities, Video

YouTube Auto Buffer: how did I ever watch YouTube without it?

YouTube Auto Buffer is a userscript that fixes a lot of the things that annoy me most about YouTube. It's a beefed up version of the barebones one Lee wrote about last December. Instead of autoplaying a couple seconds of video and having to stop and start because nothing's buffered, this script turns autoplay off and clips fully buffer before playing.

I don't know about you, but I was doing that manually whenever I loaded a YouTube vid anyway. On top of that, it also turns HQ/HD on by default, so you're watching the best available version of each video, and hides the in-video ads that YouTube occasionally shows.

You'll need the Greasemonkey add-on to run YouTube Auto Buffer in Firefox, and the equivalent in other browsers (for Safari, it's GreaseKit). If you don't like all three of Auto Buffer's features, you can turn any of them off in the script's preferences. They're hiding in plain sight underneath YouTube's search box -- not in the Greasemonkey menu as you might expect.

[via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Audio, Business, Social Software

MySpace makes music moves: buys iLike, kills autoplay

MySpace made two big moves in its music business this week, purchasing social music service iLike (which just launched an mp3 store) and shutting off that annoying autoplay feature for profile songs. Both of these decisions seem pretty savvy, and might help turn around MySpace's image as a dying site.

iLike will remain a separate service, but its new music store and its huge userbase on MySpace's biggest rival site, Facebook, could add up to a big win for MySpace. It shouldn't take all that long to make back the rumored $20 million MySpace spent on the acquisition. MySpace also thinks iLike could be expanded beyond music, into video and games. iLike's recommendation features could also be monetized somehow in the future.

Stopping autoplay might not seem like a business decision at first, but it really was. MySpace's streaming costs had grown to $10 million a month, and a significant portion of that came from songs that automatically started playing on user profiles. Getting rid of this feature has other advantages, too. The obvious one is a less annoying user experience, and the slightly less obvious is better data collection. Even if you hate your friends' profile songs, they still count as plays when they start automatically. For those who really love autoplay, there's now a preference to opt into it.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Open Source

How to display a Windows desktop icon when you plug in a flash drive

Desk DriveWhenever you plug in a flash drive, CD, or other external media device into a computer running Windows XP or Vista, an autorun window will pop up asking if you'd like to explore the contents, play any media files, or take other action. When you plug removable media into a Linux system, an icon simply pops up on your desktop. Desk Drive is a free utility that lets you add this feature to Windows.

Once you install Desk Drive, all you have to do is make sure it's running by looking for a little networked folder icon in your system tray. Now whenever you plug in a removable flash drive, CD ROM or other media an icon should show up on your desktop. You can customize Desk Drive by right-clicking on the icon in the system tray and telling the software to ignore certain drives or enable certain types of media.

You might also want to disable the Windows autorun dialog.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Fix or remove Windows AutoPlay with CleanHandlers

CleanHandlers
When you pop a CD or DVD or flash drive into your PC, odds are Windows brings up the AutoPlay menu asking if you'd like to burn a disc, watch a movie, or perform some other action. Or depending on your selections in the past, Windows may just automatically launch a program. But what if it wants to launch a program that you've since uninstalled?

CleanHandler is a utility that helps you remove or fix entries from the AutoPlay menu. There's no option for adding new programs to the AutoPlay menu. If your media player of choice doesn't support AutoPlay, there's not much CleanHandler can do. But it can clean up bad registry entries.

[via XFuture Blog

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Hardware

Have your lost USB drive ask for help

Help! I'm Lost!
With USB drives getting larger in capacity but smaller in size every day, the space on which you can scrawl your "If found..." contact info is becoming more and more limited. The solution? Make your USB drive identify itself and ask to be sent home if someone finds it and plugs it in to their computer. The Daily Cup of Tech has a tutorial and a little program for making a box with your contact information (or anything else you might want to tell your USB drive's would-be finder) pop up when it's inserted into a computer. Unless you're a programmer, you'll want to scroll down to the bottom where you can download a pre-compiled version of the program. Of course, this will only work if a) the receiving computer runs Windows, and b) AutoPlay isn't disabled on it, but this is a pretty cool technique that just might get your precious USB drive returned to you the next time you misplace it.

[Via Street Tech]

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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