How to Download ANY Video, including Facebook Videos, Convert and Free Video Hosting Online

If you’ve read my blog article entitled “How to download YouTube Videos and Videos from other Websites”, you’d realize that you still may have limitations. Specifically:

1.      How to download from any website, including Facebook

2.      How to convert the Videos from one Format to another

3.      How and where here to host videos online for Free

This short and quick article aims to document solutions to all of those problems in one quick go, as I’ve recently re-discovered how to go about doing this in the past few days. To my surprise, most of the software is easily piratable. Along with Dropbox, as I remember, was the means by which I survived my four years sojourn through UWI (University of the West Indies) without buying books as per my blog articles entitled “UWI and Piracy - Release the Kraken”. 

Very necessary now, as UWI has plans to increase Tuition by 5.5% across all faculties come the Semester that starts the 2013-2014 Academic Year as stated in the article “UWI, Mona undergraduate fees to go up by 5.5%”, published Monday April 15, 2013 1:39 pm by Jovan Johnson, The Jamaica Gleaner and “UWI Mona students to pay more next semester”, published Monday, May 06, 2013 1:16 PM, The Jamaica Observer.

You can even get copies of Microsoft Office, fully operational as well as other software described in my Geezam blog article entitled “How to Legally Activate installed Microsoft Products – Office 2010’s in the Lost and Found” and “Laptop makers go Chromebooks as Google Chrome’s Office Extension makes it easy to View and Edit Office Documents”.

However, be forewarned: if you have any qualms about piracy, please turn around at this point. Most of the software solutions presented in this blog use software that’s torrented and as such may in fact be copyright infringing. But as they also are a source of legitimate Freeware software solutions, I present this information merely as compendium of my knowledge in Piracy from my College Years for you to read and understand why UWI’s so expensive.

First, I’ll list a host of torrenting websites I’ve used in my college years for books that are still active:

1.      1337x

2.      AhaShare

3.      BTScene

4.      ExtraTorrent

5.      H33T

6.      KickassTorrents

7.      LimeTorrents

8.      ProTorrent

9.      SumoTorrent

10.  The Pirate Bay

11.  TorrentBit

12.  Torrents

Here’s some great Torrenting software to go with that as well, again all of which I’ve tried out:

1.      Tixati

2.      UTorrent

3.      Bittorrent

4.      Transmission Bittorrent

5.      Vuze

First off the bat is the software presented in my blog article entitled “How to download YouTube Videos and Videos from other Websites”, cannot work to download from any website, as BienneSoft YouTube Downloader is only good for downloading videos from Youtube. SoThink Web Video Downloader for Firefox downloads from any website as an add-on for Firefox but it’s browser based. So for a program that’s installable on your computer and has the omnipresence of being able to download from anywhere, you can use Internet Download Manager.

Works a lot like BienneSoft YouTube Downloader, with the advantage of restarting downloads where you left off and it categorizes downloads automatically. Plus, you can even download whole archives of files, be they Audio, Video or Still Images from websites. You can even download videos from Facebook. For my heavy duty downloading, Internet Download Manager is my go-to solution!

Then there’s converting videos. I won’t even go into web-based converters, as they’re constrained by you bandwidth and take hours to work and even longer to download your finished work. Best to go with FormatFactory, which again you can get from KickassTorrents, my preferred Torrent Website of choice thanks to its user-friendly layout and reliable torrent library. 

Once installed, you can convert virtually any file into any other file you desire, simply via drag-and-drop for uploading and distribution purposes. Even better, get VLC Media Player and skip that conversion business; totally unnecessary once you have VLC Media Player . 

Finally, there’s video Uploading. Youtube is great, has a strong audience and is free, but you have to be careful what you post and it has to be original content.  Thus I recommend the following alternatives uploading websites, all of which are not so popular but are free of censorship and some even come with uploading software to make the process just as painless as downloading:

1.      BlipTV

2.      Break

3.      CollegeHumor

4.      Dailymotion

5.      Facebook

6.      Flickr

7.      HowCast

8.      Metacafe

9.      SmugMug

10.  Veoh

11.  Vevo

12.  VideoJug

13.  Vimeo

14.  VZaar

Cut Negative, people. That’s Video Downloading, converting and hosting in what may prove to be my shortest post ever….

Here’s a list of the Software:

BienneSoft YouTube Downloader

SoThink Web Video Downloader for Firefox

Internet Download Manager

FormatFactory

VLC Media Player

CTIA reports a 5% decline in US Texting as Instant Messaging ramps up - WhatsApp's now Top Gun as The Dead Zone leads Star Trek Into the Darkness

Looks like my prediction of Texting Taking over Voice back in 2003 as documented in my blog article entitled “Telecom Providers and SMS - The Dead Zone” is slowly coming to an end. Oh well, so much for my dream of Texting being the new BB Messenger of Feature phones!

On Thursday May 2nd 2013, the CTIA released some stats that indicated for the first time that Texting in the US of A, more formally called SMS (Short Messaging Service), decline by 5% from 2.3 trillion Tests in 2011 to 2.19 trillion in 2012 as reported in “Are Americans getting tired of Texting?”, published May 2, 2013 6:44 PM PDT by Dara Kerr, CNET News. The Full CTIA Report on SMS and IM can be seen using this link.

The graph below illustrates this astonishing declined well, as albeit 5% is small, it’s significant as it the first time in four (4) years that Texting has shown a decline. Worse, with the spread of 4G Mobile and the coming of lower cost smartphones as predicted in my blog article entitled “Analyst IDC States First Quarter of 2013 Smartphones Shipments finally overtake Feature Phones - Sub-US$200 Iron Man 3 Smartphones for Developed World Markets”, the decline is expected to get steeper by 2014.

The reason for the decline?

The rise of Instant Messaging services now being used in lieu of Talking and Texting! This is being precipitated by more countries light up their 4G Networks and more persons being to switch from Feature phones to smartphones with Data Plans to save money as noted by Analyst Informa in the article “Chat app now more popular than SMS Worldwide”, published April 29, 2013 5:22 AM PDT by Don Reisinger, CNET News.

Informa Stats indicated that the following IM Apps on smartphones were doing more of the heavy lifting in communication Worldwide, taking over from SMS:

1.      WhatsApp

2.      BlackBerry Messenger

3.      Viber

4.      Nimbuzz

5.      Apple's iMessage

6.      KakaoTalk

This seem quite the thing, with WhatsApp leading the pack beating Twitter’s impressive 200 million users a month according to statements by WhatsApp CEO  Jan Koum at the  AllThingsD's Mobile Conference on Tuesday April 16^th 2013 in the article “WhatsApp CEO: We're Bigger than Twitter's 200M users”, published April 16, 2013 8:26 AM PDT by Roger Cheng, CNET News.

Twitter, if you may remember, hit the 200 million monthly use mark in December 2012 as stated in  “Twitter surpasses 200M active monthly users”, published December 18, 2012 7:37 AM PST by Jonathan Skillings, CNET News. So for WhatsApp’s CEO to make this statement some four (4) months later in April 2013, they must be really clocking some serious Traffic on their soon-to-be-US$0.99-a-year Service.

WhatsApp furthermore got a boost from Nokia with a dedicated WhatsApp Button being placed on the ASHA line of smartphones as stated in Kelroy’s Geezam blog article entitled “New Nokia Asha 210 features a dedicated WhatsApp Button”. It’s not the concept that of interest, as I’ve seen this before with Facebook having a dedicated button on the HTC ChaCha, the HTC Salsa and the HTC Status. This of course turned out to be a failure as documented in my Geezam blog article entitled “How to add Emoticons to your Facebook posts”.

Rather, it’s Nokia’s recognition of the fact that WhatsApp is driving their Mobile Phone sales as it takes advantage of the trend among Millennials [ages 18 to 28] to have relatively low cost smartphones on a two (2) year Plan with Data Plans being used for IM and VoIP Calling.

Furthermore, Informa estimated that in 2012 all across the globe in countries where 3G and 4G Networks are installed and Subscribers have smartphones:

1.      19 billion IM were sent each day

2.      17.6 billion SMS messages were sent each day

The study, which was originally commissioned by the Financial Times as reported in “Mobile data is growing, but voice & sms slowing”, published April 29, 2012 - 9:02 PM PDT By Om Malik, Gigaom also made a shocking projection for 2013 and beyond:

1.      50 billion IM were sent each day

2.      21 billion SMS messages were sent each day

This seems fair, actually, as it meshes well with Analyst IDC’s Global numbers that indicate more smartphones are being shipped and used in Developing World countries currently deploying 3G and 4G Wireless Broadband Networks as stated in my blog article entitled “Analyst IDC States First Quarter of 2013 Smartphones Shipments finally overtake Feature Phones - Sub-US$200 Iron Man 3 Smartphones for Developed World Markets”.

More unlimited plans in the US as more smartphone users take on Date Plans but eschew Voice Plans in their 2 year packages. The Millennials [ages 18 to 28] prefer to use the VoIP in many of these IM Service or Social Networks such as Facebook or Twitter for Voice. As such, to encourage more Talking, Texting Bundles will decline in price, which will spur a renaissance of sorts in Texting. By then the death of Texting would have set in the US of A Telecoms Market, as Social Network and IM Apps fill the gap.

Combined with the lowering of the cost of smartphones as recommended by the ABI Research data as stated in my blog article entitled “Analyst IDC States First Quarter of 2013 Smartphones Shipments finally overtake Feature Phones - Sub-US$200 Iron Man 3 Smartphones for Developed World Markets” this decline in Text message usage is expected to accelerate both in the US and Globally.

Telecom Providers are slowly losing the last Big Cash Cow of the Voice Telecom Era: Texting. WhatsApp’s now Top Gun (1986) as The Dead Zone (1983) leads Star Trek Into the Darkness (2013).

Why the Spectrum Management Authority moved 700MHz Spectrum License Auction to Wednesday May 22 2013

Wednesday May 22^nd 2013is a day that will forever be etched in History for Jamaica.

Wednesday May 22^nd 2013 is fast approaching for interested parties to submit their Proposals and bids to the SMA (Spectrum Management Authority)  for one of the two (2) 700MHz Spectrum to provide 4G LTE Wireless Broadband Internet as stated in the article “Jamaica to tender 700 MHz licences in May”, published Wednesday April 17, 2013, The Jamaica Gleaner.

If I’m reading this right, the SMA sanctioned Auction has being moved up from Monday July 15^th 2013 to Wednesday May 22^nd 2013!

In essence, it’s an acceleration of the date for the Bidding for the blocks of the 700MHz Spectrum announced by Minister Paulwell on Tuesday March 26^th, 2013  in Parliament in my blog article entitled “Minister Paulwell in Parliament debut two 700MHz Licenses for 4G LTE for Monday July 15 2013 Auction - 4G LTE Means After Earth Everything is Possible”.

Spectrum Management Authority Sale – 4G LTE being auctioned to Telecom Providers

Up for grabs on Wednesday May 22^nd 2013 is two (2) blocks of 700MHz Spectrum out of a possible three (3) blocks, each roughly about 20MHz in size:

1.      Band 13

2.      Band 17

Asking price is a tad steep for what will be a very historic Telecoms License Bid:

1.      US$40 million for one block of 20MHz without the requirement of a Fiber Optic Interconnectivity for International Calling; piggyback on another Provider e.g. FLOW

2.      US$45 million for one block of 20MHz with the requirement of a Fiber Optic Interconnectivity for International Calling

3.      US$3 million to reserve a Bid on either block of Spectrum

This is exactly as detailed in my blog article entitled “Minister Paulwell in Parliament debut two 700MHz Licenses for 4G LTE for Monday July 15 2013 Auction - 4G LTE Means After Earth Everything is Possible”.

 

The basic requirements for the Bidders are as follows:

1.      4G LTE Wireless Broadband Network can be either LTE (Long Term Evolution) or WiMaX IEEE 802.16m

2.      4G LTE Wireless Broadband Network has to be built in five (5) years

3.      Telecoms Licenses are 15 Year Leases on Spectrum, not inclusive of any microwave Spectrum that the incumbent may chooses to utilize

4.      4G LTE Wireless Broadband Network has to achieve 90% Geographical coverage of the island within that period of time

5.      Tower and Infrastructure sharing is now mandatory, with ALL Telecom Providers having to share Towers and all other Infrastructure such as Building space to minimize the Environmental Impact

So how does the bidding process work for these blocks of spectrum?

Telecom License Details – CAPEX makes 4G LTE prohibitively expensive

However, the article “US$40-MILLION broadband licences”, published Wednesday, April 17, 2013 by CAMILO THAME Business co-ordinator, The Jamaica Observer provides some more tantalizing details.

Bids will have to include a business plan, detailing:

1.      Projected Percentage population coverage per year during the 5 year build-out

2.      CAPEX (Capital Expenditure) during the 5 year build-out

As it relates to the 5 year build-out, progress should be as follows:

1.      For established Telecom Provider already in Jamaica, launch of 4G LTE Networks to the Public within 1 year and 6 months

2.      For New Telecom Provider debutante in Jamaica, launch of 4G LTE Networks to the Public within 2 years

Progress is scaled differently for Established and New Telecom Providers as well. For Established Telecom Providers:

1.      50% 4G LTE Networks Coverage in 1 year and 6 months

2.      90% 4G LTE Networks Coverage in 4 years

For New Telecom Providers:

1.      30% 4G LTE Networks Coverage in 2 years

2.      90% 4G LTE Networks Coverage in 5 years

Failure to achieve any of the above will result in a loss of the license. If there are more Bidders than Bands, the prices can go higher, much higher. But this is unlikely as the CAPEX (Capital Expenditure) for providing speeds higher than 10MBps going up to 100MBps which 4G LTE is capable would make the service too expensive for mere mortals in Jamaica to afford.

LIME outsources to Ericsson - LIME gearing up for 4G LTE Build-out

Thus, what’s more likely come Wednesday May 22^nd 2013 will be groups of Telecom Providers banding together to bid for either of the two (2) 700MHz Spectrum Licenses. Cost containment will most likely be foremost on their minds, especially for Telecom Provider Digicel and Telecom Provider LIME who I speculated may possibly be banding together to bid for the Bid for lower cost US$40 million 700MHz Spectrum License and subsequent build-out.

Telecom Provider LIME has already long begun the process to outsource it 300 strong Maintenance team to Telecom Equiptment Provider Ericsson, an unprecedented move for those like myself who’ve worked with C&W and know the culture very well.

They made the announcement on Tuesday, March 26^th, 2013 in the Media of its intentions as mentioned in the article “LIME to lay off 300 as it partners with Ericsson”, published Tuesday, March 26, 2013 6:28 AM, The Jamaica Observer  and “LIME outsources operations to Ericsson”, published Wednesday March 27, 2013, The Jamaica Gleaner.

This is the same Telecom Equiptment Provider for Telecom Provider Digicel as noted in my blog article entitled “Minister Paulwell in Parliament debut two 700MHz Licenses for 4G LTE for Monday July 15 2013 Auction - 4G LTE Means After Earth Everything is Possible”.

Upon being laid off, LIME Maintenance personnel will be re-employed by Telecom Equiptment Provider Ericsson and Ericson will assume full responsibility for Telecom Provider LIME’s Network by Thursday May 30^th 2013.

4G LTE on the horizon – Future growth of 4G LTE in the hands of Teenagers

Meanwhile April’s been one busy PR (Public Relations) Swirl.

Digicel announced on Friday April 5^th, 2013 the upcoming launch of the sub-US$100 smartphone, the DL600 in May 2013 as per Digicel’s Press Release on March 27^th2013. Digicel made this announcement out of nowhere on, with no press announcement and no grand launch, save for a posting on their Website.

I was lucky enough to spot it early and I’d speculated this was a push for increased smartphone sales and usage of their 4G Mobile as concluded in my blog article entitled “Digicel to launch the DL600 Smartphone by Mid-May 2013 starting below US$100 - Alcatel One Touch running Firefox OS marketed like The Incredible Burt Wondersone”.

Less than a week later on Monday April 8^th 2013 and Tuesday April 9^th 2013, BOTH Telecom Provider LIME and Telecom Provider Digicel made donations of Tablets to schools in Kingston and St. Andrew as noted in my blog article entitled “LIME and Digicel both make Donations of Tablets to Preparatory and Primary Schools - How Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark started a Love for Computer Programming Languages in Jamaica”.

More signs of Telecom Providers realizing that any future growth of 4G LTE would have to be predicated on the very young being introduced to the latest technology as they’ll need access to the Internet for educational purposes on a device that can be easily controlled. Best of all, Tablets reduce the need to build more Labs by enabling the use of Wi-Fi in the Classroom, thereby turning any schoolroom into an IT Lab. IT can now be taught in any classroom like any other subject, requiring no special room.

Thus the E-Learning II Project got a boost with planned subsidized gifting of 20,000 Tablets to some 30 under-performing schools as noted in my blog article entitled “Minister Paulwell gives Parliamentarians and 20,000 Students in 30 Schools Tablets - Future in Science and Technology now rescued Indiana Jones and the Palace of Doom” to help improve their IT competency.

Not only will it improve their school performance and inspire them to be their best and not feel society has abandoned them, but it’ll also encourage them to pursue careers in Science and Technology, particularly Programming and take an interest in learning Languages. Hopefully too, Private Sector Companies may take a second look at the E-Learning II’s initial phase, the Schools Tablet Computer Programme and decided to contribute Tablets or even lend their expertise in installing Wi-Fi Hotspots.

So there you have it.

Tag-Teams to acquire very expensive 15 year Telecom Licenses and build them within a 5 year span, with very rigid timelines. Already the Telecom Providers are creating the very market by seeding the minds of the very young with devices that can access these 4G Networks, stepped down via LTE to Wi-Fi Routers of course, a big hint as to how to reduce the CAPEX at the Customer end.

Truly a Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), but as is now well known from my experience with CLARO, with the future of Jamaica at stake, Everything is Possible as we push Jamaica forward into the 21^st Century come Wednesday May 22^nd 2013.