Grooveshark currently provide a useful search add-on, it installs Grooveshark search to your current list of search engines within Firefox. By searching for an artist or song you are directed to the Grooveshark website and results are displayed.

I re-coded their XML install file to include a live suggest feature pulling related words as you type from Yahoo to speed up your search query.

Examples:

1. The below image shows the default Grooveshark add-on, you have to type in the artist and song title and then click on the magnify button to complete a search:

2. And here is my improved version in action, as you type you will be prompted with relevant words speeding up your search, no need to click on magnify button. Just type, select, go.

Try It Out:

If you haven’t installed the Grooveshark search add-on for Firefox please try my version:
“Click here to install Firefox Grooveshark auto suggest search add-on”

Note* I would prefer you install it via my Firefox Official Plugin page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/14319 this allow me to track downloads, installs and reviews etc.

How to uninstall:

To uninstall the add-on just select “Manage Search Engines” from your drop down list then select and remove it.

Hope it improves your search speed on Grooveshark

Note: This add-on will install to “Microsoft Internet Explorer” browser but the auto suggest feature is disabled.

What is Grooveshark ?

Grooveshark is a Rich Internet Application, (RIA) written in ActionScript using the Adobe Flex framework which runs in Adobe Flash. Its design implements various sliding panels to categorize and display lists of information, similar in style to that of the Apple iPhone. A right-aligned black modal window also slides in to display more information for songs, playlists, and users.

Grooveshark also lets users upload music to their online music library through a Java Web Start application. The upload program scans folders specified for mp3′s, uploading and adding them to the user’s online library on the service. The ID3 information of the uploaded song is linked to the user and the file is uploaded to Grooveshark which allows on-demand music playback. Collectively, each user’s uploaded library is available to any user of Grooveshark. All content on the service is user-sourced.

The website also allows users to upload music files on their hard drive to the search database, resulting in constant growth of its library.

Please note this fix worked for me on 2 upgrades but does not promise a fix for your own problem, these tips may help you but do so at your own risk! Before proceeding with any of the following please back up your site and database!

The Problem

On previous occasions I used the easy”upgrade automatically” button option with no problem but this time around I kept getting this error in the below image:

I then de-activated all plugins and re-tried the auto upgrade but still got the same error as the above image, this was not making any sense to me so I searched through the WordPress Forum querying terms such as: Installation Failed, Could not copy file, upgrade failed etc. There was one interesting reply on this thread http://wordpress.org/support/topic/277858?replies=10 that suggested accessing your database using phpMyAdmin and repair your tables.

The Fix

Here’s what that user suggested :

use phpmyadmin,

Check:

1. Login to phpMyAdmin.
2. Select the database and click on ‘Structure‘ tab.
3. Right under the list of table there is a “Check All” link. Click on it to select all tables.
4. From a “With selected:” drop-down menu right next to it, choose “Check table“.

Repair:

1. Login to phpMyAdmin
2. Choose the affected database. If you only have one database, it should choose it by default so you don’t need to do anything.
3. In the main panel, you should see a list of your database tables. Check the boxes by the tables that need repair.
4. At the bottom of the window just below the list of tables, there is a drop down menu. Choose “Repair Table”

The Result

I did follow the above instructions and with all of my plugins still disabled proceeded to use the “upgrade automatically” button again and the result was successful!  The resulting image of the fix is below:

I then re-activated my plugins and all seems to be fine for now.

Summary

For me it seemed that my database table or tables needed to be repaired for some reason beyond my skill set but however on other wordpress upgrades I do remember being asked to upgrade the database after the upgrade finished but this time around with 2.8 that did not happen. Is this a glitch or other? time will tell…

Comments or suggestions appreciated…

WordPress 2.8 Video

Having had a few problems with my upgrade was only a few fixes away but I want to take the opportunity to thank all of the WordPress team for bringing us new tools and releases. The following video is from WordPress and shows you some of those great features with this release.

[Click Here to try out Google Maps animated directions]

What this does is you input a start location and an end destination in the input boxes, press the start button and watch the journey animated with a small van icon.

It will display your current speed, mph, road names & routes as it plods along call it “sat nav” on the cheap…

I have a preset journey leaving from Patrick’s St, Cork, Ireland going to The Square, Blarney, Cork, Ireland but you can change the start and finish locations to your own liking.

What’s also interesting about this map is it will take you across channels e.g. I put Rosslare as start and Swansea as finish and it took me across the proper channel route and then continued on the roads in the UK!

I’d imagine it will take you to anywhere that Google Maps can find….. [Click Here to try it out]

Could it be that YouTube/Google tracked the script page because of the Adsense banner? (maybe)…  and the fact that a heap of trackback links from crap blog scrapers featured the article….. What to do now… Should I remove the scripts and links to it…. I’m not sure?

Click here for the “YouTube Video Downloader & Path To FLV Finder Tool”

This is a follow up article on my previous post “How to get the direct url path to .flv video files on YouTube for Free” it’s a collection of php scripts mashed together from around the web. It will enable a user to fetch the actual .flv path url to a YouTube video.

If anyone is interested in the code leave a comment request and I will contact you.

Hope this helps you!

ps: I decided to run Google Adsense on the tool page as a lot of time is spent on building and sourcing the code…

“JW Media Player supports playback of a single media file of any format the Flash Player can handle (MP3, FLV, SWF, JPG, PNG and GIF). It also supports RSS, XSPF and ATOM playlist (with mixed mediatypes and advertisement possibilities), a wide range of flashvars (settings) for tweaking both behavior and appearance and an extensive, documented javascript/actionscript API.”

The Problem?

While coding the xml playlist file for the player I tried adding a YouTube video but couldn’t find the actual path to the .flv file on YouTube’s servers. YouTube dont allow downloading of the video files and they have the path to the files pretty well hidden. So with a little tinkering around I came up with this trick…

The Solution!

I used this website www.keepvid.com to decode the url from YouTube. First go to YouTube and load a video, copy the url in the address bar it should show something like this:

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=TvedUxLtZKQ

Now go to the www.keepvid.com website and paste the url into the box provided, select Youtube from the drop down options and then click the Download button.
You can download the file direct but in this case I only need the path to the flv file so just under the url input box there will appear a Download box like the image below.

Right click on the >>Download Link << and select “Copy Link Location” (Firefox) or “Copy Shortcut” (Internet Explorer)

Now paste the result into notepad or directly to your xml file it will show like this:

http://chi-v48.chi.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=TvedUxLtZKQ

One thing left to do, add .flv to the end of the url so it ends up like this:

http://chi-v48.chi.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=TvedUxLtZKQ.flv

That’s it, the final url path to your YouTube video.

I know that this tip breaches the YouTube terms and conditions as using a third party player to stream the flv is therefore stealing their bandwidth and not allowing them to run any advertising on the video page, but hey! rules are sometimes broken and this tip is for purely experimental purposes!

Time Saver Tip…

KeepVid provide a handy link to drag to your links toolbar it’s a great time saver if you intend on getting paths to video files or just to download videos files direct for free. I have it here for you, simply drag the button below to your Links Toolbar and when you are viewing a video on any website just hit the link on you toolbar and it redirects you to their website with the video ready for download or just to get the path.

Hope this helps you…..

I was asked by my friend Shane Supple if it was possible to download a video that was uploaded to Bebo.com.

It is not as straight forward as you may think, having tinkering around with source code etc. I discovered that when you upload a video to Bebo you are actually storing your file on www.videoegg.com so I took the embed source code that Bebo provide which reveals the first part of this tip.

Go to a  page that displays a bebo video, you will know it is a bebo video because their logo is embedded as a watermark over the video then scroll down till you see the “Embed” part of the page.

Example:

Copy the embed code and paste it into Notepad, it will show something like this:

<embed width=”425″ height=”350″ src=”http://static.videoegg.com/videoegg/loader.swf” FlashVars=”bgColor=FFFFFF
&file=http://download.videoegg.com/gid329/cid1124/E7/7N/1175278125C1Zp0f2MW8
zokcDy8sWC&autoPlay=false
&forcePlay=false&logo=&allowFullscreen=true” quality=”high” allowScriptAccess=”always” bgcolor=”#FFFFFF” scale=”noscale”wmode=”window” name=”VE_Player” align=”middle” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” /><br><a href=”http://bebo.com/watchtv”>Watch More Videos</a> Uploaded by <a href=”http://bebo.com/watchuser/436885205″>www.bebo.com/De-baw</a>

All you are interested here is the part:

http://download.videoegg.com/gid329/cid1124/E7/7N/1175278125C1Zp0f2MW8
zokcDy8sWC

To download and save that file you need to put _high.flv to the end of the URL string in order to download that file in .flv format.

So the new URL would be:
http://download.videoegg.com/gid329/cid1124/E7/7N/1175278125C1Zp0f2MW8
zokcDy8sWC_high.flv

Type or copy/paste this URL into a browser window and you will be prompted to download the .flv file

Try it here: http://download.videoegg.com/gid329/cid1124/E7/7N/1175278125C1Zp0f2MW8
zokcDy8sWC_high.flv

How to play an .flv file

You need to download a FLV Player to play back the .flv file. There are many free flv players available on the internet I use Wimpy FLV Player. No installation needed as its a stand alone player and it also supports drag and drop. It is available for both Mac and Windows.

Download it here: http://www.wimpyplayer.com/products/wimpy_standalone_flv_player.html

There is probably lots of software and tricks to download video from Bebo but I think this is the quickest way around it. Hope this helps you…

I coded this firefox add-on to query the SkreemR mp3 search site much quicker than the standard search tool add-on.

SkreemR currently provide a useful search add-on, it installs SkreemR search to your current list of search engines within Firefox. By searching for an artist or song you are directed to the SkreemR website and results are displayed.

I re-coded their XML install file to include a live suggest feature pulling related words as you type from Yahoo to speed up your search query.

Examples:

1. The below image shows the default SkreemR add-on, you have to type in the artist and song title and then click on the magnify button to complete a search:

2. And here is my improved version in action, as you type you will be prompted with relevant words speeding up your search, no need to click on magnify button. Just type, select, go.

Try It Out:

If you haven’t installed the SkreemR search add-on for Firefox please try my version:

“Click here to install Firefox auto suggest search add-on”

How to uninstall:

To uninstall the add-on just select “Manage Search Engines” from your drop down list then select and remove it.

Hope it improves your search speed on SkreemR

Note: This add-on will install to “Microsoft Internet Explorer” browser but the auto suggest feature is disabled.

If your interested in the code?

To view the source of the xml install file click here

What is SkreemR ?

SkreemR is a search engine for locating audio files on the web.
Some quotes about it:

“Music search engine SkreemR turns up a nice selection of MP3 files from all over the web…” – lifehacker.com

“If you are looking for a great mp3 search engine you should head over to Skreemr immediately.” – gHacks.net

We will use Snap Shots cached thumbnails to retrieve a web page screen shot. You can grab a small 270 x 173 pixel image or a large 427 x 274 pixel image of your website here is do it how to:

In your html page just call the image from within the <img> tag like so:

<img src=”http://shots.snap.com/preview/?url=http://www.kmcgraphics.com&size=small” />

or if you want the larger size type:

<img src=”http://shots.snap.com/preview/?url=http://www.kmcgraphics.com&size=large” />

Make it appear in the browser:

http://shots.snap.com/preview/?url=http://www.kmcgraphics.com

Type the above url into you browser address bar to get the image. By default the small 270 x 173 px appears if you want the large version 427 x 274 px just append &size=large to the url like so:

http://shots.snap.com/preview/?url=http://www.kmcgraphics.com&size=large

Dont forget to change the url http://www.kmcgraphics.com in my example to the website domain you want to grab.

Give it a go right here:

Type in your domain name and select small or large then submit.

I cannot see my website screen shot why?

The Snap Shots website bot has not yet visited your website, it will not have a cached screenshot of your website therefore you will see this image:

If this happens just leave it there on screen for a minute so that the Snap Shots website has time to visit the url and take a screen shot.

Just refresh your page again after 1 minute and the image should appear, if not try again after few minutes.

Please do not hotlink to the image on the Snap Shots website just wait for it to load in your browser and then select save image as, also by default the image will be named”preview.jpg” change this to your liking. Thats it…..

I created this map just for fun but also to play around with ideas on how to code for Google Maps.

Click here to view the map

If you ever get around to having a drink in all of them don’t forget to mention I sent you there…