Ever wanted an audio clip of a music video you saw on YouTube or wanted to keep the video you saw on YouTube on your hard drive for later viewing or sharing with friends? Well here’s a short list of a few websites that offer just that:

Vid2Mp3 – copy and paste the YouTube URL and it gives you an MP3 link to download – bearing in mind quality of MP3 will be that of the audio in the video, and low-res videos will probably have mono audio.

MediaConverter – converting videos from a number of portals to just about any audio format.

CatchVideo.Net – paste the YouTube URL and specify the output video and/or audio format.

If you have any others, please pass them on via comments to this post.

I just came across this beaut of a site. Ever wanted to register for a website that required you to give your email address so that it could send you an email to authenticate before you could browse around? Ever used your own email address, only to find that from that day forward your inbox suddenly becomes exponentially flooded with spam, seemingly out of nowhere?

Well, then I’ve got just the answer for you, for those occasions. It’s called 10-Minute Mail. Just go take a look for yourself on their page how it works - and if you need this temporary account to last another 10 minutes – just click on the link on the inbox page to keep it “alive” for another 10 minutes – simple!

Ever since DVDs and Home Theatre Systerms were available I’ve had one of my own. My current setup includes a  Sony Home Theatre System, a 29″ Philips PureFlat TV, a Sony DVD Player as well as a Philips DVD Player for playing DivX movies since my Sony doesn’t and I didn’t want to get rid of it, since I’m such a Sony-fan! Yes, I know it’s not the very latest and biggest, I’m only a software developer after all, and I have a family to feed

If you’re wondering, if he’s such a Sony fan, why a Philips TV then? Well, when we came back to SA, I really wanted to get a nice Sony TV but, living in SA, support for international products isn’t the greatest and Philips in SA (at the time) was better, with better guarantee on the tube, etc (plus this Philips has PiP support which is very useful with kids).

Bragging? No, this is the real reason I’m posting this – not to brag but show you what’s capable if money is no object. I came across a post today of Jeremy Kipnis’ Most Expensive Home Theatre System. If you’ve got US$6m to spare, here’s how you can use it – if not, go take a look anyway – the only thing I’d change is the couches to multiple lazy-boys instead!

If you’re anything like me, you like order and accessibility. I like the most common programs I use at the top of my Start Menu so that I don’t have to navigate the All Programs section every time I want to run an app I want to use. So, if you like doing your own admin on your machine and do admin-type things often then I’m sure you’ll find this post useful, if you’ve not done it yourself already.