Play any YouTube Videos Directly in VLC Media Player

There are plenty of tools for converting YouTube videos, and VLC Media Player is one of them. VLC Media Player, the world’s favorite video player that supports nearly every video format, can also play YouTube videos on your desktop without requiring the web browser or the Adobe Flash player.  With its latest update, though, VLC can also simply play YouTube videos when you paste in a YouTube URL.

It wasn't promoted heavily, if at all, at the time of the 1.1 release. To get started, open the VLC player, click on Media button and choose "Open Network Stream" ( or simly press Ctrl+N ) to open the Network URL dialog and paste any YouTube video URL in the input box(just the URL and first parameter, like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmiKebc3l6w).

The Benefits of Watching YouTube Videos with VLC

The streaming videos will play inside VLC Media Player just like any other local video file while offering some additional benefits not available inside the standard YouTube player.
For instance:

•     You can choose Video -> Always on Top inside VLC and the YouTube video window will stick to the foreground while you work on other tasks.

•     Press the Loop button in the player controls and the YouTube video will play non-stop in a loop (also possible with Chrome add-ons).

•     You can change the Playback speed of the YouTube video and make it run slower or faster than the normal speed.

•     Use the Tools -> Take Snapshot option to capture a screenshot image of any frame or scene in the YouTube video.

•     Watch the YouTube videos without the ads. I played a couple of movies and music videos inside VLC and none of them carried any pre-roll ads.

Play YouTube Playlists inside VLC

VLC, by default, only supports single YouTube URLs but it also possible to import an entire YouTube Playlist into VLC and watch all the videos in sequence.

Here’s the trick. Right-click and save this file to your desktop. Now open the VLC installation folder (%ProgramFiles%\VideoLAN\VLC) and move the .lua file into the exiting /lua/playlist folder.

Restart the VLC Media Player and choose Media -> Open Network Stream. Now paste the URL of any public YouTube Playlist here and the enjoy the videos.

In addition to YouTube, VLC Player can also play DailyMotion videos outside the browser. It is supposed to work with Vimeo videos as well but that is currently broken possibly due to a change in the URL structure at Vimeo’s end.

New technology makes licence plates a snap to read

Automatic plate scanners being tried out by Quebec Police provide more information quickly.

The stolen car that led Gatineau police on a wild chase Aug. 14 wasn't spotted by a flesh-and-blood police officer but an all-seeing electronic eye that can scan dozens of licence plates in an instant.

The new technology could be a threat to individual privacy, says lawyer and privacy expert Jonathan Dawe.

"On the one hand, your licence plate is something you display in public, it's a public record," he said. "But there is a real privacy concern that emerges when there's technology that can collect people's data in public in a way that would be difficult for individual officers to do."

The licence plate detection systems have been in place for almost two years, a Gatineau police spokesman said.

Cameras affixed to four Gatineau police vehicles, both marked and unmarked, scan plates of passing cars and feed the data to a com-puter connected to the main police database that cross-references all known information about the car and feeds it back to the officer.

The Ontario Provincial Police rolled out a similar system in 2009. Through an information-sharing agreement with the province, the OPP obtain a list of what they call licence plates in poor standing - plates with expired tags, cancelled licences, or from stolen vehicles.

For both police departments, if the scan turns up any kind of violation the officer is immediately notified.

"As soon as we read a plate, you can see the result in the car," said Gatineau police Const. Pierre Lanthier.

Police say the systems are a boon for traffic enforcement and an important tool for keeping streets safe from unsafe drivers.

"For us, it's just another investigative tool," said OPP Sgt. Kristine Rae. "We still have to do the legwork, we still have to verify what the computer spits out. It's just an indicator."

Only four cruisers are equipped with the systems in Ontario, Rae said, and they rotate through different districts. The systems' database was originally planned to link up to the police information on outstanding warrants and criminal charges, but Rae was unsure if that connection had been completed.

Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, said the automated licence plate scanners are not an exercise of any new police powers.

"It's just a more efficient way to do what the police have always done," he said. "The only difference is the volume of information. There's no difference in terms of what information police officers are accessing. From a policing perspective, it's a really efficient way to identify people who might be dangerous to others on the road."

It is unclear what happens to the data collected by police, including location and time of day, about vehicles that aren't flagged by the system.

Lanthier admitted that data about every car scanned by the Gatineau system, including offenders and nonoffenders, is kept in a police database for a time, but any further information about the system would have to be obtained through a provincial access to information request.

But Stamatakis said keeping the information around makes little sense for policing, and the reams of data would quickly fill whatever storage police had chosen.

"I can't think of what we'd use that for," he said. "From a policing perspective, there's no utility to retaining data where there's no issue."

Dawe said licence plate recognition systems are one part of the evolving conversation and legal framework surrounding privacy in the digital age. "They definitely should be a part of the conversation about the limits of privacy," he said. "Technology has made it far easier to collect this information. The cost of electronic storage is plummeting and it's made it easier to keep giant databases that make this kind of information easily accessible."

Nader Hasan, a criminal defence and constitutional lawyer, said he believes the public should be aware of the creeping expansion of police surveillance powers. The legal definition of privacy is based on when people feel they should have privacy. Hasan said that as technology advances, people's reasonable expectations - and by extension their legal right to privacy - can change.

"Technology has the potential to eviscerate privacy," he said. "The longer a technology is in place, the narrower the scope of your privacy rights. Even something that seems like an incremental diminution of privacy rights is something that must be approached with the utmost concern."

An Ottawa police spokesman said the department does not use licence plate recognition systems, but it is under consideration.

NASA approves $100,000 for Sideways 'Ninja' supersonic plane

'Ninja style' plane that spins 90 degrees in air for supersonic flight gets NASA aid for development. (Photo: Gecheng Zha, Florida State University)

A new type of 'Ninja style' aircraft that spins 90 degrees in air for efficient faster-than-sound flight and 'virtually zero sonic boom' has been granted USD 100,000 by NASA for further development.

The plane is created in a way that will allow it to take off from the ground, and then turn on its side once it reaches supersonic atmospheric levels so that it can continue its flight into the uppermost parts of space.

The plane looks something like a four-cornered ninja throwing star with two sides that are extended out while the other two sides are far shorter, the Daily Mail reported.

As the plane takes off from the ground, it has to have the longer wings on either side, making the plane appear shorter in length and longer in width, according to 'Engadget'.

Normal commercial airplanes have such significant wings because they need to use that wingspan to gain enough momentum to get off of the ground.

While the large wingspan is needed to take off, it creates too much drag for the plane when it reaches supersonic speeds.

As a result, once it reaches the supersonic atmosphere, the plane will then rotate 90 degrees so that it is longer and thinner than when it took off.

The new technology pioneered by Dr Gecheng Zha of University of Miami can overcome these problems.

The school has an animated video of the plane in flight- equipped with the University's logo on the wings- to give a fuller idea of the shift and at what point that would happen during the flight.

'Engadget' reports that the recently-approved award from NASA will allow the Professor and his aides to continue their research and refine it using simulations and wind tunnel testing.

While the funding will give the research an obvious boost, it is still expected to take decades before any form of said plane becomes a reality.

Now, technology to reduce cost of solar energy by 75%

Washington - Sept 2: Scientists have developed a new technology which they claim could make production of solar energy cheaper by 75 per cent, and thus speed-up its market adoption.

The RTI International solar cells are developed from solutions of semiconductor particles, known as colloidal quantum dots, and have a power conversion efficiency that is competitive to traditional cells at a fraction of the cost.

Solar energy has the potential to be a renewable, carbon-neutral source of electricity but the high cost of photovoltaic s, the devices that convert sunlight into electricity, has slowed widespread adoption of this resource.

Preliminary analysis of the material costs of the technology show that it can be produced for less than 20 dollars per square meter, 75 per cent less than traditional solar cells.

“Solar energy currently represents less than 1 per cent of the global energy supply, and substantial reductions in material and production costs of photovoltaic s are necessary to increase the use of solar power,” said Ethan Klem, research scientist at RTI and co-principal investigator of the project.

“This technology addresses each of the major cost drivers of photovoltaic s and could go a long way in helping achieve that goal,” Klem added.


“The efficiency of these devices is primarily limited by the amount of sunlight that is absorbed. There are many well-known techniques to enhance absorption, which suggests that the performance can increase substantially,” said Jay Lewis, a senior research scientist at RTI and the project’s other principal investigator.

Unlike traditional solar cells, these cells can be processed at room temperature, further reducing input energy requirements and cost.

In addition to being low-cost, the new cells have several other key benefits, including higher infrared sensitivity, which allows the cells to utilize more of the available solar spectrum for power generation.

RTI is an independent, non-profit institute that provides research, development, and technical services to government and commercial clients worldwide.

The technology was recently featured in a paper published in Applied Physics Letters.

Source: Business Line (The Hindu)

New Hadoop-Based Big Data Analytics Solution: Jaspersoft Announces

Jaspersoft, maker of the world's most widely used business intelligence (BI) software, today announced it is joining with IBM (NYSE:IBM) in the Big Data space. Jaspersoft will work with IBM to deliver a solution that combines IBM's enterprise-class, Hadoop-based product, InfoSphere BigInsights, with Jaspersoft's full BI suite to provide a complete reporting and management solution to meet customers' significant-volume data needs.

With the increasing amount of data in companies today, there is an opportunity to extract high value from it inside and outside of the organization. In fact, Forrester Research estimates that firms currently utilize less than 5 percent of their available data; Big Data enables firms to affordably access the other 95 percent. While these data sets are characterized by their very large volume, velocity, and variety of information; using the right tools, they can yield new insights for greater business value. Through its new partnership around Big Data, Jaspersoft is integrating and licensing IBM InfoSphere BigInsights through an Application Specific Licensing Agreement. Jaspersoft for InfoSphere BigInsights combines the power of IBM's analytics platform to manage, analyze and provide deep insight into Big Data with Jaspersoft's capability to extract key information using flexible and easy-to-use reporting, dashboard and analytics views in one integrated solution, enabling competitive advantage.

Jaspersoft provides a truly native reporting solution that can connect directly to IBM InfoSphere BigInsights through HBase as well as Hive. This means that with Jaspersoft, businesses can perform interactive ad hoc reporting and analysis directly on data stored in Hadoop without having to load this data into another database as is the case with other BI vendors. Fully integrated with IBM's InfoSphere BigInsights platform, Jaspersoft's BI suite provides BigInsights users with plug-and-play access to their organization's data and the ability to combine this information with a wide range of other internal and external sources, including web and SaaS-based data sources.

Karl Van den Bergh, Vice President of Product and Alliances at Jaspersoft said, "We're pleased to be partnering with IBM to deliver an industry-leading solution that combines cost-effective and flexible business intelligence with Internet-scale data management capabilities. Together, we can meet the Big Data Analytics needs of any size organization."

Bruce Weed, Program Director, Big Data Business Development at IBM said, "Jaspersoft provides a powerful and flexible reporting and analysis solution, and is a key part of our rich ecosystem in the Big Data space. In addition, Jaspersoft's community of a quarter million members will help us further address and solve problems within the Big Data space."

Key features of the solution:

• The full Jaspersoft BI Suite including ETL, pixel-perfect and ad hoc reporting, dashboards, and analysis with native connectors to IBM InfoSphere BigInsights through HBase and Hive
• Job and workflow management, provisioning and advanced security, large-scale indexing and text analysis through IBM InfoSphere BigInsights
• Available as a free/community version and a commercial version with more advanced features

For more information on the Jaspersoft and IBM Big Data Analytics solution, listen to the replay of the joint IBM and Jaspersoft webinar held on October 12.

About Jaspersoft

Jaspersoft provides the most flexible, cost effective and widely deployed business intelligence suite in the world, enabling better decision-making through highly interactive web-based reports, dashboards and analysis. Leveraging a commercial open source business model, Jaspersoft provides end-to-end BI capabilities at a fraction of the cost of other vendors. The BI suite includes pixel-perfect enterprise reporting, ad hoc query, dashboards, OLAP and in-memory analysis, and data integration. Jaspersoft is the only BI vendor that enables companies to adapt to the new, virtualized world by providing a complete spectrum of on-premise, multi-tenant SaaS and cloud-based deployment options for both embedded and standalone business intelligence. Unlike traditional BI vendors, Jaspersoft is built on a modern, lightweight, standards-based architecture and offers greater vendor independence thanks to its open source codebase. Unlike niche BI vendors, Jaspersoft represents a safe choice with tens of thousands of production deployments across a wide range of industries.

Jaspersoft's open source business intelligence software has nearly 14 million product downloads worldwide, 175,000 production deployments and over 14,000 commercial customers in 100 countries. Its BI suite is advanced regularly by a development community of nearly 240,000 registered members. For more information visit: http://www.jaspersoft.com and http://www.jasperforge.org.

AR-Based Interactive Displays Debut in Japan

Augmented reality (AR) technologies, which superimpose information from computers on real fields of view in real time, began to be actually used on streets in Japan.

For example, they are now being used for improving item description on digital signage, providing new features to show windows and helping shoppers find stores.

Item descriptions

One of the Japanese companies that promptly employed AR technologies is Toppan Printing Co Ltd. It began testing a terminal that looks like a vending machine and features AR functions and functions to showcase products at three Ito-Yokado supermarkets in October 2009.

For example, consumers can use their mobile phones to read the QR codes that are printed together with sample product information on electronics fliers available on Toppan’s Website. After completing member registration on the Website, they receive a QR code. When they show the QR code to the camera equipped on one of the terminals, they can get a sample product.

Furthermore, when the package of a sample product is shown to the terminal’s camera, the display on the terminal superimposes the description of the product on a real image.

Show windows

Sony Music Communications Inc (SMC) and Sky&Road Co Ltd are providing the “interactive show-window display using AR technologies” for offering shoppers new experience. When a person stands in front of the display, it superimposes a virtual image around the person in the real image by using face recognition technology.

“We are offering an experience like being drawn into a wonderland,” the companies said.

The display was developed by using the AR development kit of Total Immersion, a France-based software solutions provider.

The display is exhibited in the show window and children’s clothing department at an Isetan department store in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, from December 2 to 25, 2009.

Virtual fitting room

Furutanisangyou Co Ltd will test its “Magical Mirror” to let shoppers try on outfits and help them find stores in an underground mall in Okasa, Japan.

The Magical Mirror has a full-HD LCD display equipped with several cameras and superimposes the images of clothes on an image of a shopper standing in front of the display. It also has a function to measure the physical constitution of a shopper and process the images of clothes so that they fit the body.

The clothes are actually being sold at stores in the underground mall. And the display can show the availability of the clothes in appropriate sizes.

It is possible to try on up to six items, such as inner clothes, pants/skirts, shirts, dresses, sweaters and coats, at the same time even when they are being sold at different stores. Then, shoppers can go to a store and purchase the items they tried on.

“It eliminates the need for going to many stores and enables to try a combination of clothes that are being sold at different stores,” Furutanisangyou said.

However, the Magical Mirror does not use AR technologies in a precise sense. It takes an image of a person standing in front of the display and, then, superimposes the images of clothes on it. So, it is not done in real time.

Still, the company plans to increase the number of items wearable at the same time to nine in October 2010 and enable to show images taken from the sides and behind a person in or after October 2011.

The Fraunhofer Institute of Germany demonstrated such virtual fitting technologies at CEATEC JAPAN 2009, a trade show that took place in October 2009 in Tokyo, under the name of “Virtual Mirror.”

Skip Waiting Time in Rapidshare & Other Hosting Websites

Online websites like Rapidshare, Megaupload (well its dead), zShare provides an easy way to upload and download files but for a free user they have some limitation and the one limitation is there waiting time, so if you need to download anything you need to wait till the clock goes to zero and then you to click in order to start your download.

Well that’s not so much annoying but the worst part comes in when your download link gets expired for not clicking in time, well to overcome this problem Skip Screen steps in this little add-on can be easily used to skip those time limit and then automatically starting your downloads.

Well this add-on is available for both Chrome and Firefox and you can easy install it in one click, after your installed this add-on you do not need to do anything just visit any downloading website and this add-on will automatically do its job. Well for more insight on this add-on you can watch the below video on how it exactly works.