Keep What You Stream

Streaming Video and Streaming Music are all nice and good when you have a good internet connection. But that's not always the case. Fortunetely, there's free software to help you grab your favorite online media without having to reload a web page endlessly. These are the ones I use, there may be better programs out there, but I've been fine with just these.

Download Helper
I think I've made it clear that I use firefox, this video downloader is a firefox plugin. Let's say you've just watched a YouTube video and want to save it. If you have this installed, then you can just right-click the page, go to the "Download Helper" option, and then choose the flv file. (Youtube videos are flv format, K-lite Mega Codec allows you to watch them, or there are tons of easy to find "flv to avi" programs.) I used Youtube in this example, but this Download Helper will work with just about any streaming video site. Oh yeah, here's a good tip, go to the preferences menu and add 'swf' to the MediaLink and MediaReq tabs so that you can download flash files.

Audacity or Free MP3 Sound Recorder
These two programs will allow you to record sounds, both can record to the MP3 format. Audacity doubles as an editing program, Free MP3 Sound Recorder is more limited but much simpler to use. Both seem safe to me. If you don't trust me, you can google search to find a bunch of other options. Oh yeah, you need to choose either stereo mix or wave in for the sound device if you want to record stuff playing on your computer. This is a problem for certain computers, all the fixes for it seem expensive.

Download Statusbar
And while we're talking about downloading stuff... if you're using firefox, please also be using download status bar. It's a million times better and less intrusive that that default download pop-up manager.