Ever wish you could remove an annoying logo, ad, or other element from a web page. Not just hide it up for now, but never ever have to look at it again? Then you might want to check out the Remove it Permanently extension for Firefox. It lets you remove any element from any web page. Well, sort of.
First thing you need to do is install the extension. That's a bit trickier than you'd think, because the latest version isn't yet compatible with Firefox 3.01. Fortunately, you can force it to work by preventing your browser from checking for extension compatibility.
Once the plugin is up and running, you can right click on any portion of any web page and either remove that section permanently, or click the RIP advanced button for additional options. Keep in mind that if you remove an element, it will only be gone from a single URL. For example, if you remove the Download Squad logo from our main page, it will still show up on article pages, search pages, and so on.
It's also worth nothing that your browser still downloads the files. You just won't see them. So Remove it Permanently won't reduce your bandwidth use, it will just make obnoxious web sites like MySpace slightly more bearable to read.
Want to watch your DVD collection on your iPod, iPhone, PSP, Smartphone, PDA, or Zune? DVD Catalyst is a simple Windows application that can rip a 2 hour movie from your DVD and apply video compression so that the file fits on your portable device's storage card and still looks halfway decent on your mobile screen.
DVD Catalyst offers one-click DVD ripping and encoding. Just launch the program, select your portable device, slide a DVD into your disc drive, and click the little green button. The program will choose the best resolution, bit rate, and other settings for you.
Up until recently, only a commercial version of DVD Catalyst was available. But now there's a free version with a limited feature set. If you want advanced features like the ability to set 2-pass conversions, split videos into multiple parts, or adjust the volume and framerates, you might want to shell out $15 to $20 for a full version. But if you're looking for a quick and easy way to cram a few dozen DVD movies on your iPod, DVD Catalyst Free might be all you need.
There are plenty of free CD/DVD burners for Windows, and to be honest we haven't often been tempted to look beyond CDBurnerXP and InfraRecorder, which both seem to handle pretty much any tasks you can throw at them. But while reading an article about BurnOn over at Life Rocks 2.0, we noticed a link in the comments to StarBurn. And while we might check out BurnOn later, we were kind of blown away by StarBurn.
The application can handle all of your basic tasks like burning data, audio, and video discs. It supports a wide variety of formats including CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. And it has some nifty features like the ability to either rip audio CDs or compress audio already on your computer to MP3, WMA, or OGG formats.
One StarBurn feature that you don't often see bundled with disc burning utilities is a virtual drive mounting application. In other words, you can use StarBurn to create a disc image or ISO file, and then mount that file as a virtual disc so you can see how it performs without actually burning the file to a disc and sticking it in a drive. This can come in handy if you want to see check an image before burning it, or if you want to mount an image you've created or downloaded on a system that doesn't have a working optical drive.
StarBurn is free unless you want the network version, which offers network burning features and costs a whopping $495. The full functionality is included in the free version, but you can only use the network features during a 30 day free trial period.
In the intervening months since we last took a look at the fabulous DVD-ripping tool Handbrake (for Mac, Windows, and Linux), the studios have gotten wise to the "lawful use" of the little silver platters they sell at Wal-Mart and upped the ante on rippers. It seems there's a newer protection scheme that does indeed stop Handbrake from ripping the video content on certain DVDs so you can package it for your iPod.
Granted, Handbrake's developers state that the best way to use their program is by supplying it with unprotected video files to begin with. And that's the trick.
The answer is the new beta of MacTheRipper (3.0), which offers a workaround for this new technique. Once you've nabbed a rip using MacTheRipper, Handbrake will grab the ripped video files from your hard disk and package them into a MPEG-4 or AAC format that's perfect for your video iPod, iPhone, or for on-the-go viewing on your laptop. Now MacTheRipper is freeware, but you'll need to contribute to the developers' coffers if you want to get the 3.0 beta at this point. When you do, let 'em know Download Squad sent you.
According to the press release, Yahoo! Music Jukebox will be enhanced with:
New Audio Equalizer: A new 5-band equalizer allows users to adjust the sound of their favorite music in a convenient fashion.
Usability Enhancements: An overall new look of Yahoo! MusicJukebox has made key functions more accessible through consistent right click and tick menus. Users can quickly play a selection of an artist's top tracks with just one click. The improved application makes moving the Yahoo! Music catalog - to a users' music collection - to Messenger Music and back again for a seamless experience.
It used to be harder to justify ripping DVDs, but now, in the age of DVRs and half-terabyte hard drives copying a movie you own to your computer is both legitimate and smart. Still, some DVDs are trickier than others to back up, and that's where RipIt4Me comes in. It's a free app for Windows that combines the power of DVD Shrink, DVD Decrypter, and FixVTS to make even the stubbornest DVDs easily conquered. RipIt4Me has two modes, Wizard and 1-Click, which are pretty much what you'd guess. Wizard mode gives you a few options for a little more control over the process, and 1-Click mode just gets it done without asking you any questions. RipIt4Me is a tiny 64kb download, but you'll also have to download and install the above programs. Simple instructions can be found in the RipIt4Me Guide.
Pandora is lovely, but don't you sometimes wish you could save the music you're listening to? Well, I'm fairly certain that's against Pandora's ToS, but anyway it's possible with 3tunes. 3tunes is a free app for Windows that bills itself as a "time-shifting" program for Pandora, but basically what it does is save the music you hear on Pandora to MP3 files on your hard drive. It's currently in alpha and is not without its limitations (for example, it only works with Firefox, doesn't take kindly to track-skipping, and isn't especially user-friendly), but it's in active development and will hopefully improve quickly.
Popular open source DVD ripping
app HandBrake has been available for Mac and Linux for some time now, and
has finally been ported to Windows. HandBrake is a slick
all-in-one ripping app that will encode your ripped video in MPEG-4 or H.264 (MP4, AVI, or OGM) and has a great
built-in calculator that takes the fuss out of choosing a bitrate, which is especially great if your video's
destination is an iPod or PSP. Hit the HandBrake forums
to get the Windows release.
So what's the deal with the logo? The FAQ says "don't ask."
Yesterday I posted about Elliott
Back's How to rip a DVD tutorial and HandBrake Lite, a Mac
app for ripping DVDs for your iPod. Apparently this is the week of DVD ripping, 'cause here's another DVD ripping app:
StaxRip is a lightweight, open source Windows app for ripping DVDs to
several different formats with a minimum of fuss. That includes H.264 and AAC, so this might be the solution for those
looking for a Windows equivalent to HandBrake Lite.
Speaking of ripping DVDs, Tyler Loch, creator of iPod video
converter iSquint, has released a Mac utility called HandBrake Lite which he describes as "a
horribly-mangled abomination of HandBrake, jettisoning its non-crucial features with the one-track goal of creating
iPod-sized movies from DVDs." The original HandBrake was a general-purpose open source DVD-to-MPEG4 converter, but
Loch touts HandBrake Lite as having "less stuff to read, and fewer confusing words" and claims it will rip a
DVD to an iPod-friendly format in only two clicks. In its very short FAQ Loch writes, "HandBrake Lite is done. I
can't add any features because I don't know how to write Obj-C code; only blind mangling of existing code. It's a
miracle this even works at all." But if it works, it works, right?
The last time I tried to rip a DVD was circa
2001, and though I ultimately succeeded, the experience was so traumatic I haven't attempted it since. But it's my
understanding that we're on the verge of 2006 and things have improved quite a lot since the dark ages of DVD. To that
effect Elliott Back has written a two(!)-step tutorial on ripping a
DVD using DVD Decrypter and AutoGK. I'm sure it isn't the end-all be-all of DVD ripping
guides, but it fulfills my requirements: it's short and uses only free software. Thanks, Elliott!
Popular open source DVD ripping
app 
