The blurry, grainy, tiny YouTube video you know and tolerate will soon become a thing of the past as Google’s billion-dollar baby is currently in the midst of rolling out out higher quality options for your video clip-ripping pleasure.  Of course 480×360 isn’t that much better than the old 320×240 videos we’re all familiar with, but hey, at least it’s something, right?  Here are a few ways to get that bigger bootleg copy of the “Mr. Plow” episode of The Simpsons everyone loves.  Can you see the difference?

There are a few different options to get the good (or at least better) version of the YouTube clips to display, other than clicking on the ‘display higher resolution’ button where available on YouTube itself.  There’s a simple URL hack you can do in your browser of choice, and a Firefox extension for people who are too lazy to add six characters in by hand.  Displaying the larger quality video in your website via the embed code is quite a bit more difficult (for now at least), but it also can be done with some significant embed code changes helpfully listed by Wired.

If I used Firefox still, I’d definitely download the extension.  That’s right, I made the switch, then went back to Internet Explorer (at least at home) once IE added tabbed browsing.  The memory hogging aspect of FireFox was too much to overcome for me, even though I loved the various add-ons dedicated solely to World of Warcraft searches.

Tags: youtube, hacks, firefox extensions

 
Axl Rose has been working on the new Guns N’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy, since 1994.  It’s been supposedly ready for release for many years, but legal problems have kept the album delayed.  It’s missed release date after release date.  The band has toured to drum up interest in the album, but the album hasn’t […]

The Simpsons, now tied with Gunsmoke for the longest-running prime time program in American history, has had an incredible impact on popular culture.  They’ve been on every kind of promotional piece of merchandise ever made, have had a hit movie, and have not one, but two words in the dictionary.  D’oh made the cut and […]

Remember Thomas Beatie?  He made a splash everywhere when he announced that, despite having become a man via sex change, he was legitimately pregnant.  Well, the pregnant man is back, and he’s pregnant again.
After Beatie gave birth to his daughter Susan on June 29, Thomas never resumed the male hormone treatments that turned him from […]

Google is just an unstoppable octopus of helpfulness these days.  If you’re a webmaster, you know all about Google Analytics, which tracks your website’s performance, and Google Trends, which tracks general internet things of interest.  There’s also Google’s advertising network AdSense, the Google Android smart phone OS, the Google Chrome web browser, and all the […]

It’s a special day today for a lot of my good friends who are members of an elite wing of the United States Armed Forces.  That’s right, leathernecks, it’s time to wish happy birthday to the United States Marine Corps!  Oorah, devildogs!
There is no branch of the service that commands the loyalty and respect that […]

Miss Cellania asks:  “To drink or not to drink?”  That is question.  Coffee has a lot of potential health benefits for those of us who indulge in a bit of the black brew from time to time, but it also has a lot of potential health risks associated with its consumption.  The wise owls over […]

Sad news for me today, gang.  Best-selling science fiction author and medical doctor Michael Crichton passed away today after a private struggle with cancer.  He was only 66 years old, but he leaves behind a body of work that is as good as anyone’s in his genre.  His books, usually a blend of action and […]