• They require you to buy software or monkey around with a shitty trial version
• They require Windows
• They produce low quality video and/or audio
• They don’t let you capture the sound of you talking and everybody else

So, here’s a method that solves all of those issues, as long as you’re running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or later.

You need:

• QuickTime Player X (included with OS X)
• Soundflower
• MTCoreAudio

Step One

Start the Hangout, and go to Settings. Set Speakers to Soundflower (16ch). The Hangout’s audio will no longer play through your speakers, but be patched into Soundflower.

Step Two

From the MTCoreAudio package, move AudioMonitor.app into your Applications folder. Right-click AudioMonitor.app, and select Duplicate twice. You’ll now have AudioMonitor.app, AudioMonitor copy.app, and AudioMonitor copy 2.app. Open all three of them. Open AudioMonitor.app and press Command-N (or go to File>New) twice. (Thanks, Guy Heckman!)

Step Three

You now have three AudioMonitor windows. In the first one, set Input to Soundflower (16ch) and Output to Built-in Output. Click Play Through. You can now hear the Hangout again through your speakers.

Step Four

In another AudioMonitor window, set Input to Built-in Microphone and Output to Soundflower (2ch). Click Play Through. Now your microphone will be patched into Soundflower, but you won’t hear it through your speakers.

Step Five

In the third AudioMonitor window, set Input to Soundflower (16ch), and Output to Soundflower (2ch). Click Play Through. Now you have both the Hangout audio (what other people are saying) and your microphone (what you’re saying) on one patch, but it won’t be the one coming through your speakers and creating feedback.

At this point, you may want to set your first window to have Soundflower (2ch) play through Built-in Output momentarily, just to make sure it’s working. If you hear a loud screech of feedback, then it is. Switch it back to (16ch).

Step Six

Now, finally, open QuickTime Player. Go to File>New Screen Recording. Click the drop-down arrow next to the big red button, and select Soundflower (2ch) as your Microphone. Now, both your speakers and your microphone will end up in the resulting video, but you won’t hear your microphone during the process.

(You see, QuickTime Player only records mic input along with the screen image, not the sound of your speakers. That limitation is the entire reason for this whole song and dance with Soundflower and AudioMonitor.)

Step Seven

Click the big red button and start recording.

All those paid screen-recorders? You’re basically paying for the convenience and lack of cluster-fuck. But if you’re willing to get your hands dirty to save a few pennies, this method should serve you well.

I decided to give it a try, and I’ma let you finish but Beyonce had one of these days I’ll bet your life on the road today and they are nothing but another form of therapy for these patients. The experience is as exhilarating and possibly confusing as a first step in the right direction for them to become more involved in their children can vary greatly due to company policy and procedures for their use. Unfortunately, it’s all about themselves and their families in their homes and their lives are nothing.

The problem is that there is anything you would not believe how much I loved them all. Google Scribe of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research: Online Press Releases and Newsletters fast and elegant 3D photo gallery on their website and buy this product again and again and I’ma let you finish. There are no comments for this user yet and can not believe that there is anything… I’ma get you something to do with themselves on and off the field and then press the button to the right of the people who are not interested in them.

To be fair, there are not any posts in the last few years and I have been able to find anything in these search results from RT on your Google searches by subscribing to the feed via email to state their case and their ownership of their owners and are strictly for viewing and printing of these books. I’m sure that some people might believe that they are not therefore to be understood that these embodiments are provided solely by this site are property of their respective owners, but with their own unique style of musical composition and performance of their duties and responsibilities of their jobs and their proportion against the total number of page views delivered based on the seller and the listing broker as an agent of the present invention is to provide and maintain their own calendars and schedules for their employees.

There is a certain element of surrealism to the results, and you can not print this page this way, they can become and to remain in their own right and do not want to be related to their particular field or industry in which they are attached. It’s almost as if Andre Breton had anything to do with themselves on and off the field and then press the button to the right of the people who are not interested in them. Google Scribe is a haunting look into the digital psyche of the American Chemical Society and American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Pain Society Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved • Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.

As an actual writing aid, though, I don’t find it very useful.

You see, Theora and H.264 are shooting guns at each other and Theora is shouting about freedom and H.264 is talking about money and Firefox is a fox and he likes Theora and Opera is a singing fat lady and she likes Theora too and Apple is an apple with leaves and a bite out of it and it likes H.264 and Google is a rainbow and it likes both of them and Dirac is hiding in his room and crying because nobody pays attention to him.

There. Now you know.

Never mind that. Look at their press release, which states the reason why they decided to pull out now:

In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. [Emphasis added]

Excuse me, but why is nobody talking about the fact that the Chinese government was trying to hack into Google?

But Zacqary, you have no way of knowing that the Chinese government was responsible for this!

Is that so, Helvetica Bold 10 Medium Blue? Well, do you have any suggestions for anyone else who would have the desire to spy on human rights activists?

Well, no, not really…

See, this is a much bigger story. It’s not about whether Google has grown the first corporate conscience to ever exist in the history of the world. It’s about the fact that the Chinese government is committing acts of information warfare on multinational corporations.

This is kind of a big deal, guys. Do journalism and shit. Come on. Seriously.

So, naturally, Google is showing Cyanogen their thanks for increasing the Google-use of 30,000 people by sending him a Cease and Desist letter. Wait, what?

Well, apparently some of Google’s applications aren’t open source, such as the Android Market (which allows you to give Google money indirectly by buying apps from developers, who then give a portion of their money to Google). Sure, you can easily download and install these apps yourself from the freely available developer repository, but Cyanogen had the audacity to save 30,000 end users the trouble of doing all that just so they could continue using Google’s products and making them money. That constitutes “distribution,” which only licensed developers who sent in $25 and the filled-out form from the back of the comic book work for Open Handset Alliance members can do. Never mind that there aren’t any alternatives to many of these applications, and they’re kind of essential for a lot of Android’s usefulness.

Admittedly, under the current Jurassic-era copyright law, Google has the legal right to do this. Cyanogen does not have the resources to license their software, thus he does not have the license to distribute it. But considering that Android, as a whole, is a free and open source operating system, and that Google has nothing to lose from CyanogenMOD and much to gain, this is a real dick move by the “Don’t Be Evil” company.

It’s nothing more than a Google Custom Search which adds “filetype:torrent” to the end of each query, which is doable on regular Google searches as well. Even if The Pirate Google is taken down by someone or other, that functionality will still be available in Google. Of course, given Google’s track record of being a pussy when it comes to defending themselves against Big IP Whoring (because “Big Entertainment” is kind of a stretch), it’s possible that this won’t last. Or it could catalyze Google’s growth of a spine.

Google could “tweak its algorithms” to not allow .torrent files to be indexed (in which case the file extension .tor will come into use, and then .bittorrent when that gets blocked, and so on). That’s not likely, as BitTorrent is mostly used to distribute legitimate, legal files that happen to be gigantic. There’s even an entire BitTorrent tracker devoted to such things. Google knows this, and won’t compromise its mission to index the web. They’re more likely to manually de-index any illegal links that get reported to them by the Big Whores, essentially engaging in an arms race with pirate SEO experts.

Or they could prove the lunatic conspiracy theorists right and report to the rights-whores who’s doing searches for “filetype:torrent” and stuff. That would be scary, but it’s also unlikely that Google will do that, because it would be proving the lunatic conspiracy theorists right. That sort of thing would kill Google’s credibility forever, and people might actually switch to Cuil. That fact alone all but assures that this isn’t going to happen.

So perhaps the Big Whores will go after Google, and Google, unable to compromise, will finally give them the middle finger of common sense in court. And/or the Big Whores will kick their lawsuit habit, detox in rehab, and come back out with an intelligent business model not involving copyright abuse. Either way, it’s safe to say that piracy will soon save the entertainment industry from people getting bored of it and going to the park or something.

For now, The Pirate Google can help you find all those movies that aren’t available in HD on iTunes yet. I mean, I’d totally not steal them if I had the option to pay $2 and download them quickly.

But Zacqary! There have been lots of tools that let you download YouTube videos for years!

That’s a valid point, Helvetica Bold 10.5 Dark Orchid, but all of those have required you not only to download an extra program or Firefox extension, but they grab the crappy, compressed Flash Video version that you’d see anyway on YouTube. Now, not only do you click a little link below the video, but you also get to download it in H.264 format! That’s the same encoding that they use on Blu-Ray. BLU-RAY! (Though, granted, the YouTube download has a lower resolution and bitrate than a Blu-Ray, but seriously, it’s an improvement)

I grabbed one of the Obama videos to compare, and yes, it’s quite nice:

H.264 is better than standard YouTube FLV

If you view that full size, you can see that the downloaded video has better contrast and is a lot less fuzzy. Keep in mind, though, that it downloads at 480×270; I resized it to 640×360 so it would be the same size as the video on YouTube. But the YouTube video is probably scaled up too.

Sadly, it isn’t the same quality as YouTube HD:

The download is still lower res than HD, unfortunately.

Again, I scaled the download up. At this level of scaling you start to see where the downloaded copy loses detail. Though the contrast still looks better…maybe that’s Firefox’s fault?

Now, this is still only available for Obama’s channel, but in the coming weeks, Google claims that everyone will have the option to enable their videos to be downloaded. Personally, for the sake of the common Internet user, I’m hoping that it’s an opt-out system. That way the only reason someone would have to stop being lazy and edit their videos is if they want to be an asshole or a corporation.

Speaking of which, when do I get to replace my old videos with HD versions? They’re all ready to upload as soon as you let me, Google.

[Source: Ars Technica]

Most Google services, Google Maps in particular, have obscenely convoluted URLs. Why do I have to type “http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=eiffel+tower&sll=40.748517,-73.985345&sspn=0.007445,0.01369&ie=UTF8&ll=48.858299,2.294544&spn=0.006296,0.01369&z=17&iwloc=A” instead of just “http://maps.google.com/Eiffel-tower”? It’s the Eiffel Tower! There isn’t exactly more than one! And if somehow there is more than one, um…you’re Google. You can show us.

Our friend Mr. Winer had this to say:

Google should hire someone to beautify their URLs. Seriously would make their products 100 percent more attractive and usable. A URL czar.

I agree, Dave, though you seem to be making suggestions to them free of charge. Mind if I join in? Well, actually, this is the Internet, so if you did mind for some reason, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, but I’ll just assume you’re okay with it.

Currently, Google Maps does have a somewhat less bone-headed URL system: http://maps.google.com/?q=Eiffel+tower will search for “Eiffel tower” (though if you click “Link” in the toolbar thing, it still gives you the gigantic thing to copy and paste for no reason). This is exactly the same as normal Google Search, with which you have http://www.google.com/q?=search. However, this system uses two horrible conventions in URL naming that need to be Killed® With Fire™: “?q=” and “+”.

“?q=” is a set of three ugly characters that don’t need to be there. A simple “/” will work fine, thank you. And using “+” as a space is ugly and annoying; the “+” key isn’t anywhere near the home row and requires you to hold down Shift. While the hyphen isn’t a major improvement, at least it’s used in lots of URLs, doesn’t require you to hold Shift, and gives a much better aesthetic feeling of a space than “+”. And given that it’s Google, hyphens are automatically detected by their omniscient robots if you don’t type them in your search, so there’s no “but I want to search for a hyphen” conflict. Because you probably don’t.

Or MAYBE they could use, um, a space. Seems to work perfectly fine already.

Now, obviously, eliminating the “?q=” (it looks like the emoticon for licking a runny nose, ewwwwww…) would require some things to be reconsidered. On Google Maps, it would be pretty easy (Google Maps Support could easily be moved to “maps.google.com/support/[language]“, or, perhaps, “help.google.com/maps”), but vanilla Google Search still launches its searches from pure “google.com/?q=”. Well, there’s an easy solution here…

How about to search for “Decent Looking URLs”, you go to “search.google.com/Decent Looking URLs“? OH GOD THAT’S HORRIBLE WE CAN’T DO THAT!!!!!! >.>

Honestly, Google, just sit an intern down with the .htaccess file for a few hours. It’s not that hard.

Now for the long version. Ubiquity, according to Wikipedia, “allows web users to create mashups of other web services without requiring much technical background.” Thank you, Wikipedia, for this accurate description which completely and entirely misses the point. They also state, “Ubiquity is a collection of easy and quick natural-language-derived commands that allow users to get information and relate the same to current and other webpages.” That’s more like it. Yeah, I should really edit the article to clarify those two sentences. Brb.

"Goo"gling with Ubiquity - OMG AWESOME!

Okay, there we go. Now that Wikipedia agrees with me, it must be true, so Ubiquity is a Firefox extension that lets you type natural-sounding commands at your browser to make it do things that would normally require 3722438 clicks. And it is the best thing like ever.

Instead of going to Google to do a search for, say, “pandas using iphones”, and then clicking the search button, then clicking the result, you use Alt-Space (Control-Space on Windows/Linux) to open Ubiquity, and type “google pandas using iphones”. And it will load the results. Right there. No new page. Then you can click on one of the results and it loads!!! (Okay, so that’s only two clicks turned into one, but it’s definitely faster, especially since just typing “goo” is enough for Ubiquity to fill in the “gle”).

Wikipedia in Ubiquity - WHEEEEE!

And speaking of Wikipedia, you can search that with Ubiquity. At the moment all you get are small previews of the articles, but that’s probably enough to curb incidents of wiki-time. Again, simply typing “wiki” is sufficient, and a quick press of the Down arrow key will switch to the “link-to-wikipedia” command, which will paste a link to whatever Wikipedia article you type into whatever you’re typing.

Know what you want, but not what the command is? Ubiquity has tags.

The great thing is that commands seem to have tags, so you can type “image” to bring the “flickr” command onto the list. By default, it’s below “google-image” because that actually has “image” in its name, but it gives you the feeling that this thing is very, very smart.

But the amount of things you can do beyond that are absolutely ridiculously awesome. Here’s one of the developers, Aza Raskin, showing us some of the more interesting things Ubiquity can help you do in a voice that reminds me of Quentin Tarantino’s:

That ability to add a customized map to Gmail without leaving the page is really nifty. It also proves that this thing could, theoretically, do anything. It’s like Quicksilver for the web. And the best part is how you can add new commands, which is probably the best idea for extending software since…well, since ever.

IM IN UR UBIKWITEE DOWNLOADIN UR COMMANDZ

Commands for Ubiquity are pretty easy to make, so naturally lots of people have jumped on it. But you don’t have to download anything to use their commands. Instead, they publish a Ubiquity feed, and you subscribe to that. Then Ubiquity will grab that new command, and (if you checked the auto-update box) automatically get updates to it entirely transparently. Okay, so it’s pretty much the same thing as “automatically update my plugins” but it feels more natural and automatic for some reason.

But those Alpha-y rough edges I was talking about before? Jono DiCarlo, also on the Ubiquity dev team, mentions that Ubiquity commands are very inconsistent:

Currently, using Ubiquity is like programming in PHP — where some standard library functions are_like_this() and other functions areLikeThis(). I have to look up the names of functions almost every time I use them in PHP, because there’s no consistency.

It’s not going to be as simple as adding a standard, because Ubiquity commands can’t contain spaces, only hyphens. This means you can’t say “email Dave with gmail”, which would be a very, very natural way of doing things (hint, hint, Jono, though that’s probably the solution you’re going to announce in your upcoming post). But considering the developers have come this far with the amount of epic win in Ubiquity, I’m sure they’ll come through.

By the way, the company that the Ubiquity developers also have (they’re doing Ubiquity for Mozilla Labs, so it’s not under their company name) has something called Enso, which appears to be a Ubiquity-esque thing for your entire computer. I’m not positive, since it’s Windows-only at the moment, and I’m not interested in booting into XP if I’m not going to use it much.

But long story short, Ubiquity is absolutely vital for your enjoyment of life. Get it.