Not happy with your 30-inch monitor? Well, NEC is releasing their first 43-inch curved PC monitor, yes you heard me right - CURVED monitor! With whopping 2880×900 pixel resolution, a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, the cost of this thing is $8,000. Worth it? I don’t think so… From the front, it looks like a flat-screen, but it’s actually a 15.2 inch deep DLP (projection-based) display.

1. High quality videos

YouTube gives you the option to switch to high quality videos for some videos, however you can check if a video is available in high quality format by appending at the end of the web address (URL) ‘&fmt=18‘ (stereo, 480 x 270 resolution) or ‘&fmt=22‘ (stereo, 1280 x 720 resolution)

2. Embed Higher Quality Videos

If you want to embed high quality videos you need to append ‘&ap=%2526fmt%3D18‘ or ‘&ap=%2526fmt%3D22‘ for 480 x 270 resolution and 1280 x 720 resolution respectively.

3. Cut the chase and link to the interesting part

Linking to a video where the real action starts at 2 minutes and 31 seconds, wonder if you can do that? Of course, you can! All you have to do is add #t=02m31s (#t=XXmYYs for XX mins and YY seconds) to the end of the URL.

4. Hide the search box

The search box appears when you hover over an embedded video. To hide the search box add ‘&showsearch=0‘ to the end of the URL.

5. Embed only a part of Video

Same concept as #3, if you want to start the video that skips the first 30 seconds, simply append ‘&start=30′ to skip first 30s of the video. You can skip the first 90 seconds if you want by ‘&start=90‘.

6. Autoplay an embedded video

Normally when you embed a Youtube video and load the page, the player is loaded and it is waiting for you to hit the play button. You can make the video play automatically by adding ‘&autoplay=1′ to the URL part of the embed code.

7. Loop an embedded video

Append ‘&loop=1‘ to make the video start again without user intervention after it reaches the end.

8. Disable Related Videos

When the video finishes, it always display the related videos and have you wonder how to remove it? Just add ‘&rel=0‘ to the end of the URL part of the embed code and you just turned off the related video suggestions! Cool huh?!

9. Bypass Youtube Regional Filtering (Note: may not work in a few regions)

Some videos are only available in certain parts of the world. Your IP Address is used to determine your location and then allow or deny access to the video. Change the url from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<somecode> to http://www.youtube.com/v/<somecode>

10. Download Video

There are tons of websites that helps you download the YouTube videos so you can permanently own it. My favourite one is KeepHD ( http://www.keephd.com/ ). Also, if you are using Firefox, you can use addons - I tend to like the DownloadHelper.

Or if you do not want to use Firefox’s add-ons and third party websites, you can use the Real player’s “Web Download and Recording”. When you hover over the video, a tab will show you “Download this Video” and it downloads it in flv format and put it into the My Library folder.

You know more YouTube tricks? Feel free to post it in the comment!

Source: Digg

The smart folks over at Tom’s Hardware’s Forums have come up with a proposed specification that supposedly provides great gaming for the first year, “decent” gaming for the second. The cool thing is the budget is under $1000. Here’s how.

• Casing: Antec Three Hundred Black Computer Case ($60)
• Power Supply: CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply ($100)
• Motherboard: MSI X58 Pro ATX Intel Motherboard ($200)
• CPU: Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor ($289)
• Memory: Kingston 3GB (3 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Kingston HyperX 4GB (4 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Quad Kit Desktop Memory ($52)
• Video Card: EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512-P3-N873-AR Video Card ($135)
• Hard Disk: Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive ($75)
• Optical Drive: LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS30 ($25)

Grand Total: $936

Some may argue that you can buy a PC with AMD chipset for less, but personally, I am in favour of the Intel Core i7 series more than AMD. Put your comments about your own or dream PC ?

Features:

• The D5000 first of all comes with a versatile Vari-angle LCD display
• 12.3 Megapixel CMOS sensor
• Low noise courtesy of a wide ISO sensitivity range
• Scene Recognition System with Face Detection
• It measures 2.7″ across diagonally

Source: Coolest-gadgets.com

Google’s Gmail has added the “Undo Send” feature - you can stop the email that you have sent out within 5 seconds! To enable the feature, click on the greet lab bottle in the upper right corner of the Gmail page. Find “Undo Send” and click on the “Enable” radio button.

My two cents: I think this is a great idea, but you have to be quick in order to recall your message in 5 sec.

Nintendo DSi sold 600k units during the first week-end (2-days) in the U.S and Europe, it beats its expectation. Is there a big difference between the new and the old? No, the major add-on is the cam. We think that Nintendo will also push back the plans they had for new hardware platforms as long as they enjoy this formidable success in both home and mobile consoles. In the meantime, the company will continue to cost-reduce its offering and improve its margins - not a bad tactic at all.

The new prize this month is the 8GB SD card - ideal for your digital camera or digital equipment.

Want a reliable and easy way to store and backup your data? Seagate has just the tonic for your bits and bytes in the form of the BlackArmor NAS 420 and 440. Both solutions feature four bay network attached storage arrays, where the former will ship with a couple of hard drives inside while the latter will be filled to the brim with a quartet of hard drives. It automatic backups of up to 50 computers that are hooked up to a network. You can pick up the 2TB NAS 420 for $799.99 while the 4TB NAS 440 will retail for $1,199.99. In addition, the 6TB and 8TB models will retail for $1,699.99 and $1,999.99, respectively.